Isn’t It Weird How You Can Just Grow Up Without A Single Person Caring About You Or Looking Out For

I can't believe I'm 31 and still putting pieces together.

Shortly after reporting my stepfather to the police for rape, his father, the man I had called grandpa for a fucking decade, started coming to the burger joint I worked at. I couldn't get a restraining order because he didn't do anything but order a burger and sit at a table directly across from the register and stare at me. He'd leave when he finished his food.

When I told people, their reaction was always "why would he do that? That's so weird." But knowing what I know now, knowing he'd been paying my mother thousands of dollars over the years to keep both of us quiet, knowing he had effectively been paying my mother to let his son use me-

It was just intimidation. Money wasn't keeping me quiet so he wanted to scare me into silence. Wanted me to know he had more power, more resources, more time.

And they did win the court case. And he did scare the shit out of me. So much so that I nearly quit my job.

I was just faulty merchandise to him. God.

I do not ask this lightly, the Missouri AG’s office has started a site to build a list of trans people. Clog the system. That’s the life of a trans kid who gets another day on this earth. Spam the fuck out of it, it’s not sophisticated. You don’t need to use a real email. Post as much as you’d like

another thing that people are clearly having a bit of trouble wrapping their heads around is the concept of objecting to the terms in which something is criticised, and how that does not necessarily equate to defending that thing.

some people tend to like to reduce things to "pro" or "anti," and any attempt to delineate a position more nuanced than that will still be immediately assigned by them to one of those two "camps"

Fuck fuck fuck.

So I'm visiting my grandma today which means I'm also visiting my stepmom, who doesn't believe 80% of my trauma even happened.

A series of very fucking unfortunates events has taken place. The details are unnecessary. But I'm triggered as all fuck and TRAPPED here until my bus comes, then trapped on the bus for 2.5 hours. All the while I have to pretend I'm fine, like I'm not experiencing feelings about the triggers, like I'm not fighting for my life to keep from dissociating, like my dissociated parts aren't freeeeaking out.

I am so mentally unwell it's making me nauseous.

I hate this fucking place and my fucking brain and my fucking trauma and this fucking disorder. Hate hate hate.

I've been thinking over the shitshow that was my adolescence and wondering how I can be different as an adult and what I can do to protect the children in my life. Thinking about how fucking much I always hated people saying "just ask for help" when help didn't fucking exist. Asking for help meant taking a leap off a cliff, blind, and hoping someone would catch me. And nobody fucking did.

And I realized. Just now. Just today. That if instead of being told "just ask for help," I had been told "get as much evidence as you can and then get out and then ask for help" maybe things would have been different. If I had just been told how to protect myself, maybe.

every time i ask people if they do any new years resolutions its all ooooo i dont like making them bc i fail or ohhhhh no i couldnt keep up wiht that and then when they ask me and i tell them about Pasta Quest (i am eating as many different pasta shapes as possible in the space of a year) or when i did Fruit Adventures (every time i saw a fruit i had never eaten before id get one and eat it and read the wikipedia article about it) theyre like hang on i forgot you can make Fun Ones i want a fun one

Have I told y’all about my husband’s Fork Theory?  If I did already, pretend I didn’t, I’m an old.

So the Spoon Theory is a fundamental metaphor used often in the chronic pain/chronic illness communities to explain to non-spoonies why life is harder for them. It’s super useful and we use that all the time. But it has a corollary.  You know the phrase, “Stick a fork in me, I’m done,” right? Well, Fork Theory is that one has a Fork Limit, that is, you can probably cope okay with one fork stuck in you, maybe two or three, but at some point you will lose your shit if one more fork happens.  A fork could range from being hungry or having to pee to getting a new bill or a new diagnosis of illness. There are lots of different sizes of forks, and volume vs. quantity means that the fork limit is not absolute. I might be able to deal with 20 tiny little escargot fork annoyances, such as a hangnail or slightly suboptimal pants, but not even one “you poked my trigger on purpose because you think it’s fun to see me melt down” pitchfork.

This is super relevant for neurodivergent folk. Like, you might be able to deal with your feet being cold or a tag, but not both. Hubby describes the situation as “It may seem weird that I just get up and leave the conversation to go to the bathroom, but you just dumped a new financial burden on me and I already had to pee, and going to the bathroom is the fork I can get rid of the fastest.”

Fuck I am so far from okay right now

Hey y'all. Healing is possible. It's hard and it takes years. There are things you may not be able to fully heal and there are things you will let go of quickly. It's okay. There is no timeline for healing.