Tag: Disability

I was minding my business, checking a former college classmate’s Facebook when I saw a name that I recognized and that I actively try not to think of whenever I can. Of course I gave in to my worst instincts and clicked. And what did I find? A post that made me roll my eyes.

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It’s interesting she cares so much about the mental health of young people or people having a hard time or people with issues with professors now. She didn’t care about them when she was my professor and she marked off on tests where my handwriting was shaky due to lithium. She didn’t care when she refused throughout Fall 2006 to find a placement for my internship until the last moment (because I couldn’t drive at the time due to my disability) and she had no problem ending that internship prematurely either.

She didn’t care when she mocked me publicly as she taught Art of Interviewing and when she mocked me in front of my internship class. She didn’t care as she mocked me privately to my classmates, who would later tell me about it. She didn’t care when she mocked my family being too poor to afford Caller ID or when she knew I couldn’t afford nicer shoes or better clothes because of my being poor. She didn’t care that her decision (along with another professor) to coerce me into allowing them to attend a therapy/psychiatrist appointment with me caused me emotional distress & was traumatizing; nor did she care when it nearly caused me to be hospitalized. She didn’t care when she told me to my face that my diagnosis of bipolar disorder meant that I wouldn’t be allowed to graduate from the program when I had 11 hours to go in the program, that should get a degree in business instead (which I’ve never understood where that came from), and that I really shouldn’t be around people at all. She didn’t actually care when she said I could complete my internship Fall 2007 in January 2007, for me to call her about it in February or early March; nor did she care when she ghosted me on that until the fateful meeting in Fall 2007.

She didn’t care about healthy interactions between professors and students. She didn’t care that her actions and her words caused my mental health to worsen for a variety of reasons and that she made it harder for me to trust authority figures. She didn’t care that she violated my rights or that her actions caused me to be unable to not only get my degree but to get a job, thus making it almost impossible for me to escape poverty.

Maybe she’s not the woman she once was. Maybe she actually gives a shit about mentally ill people like she claims on her Facebook profile. I sincerely hope she’s changed but I doubt it with every fiber of my being because I don’t know that she’s capable of ever having that kind of empathy. I used to question why someone like her would become a social worker, but I’ve learned over the years that social work isn’t free of ableism. In fact, it may be more prevalent in this field than in others; and part of that is probably because people who lack empathy or basic compassion toward disabled people know that they can get away with taking advantage of them very easily in it.

So I will probably regret writing this later, but I’m on Flexeril so I’ll worry about that then.

As you may or may not know, for years, I didn’t have the best experiences in life when it comes to sex positivity, sex education, and sexual experiences. That I was sexually abused as a child, raped as an adult, part of a very conservative religion for most of my life, and forced to grow up in the “sex-is-bad-bigotry-is-good” state of Alabama probably all have contributed to my vaginismus. If you don’t know what that is, it basically means that my vagina closed up shop without letting me know and refuses to reopen for no goddamn reason. It can be painful, but it’s mostly embarrassing as fuck and emotionally devastating.

I can be super turned on, but if my vagina wants, it will close up like it’s Spirit Halloween on November 3rd. It practically disappears from the face of the earth. And by face of the earth, I mean my “down there” region. It’s so exhausting and it’s painful, and sometimes I feel like I’m failing at being a girlfriend and a human being.

There are treatments for it, including dilators and physical therapy. The problem is that dilators can take hours, which is kinda shitty when you really want to have sex right this minute. And the problem with physical therapy is that pelvic floor physical therapy can’t be done by just anyone and the people who do it won’t fucking schedule my appointment. My family doctor sent the first referral the week before Valentine’s Day. They sent another almost two weeks ago. Still nothing.

Mila Kunis saying “I’m sorry, what?”

What does a girl have to do to have a functional vagina so she can have a lot of sex with the love of her life? Also, so I can stop having the vagina spasms that hurt like a motherfucker. Mainly the sex though because priorities.

