A haven for creative people living with mental illness. This is the place where you can tell it like it is, not yet another place where you have to pretend to be someone you've been told you should be.
A Senryu in honor of little girls who are taught from a young age that our only real worth is in our ability to be pleasing to the eyes and desires of men.
isoftstone has landing page evaluator positions available worldwide. These are work from home positions requiring between 10 and 25 hours per week availability. The current pay rate is $13 per hour.
I am currently in the testing phase for this position. So far I have learned that I would throw myself from the top of Mount Everest if I had to do this work for more than 10 hours per week, and I am still deciding if I would be able to do even that much. My mind really does not sync with this sort of work.
To do the job correctly, one has to intuit the intent of the hypothetical searcher and evaluate the validity of the given landing page to the searcher's intent. It sounds simple, but there are multiple criteria to consider. If you prefer crossword puzzles to Sudoku puzzles, you may not be a good fit for this position either.
I did very poorly on the pattern recognition portion of the old-school I.Q. test when I was twelve years old. For many years, I believed myself to be "borderline retarded," because those were the words I heard the school psychologist telling my parents. Combine this with the fact that I have some trouble with balance, and girls in the 1970's were all expected to emulate Nadia Comaneci in the gym, I believed that I must be severely deficient intellectually even though I had always tested well above my grade level when it came to reading comprehension and writing abilities.
The "above my grade level" measure did not translate to math. I did fine with addition and subtraction but when we started learning multiplication in the third grade, I was screwed. My well-meaning chum who rarely thought things through was given my paper to grade on our first multiplication test. She always praised me for being very smart because she had a bit of trouble with reading and writing, and I helped her. Once the papers were scored, she held mine up, eyes wide with surprise, and said loudly: "You got an F!"
My friend meant no harm, but I burst into tears. I have long felt that the letter grade system was harmful to kids who are having trouble in school. F stands for "Failure" and everyone knows that. It would be better to replace D and F with something such as "Incomplete" and rather than punishing kids who were struggling, work with them to determine what they need in order to understand the subject.
I got an F in basic college math many years later because I made the mistake of trying to take the course online. When I took the course in person, I got an A, because I had a very patient teacher who held my hand and led me through the Math Jungle.
I also learned many years after my diagnosis of "borderline retardation" that I have a degree of dyslexia, mostly with numbers, and I have ADD. I have trouble concentrating for long periods of time on things that don't really hold my interest, and I do terribly with projects that seem mathematical.
If you have a very mathematical and analytical mind, you might really enjoy the isoftstone position to increase your income. I'm going to have to decide within the next three days if I'm capable of doing it for even ten hours a week. At the moment, I have my doubts, because working on it for even an hour had me wanting to throw myself into an active volcano, and my accuracy rate is...well...I got an F.
Disclaimer: I am not an employee or affiliate of isoftstone. I receive no compensation for reviewing this position or for tossing in a piece of my life story.
I’ve started and stopped writing this several times. I remember that someone else once mentioned that the reason Sam didn’t look for Dean in season 8 isn’t because he was having such a grand time with Amelia (blech.) In fact, some of us theorize that Amelia never really existed. She was a dream or a hallucination. Most of the scenes involving Amelia have unnaturally bright lighting. I believe (as some other people have postulated) that Sam was in shock and that is why he didn’t look for Dean.
Also, Sam has had his head messed with multiple times by Lucifer. But at this moment, I’m specifically thinking of the episode in Season 11 where there is an implication that Lucifer is at the very least trying to mess with Sam’s head by sexually harassing him, and it’s quite possible that Lucifer has molested Sam in the past.
Also, I can’t even begin to say how much I hate the accent with a pantsuit. Torturing someone is bad enough. Messing with their head and convincing them that they had sex with you is beyond nasty. There are few characters that I’ve wanted to see burn as much as this bitch.
As someone who is a sexual assault survivor myself, I can’t even begin to say how uncomfortable that idea makes me.
You see, what happened to me may have happened close to 22 years ago, but it has never left me. It’s always in the back of my head. It makes me do things that seem irrational, like wanting to sleep up against the wall if on a bed, or wanting to sleep on a couch. It makes it hard for me to convince myself to do simple things (things which I actually like) such as take a shower, because being sexually assaulted fucks with your mind in ways that people who haven’t been traumatized in a similar way can’t understand.
