This Counts As Coping

Queer rage, autistic burnout, and whatever gets me through the day.

[two-bees-poetry]

twenty years across the sea

[aimlesspoet]

a bottom-tier autistic experience is being told throughout your entire childhood that you are just an overthinker when it comes to social situations and later finding out that your friends did, in fact, hate being around you and tried to communicate that through weird little hints

[tyiart]

print \ sticker 🦋

[deeptrospection]

[prideknights]

Meet the King of Diamonds, the rainbow pride knight! Thank you everyone for joining us and giving feedback on all the compositions, shaping this deck; it's been an amazing journey! The Pride Knights Playing Cards, art prints and uncut sheets are available for pre-order until June 30, 2025: prideknights.com ⚔️🌈

[thiscountsascoping]

What If I Don't Know Who I Am Without It?

There’s a fear that lives in my body when I think about quitting weed. Not the kind that flares and fades, but the kind that settles in my chest and stays put. It’s quiet most of the time, but it hums beneath everything. I’ve been trying to name it.

I’ve already kicked hard drugs. I’ve already let go of alcohol. I’ve walked through detox, recovery, withdrawal, cravings, and all the chaos that comes with rebuilding your life from scratch. I’ve done a lot of healing. I’ve had to. There’s no way to survive what I’ve survived and come out untouched.

I’m proud of how far I’ve come. I’ve built a life that feels real. I show up for people. I hold down responsibilities. I’m in love. I’m present. And even on the hardest days, I don’t fall apart the way I used to.

But weed is still here. It’s the one thread I haven’t been able to cut.

I tell myself it’s not that serious. That it’s different. That I’m functional, so it’s fine. And maybe it was fine for a while. But lately, I’ve been noticing how much space it takes up. How often I reach for it. How automatic it’s become. How much I rely on it to get through stress, noise, dysphoria, boredom, overstimulation, everything.

It’s not destroying my life. But I don’t think it’s helping me live, either.

I’ve started to wonder what it would feel like to be fully clear. Fully present. To not need anything to soften the edge. To trust that I can sit with discomfort without trying to blur it.

But there’s a part of me that’s scared to find out.

I don’t know what my days look like without it. I don’t know what might come up. I don’t know how I’ll handle the nights when my body won’t settle or the mornings when I feel pulled under before I even start. I don’t know who I am when I’m not managing myself through a haze.

It’s strange to have come this far and still feel stuck. I’ve already done the hard things. I’ve already quit the things that were killing me. I know what it takes. But this habit is quiet. It’s familiar. It doesn’t wreck me the way the others did. It just keeps me from rising the way I know I could.

I haven’t quit yet. I’m not writing this as a declaration. Just a reflection. A place to tell the truth about where I am. I want to let it go. I want to see what’s possible without it. I want to believe that I’ve built enough strength and softness to carry myself through whatever I’ve been trying to avoid.

And I think I’m getting closer.

This is the last tether. The last thing I reach for when I don’t know what else to do. And maybe that’s enough of a reason to try. Not because I hate myself for needing it. But because I’ve worked too hard to stay stuck in one spot.

I don’t need to be perfect. I just want to be free.

[thiscountsascoping]

This Counts As Coping: An Introduction . . . kind of.

I didn’t mean to start a blog. I just hit a point where there wasn’t anywhere else to put all of it.

I’ve spent most of my life collecting words I never said. Half-written notes in my phone. Thoughts I rehearsed but never said out loud. Memories I only let myself think about when it’s late and quiet and I can pretend no one’s watching. Eventually, I needed somewhere to put them. Somewhere outside my body.

This blog isn’t polished. It’s not curated. It’s not full of advice. I’m not here to teach you how to cope. I’m here because I’m trying to figure out how I do.

I’m trans. I’m autistic. I’m ADHD. I’ve been through addiction. Eating disorders. Shame. Church. Self-harm in a dozen different forms. I’ve masked so hard I forgot who I was. I’ve unraveled on purpose just to see if anyone would notice. I’ve built entire lives around being who other people needed me to be. And when those versions couldn’t carry it anymore, I burned them down and started over.

I’ve worked long hours pretending I’m okay. I’ve come home and laid on the floor and dissociated for three hours. I’ve sat in cars outside of houses I couldn’t walk into yet. I’ve folded laundry like it’s proof I still exist. I’ve eaten nothing for days. I’ve eaten everything in sight. I’ve stared at the mirror and tried to find something to love. Some days I’ve found it. Some days I haven’t.

There is no moral arc to this blog. No happy ending. No “and then I got better.” I write this as someone still in it. Still tired. Still trying. Still crawling out of shutdowns and back into my body. Still learning how to ask for what I need without apologizing.