This past week has been a struggle. No, really it has. There have been several times where I wanted to scream into a pillow or start crying and never stop. It’s been bad enough that I can’t even remember all of the badness.

The worst of it started on Monday morning. (Prior to this, the freezer we keep my ice packs in died.) Mom had a steroid injection in her neck. She’d thought it was funny when they scheduled it that they could either do it on Valentine’s Day or on my birthday (Thursday); and she didn’t understand the concept of: I have plans those days that don’t involve hours of waiting in a car for a shot that never actually gives any lasting relief. But I agreed to Valentine’s Day because I knew it’d be easier that day than on my birthday.

So because of their newest Covid protocols, I sat in the car for three hours. When you have a notoriously bad hip, sitting in the car can be beyond painful. I was stiff and in a lot of pain during my date with Chris, but the date was nice, cute, and fun. We watched YouTube videos afterwards.

An hour before my dad had to leave for an appointment on Tuesday morning, mom fell. I checked on her and asked if I needed to take him. She said she was okay, and she took him to his appointment. When they got back, she was talking about how the next afternoon he needed to go to the pharmacy to get his pneumonia vaccine. I told her that wasn’t possible since I had to work Wednesday. She then said she’d do it on Thursday afternoon. When I reminded her I had plans on Thursday, she told me other people in the house have plans too and she didn’t understand why I had to do whatever it was on Thursday. I told her she could take him early on Thursday, but I wasn’t going to give up that afternoon. She never seemed to recognize why I was so adamant about Thursday.

I had to take her to a lab appointment that afternoon and I had to sit in the car in the parking lot for another hour, which inflamed my hip even more. When we got home, I went to grab my bag and I saw that a painting of mine had been cut in two places. I assumed it was damaged by my dad because he does that with my stuff quite a bit. I showed my mom and she didn’t seem to understand why I would be so upset.

Normally, Tuesday is Writers’ Club night. So I would usually be staying at Chris’s overnight after we all went home. But Tuesday it was canceled. I texted to make sure I could still stay over, since I know sometimes he might not feel like it, and he said of course I could. So I went over and started napping on the bed with him at around 5 pm.

Text from mom: Janet I think I may need to go to the ER. I'm choking on drainage in my throat. It doesn't matter what I do, it won't go up or down. My throat feels like it's being cut with a thousand knives. And my doctor is not in tomorrow. Also my back is killing me. It hurts so bad that I can't stand to get up and down. Any suggestions of what to do?

At 5:59, we both woke up to a special ringtone I have set for mom. She might need to go to the ER. Her throat hurt, she couldn’t swallow, her back hurt, she couldn’t move, and she couldn’t see her doctor the next day because he wasn’t going to be in. I drove home and picked her up; I waited while she got ready. Then I drove her to the ER and, at about 7 pm, let her out before I went to park the car in the parking deck. That’s when it happened, and, by it, I mean I wrecked my car.

Car in parking deck with damage to front right headlight and fender.

I hit a concrete pillar/support/column as I was entering the parking space. A doctor witnessed it and tried to prevent my oncoming panic attack. This led to an asthma attack and texts to Ashley, Chris, mom, my aunt, Laura, and Kitty. They helped calm me down.

While in the ER’s visitor waiting area out in the parking deck, there was a guy who was reciting rap lyrics, yelling obscenities & slurs, and said “I’m going to fucking kill you” as a state trooper headed into the ER. The cop grabbed his vest and turned really quickly. I was sure something bad was about to go down. It didn’t. Security moved the guy a few times. Eventually Chris suggested I go wait in my car, so I did.

At about 1:45, mom texted me that she got a room in the ER. This meant I could go wait with her in the hospital, which I did. We were told that the doctor would be in soon. Soon ended up being 5:30. He said she pulled a muscle and just had a sore throat; her throat had already started feeling better by now. He said we’d get discharged soon. Soon ended up being 7 am.

Around 24 hours after I first woke up.

