do it while the ground falls out from under you; do it while everything you loved goes up in smoke; do it while the dream of your future is still burning embers around you; build anew on the hot ashes of everything you worked for; keep going, keep loving, keep living, even as all you want is to turn back (there is no turning back; it is gone already); do it through grief, which feels like fear in the body
The tag I have seen most often on this post is "I needed to hear this," and I am so, so grateful to have said something that was needed. These words came out of the depths of my own grief, and I am so grateful to have made this small connection with others in the midst of it. Grief is isolating and indescribable, but none of us are alone.
That said, these tags were what I needed to hear:
we're all gonna make it
it's okay if you can't see how yet. you don't have to believe in better. for now it is enough to just keep going, and eventually the path will emerge. you are not alone. you are not lost in the woods forever. keep going. I love you.
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.
Andrew Minyard better than me fr because if my blue eyed situationship said "thank you, you were amazing" to me after I gave 110% at a fucking stickball game and then immediately gets kidnapped by his serial killer dad he conveniently forgot to tell me about, and I had to learn that my codependent worstie knew the whole time through "gentle persuasion"...
As much as I think it would be fun to have emotive anthropomorphic ears, I also recognize I can barely control my facial expressions. Like hell can I keep from Angry Ears-ing during meetings
Every day I think about loving Percy Jackson as a kid and loving All For the Game as an adult. The two main characters are both young boys who've learned to run from their deaths with an unending respect for their mothers, women who have clawed their way out of abusive marriages. My tastes really haven't changed all that much since I was a kid, have they?
If you ever hear the phrase "fascism is aesthetics as politics," that's what this post is talking about.
It's not about being tough on crime, because the absolute toughest most brutal measure you could take against "crime" as a social problem is to alleviate poverty, and increase access to education, healthcare and social mobility.
It's about performing "tough on crime" as an aesthetic by enacting violence against a prop, i.e. minorities and the impoverished, who are fetishized and objectified to represent "crime." They are brutalized as punishment for crime, but never with the purpose of alleviating the problem of crime.
This is why a lot of conservatives and other right wingers can get straight up angry when you suggest things like reform or social measures to reduce crime. They don't want crime to be reduced, they want an eternal war against "crime" because it provides an arena for the righteous to demonstrate virtue by brutalizing their enemies.
Posting this for my soul cat Kenzie (she passed a few years ago but I still think of her every single day) and for everyone else who has lost someone they love. ❤️
ngl it’s so crazy to me that some people think andrew choking kevin was out of character for him. there’s plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise, but the scene where he goes after allison in particular shows that when andrew’s promises conflict with one another, (ex. aaron vs neil), he prioritizes the one that he deems most pressing in that moment. what’s more, if someone stands in the way of andrew’s efforts to protect someone, he will always, ALWAYS, escalate. it’s a knee-jerk reaction. it’s tunnel-vision. choking kevin was not a premeditated decision to hurt someone he cares about, it was a goal-oriented response to the fact that neil was in danger. i’m not saying that characters cannot be poorly written, but as @andrewminyard-josten has articulated before, it’s really crazy to refer to the CANON CHARACTER as ooc because he doesn’t match your perception of him.
