Estrogen VS. Testosterone

Were you born with a vagina or a penis? Right, the question is none of my damn business, so why doesn’t the rest of society accept this fact? Being female or male does not make a difference in all areas. Think about sports such as basketball, football, ballet, and swimming. Do you remember the story regarding the transgendered swimmer (born a male and transitioned into female)? She was the topic of a national debate because of her personal choices. People were suggesting that she shouldn’t be allowed to swim on the women’s team for various reasons such as not being born a female, having testosterone and being able to physically perform stronger and better and other issues. This is not a disadvantage because if this is the case, then someone can find fault in any sport. For example, I’m short and can walk under a volleyball net depending on the height, or my husband shouldn’t run in a race because he is 6 feet 6 inches and has longer limbs than most people. Aren’t there some women that are stronger than men, but they are not condemned for it. For example, Rhonda Rousey is stronger than the average man because of the training and profession that she is in, but that doesn’t make her less of a woman or more of a male. The qualifications for sports has nothing to do with what is between your legs. It should be based on your ability to perform at the best level that you are able to without any enhancements. Everyone is entitled to enjoy any sport. I have a vagina, but why is that your business? So, to those ignorant and closed minded people, please dial 1-800-GO2-HELL!

My Experiences with People from All Walks of Life.

My parents were older when they had my sister and I. They, as a couple, decided to wait until they were mentally and financially ready to raise children. When we were born, my mom was the type of parent with a ridiculous number of books to learn how to be the “perfect” parent (which does not exist). My dad followed my mother’s lead while using his teaching skills on us.

From a young age, I understood that love comes in different forms, which are all valid. My parents are friends with biracial, gay, and lesbian couples, etc. When I would ask my parents questions about these friends, they would explain it to me in a kind, respectful manner. After they answered my questions, it was normalized to me because my parents treated them like any other person, which was essential. After all, parents teach children by example.

Later, in elementary school, my mom had my sister and I join the 4-H club. This club taught us a lot about social and physical skills, like sewing, baking, working with hardware tools, etc. We also did fundraisers where I would help cook and serve food to the homeless shelters, gather and donate food for people experiencing homelessness, and clean parks and beaches. 4-H would have competitions where I would have to give speeches and demonstrations. These competitions helped me to be more confident and learn how to communicate with others effectively.

My parents made sure at a young age that we could adapt to the world and be open to everyone around us. They continued to improve themselves for us, which is what my mother did until her last breath. I am thankful I had a childhood with parents who sincerely wanted the best for my sister and me. I am grateful for a father who continues to try to support us in every way possible while struggling with the loss of his partner of over ten years. I am thankful that I can eat delicious food with my immediate family. I am thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Image from Openverse.

Change Your Attitude.

You might walk into Foot Locker or Hollister in the mall to do routine wardrobe updating. Minding your own business, until you’re not. You hear a rather strange noise being emitted from someone. There is a possibility they might suffer Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), but that’s not what flows through everyone’s mind. Or it might, but you don’t care about that, you’re just trying to shop. Many people today are rather judgmental than open and accepting, which needs to change.

There’s this tendency of stopping and staring, rather than moving on with yourself. The caretakers have it handled, and there’s nothing that you can do but cause embarrassment by staring and talking down. It’s impeccable how often I see piercing eyes judging another human being for something they cannot control, but can only work on with time and caring people.

It is also insane how we generalize autism to specifically children, when in fact those children do age just like any other child. Reading Stevenson et. al on Infantilizing Autism, many facts and statistics were revealed on the number of ways that Autism Organizations infantilize the disorder. On page 2, authors stated, “In 2008, the most prominent autism charity, Autism Speaks, reported on its website an estimate of the number of “autistic people.” That estimate was identical to their estimate of the number of “autistic children,” thereby denying the existence of any autistic adults.” In my opinion, that’s almost dehumanizing.

Overall, we just need to do better with our attitudes and opinions to neurodivergent beings. They are just as human as we are, and making this change would invite those into a safe space rather than excluding.

My Reflection

Who am I?
I,
I’m my thoughts,
My dreams,
My aspirations.
I’m my name,
My looks,
My imagination.
That’s what I see,
When I stare,
Into my reflection.

My reflection,
Ripples in the river of life,
The shallow,
Shallow river of life.
To the world,
I am my reflection:
I am only what the world sees,
Only what the world decides I am.
My body is but a vessel;
Why must the world ignore me,
But acknowledge the vessel?!

Books, merely objects
Are still judged 
By only their covers,
So who am I to demand
They not judge me
By only what they can see.
The inside of a book
Is where the value lies
But most people don’t bother;
It’s easier to judge
From the outside

My body is a part of me,
It embodies my soul
My personality,
But it is not all I am.
I am not my scars,
My disability,
I am me,
A completely separate entity.
I, Me,
Not just what you see

I Have to Live My Life for Me

Ever since I was a child, becoming a doctor has always been my dream/goal. Watching my mother and grandmother struggle with health issues and chronic illness has been my motivation to be in the healthcare field and help people like them. I’ve always been one-track-minded when it comes to becoming a doctor. In high school, I even joined a program catered towards kids who wanted to pursue a career in healthcare and help prepare them for college and the courses they would be taking.