I went home to take a nap before my HAL shift, and got about 4.5 hours sleep in. Luckily, things were fairly dead on Wednesday, so I just sat and watched my friend Sara get married via livestream. Oh, and I answered a new text from mom about how I needed to change my birthday plans. (Not because she was in pain.)

Text from mom: Storms and supposed to come through from 4 to 8 pm tomorrow. That will probably make them very strong. My response: Ugh. That’s not good. Mom: I know. It throws a kink in your birthday plans doesn't it? I'm sorry. I want you and Chris to have a nice time together. Can you take something to his house to have for dinner and go to the Cheesecake Factory another day? Me: It does. We should be able to get food at the Cheesecake Factory at/around lunchtime and get back to his house before the storms get here. And I'll take dad in the morning to get his pneumonia vaccine if you want me to.

She told me that there would be storms the next day and there was a risk they’d been strong. I had been monitoring the system for days. She wanted us to cancel our plans to go to The Cheesecake Factory. I told her that I would just make sure we got there and back to Chris’s house before the storms arrived. So even though I suck at time management, I worked out a timeline for the next day so that we could do what we’d planned on doing for months. (Mom had been told a while before that this was our plan.)

Because of the importance of the timeline, I was the one who took dad to get his vaccine, not her. And I was able to get to Chris’s house well before I needed to to make sure we could go to The Cheesecake Factory.

Chicken Parmesan Pizza Style at The Cheesecake Factory

Our date was actually one of the best birthdays ever, and not just because I was finally able to try Chicken Parmesan Pizza Style, which I loved. No, it was one of the best because I was with Chris.

Chris smiling at The Cheesecake Factory

He’s so pretty.

At 4:54, mom texted to check if we’d gotten back. We had been back since shortly before 3:30, which was when I had told Chris we needed to be back. She asked if I was staying overnight and I told her I was. She said that was fine.

Mom: Be glad you're not home tonight. Dad is having fits over his new glucose monitor. Every thing about it is wrong. He is snapping and yelling and losing control of his senses. I'll stay out of his way and let him implode. Say a prayer for me. Me: I will. Maybe he'll calm down soon. Mom: If not I may have to call HEMSI to take him to the hospital. I'll be fine. ☺️☺️☺️ Me: Is there any curling or anything on? That might soothe him.

Two hours later, she let me know that dad was upset by his new glucose monitor. She was describing him as losing control, snapping, and yelling, which he does these things as part of his dementia and his bipolar disorder and his sparkling personality. He can be violent and it’s important to keep him as calm as possible to prevent that violence. His violence is something that mom knows scares the shit out of me because I’m usually the person he targets. So bringing it up was a good way to make me come home. But I sensed that he wasn’t really in that mind frame, so I tried giving ideas to soothe him. She told me nothing could soothe him but she’d leave him alone. Chris asked if she realized how her texts sound. I told him that she says she doesn’t, but that I’ve told her in the past and she claims that isn’t her intention.

I don’t think anything major happened on Friday, but on Saturday night while I was sleeping my Facebook got hacked. I was able to convince Facebook to let me change the password, but my account is currently disabled, pending a review.

From what I’ve gathered, the hackers posted an ad for some kind of good or service that violates Facebook’s Terms of Service. The community standards link leads to this page. If they compared the ads to any other post I’ve made since 2007, they’d notice that none of those goods/services line up with my values.

So, in 28 days, I may officially have a permanently disabled Facebook profile for things I didn’t even do. Fun. Things will get better soon. They have to.

Taylor waves hello.

O’s birthday was a couple of weeks ago, Chris’s birthday was Monday, my birthday is in just over two weeks, and mom’s is five days after that. This time of year is always pretty hectic for me in terms of birthdays & other family things.

Taylor throws cake she grabbed with her fingers at the wall behind her before making a sheepish face. Her face is covered in frosting and red velvet cake crumbs.

We used to also have the days and weeks Nana would mourn the losses on the anniversaries of deaths, including Granddaddy’s, which happened 26 years ago this past Monday. I sometimes wonder how she would react to knowing Chris’s birthday was Granddaddy’s death day.

