I love talking to kids about disability bc
1. they often just Get It, and
2. they have 0 concept of disability as a tragedy or something pitiable.
I've watched kids get into an argument with a teacher bc they thought wheelchairs were cool. I told a kid that I can't stand for too long sometimes and they replied, "That's okay, I can't do cartwheels sometimes, but I just do other stuff then. You can sit down with me if you want". Today a girl asked me what the headphones on a classmate's desk were for and I told her that headphones are important for some kids because noises bother them, and she said she wished she had headphones at home, because her baby brothers make a lot of noise and it makes it hard to think. The idea that different people could use tools at different times is intuitive and simple and when accessibility aids are explained neutrally, kids don't see them as bad or unfortunate, they're just things that are useful.
Even mental disability!! In Kindergarten the other day one of the kids asked me why his table partner got stickers when nobody else did. I started off by saying, "Well, when you do your work well, it feels good, right? That's your brain giving you a reward," and the kid just right away went, "Oh, and the stickers are like his reward?" YES! You are 5 and have a better grasp on ADHD than most adults! Kids blow me away every day.
Some gatekeepers and overseers in our system are chill looking people who help take care of everyone else, and others are creepy ass motherfuckers like this *glares at Michael*
Insomnia by Vincenzo Lamolinara
So funny story! When we were first learning about systems and DID and everything, we learned that denial is a massive symptom that's baked into the foundation of how systems function, so right off the bat we put in a lot of work to accept that we are a system, and build an internal structure of reassurance specifically for our existence as a system.
However! Our brain still found all kinds of ways to trip us up with denial! And it's been a constant frustrating battle. For several years we thought that we were an "average" sized system of about seven to ten headmates, and only recently have we been able to drop enough denial barriers to find that there's actually close to a hundred of us in here. Even after that, it took months to actually see the fictives from our biggest comfort medias (percy jackson and the heroes of olympus, avatar the last air bender, and others) because for some reason our brain thought that large system was bad so "nu-uh" and fictives from "childish" comfort sources were also somehow bad so "what fictives?" and it's been so much chaos T-T
Just the other day someone was going through and updating our system server and poked into channels they didn't recognize and then got smacked in the face with vibes that are obviously in our system somewhere, the person has full on had conversations at some point, and we just completely forgot they existed several times
So basically, yes, a lot, denial comes in all kinds of nasty packages and it's such a pain in the butt and you're not alone <3
Question for systems:
How often do you go into denial or convince yourself that you faked everything/your headmates have disappeared?
Socializing as someone who is extremely strange has gotten a lot easier for me when I realized that the people who's opinions really matter to me aren't going to leave me or be mad at me just because I used the wrong phrasing or didn't have the right expression on my face when I said something and whatever other stuff like that. The people that really matter will stick around and celebrate the way we exist together, goblin noises and all
Saying "get out of my head" when another alter cofronts will continue being the funniest shit ever to happen to DID.
i feel like no amount of labeling and marie kondo-ing their cottage would stop Essek and Caleb's dinner table from becoming a research table as well
tip jar
the thing about being nonbinary is that you really do start to forget that other people have such strict walls around what is and isn’t allowed for genders. i thought we all agreed that we made that up. could you climb out of the cave real quick and feel the sunshine for a minute.
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