My family has always been proud of me and encouraged me to pursue my goals. They’ve always expected nothing less of perfection regarding my grades and overall performance in school. I want to become the first doctor in my family and they want that for me as well. 

It wasn’t until last year when I became sick and this year when I had to care for my mother following brain surgery, that my grades dipped below that line of perfect and my performance in school was lacking. The whole time I couldn’t even focus on taking care of my health because I was so worried about how I was doing in school and what my family would think of me.

I didn’t start doubting my ability to achieve my goals of doing well in my undergraduate year and making it to medical school until this year. I’ve worked so hard and I know I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, but honestly, this doubt has in a way uprooted my self-worth. 

I am slowly learning not to quantify my self-worth based on how well I am doing in school and how much that is pleasing other people, but at times it can be hard. It’s those moments while I’m on the phone with my grandparents and they mention how I’ll be able to help my grandmother with her knee when I become an orthopedic surgeon, or how successful I’ll be when I become a doctor and how proud of me they’ll be that I find myself fighting back wanting to tell them I’m struggling mentally I’m not sure if I even want to be a doctor anymore or if I’m worthy or becoming a doctor, or if I deserve to receive their praises or for them to be proud of me. 

It wasn’t until these last two weeks that I had stress-induced muscle spasms and migraines that I finally decided I was going to ensure I put focus on my mental, physical, and emotional health.  I cannot be consumed with what other people think of me, even if it is family members. I have to live my life for me.

Internal Battles

What is it like living with PTSD? For me, I freeze a lot. Sometimes my body just freezes for hours at a time and I am stuck in a trance-like state doing nothing. This makes it very difficult for me to keep up with everyday life because the smallest trigger can put me in a catatonic state for hours until I feel I can move again. For example a few weeks ago I was having a completely normal day when something so unexpected and niche triggered me into taking a seat and staring at the wall for an hour and 30 minutes straight. I always eventually snap out of it and catch myself like -what am I doing?- and then I have to kind of shake it off and really motivate myself to do some work, self care, or anything really. Most days it is a big feat if I brush my teeth and take the bare minimum care of my body.

TW:

right when you’re developing social skills and learning how to move through the world, I got hit with truckloads of guilt and shame and my little 9 year old body couldn’t handle it. I went into a depression for at least six years, I never made any social media accounts, stopped inviting people over, dropped all my sports and stuff. I just isolated myself for my entire youth, as a college student finally making an Instagram and all that; I can’t help but notice how much of the world passed me by while I was stewing in the darkness. There’s a whole human experience I never got, and now I’m too old for anyone to care and I have to try and catch up with the times alone. I know this stuff sounds stupid but it’s just another thing I took away from myself. I’ve felt grown my whole life and now I just wish I could go back. There’s not really a way for people to see any of that from looking at me. They see an able bodied young person which should allow me to live my life to the fullest. In reality I feel like I have a huge weight on my mind all the time.

End of TW:

The Invisible disability project defines invisible disabilities as any physical, mental, or emotional impairment that goes largely unnoticed by society.

I think society is aware of invisible disabilities such as PTSD but doesn’t really give much wiggle room for the tedious processes involved in living with/healing from trauma.
And I understand, maybe it is just that the current framework of society is solely based on productivity. In my experience, if someone isn’t able to produce and contribute something then they are valued less and often struggle without a support system.

On a lighter note this is an image that I feel my brain would look like, its a fire fortress waffle house.

We Are All Different

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed my life forever. After the pandemic, I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression. And the last 3 years have been the worst of my entire life. My senior year of high school was terrible, my freshman year of college was ten times worse and it always feels like nothing ever goes right for me. I’ve done so many things just to feel normal and fit in. I have literally gone to so many different dermatologists and have spent almost $400+ for my skin to get clear and at one point it did. But of course, my ance had to come back and now makes me feel more insecure every time I look in the mirror or even when others look at me. I’ve tried to dress in a certain way, drink, smoke, etc. just because I felt like all of my friends were doing it so if I didn’t I was “boring” or just ruined the mood.

But after being in therapy for a few years now, I’ve recently slowly come to except myself. I think ever since I was young, I tried to fit in no matter what and my anxiety and depression made this even worse. Also when looking at social media, I have always compared myself to people I saw and questioned why I didn’t look or do certain things like them. But I’ve come to learn that there is no such thing as a “perfect” or “normal” person. As humans, we express ourselves in many different ways with the way we dress, talk, and go on with our daily lives. Our differences don’t make us unnatural but are what makes us all special in our own way. While I have improved over the year myself, I still have a long way to go and I hope one day, I won’t give a fuck about what other people think about me and be cunty. :)))

OCD isn’t really cute

OCD is like (and I apologize for what I’m about to do to some of you) The Game. Always there, but not a problem until it becomes a conscious thought. And then it’s on replay; like The Game, trying not to think of it only makes it worse.