Taylor shakes her head and says “awkward”

This last weekend was also Chris’s weekend with O. I drove him to pick up O on Friday and I drove them to drop O off on Sunday. It was the first time I was in the vicinity of O’s mom, a woman I have felt intimidated by for a while. But now I don’t, which I’m counting as an achievement.

Taylor runs her hand under her chin like this emoji: 💁🏻‍♀️

After dropping O off, we went on a quest to find dinner for his family. We were going to go to Popeyes but there were technical issues and a lack of sides that prevented that, so instead we got food at KFC. Then we watched Charlotte Dobre and Evan & Katelyn videos on YouTube. Eventually mom texted to passive aggressively remind me to come home because she wouldn’t get to see me for the next two nights so she needed to spend time with me.

Taylor head tilts

I spent Monday with Chris. He had to get his hair cut and his beard trimmed. I have previously attempted to trim his mustache before and accidentally gave him half of a Hitler-stache, so I defer to professionals on that. We then hung out at his house for a while until his mom was ready for dinner, which we ate at his favorite Japanese restaurant. We ate, and I tried sushi for the second time and found out I do like it. I also found out that my first sushi was probably bad, as in rotten or on its way to being rotten; this rice was vinegary and the fish was super fishy to the point that I barely finished a couple of rolls. Chris told me that it’s probably a good thing I didn’t finish the sushi that time because it was bad. The food Monday night was good; so good that I overate & ended up vomiting part of it when we got back to his house.

Taylor shrugs and nods her head

Then we watched The Legend of Vox Machina before going back to YouTube videos while we regretted our life choices. (Mostly, the overeating, but also any movement we made after overeating.) Mom texted at around ten, which caused the night to come to an abrupt end.

Taylor pumps her fists and the words “I’m taking a nap” appear at the bottom

Chris was still feeling bad after the food choices today, so, to give him a chance to recover, we didn’t get to go to Writers’ Club together tonight. I’ll admit I cried a bit when I found that out because I’m on my period and I do that a lot on my period, as I mentioned a few posts ago. Apparently it had to do with the extra progesterone that gets released around the time of your period causing borderline personality disorder to go into overdrive.

Taylor dramatically fakes tears on a talk show as a joke.

I found out about the change of plans prior to getting my labs done for my primary care doctor. And I’m sure my lipids and sugar levels will be great after the mukbang that was this weekend.

Taylor tries to look innocent.
The first Tiktok I got to post about my labs this morning.
The first I started recording this morning about my labs.
Taylor smiles and gives two thumbs up.

Oh, and I found out before the labs that Adore Me decided to claim I sent back another empty box with their Elite subscription, so I was fucking pissed about that. Later in the day, they’d claim they actually received it, but everything was unsanitary so they had to give me an almost $200 penalty for items they actually received. I’ve contacted the BBB and plan to make YouTube & TikTok videos about their scamming tendencies. (Last month, they claimed I sent back an empty box because they say they never received anything from me. The month before, they claimed I sent something back dirty. I’m not sure how I could dirty up something I never touched.)

Taylor grabs her head

Oh, and I started figuring out how extensive my disordered eating really is. I’ve been exhibiting signs not just of binge eating disorder but also bulimia, and that’s freaked me out a little. But otherwise things in my life are awesome.

Taylor eats a cookie.

Basically, I had a lot going on and didn’t really have a lot of time for drama llamas on social media, so when I got home and found out a person I considered a friend blocked me on Twitter, I was about ready to laugh. No really. Apparently I may have been blocked for failing to block another friend of mine sometime over the weekend because some of their friends got into it with some of hers.

Taylor dances and snaps her fingers in front of her face while singing “haters gonna hate” from Shake It Off.