I called it This Counts As Coping because I’m done trying to make my healing look palatable. Sometimes coping looks like routines and boundaries and journaling. And sometimes it looks like sarcasm and stubborn survival and taking the damn day off. Sometimes it’s saying “I’m fine” and knowing I’m not. Sometimes it’s staying alive out of spite. Sometimes it’s crying over nothing and calling that release.

If you’re here, it’s probably because something in you is still fighting. Or hiding. Or exhausted. Or just wants to feel a little less alone.

I don’t have answers. But I do have honesty. And I have space for the parts of you that haven’t found a home anywhere else yet.

This is where I put the things that don’t fit anywhere else. The pieces of myself I used to think I had to hide.

If that sounds familiar, welcome.

This counts as coping.

[thiscountsascoping]

I'm Not A Survivor, I'm A Graveyard

I’ve lived a lot of lives. Burned through them, honestly. Some versions of me were built just to survive a year or a moment or a house, and then they fell apart. Or I took them apart. I’m not sure it matters.

The first version of me was a girl. At least that’s what I was told I was. I didn’t feel like anything. I just tried to be good. Quiet. Helpful. I didn’t cry too much. I didn’t ask for much. I was told not to make people uncomfortable with my feelings, so I didn’t. Even when I was being abused. Even when I wanted to die. I thought if I did all the right things, I’d be safe. I wasn’t.

Around six or seven, I started sneaking candy. My first real addiction. Food made me feel better for a minute. It made me feel full when everything else felt hollow. No one really noticed. Or if they did, they didn’t say anything that helped. Just comments about how much I ate. I learned to hate myself in quiet ways.

Eventually, that turned into starvation. It wasn’t a straight line; more like a loop. Binge, shame, restrict, starve, binge again. Sometimes I threw up. Sometimes I didn’t. I told myself every time that this was the last time, that I’d get it together tomorrow. That if I could just shrink enough, or stay empty long enough, everything would stop hurting. It didn’t.

I didn’t know I was trans yet. I just knew I hated being in my body. It felt like a betrayal. I couldn’t explain it, and I didn’t have the words, so I just kept trying to fix it by force. I thought if I could change the outside, I could maybe tolerate the inside.

I came out as a lesbian at eighteen. It was the closest I could get to the truth without losing everything. I didn’t tell my dad the real truth. He had already said enough to make it clear it wouldn’t go well. I told my mom. She tried. She didn’t get it, but she didn’t shut me down. That was enough.

By that point I’d already decided I was going to medically transition. I wasn’t looking for permission anymore. I just needed to be real. Or at least closer to it.

And for a little while, things got better. I started to see a version of myself I could almost live with. But I was still masking. Still hiding. Still waiting for someone to call me a fraud.

Then came the crash.

Drugs. Alcohol. Sex. Not for fun. For destruction. I wasn’t trying to get high. I was trying to disappear. Everything I did felt like a slow way to erase myself. I knew how to be funny. I knew how to be useful. I showed up to work. I remembered people’s birthdays. I helped everyone else stay afloat.

But I was falling apart, quietly and on purpose. People said I was reckless. But reckless is unplanned. I was exact. I knew exactly what parts of myself to break first.

I spent nearly a decade working in the back of a restaurant. Pizza ovens. Morning prep. Same kitchen. Same burnout. I did that job long enough to watch the same pain cycle through a hundred coworkers. I was still using, still spiraling, still showing up. I learned how to function just enough to stay off the radar. People liked me. I made them laugh. No one asked how I was doing.

Eventually, I got clean. Eventually, I left. In 2024, I started working in recovery. Residential addiction treatment. It's a whole different kind of survival; holding space for other people’s pain when you’re still learning how to hold your own. I know what to say. I know how to show up. But I also know how easy it is to sound whole when you’re not.

Sometimes I walk out of a twelve-hour shift after holding everyone else together and come home completely empty. Sometimes I give all the right advice and then go home and forget how to feed myself. Sometimes I wake up and I’m still in one of the old versions of me. And I have to claw my way out all over again.

But I’m here.

I know things now that none of those other versions knew. Like how I’m worthy of happiness. Like how my body doesn’t have to be punished for me to be okay. Like how I don’t need to destroy myself to feel real.

I’m building something. Slowly. With someone who loves me and sees me and doesn’t leave when it gets quiet.

I still fold laundry like it’s proof I exist. I still forget to eat. I still stare at myself in the mirror some days and feel nothing but static.

But I stay.

I’m not healed. But I’m here. And for now, that’s enough.