#post number 2

[terrifyingly-overthought]

Boop

Why are asks even open by default?

Also, did you use a different account just to pretend to boop me?

Hi to the one guy following me who I don't know irl :3

[relatable-messenger]

Follow @relatable-messenger for daily content

[ghxstype]

Part two of my friend post

I met this friend in my freshman year of high school. We met in our PE class and we had AP classes together. We grew super close that year.

In junior year we had a class together again, and we sat next to each other. We met two other people that were introduced into our dynamic. The boy, we’ll call him Bryce, I immediately had a crush on him and my friend had my back whenever another girl would like him. We were in it to win it. The girl, we’ll call her Courtney, I was a little iffy on. To be honest I didn’t click with her all that much, she told me she loved the first day I met her and she asked why I didn’t say it back.

It got to the point where I wanted nothing to do with her, from about Thanksgiving break through winter break. About three days before we went back to school I started talking to her again I honestly don’t remember why, it’s not important. My friend told me she liked Bryce too. We vowed not to let it get between us. I let it, with the help of Courtney. 

Bryce told me he liked my friend, it sucked, but I loved my friend, and I wanted her to be happy. They started dating, I sat next to them in class and walked with them to class. I started resenting my friend. Courtney made up reasons for me to resent her, I believed them blindly. Bryce broke up with my friend, I liked Bryce so much that I started to ice my friend out. I just stopped talking to her, no reason, no closure. 

And then she got sick, hospitalized from stress. Bryce and Courtney speculated it was because she wasn’t eating. I was worried, I asked if she was okay and she told me why she was hospitalized. 

I thought I was in love with Bryce, but I couldn’t handle it because I knew his feelings weren’t the same. I wrote him a letter that said I couldn’t be friends with him anymore because it hurt too much. I gave it to Courtney to read and tell me what she thought. I never gave it to him.

Then it was summer, just as quickly as it came we were back in school. We were supposed to have AP Statistics together, She wasn’t there on the first day or the second. I assumed she had moved schools, she did. Bryce and Courtney thought it was funny that she left, I wasn’t so sure. After a month back from school I was really wondering what happened. As if it was all a dream. I found her on twitter and asked her what had happened. We talked for a couple hours, she told me not to trust Courtney, that she would stab me in the back, I said I was getting bad vibes from her so I already stopped trusting her. Courtney found out I was talking to my friend again and wanted to know everything that was being said. I didn’t tell her what we said.

That night I found out that Courtney had told Bryce everything, she told him that I loved him, she let him read the letter that I poured my heart out in to. I told Bryce that I knew everything that he had told her. I called her a bitch and told her never talk to me again, and that she should be ashamed for coming in between my friend and me and driving a wedge between us. I never talked to her again.

Except for that one time when me and my cousin were going through what I said to her and I sent an emoji and she thought that I was ready to talk. I told her no, I still wanted nothing to do with her.

I liked Bryce up until January of Senior year, and suddenly I was over him. I talked to him on and off until 6 months ago when he messaged me out of the blue to ask if I wanted to hang out, I said no I was busy. He said he was fine he could wait, he just needed someone to take him to “cigs” and thought we could hang out in the process. I ignored him and stopped talking to him.

Me and my friend still talk and we say we are best friends and we love each other, but I know that she’ll always remember what happened back in high school, and part of me thinks that it has messed up that part of our friendship permanently. 

But we’re better than we have been, and ultimately I know she’s having one of the best times of her life despite all the bad.

[annakarinasource]

“Une Femme Est Une Femme” (featuring Anna’s *constant* adorableness), 1961.

[echosketches]

Here's a picture I had to make for history class! We had to make fictional people around the time of the French Revolution, and I got assigned a noblewoman. She's not the best due to being a bit rushed and not having the best materials at hand, but I'm still pretty happy with how she turned out.

[strugglesofacanadianwannabe]

Of Birth Controls and Side Effects

(little note: I wanted to finish and upload this post yesterday, but my exhaustion got the best of me and it was delayed for today)

Today is Friday and usually this is the day of the week that brings a sense of “finally I'll have some time to rest and unwind”, right? I share the sentiment because I usually feel so tired after five work days; waking up around 6am (some days earlier than that so I can take a shower before getting ready), working for about 8 hours, then making my way home, eat something, relax for a while, spend some time with my dogs and my parents (mostly my mom), and, finally, sleep.

But on this particular Friday I want to talk about how the need to take birth control in the past has affected my mental health. And before I start, I should give a fair warning that I'm going to talk about my past mental health issues, insecurities, and body issues. So please consider this as a trigger warning.

The first time I took a birth control was back 2012, when I was a mere 17yo going into 18 years of age, in my first year of college/uni. Up to that year, my menstrual cycles were quite complicated. It was very irregular, and I felt terrible cramps. It was so bad that I used to take two medicines on the first three days out of seven of my period: one for cramps itself and the other for general pain, and this one was also indicated for tooth pain (heavy stuff). And I also felt completely horrible and blotched through pretty much the entire week. On some months I even felt nauseous with the smell of milk (I still have that sometimes, tho). So my mom, noticing how all that was bothering for years already, suggested for me to with her to see the gynecologist she used to go at the time to talk about trying a birth control to help on those things.

The medicine the doctor suggested to me worked for the things I needed at the time (regulated my cycles, made my skin look better, reduced the pain level of my cramps). But, at the same time, it caused two side effects that I didn’t realize weren’t supposed to happen when you take a birth control: weight gain and lactation.

I didn't notice these effects as quickly as I should have because I had just started college/uni,  and I was stress eating a bit (thanks to the snack shop that was located in the same building I had all my classes and had the most amazing smell of baked goodies around break time). And I also thought that my weight gain was normal after all the stress I went through in 2011 - one of the worst years of my life in many aspects.