I relate to Sam because while he may be only a fictional character, he gets it, and I’m sorry he does.
Here is my part in a thread about how to encourage children to have a healthy relationship with food. The rest of the thread is here.
I developed a bad relationship with food early on. When I was young my family was pretty poor, so we ate a lot of stuff like boiled soybeans and buckwheat groats. I still like buckwheat groats, but if I never see another boiled soybean, it can’t be too soon. So, food insecurity was a thing in my early life.
However, i also learned early on that the worst thing you can possibly be is fat. My parents made sweets a verboten thing, so I started sneaking candy whenever I could find it. I ended up shoplifting candy bars from the natural foods store my mother shopped at. My parents made me pay for the candy. The elderly lady that owned the store forgave me, but I still felt terrible.
My father was also insistent that we eat what was put in front of us whether we liked it or not. I hated liver with a blazing passion. I slipped my portion to the cat under the table and went hungry.
When my son came along I’d always insist that he eat some sort of reasonably nutritious food before having dessert, but I never forced him to eat anything he didn’t like. As it turns out, he’s high-functioning autistic, so food textures are a bigger thing with him than they are with non-autistic people. My family never understood this and scolded him for not eating what he was served and me for letting him be “spoiled.”
I don’t think that forcing people to eat things they don’t want to eat is a good thing.
I also don’t think that teaching people that fat is the worst thing you can possibly be is a good thing.
I still have a really fucked-up relationship with food, and I’m now more than half a century old.
The "sleigh" of this Troiku was written by Hamish "Managua" Gunn, aka Pirate. The three (utterly fucking depressing) Horses of the Apocalypse are my creations. Read them and despair.
I am in rather a bleak mood today. Please, no comments suggesting therapists, drugs, or any of that sort of thing. That shit doesn't work for me. I just have to work my own way out of it.
I'm not much for the whole "content warnings on everything" culture, but to avoid that blasted criticism, I will tell you that what I'm writing here is not going to be pretty, so if you feel like you might be upset by discussions of topics such as suicide and suicide ideation, you can give this post a miss.
I have an online friend whose name is Richard. Richard has autism. At one point, he wrote a post which said he hears people say all the time that they support people with autism and would never bully or hurt anyone who is autistic. He followed this up with the statement that a lot of these people are probably unaware of the times when they have been interacting with someone who was autistic and decided that it was okay to bully or belittle that person because that person was "just weird."
I cannot write a first-hand account of what it means to be misjudged and treated poorly as a person with autism, because I don't have autism. My son does. However, members of my extended family like to tell me that he doesn't, because he's high-functioning. He doesn't show signs of being overstimulated when he's in public. In their words, he's "just shy," he "just needs to come out of his shell," he "just needs to put himself out there." "He's intelligent, it's about damn time he went back to school/found a job." "You baby him too much."
If I don't listen to what my son is saying and ignore the fact that he's becoming overstimulated, he shuts down on me and it's hard for me to open communication with him again.
My son went to a school where people were taught to be understanding and accepting of one another's differences. My friend Richard wasn't so lucky. A lot of people are not.
A whole lot of years ago, I learned about a very unusual fellow by the name of Per Ohlin. If he were still alive, he would be 50 years old now. However, he died from a self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head when he was 22 years old.
There is a lot of misinformation about this unfortunate soul floating around. After reading a fair bit about him from people who actually knew him, such as his brother and the few real friends he had, I believe that he may have been autistic. Per's brother said that Per would become hyper-focused on whatever task he was working on and get very upset at being interrupted from what he was doing. Although highly intelligent, he performed very poorly in school.
Per's classmates in his early years accepted his idiosyncratic behaviors. However, when he was twelve, his parents divorced and he ended up going to a new school. His new classmates not only bullied him mercilessly, but they also ganged up on him and beat him so badly that he ended up being declared clinically dead. There was evidence after this beating of brain damage. None of the individuals involved were ever punished.
Per experienced high degrees of suicide ideation and engaged in self-harm. In his case, the suicide ideation ended up being completed. I am not sure that anything could have been done to save this tragic soul.
However, people can prevent the likelihood of further such occurrences by educating themselves about neurological and psychological differences and by attempting to be a bit kinder to those who present with unusual personalities.
