offbeatmoodyrollSorry for asking this stuff out of the blue, so feel free to ignore me. What you said about all the people asking you if you ever tried Advil reminded me of the folks asking if I ever tried XYZ for my depression. I too recognize they are trying to be supportive, so I try to be understanding. Sometimes though, people will come up with lots of absurd advice and later they will chastise me for still being broken despite all of their efforts. Do you get those as well? Any advice?
….every other message or so in my inbox is people demanding to know why I’m not better yet if I’ve been doing xyz for zyx amount of time. It is infinitely frustrating.
I’m sort of incredibly low on energy today and don’t really have the spoons to give you an I depth a reply as I’d like, but my advice for dealing with those people is to realize they do not have your best interests at heart (even if they think they do) and you are not obligated to spend valuable time and energy attempting to appease them or convince them. If you’ve told them X and they’re still insisting on asking Y, it’s perfectly acceptable to shut down the conversation (or in some cases where it is recurring end your association with them) and move on. (My favorite is when someone asks me if I’ve tried yoga, green tea and reiki, cause I have master/teaching qualifications in all of them.)
Something I’ve started doing with people who refuse to let it go, is to start asking really personal and prying questions, and when they get upset my response is to be like “oh, sorry, do you not want to talk about that deeply personal and uncomfortable topic?” as pointedly as possible. After that people tend to realize they were being rude and not helpful. Some might even apologize. Some will go off the deep end and still try to insist you’re doing something wrong, which, fuck those people. Yeet them out your life.
This can be extremely hard when it’s family, or even people you thought were good friends, but part of the healing process, at least mentally, is learning to distance yourself from the idea that you are somehow to blame for your body being the way it is. You can be as self aware and at peace with yourself as can be humanly possible, and still get struck by something like an auto immune disease, or heck, even a God damn bus. And you do not owe those people an iota of your mental energy in appeasement. Learn to smile at them and say something like “I’ll bring it up with my specialist” or “thank you for your concern, but I feel I’m doing what is right for myself right now.”
You do not need to fight them, you can however come to terms with the fact that their opinion is inconsequential to the truth of your reality, and move on from them mentally, if not always physically. I have family that do not believe I am sick and go out of their way to invalidate me all the time, usually by doing things like trying to get me to eat something they’ve made while claiming it’s safe for my allergies, I think so they can go aha gotcha! When I don’t drop down dead immediately at the dinner table. To which I vowed a) to vomit on their shoes and to never trust them with my safety ever again. I bring all my own food to events now even when I’m told I don’t have to, and I make enough to share too. Pisses them off Majorly, but that’s their issue of unresolved anger and insecurity, not mine.
Basically, fuck ‘em. Do what you need to do to take care of yourself, and don’t ever set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm. No one deserves that from you.
Thank you so much for your reply. I’m reblogging so I can keep it.
I really appreciate the time and effort you took to write this answer, even though you’re low in spoons. You said you’d like to go in more deeply, but it was already really insightful. (Sorry for the weird word choices, English is not my first language).
Also thank you for being so reassuring that I’m not being selfish or stand-offish. Sometimes I struggle to recognize that (I think a lot of us do), and a lot of what you said did reframe my thought process.
Also, thanks for the tips.
I hope you feel better soon!
Thank you, and that’s quite all right, I am glad it was reassuring to you 💖
If you’d like another resource to follow, I’d like to rec Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, she’s a deaf and disabled activist, TV presenter and vlogger on youtube and her videos with her wife Claudia are very positive and fun to watch.
Some of you likely saw me posting her video a lot on why banning plastic straws is ableist and performative activism that harms people with disabilities.
She has a wealth of videos where she talks about her lived experiences with chronic illness and disability, and also how she has dealt with people unhelpfully putting their expectations onto her and her life.
She actually posted a video today, whilst extremely ill herself, titled “Are you better yet…?” Which was painfully familiar to watch, but as ever very poignant:
The rest of her videos are also very useful, informative and often fun too. So y'know, if you’ve got time to spare, and want to fall down a youtube rabbit hole, Jessica is a good place to start.
All of her videos use closed captions for those who need/like then.