I don’t know all of what happened nor do I care to, especially since the blocker is being hypocritical as fuck over all of it. A few months ago another person said that if you didn’t like two people they both happen to like, then you are a bad/questionable person. I made a TikTok about how this kind of behavior hurt my feelings. The blocker sent me half a dozen comments invalidating my feelings & gaslighting the fuck out of me. Then she deleted them so as to not look bad. We never spoke of it again, but she’s seemed sus to me since then.

Taylor shrugs and scrunches her nose as she smiles.

It used to make me uncomfortable how close she was with people who had been even more hurtful toward me. There was one in particular who compared a breakdown in borderline personality disorder to being a little depressed or anxious. That person claimed I was ableist because I disagreed with them and had pointed out that they had excused their friend’s ableist rhetoric. They claimed I hated autistic people and some other bullshit. I have a lot of mutuals with this person, but most don’t make me uncomfortable. The blocker did.

Taylor Swift recording “My Tears Ricochet” with the words “you’re cursing my name, wishing I stayed look at how my tears ricochet” at the bottom.

Today I realized her block didn’t matter all that much to me. I had an amazing weekend. I’m hormonal and cry over anything, but being dumped by a person I used to think of as a friend didn’t matter to me. There are other people who I know it would hurt coming from, but not her.

Taylor stands before a crowd at an award show. She waved her hand nonchalantly and says, “just shake it off.”

And I know this coming weekend will be amazing too, and I know that not being able to share it with this person doesn’t bother me at all. So I guess I should thank her for the learning experience?

Taylor plays music with the words “like a boss” at the bottom of the gif.

Or not.

Taylor clumsily curtsies and falls to the floor.

Please go sign up as a patron if you haven’t already. I wrote a new story at Writers’ Club that you can read for as little as $1 per month (along with other posts)—I need the money. I have a special offer for the $10 & $100 tiers through April, but I appreciate all my patrons.

The weekends this year are starting to remind me of the winter of 1996. We’ve had two winter storms so far and we’re only fifteen days in. In 1996, we seemed to have a winter storm every single week in January and a couple into February.

Of course memories of that year are pretty vivid since it was also the winter when so many relatives died and the year when both of my grandfathers died. It’s also the year when my OCD got kicked into high gear. Basically, it wasn’t the best of times for me & my family.

I love snow, except for how it seems to isolate me from my friends and, now, Chris. It gives me no way to get out and deal with my anxiety, which isn’t great. At least when we were on lockdown, I could be in my car and drive around a little. Or I could go up to Lowe Mill and work a little, but I can’t do that even on the clearest day since that studio is no longer being rented by HAL. (I need a safe place to do art.)

I hope the snow won’t keep us stuck inside for long.

For years—nay decades, I have had this strange issue of my mental health imploding on a 3 year cycle. Little things become big. Everything becomes too much. I feel like I’m losing it.

2001: Suicidal depression, regular self injury

2004: Same, plus Adderall induced psychosis

2007: Same, plus trauma of being kicked out of my major

2010: Same, without the Adderall but with the joy of having an autoimmune disease that I associated with my grandmother’s death

2013: Actually didn’t have anything happen this year besides Shingles

2016: Genuinely considered self-destructive behaviors over the election results

2019: Dad’s dementia led to a physical assault that resulted in a call to the police. I cut myself repeatedly after that.

2022: Cycling between self-injurious impulses, severe depression, hypersexual impulses, severe body image issues, and normalcy.

I just have to make it a few more months and things will probably be better. But I fucking hate this cycle.

On the way to celebrate Thanksgiving at my aunt’s house on Thursday, my mom told me that she and my dad had had a conversation recently about me. She told me that she told him that I would be happier and easier to get along with if I was on mood stabilizers. I was horrified.

My first response was, “what?” That was followed by my pointing out that I had tried every mood stabilizer and that I had adverse reactions to a large chunk of them (lithium, antipsychotics, and several anticonvulsants) and a zombie on most of them. My mom told me that I hadn’t. (I have taken all but two FDA-approved and off-label mood stabilizers.)