I did noticed that some of my clothes, like pants and t-shirts, were a bit tighter around my stomach and thighs - and I had to buy some things that were slightly bigger and fit me better. But it wasn't until one year after (2013) I started taking the medicine, on a particular Saturday evening, when my mom pointed out that I wasn't naturally like that, basically telling me that I was bigger than my usual shape. She also said that it was probably the medicine that was helping on my out of the blue weight gain. I cried a lot that night, thinking that my mother just wanted to point out my flaws (which wasn't the case). And let's be honest, who wouldn't feel like crap when you realize that you don't feel look good based even on your standards and you could have prevented such thing to happen to you?

So back in July of 2013, my weight was around 60kg. At least six months later, I was already down to 58kg already. And by December of 2014, I was weighing about 55kg - which is the weight I tend to have around these days.

As for the lactation side effect, I did some exams, it nothing related to a possible issue and it disappeared a while later.

Mid 2016 was when I tried taking birth control for the second time, after consulting with a different gynecologist. The reason why I decided to take it again was, at first, a relationship (that didn't even last a month LOL). But after an ultrasound, the doctor told me that the exam showed that I had micro cysts, which probably caused by hormonal level changes.

And so began a sequence of tries with different birth controls.

I took the first medicine the doctor suggested for less than a week due to a side effect that made me feel my weakest self: big humor swings. Around three or four days after starting to take it, I had an anxiety attack (it wasn't pretty). I felt so sad and powerless over how my body responded to something that was supposed to help me that, on that night, I couldn't care less if I just disappeared. On my next appointment with the gynecologist, I handed back two unopened boxes out of three she gave me.

I tried the second birth control the doctor suggested for about 3 months, but I couldn't ignore something that was happening all month around: menstrual cramps.

In the meantime, I went tomy trusty cardiologist for a checkup appointment (because of some other health issues I have). My mom remembered that the cardiologist's husband was a gynecologist that was practicing on the same place as her and an appointment with him was scheduled.

He was very attentive and understood why I was still pushing the idea to take birth control. And so the next one I took was a version that was supposed to stop me from having my period. I was really excited with the idea, but it turned sour when I had the usual amount of cramps and my period (even if it was on a smaller scale).

The next birth control worked better than all the previous ones I had taken, so I kept going with this one. But then one morning when I was climbing down the stairs at home when I felt my breasts hurt just from this small action. I pressed them lightly and they felt stiff, in a way I don’t feel even when my breasts bother me during PMS. I told my mom about it and she, having been a nurse in the past, knew right away what was wrong with me: I was lactating again, and this time it was severely.

And then I just knew I was done with birth control, micro cysts and all wouldn’t make me continue with that shitshow.

Flash forward to 2019 and I started noticing that my hair was falling out  like crazy - no exaggeration on the “crazy”, and it’s still happening. My first thought was that it was probably hormonal (I can detail more on that in a future post). I went back to that first doctor I saw back in 2016, and she asked for some blood tests and another ultrasound. I was so sure of the possible result on the ultrasound, full of tiny dots representing all the microcysts still over my uterus and ovaries, that I didn’t imagine the opposite result: not a single microcyst. So you may ask what made me want to give another try to this cursed type of medicine? Hormonal alteration.

This time around, the doctor suggested a different version of a birth control: in the form of pads. Not only it was the most expensive birth control I’ve ever tried, but figuring out where to stick the damn thing was quite tricky - because each of three pads that came on the package are supposed to stay on for a whole week. Turns out the best place to applied it, if you’re a hairy girl like me (due to being partially Portuguese and Spanish descendent), is your upper arms. Price aside, I was really hopeful that is new other option of birth control could help me, but you might guess that it didn’t.

And you’re right, it didn’t work well enough for me to continue using it for more than a month. Why you may ask? The same side effect I had with one of the birth controls I used back in 2016: humor swings. The difference now was that it made me feel so angry and frustrated even when a small thing happened, like work related for example - some things even caused me anxiety. And it felt like once I felt either frustration or rage, it wouldn’t stop until I went to a quiet, hidden corner, cried my eyes out and tried to regulate my breath. It wasn’t a pretty sight at all to be seen.

The things that got me through those days was speaking how I was feeling to some close friends and my mom. Honestly, the people I talked to about what I was dealing with all thanks to a drug made me feel really understood and I can’t thank them enough for listening to me. Being around a coworker who was purely not nice to me and some other things happening at the time didn’t help either on keeping my emotions totally in check, but I had to focus on my job and faking until I made it. It worked to a certain point, but there’s only so much a not totally in place mind can do when you feel like the shittiest person you know.

As for today, I know that I still need to find a solution for the hormonal alteration shown on my last blood exam (and possibly another gynecologist who’s more understanding). I don’t know if I’ll find a birth control that won’t cause a side effect bad enough for me to switch to another one or quit trying altogether.

With this text, I wanted to show that women don’t take birth control simply because they are in a relationship that might involve sex. There are many other things that can lead a woman to that decision, and as long as the stigma keeps living, women like me will always be judged. I also wanted to show how much a medicine can cause both good and bad things to happen to your body in many aspects.

[ask--canadia-blog]

[adastra-lux-blog]

Political Bullshit

There are many versions of the truth in Martial Law but in the end, they all have common denominator: MANY PEOPLE DIED. MANY HUMAN RIGHTS WERE VIOLATED. ALL THESE HAPPENED UNDER THE REIGN OF MARCOS.

And now people are electing the son of the dictator who is WELL AWARE of what happened during that time. And who is now DENYING ALL ALLEGATIONS and DEFLECTING ALL THE MARTIAL LAW ISSUES.

are well all just going to settle for this stupidity