If the world is wearying, if the day is darkening– Sing, from the bottom of your heart, blossom every broken part, sing, sing, sing– do not let them win. (ze/hir)
rent lowering gunshot time so i actually do not think all israelis are evil or that israeli companies are untrustworthy or indeed that israeli newspapers are wildly inaccurate simply because they are israeli. holding any of these views is bad and xenophobic actually. performative protests against israeli people existing in the global space a la refusing to play the israeli football team are completely ridiculous and also xenophobic. <3 bye if u think this post makes me bad and racist for some reason & maybe think about why you think that
this might be my silly inconsequential take about this but I think you should support your friends' art endeavours in whatever ways you can and very vehemently
say nice shit about their art. fangirl about it, compliment the art fundamentals or the vibe or the color whatever. share their posts online
it used to be so easy to create an art community online in the past and now it's hellish. fight the algorithms. spam your friends art. they will either rlly appreciate the attention or straight up need it.
theres something slightly heartbreaking about the thought that the people around you don't care about your creations. by all means, you should create art for yourself but also, sometimes that art is a direct window into your inner world and when friends and loved ones ignore that it can sting pretty bad
that's it folks be nice to each other out there and fight to create meaningful communities
I've been meaning to make a post talking about my stroke because y'all got bits and pieces of the recovery but I never actually told the story of HOW it went down and the thing is the type of stroke I had is usually the type young people have and since having mine i've now heard multiple stories of people under 40 having very similar strokes and the scary thing is, is that they didn't get help right away. Because you're young and healthy and sure you feel weird but it'll pass right? but it doesn't, and it gets worse, and by the time you get to the hospital (some people literally take days to go) the deficits are worse and recovery is harder.
so here's a super long post about strokes in general, and mine in particular/what I went through.
So for strokes the signs are abbreviated BE FAST. Balance loss, Eyesight changes, Face drooping, Arm weakness, Speech difficulty, -> Time to call 911.
Had I known those MAYBE I would have figured it out but my symptoms were a little mixed. I was reading (fanfic!) in bed because it was a sunday morning and i had nothing pressing to do and suddenly got dizzy. I put my laptop aside because my eyes were blurring (Eyesight changes - symptom #1), and laid down, thinking it would pass, it didn't, it's a little vague how it progressed because I'd been having headaches and neckpain for about 3 weeks leading up to it so I was like 'idk is this a migraine?' (headaches can be a stroke symptom so symptom #2) but i got nauseous and eventually got up and to my utmost surprise I immediately fell over as if I was the drunkest of frat bros. The room literally spun before my eyes as I fell to the floor (Balance loss - symptom #3). I have had some Nights and I had never been that unsteady before. I crawled my way to the bathroom, threw up (nausea - not a common stroke symptom) , took 800mg of ibuprofen, and crawled back to bed.
if you know anything about ibuprofen you might know it's a mild blood thinner and that's a high dose. I may have inadvertently helped myself with that one. I was just feeling like shit and thinking 'idk this might help'
At this point I still thought we were still in Normal Land. Sure, it was a weird morning, but Surely There Was A Reason. (Yes There Was) Anyway, as I'm lying there willing my body to stop suffering I realize my arm is going numb (stroke symptom #4) and I switch positions, because weird, but it doesn't go away, and I gave it a good little while. I'm on a medication that can make my limbs tingle but it usually just does it to my fingers and it dissipates quickly but this wasn't dissipating, and then I realized one of my legs was also going numb. Then one side of my face is going numb.
(at the time I did not look in the mirror but I had a drooping eyelid - symptom #5)
Those all seem bad. I grab my computer and google 'when to go to the hospital for dizzyness' as that felt like the worst of my problems. and indeed the list I found highlighted that if you are also experiencing loss of balance, blurred vision, nausea, and limb numbness, you should see a doctor. That seems like far too many symptoms to be having all to be listed. I grab my phone (thankfully plugged in and by my bed), and start layering on more clothing because it's about 10 degrees out and i'm in a pajama dress. The very nice man at 911 talks with me and sends an ambulance, I tell him I don't think I can get out the front door of my building on my own and he asks if I can get to MY apartment door to which I say yes and he assures me that's fine they will have keys to my building.
(I have been since informed they love to chop down doors but no, I could get that far)
I wait by my door laying down on the ground and they arrive pretty quickly. They see to me in the hallway, which is more of a lobby in my building and the only place with room for me to lie down (I cannot stand unassisted at this point) they ask me a bunch of questions, take vitals, and ask me where I would like to be taken. Me, having never had to go to the fucking hospital in an emergency before, simply go 'wherever is close' because I again, I am having a stroke and do not have the wherewithal to think through these things.
A big firefighter helps me down the stairs (it's only a half flight and I still almost did not make it) and we get underway.
