🏳️‍⚧️ Unknown Emtity 🏳️‍🌈

I don't think regulating what you're exposed to is prudish in the least - it's choosing to minimize impact and curate your experience at the same time.

Consent is big, too. I don't know why it'd be prudish to effectively close the curtains on someone in the buff when you don't want to see that?

Alternately, I could give in and start rebelling via drawing and writing erotic content, since that seems to be our governments' biggest concern right now.

I will shock them with images of emotional vulnerability, accountability, growth, and support. Human connection. The scandal and outrage. /lh

Maybe it "just" gives someone hope. Or helps someone connect with estranged family in a way they couldn't before. Maybe it helps people see the beautiful souls I see, and relate to them in ways they didn't before.

Maybe not... but maybe.

I can dream.

the idea.

I just know there are a lot of stories that deserve to be told - reliable narrator or otherwise - in the way their narrator chooses to tell them.

Maybe it helps save a couple lives, or get someone the help they need, or educates someone who in turn affects change in policy.

worlds for those whose educations don't at first expose them to those experiences. A means for action toward the better for everyone.

It might be too large an undertaking at first, but it feels like it'd provide an important context, even if only as a piece of history.

Still feeling my way around

the way of my completing the coursework.

There's been a lot I've wanted to do over the years, but I've never really found a place that feels like home. This is starting to get there.

I want to merge my passions into something that can provide tangible support, resources, and even a look into our

me.

I wanted to be an artist, then a writer, then a comic artist/writer, then a Post-Doc in Psych with lesser focuses on creative writing and fine art.

Eventually I dipped my toes into a major in Game Design and Development with a minor in Graphic Design, only to have a health issue that got in

Maybe add in more voices as more voices become available.

I know I want to do things that help people, and this feels like it has the potential to help in a myriad of ways.

Unsure what kind of interest there would be, or if I could do it justice, but it feels like a step in the right direction for

anything, but flawed, imperfectly perfect human narratives cataloging how we got to where we are, what we've faced - in as full detail as people are comfortable sharing - and how we're handling the situation now. Maybe with an intent to check in 5, 10 years down the road for follow-up pieces.

stories with me, with the understanding that all names will be changed, and they'll have a say in how things are presented... and just... make a collection that talks about lived experiences from voices that might otherwise go unheard.

Not necessarily strictly following a scientific method or

Tbh, the more I think about it, the more I'm tempted to see about doing a series of zines or a comic anthology telling the stories of minority people - especially folks who face intersections of minorities.

People of Color, Disabled People, Trans People, etc.

Just... invite people to share their

They are just as valid as Epileptic seizures, and their presence is not an indicator of weakness - if anything, it is an indicator of perseverance.

Note: PNES stands for Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizures

These are seizures that do not have Epileptic origins and are thought instead to help with processing unprocessed trauma via bodily motion, when it's simply too much for the brain to process on its own.

It's exhausting and difficult work, and sometimes it wears you down to almost nothing. But it's still your choice to make, your life to live. And as long as you're around there's still a chance for your life to improve - even if that's only through improving your outlook (which can change a lot).

When things feel like they're out of your control, and life feels like it happens to you, it can be tempting to lean toward taking control in the only way you can see at the time - in choosing to stop the ride.

But you can also choose to keep going, and keep fighting for your life to be better.

It may be one of the world's worst collectathons, and it's like the collectibles are jumping at you.

Some days you just miss who you used to be, or who you feel you should have had a chance to be. The life you should have been able to live. And that can be crushing enough on its own.

My heart goes out to those who have to worry about breaks and bleeding more than I do, as I know just how dangerous those can be.

That's the other crux of the matter; the more diagnoses you have, the more likely it is you have even more diagnoses you don't know about.

And - somehow - it can still be nearly impossible to get the care needed for proper diagnosis and treatment, and further difficult to get the approval needed to finance life.

Having PNES while also having joints that dislocate easily and no base of your skull is its own kind of nightmare, too.

can't, and more that don't want to even have to acknowledge that those who do exist. Who think we should exist outside of the public eye, or not exist at all (which would be great if it were about helping solutions and not about taking away our autonomy and, y'know, life).

hurting your partner while they try to support you so you don't get hurt. Imagine blacking out and waking up in an unfamiliar room, unfamiliar with what's happened or even what time or day it is. Imagine that being a normal occurrence in your day-to-day life.

There are some who can, but many who

It's also widely underrepresented in media.

Sleepwalking is terrifying, but so is PNES. Imagine taking the stairs when your body suddenly collapses into convulsions, and you can't do anything to stop it, but may be consciously present through the entire thing. Imagine involuntarily swinging out and

at worst. And you never actually have a chance to be the you that you deserved to be.

PNES is the harsh reality of all of these things converging on the nervous system in sudden bursts, and it wracks the body in ways people without nervous system disorders or illnesses can't truly understand.

everyone else's needs for so long - and consistently learning to forget your own. But sacrifice always has a price, and when you've been hollowing yourself out for years, or never even had a solid foundation on which to build, things get rocky at best, incredibly complicated at median, or they stop

lasting moment of peace and relief.

Safety becomes unsafe, everything around you becomes a trigger, and you aren't sure which way is up anymore. You realize just how many of the threads of the fabric of you are made of the expectations you placed on yourself as a result of trying to predict

before feels impossible, now. Your body lets go and you may spend years building yourself back up to the strength you had. Because you can only push yourself to the breaking point so many times before it breaks you, and no child is meant to go through that. No person is meant to have never seen a

boundaries necessary to do that deep work comes an unfortunate side-effect. "The Body Keeps the Score", as it were. And those years of tension that have been holding you together like some kind of sick, makeshift glue get released. Maybe not all at once, but usually in a flood. And what was so easy

even if they're hurting you, you simply give up hope again. Or you don't have the energy or resources to tackle it yet. That's where the more intensive programs come into play. Residential, rehab, partial, etc.

Oftentimes those programs are a necessity, because with the weakening of mental

It's about deconstructing everything you learned in your formative years and starting from scratch. It's learning to be your own parent, support, etc, and to find the power in yourself to handle the shit no one else can do for you.

Sometimes it's so much easier to slide back into old habits that

You deconstruct every bit of yourself - often in big leaps - and then look at your ingredients and decide which things are there because they're you and which things are there because they helped you survive, but they're not really serving you anymore, and might even be rotting a bit.

When people talk about becoming soup during Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and Shadow Work, I think there's a lot of factors that go unmentioned - maybe because not everyone experiences them. But soup is an appropriate descriptor, because you break down everything you thought you were.