Years ago, I was luckily “exited” from The Game. Although I’ve not seen this ever described as an “official” rule or solution to The Game, I choose to believe that one could be “exited”. Since The Game functions a lot like OCD does (at least, for me), it’s not some cute mind game that we all play together, it’s a reminder that my brain doesn’t work the same way everyone else’s does. I have a million little “The Games” I’m playing constantly in my head—if a pencil is turned toward me, if I notice it, it has to be turned away. If the “Best By” date has passed and I notice it, I have to throw it out. Well, I don’t have to, but my brain will make it seem like the end of the world if I don’t (and that’s on magical thinking, which isn’t as fun as it sounds).

Diagram by me!

There’s more, too: intrusive thoughts, which are not what TikTok makes them out to be; object personification, which leads me to hoarding, unable to give away anything because I fear it ending up trashed, abused, or unloved (which is of course made worse when coupled with ADHD and impulse buying). Like many others, I have to do things in equal measure to my body. If I chew my nails (as I have a bad habit of doing), I have to chew equally on both sides of my mouth, and then the whole nail has to be smooth, which often means I’m stuck chewing on my nails until it’s too painful to continue. Or I have to step on the stairs evenly, which might make me go back and walk back down the stairs if I wasn’t able to get enough steps on my left foot.

The thoughts are easiest to stop when you don’t even give them the chance to talk; you look away from what triggers the obsession, you walk away, leave the room, remove yourself from the trigger, and the voice doesn’t get the chance to talk. You look like a madperson when you literally plug your ears and say, “La la la!” loudly, but you do what you have to to block the thoughts from forming. Blocking them is hard, but resisting is harder.

It’s not fun talking about OCD, I know. I understand the looks of discomfort, fascination, scrutiny, disbelief when I talk about why I do what I do or the process of my thinking. It’s as crazy to you as it is to me. I know how alien it is to many; it’s clear from how I’m treated.

The Game is a reminder that I do not belong to the same world as everyone else; that I cannot escape this, even in the most normal of moments, even in elementary school games. That, at the end of the day, most people can decide whether or not they want to be a part of The Game, but I have a voice in the back of my head telling me society will literally collapse if I allow myself to exit The Game.

But someone exited me from The Game, so I don’t have to play it ever again. Years of therapy and learning how to cope with OCD have helped me learn that I can stop those thoughts on my own (most of the time; I’m still getting stronger).

If you’ve read through all this, I hope this helps you understand a bit more how OCD can work (and it can be more or less extreme than it is for me than it is for others). And, if you need to be exited from The Game too, consider this your official invitation to stop playing the game. I promise, nothing bad will happen.

Spice Girls Wannabe answered

“So tell me what you want, what you really, really want, I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want”

First lets define disability and impairment. Susan Wendell uses disability activist’s and United Nations definitions explaining:

Disability activists and scholars usually distinguish impairment from disability, treating impairment as the medically defined condition of a person’s body/mind, and disability as the socially constructed disadvantage based upon impairment.

Wendell, S. (2001). Unhealthy Disabled: Treating Chronic Illnesses as Disabilities. Hypatia, 16(4), 17–33

For some people the limitations they face in day to day life isn’t based at all on impairment, but rather how society disables them. And even for people who are looking for treatments to make life more livable, society is still a huge disabling presence. Some examples of how society can disable include, uneven sidewalks, broken or lack of elevators or in general poorly made and maintained spaces. Those are some of the more obvious physical barriers. There is a larger social barrier that people with disabilities face and that’s prejudice. Especially for those with invisible disabilities the strain of people assuming they are fine, that they are “faking” and don’t really need the help they are asking for, causes such an intense mental and sometimes physical strain.

From personal experience people don’t trust that you know what’s going on with your body and with what you are able to do. When covid was really bad I got sick, but not in such a way that I needed to go to the doctor. During this time going to a doctor if it wasn’t necessary was not just looked down upon but also dangerous. When I told my professor I couldn’t come to class I was asked to get a doctor’s note, which I was unable to produce and ended up getting points marked off in the course. Another time I was hospitalized and the doctors told me they contacted my professors. Either the professors didn’t care or they weren’t told because when I came back most of the professors said I couldn’t make up the work and should just drop the class and take it next semester. Instead of preparing and trying to figure out a way for me to make up the work. Not only did I lose thousands of dollars in tuition, I ended up going under the credits needed to be full time and I was kicked out of my housing. This whole time disability services didn’t do anything because they said “We can’t do anything retroactively”.

Recently someone asked me if I could change anything about my university to make it more disability friendly what would it be? There’s the obvious: fix the sidewalks, routine maintenance on elevators and doors and changing certain stairs into ramps, but there’s also making professors have recorded lectures or accessible online materials. I’ve had multiple professors that use pre-lecture videos to prepare students for class discussion, and while going to class is important, in times of extremes like hospitalization these pre-lectures are wonderful supplementary materials. I’d also like to see disability talked about more and normalized not just in the university setting but in the work place too. So hopefully that answers the statement: “tell me what you want what you really really want.”