At the hospital they wheel me into triage and I mostly lie there gratefully and answer some questions and respond to some tests (grip strength, following a pen with my eyes, that sort of thing) and then I hear what is great when you've been at urgent care for two hours but what is Very Bad when you just arrived in an ambulance and that's 'She's next'. I jumped the line for a CT scan and an MRI. I was there less than ten minutes before I was actively being scanned. honestly closer to five.
my active symptoms seem to have been worse than some of the stories I've heard, not being able to walk AT ALL in particular, although some other are pretty equal (Footless Jo on youtube had a stroke around the same time I did of the same type and has discussed hers, she delayed going in despite the severity for a variety of reasons and it sounds like her recovery has been difficult) My recovery was pretty easy because i was actively being cared for and on blood thinners right away. I was pretty out of it in the beginning, but I was only in the hospital for 6 days and then in a rehab for another 4 to relearn how to walk and balance, then i was released unto the world and just spent time going to physical therapy and recovering for awhile. I was out of work for about 8 weeks total. I basically had the best outcome for a stroke. I recovered almost fully back to 100% (I'm about 2% less sure footed than I used to be, but it's rarely noticeable), my face still feels a little weird but has markedly improved so I live in hope it will eventually get back to normal. It massively sucked. But strokes can fuck you up for life and I came out a weird medical story to tell and have to take some extra medication now/precautions to take (i cannot do certain types of yoga, no weightlifting, no push ups, no going on rollercoasters.... things that could strain my neck essentially) but overall I escaped very lucky.
For anyone who has ever had covid before, please be sure you are aware of stroke symptoms. Each successive infection raises the risk in a pretty major way, and a lot of people are dying young due to not knowing these signs or being afraid to act on them. Please take care of yourselves.
Fyi being part of a minority doesnt make you or me inherently more progressive just by virtue of being that minority alone. We still need to actually be progressive to be progressive
the thing about misogyny is that femininity is both devalued AND forced on women (and those misgendered as women). if you fail to meet the arbitrary standard of Womanly Charm you're ugly and unwanted and hate yourself and if you succeed you're shallow and brainless and weak. if you don't try to conform you're lazy and if you do you're vain. it is not possible to beat this system. feminism needs both "feminine doesn't mean weak or less-than" AND "women don't have to be feminine to have value", and if you are fighting for one of these the people fighting for the other are not your enemies, nor are they privileged over you.
this post is inclusive of trans people, including but not limited to trans women and transfeminine people. exclusionary sentiment is not welcome.
'Why does every nonbinary person want top surgery' I dunno maybe because having visible breasts immediately makes everyone assume you're female and only female, and therefore put you into a binary. Also why are you assuming every nonbinary person has breasts.
I think people who believe that should also put some thought into whether every nonbinary person with breasts actually wants top surgery, or whether they've just decided that the nonbinary people with breasts who want to keep them don't "count" as nonbinary.
#i know plenty of nonbinary people who want breasts or like their breasts#but they're viewed as either transtrenders or trans women in denial <- prev tags
I think something that's being forgotten is the fact that some of us also have dysphoria and it can be in any direction (ie some people want breasts, some people don't, for some it fluctuates, etc). For whatever reason it seems like people forget that and if I were to guess it's probably because people see us as people who want to be quirky or different instead of "real" trans people.
i think every book should have a map at the beginning, not just fantasy books. it’s a memoir that takes place in a small town in minnesota? i want to see a map of minnesota
why is fandom less fun when black ppl or aro ppl or trans ppl tell you to check your biases. if its 'just a headcanon' why is it such a big deal that ppl ask you to think about why you made it
why do you never engage with black characters, why do you always think the same type of character is transmasc/fem, why do you only find romance interesting to the point of ignoring plotlines so you can create ships
are we actually just being the fun police or are you just being a bigot. why is pretending we dont exist necessary for your enjoyment
As a nonbinary intersex person, I feel like I'm always trying to balance on the knife's edge between "I believe that anyone should get whatever hormones and surgery they want, no questions asked, with no shitty barriers" and "...but some of y'all are really edging into truscum/transmedicalist territory, I really need people to stop equating the term 'transition' with 'HRT, surgery, and nothing else,' and I am begging other trans people to do way more work in deconstructing their binary view of gender, because if one more trans person says something exorsexist and/or intersexist to me about my body, I AM going to fucking snap. Stop gendering my body and trying to dictate what transition should mean for anyone who isn't your own damn self."
I really wish it was easier to say, "hey, transmedicalists have put a shitty amount of pressure on me and several of my other nonbinary friends to transition in a way that doesn't suit us, and the emphasis a lot of trans spaces put on HRT and surgery can be super uncomfortable as an intersex person who has had doctors try to tell me I should get hormone treatments to 'fix' my body."
But people get touchy and reactive about that conversation, because of how many bigots are doing the "omg trans people are FORCING their DIRTY HORMONES on our CHILDREN!" narrative.
I never want to accidentally contribute to that moral panic. But at the same time, as a nonbinary intersex person, some trans people really fucking do pull the "oh my god you have to get HRT and surgery in order to be VALID and REAL like ME!" shit.
These thoughts are on my mind today because I'm reading an anthology of trans-focused comics. A significant number of them are "how I got my surgery/HRT and started feeling like a Real Trans Person" narratives.
The authors haven't done anything shitty in telling their stories. These stories are important to share. But it's hard not to notice that I've yet to see a story like mine, where the journey of self-love comes through learning that body parts have no gender, that my body does not determine my identity, and that I don't have to alter it in order to fit binarist, truscum, intersexist ideas of what I should look like. My body can just exist without intervention. I don't need to do anything to it unless I want to, and the fact that I don't want to does not make me any less trans, nonbinary, or intersex.
It just gets kind of exhausting and alienating to see endless "trans empowerment is through SURGERY and HORMONES!!!!" stories, without much variation.
I wasn't born in the wrong body. I don't feel trapped in my body. My body is already nonbinary, because I am nonbinary.
