Stress Split Our Brains

Don’t talk shit about people’s teeth. Seriously.

Speaking as a major dental hygiene enthusiast…

Great-looking teeth come from two things: luck and money (which is also a function of luck).

Dental procedures tend to be very, very expensive, and are almost never covered by insurance.

Healthy teeth aren’t necessarily big, straight or bright white. Depending on what someone’s natural teeth are like, achieving that look may require a significant downgrade in their dental health; unnecessary crowns and veneers cause damage.

Do not underestimate genetics’ role in determining teeth’s appearance, or how prone teeth are to problems. Genes and early development, i.e. things people get zero control over, can outweigh all else.

A wide range of chronic conditions impact oral health and teeth’s appearance, too, and may contraindicate various types of work or raise procedures’ cost even more.

Finally, for many people and many reasons, celebrity-looking teeth just aren’t a priority (even when they’re attainable; some people might want, y’know, a new car instead).

Regardless, don’t be an asshole. Not even very attractive teeth look good on those.

R.M. Rilke, The Man Watching // Euripides, An Oresteia (trans. Anne Carson) // Oscar Wilde // Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life // @bitsbyt3s // Mary MacLane, "January 20", The Story of Mary MacLane // Trista Mateer // see 4 // @kafk-a // Olivia Laing, "Loneliness: coping with the gap where friends used to be"

are you five nights at fucking kidding me

I know I'm literally just a trauma dumping blog but I'd just like all the fandom & art accounts I follow to know that they make my life better. Thanks friends. I suck up your good content the way SpongeBob needs water at Sandy's house.

I'm really fucking tired of watching my husband suffer so much because I'm so sick. I feel like people don't talk enough about the trauma spouses go through, watching the person they love most in the world continue to deteriorate constantly.

Had a doctor appointment today where I found out officially (I suspected this would happen for a while so it's not exactly new information) that I'm going to most likely need a proctocolectomy and an ileostomy. Which basically means they're going to chop out my colon, sew by butthole shut, and give me a stoma on my abdomen where I shit into a little bag. Cheers.

Obviously I'm having feelings about it but that's not what this particular post is about.

He has PTSD from watching me almost die from a bowel obstruction and having two emergency surgeries, a bowel resection, end up tube fed, and then on TPN. Obviously I survived all of that, but he's still really, really impacted by it. Then I got a brain tumor and had brain surgery, which was a whole ordeal. He struggles so much every time I'm in the hospital.

So for me to be having serious GI surgery, arguably the most extreme surgery I've ever had besides my brain surgery, is so triggering for him. And what can he do, just grin and bear it? It's fucking awful, and I know that I'd rather be the sick one instead of the one feeling powerless and alone in the face of all biology can do to wreck a human.

so here we are again. fuck it, sincerely.

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.”

There is a new Chrome extension that detects if a video you’re streaming has a strobe in it, will freeze the video and stick this warning up there until you approve it.

WHERE THE HELL HAS THIS BEEN ALL MY LIFE????

I have therapy tomorrow, and my homework was to write, so... Hobey ho, let's go.

I'm fucking tired because my second father in law just died in a fucking stupid, traumatic, idiotic way. When my husband brought me into this family thirteen years ago, I gained three father figures. His dad, his stepdad, and one of his uncles. I was so lucky to have them in my life. But they're all fucking dead now. Cancer, cancer, and now an accident.

And I'm just. So fucking tired. My own father, after hearing about this, drunk dialed me three separate times while my father in law was on life support and sent me $500. Like, I appreciate the money. But could I have a hug? Could you tell me you love me when you're sober? Could you fucking try to fucking BE HERE? Could you try, at all. I want your attention. I want you to want me in your life. I want you to care about what's happening in mine. But you fucking don't and it's exhausting to keep wanting.

And then I have these three men that care and support me and protect me and every single one of them fucking dies within a few years of each other. And it's FUCKING STUPID. It's stupid they're dead. It's stupid I loved them so much. It's stupid that my mother is still alive when these good people are gone.

I'm fucking tired. I'm just so tired. I haven't been tired like this since I was in high school, living with my mother, being sex trafficked to pay the fucking mortgage.

I can't bring myself to feel anything beyond tired. I just want somebody to come take care of me, which is embarrassing, because I'm 31 fucking years old, but you know what? Nobody ever fucking took care of me. Nobody. And then when I was 19, I got a partner and his family and they loved me and taught me how to be loved and now they KEEP FUCKING DYING ON ME and I'm pissed. I'm pissed and tired and I want it to stop.

It's a really weird moment, going to a 2nd opinion doctor at a big university hospital and being told "your doctor is right, there's nothing else we can do for you besides remove your colon and reconstruct your pelvic floor surgically."

Moment of silence for my asshole. RIP