I’m actually much happier and feel relatively stable off of them. Being happier is why I’m not at home as much. In fact, the goal of my mental health care over the last decade or so has been to increase my ability to leave the house with the hope that one day I could actually live separately from my parents. And my treatment plans have had to accommodate my inability to use mood stabilizers.

When I told him what she’d said, Chris said it sounded like she wanted me to be compliant and stay home all the time. Unfortunately that was what I thought too. I haven’t told him all of the times she has said she wants to be my representative payee or have me placed in a program through Social Security that would eliminate my access to a bank account & remove my ability to run my shop. It would keep me without true resources.

It makes all of her talk through the years about my lack of control & my inability to live without continued assistance of my parents seem all the more sinister. Not to mention how it colors my view on her wanting access to my accident settlement (she wants it in her bank account) and how she wants to raid my cash box for the festivals I’ve sold art & jewelry at. I’m fairly certain she’s been repaid most of the change she thinks I owe her on that. Then again, this is a woman who has threatened to sell or throw out my belongings before, so who knows what she thinks about that money?

It makes me want to make sure I definitely get a studio out of this house so that I can definitely gain independence. It also makes me want to stay out of my house all the time. I don’t feel like she views me as a person.

Last night, I accidentally stumbled upon a thread of trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) making assumptions about the cause of asexuality. In their opinions, it was a result of the puberty blockers given to trans and non-binary kids, of teenage girls and women in their early twenties deciding to avoid men because of things the men have learned from porn, and because people take antidepressants because they’re sad. And all of this was prefaced by an argument that accepting asexuality is some kind of conspiracy by the transgender community.

Oh. My. God.

No!

First of all, asexuality is not a result of those puberty blockers. If it was, then there would be no asexuals over the age of 18 and trans and non-binary kids would mostly be asexuals. Most aces that I know are well past 18, cisgender, and have never used puberty blockers. Most trans and non-binary folks I know aren’t asexual.

Secondly, what is the logic in saying girls are choosing asexuality because of porn & not wanting to date? That makes no sense to me. And why only girls? The first asexual person to come out to me was a man.

Their third and final “point” was just flat out mental health stigma and ableism. It’s not surprising to see a TERF say something ableist or that stigmatizes mentally ill people. In fact, it’s pretty normal for them to be bigoted on multiple fronts.

Exclusionary feminism relies on hate and misunderstanding of marginalized groups. It isn’t uncommon for a TERF or a SWERF, the sex work equivalent, to be racist, ableist, homophobic, biphobic, classist, xenophobic, fatphobic, intolerant of various religions, or sexist. Yes, they are often sexist, and they seek to uphold patriarchal values or side with groups that seek to keep cisgender women and those assigned female at birth (AFAB) stuck in gender roles that they claim to abhor. These groups even try to limit access to basic human rights for cis women and AFAB people.

TERFs will proclaim that men cannot speak for or over women and do not belong in women’s spaces, but they will encourage pile-ons and harassment campaigns by so-called radical feminists who happen to be men. These men will harass, demean, defame, and talk over cis women and trans & non-binary folks. The hypocrisy, like everything else, is based in hatred.

These individuals say that bisexual women who have dated men are heterosexual and have been tainted. It’s the same kind of bullshit that incels say about women who have had sex. The sex work exclusionary feminists push for legislation and policies that limit the ability for people who have been or currently are sex workers to have PayPal, Venmo, or bank accounts. They claim that those who seek out sex work and pornography are exploiting women and girls, but fail to understand their actions are a form of exploitation. Their outright hatred of sex positivity is yet another way that they uphold the patriarchy.

I used to say that there was nothing radical about this type of feminism, but the reality is that it’s extremely radical; what it isn’t is feminism. Exclusionary feminists are not feminists. That’s not me gate-keeping; they just aren’t feminists. They stand for absolutely nothing but hate. They do not seek liberation. They do not seek empowerment. They do not seek a better world. They only seek a more fearful world for those who they do not like. They are no different from any group that seeks to limit the rights and safety of any marginalized group.