Anyway. I am going back to bed for a bit. I hope this was helpful for you 💖
Guess what I learned at school yesterday? The human body can live 3 weeks without food and have NO permanent damage. First, it’ll burn fat, then muscle, THEN the vital organs. Food is the least important out of the six survival priorities. From most important to least important, survival attitude (PMA), oxygen, rest, shelter (clothes count), water, THEN food. My teacher told me this just when I was about to give up on my first 24 hour fast, then as I learned this, I had the motivation to keep going. You got this! Don’t quit!
any sluts out here want some tea? a fucking biscuit?
‘Tis I, Matthew Hopkins, infamous English witch-hunter, responsible for the deaths of between 230 and 400 people in the 17th century.
Excuse me, miss. Are you, by chance… a witch?
a witch yeah yeah, anyway shit this tea has NO sugar and i forgot sugarcubes is that cool with you
Matthew Hopkins recoils in fear and disgust, for this is truly…
Y-yes, that will be fine. As a Puritan, if I take tea at all, it is without sugar…
Seeming to have not alerted the witch, he chooses to take a subtle approach and coax the damning information out of her.
Now, pardon me for asking, but do you regularly hold council with imps and other such demons, perhaps
meeting
for tea and to blaspheme God?
look dude do you want a biscuit or not
Matthew Hopkins’ eyes darken in fear, and his face goes ghastly white. The Witchfinder General has found a witch for whom he is no match. She evades even his most cunning inquiries with ease, and the brazen air with which she admits her heresy shows she fears neither man nor God. He cannot win, and defeated, he relents.
i literally dont talk to anyone unless they talk to me first
NPC Energy
Recently I was in a public place, chatting quietly with my friends, and this unattended child came out of nowhere and asked me to clarify one of the things I’d said. So I explained myself to this kid, and as soon as he got an answer, he turned around without saying anything and continued on his way. It really felt like he’d just walked up to me and pressed A.
“i am a monument to all your sins” is such a fucking raw line for a villain it’s amazing that it came from halo, a modernish video game, and not some classical text or mythos
classic texts have nothing on the crazy people come up with in modern times tbh
“I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.”
– Joshua Graham, Who Is A Fallout New Vegas NPC, Something Most People Throwing This Quote Around Don’t Realize
“If the world chooses to become my enemy, I will fight like I always have.”
– Shadow the Hedgehog in what is widely considered one of if not the single worst game in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise
this is the source for this text and it haunts me on a regular basis
Our new instrument in space, the Ecosystem
Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS), is
designed to study how plants respond to heat and water stress by measuring the
temperature of Earth’s vegetation, but that’s not all it will do. Adding
ECOSTRESS to the Space Station will also add to our understanding of volcanoes,
fires, urban heat and coastal and inland waters.
1. Fires
ECOSTRESS’s radiometer can detect all kinds of fires, but it
may be most useful in recording small fires – new wildfires that are just
beginning to grow. These have proven hard to study from satellite observations.
ECOSTRESS has a pixel size of only 130 by 230 feet (40 by 70 meters), offering
a much sharper view. “We’ll be able to see a bonfire on a beach,” ECOSTRESS
scientist Simon Hook says.
Credit: USGS
2. Volcanoes
ECOSTRESS’s thermal infrared imager will be able to spot new
fissures and hotspots that can signal impending volcanic eruptions.
The Chiliques volcano in Chile was thought to be
dormant until thermal images revealed new activity. Credit: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan
Space Systems and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team
3. Urban Heat
The heat generated by a large city can compound the health
hazards of heat waves, particularly for the oldest and youngest city dwellers.
Which neighborhoods suffer from heat the most? With the very detailed images
from ECOSTRESS, we’ll be able to see which mitigation efforts are keeping
neighborhoods cool.
Urban areas can be up to 8 degrees warmer than
surrounding suburban or natural landscapes, as seen here in a true-color image
of the Atlanta area, top, and temperature data, bottom.
Credit: NASA
4. Coastal and Inland
Waters
Along coastlines and in large lakes, wind can push surface
water aside allowing water from the depths to rise to the surface, bringing
nutrients. These upwellings of cold water are important sources of nutrition
for the coastal and lake plants and animals. ECOSTRESS can detect these smaller
upwellings, providing valuable information for researchers.
Upwelling can be seen in satellite data. Here
temperature data (top) and chlorophyll concentrations (bottom) are shown around
the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico. Credit: MODIS Ocean
Color Team/Norman Kuring