I do not have autism. I am not normal neurologically, which expresses itself in problems with balance as well as varying degrees of difficulty walking. I had a small stroke in early 2017, which is likely the culprit in this case.
What I do have is something I refer to as a trifecta of fuckery or a hot trifecta of mess. This is the Universe's Asshat Trick and it involves rapid-cycling type 2 bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Even though there are all too many people who love to use the term "bipolar" to mean "moody," and I do call people out when they do that and advise them to educate their ignorant selves and not use people's health conditions as insults, I'm going to talk about borderline personality disorder, because it is even more misunderstood than bipolar disorder.
I do not write anything that is normal because I am not normal. I use a lot of metaphors, and my characters are extremely fucked up. I am getting to the point with this, so bear with me. It's a bit difficult to put it out there.
The risky behavior has been toned down for many years. I can't drink alcohol and I don't do illegal drugs. I don't even like the way most drugs make me feel. I don't have any kind of sex, let alone unsafe sex, and I don't want to. Most of the time I am able to resist inflicting self-injury, but not always. I tend to keep my behaviors in check, but there are still things that bleed to the surface.
Having been treated poorly by people who claimed they loved me is something that has led to a strong inability to trust. I generally only form very superficial relationships with people because I don't want to get attached to them, even on a platonic level. I do not have strong bonds even with most of my family members. This is not because I am incapable of feeling. It is because I am capable of feeling too deeply.
When I have written about the consuming love/obsession I have felt in the past, there have been people who have expounded that this is the only way to love, and I am rather horrified. I honestly don't think that obsessive love is healthy. I have scars on my arms that will never go away because of an obsessive love for awful men who treated me like a used condom. I'm glad if you liked the poem, but, yanno, it wasn't meant to be a "how-to" guide. It was really more of a warning.
I had a person comment on a character in one of my stories, asking if the character was a "teenager," and, to be honest, I was a bit insulted by that insinuation. The character was an adult in his mid-twenties. Being insecure is not only the hallmark of teenagers. There are some teenagers who are quite self-assured (I can assure you that I was not one of them) and some adults who are extremely insecure. These feelings of insecurity are magnified many times over in a person who has a condition such as borderline personality disorder.
I personally don't "do" romance because I don't like having my every thought consumed by the fear that I am going to be abandoned, which is what happens when I do romance. I sure as hell don't do casual sex, because I don't like it. Since I really don't like sex much in the first place and would only engage in such an activity with someone I trusted, why the hell would I want to do it casually?
I am far from being a teenager, but borderline personality disorder ensures that I will be one of the most insecure and least trusting people I know until the day I die. It also means that I have a high degree of self-loathing.
Writing is two things to me. First of all, it's catharsis. Second, I really don't know how to do anything else.
I'm not sure if I'm a "good" writer, a "bad" writer, or something in between. I write a bunch of shit. If you like it, great. If you don't like it, whatever. I'm probably not going to stop doing it, even if the occasional bad review makes me hate myself for a few days and I might end up with some cuts or bruises.
A lot of writing critics are looking for formulaic writing, for a type of "normal." I learned this while applying for ghostwriting jobs. I don't do formulaic writing, and I'm not normal. My brain doesn't work normally.
I often compare the way my brain works to the famous images of webs created by spiders on various types of drugs.
I say that my thoughts work a lot like the spiderwebs in the top row. They look normal at first glance, but on closer look, they are not. I can "pass for normal" enough that people who meet me in public don't notice anything particularly unusual about me. But I am actually quite fragile in spite of being rather a hulking figure physically.
So, I write the shit that I write and in the end, it will all amount to nothing. I will very likely die destitute and unwell. When I was young, I had myself fooled that I had something to offer the world. I no longer believe this is true. At this point, I'm just doing the shit that I do, and you can come along for the ride or not. It doesn't really matter that much to me one way or the other.
~Cie~
The ultimate borderline personality disorder anthem
Suicidal Tendencies - Nobody Hears
Lyrics
I talk through my eyes, the words pourin' down
Nobody hears
You ask me what's wrong, but what can I say
Nobody hears
I try to tell you
I try to show you
How else can I tell you?
How else can I show you?
I'm screaming inside, why can't you hear?
Nobody hears
You're looking right though me like I'm not here
Nobody hears
When the last tear falls down
Nothing gets washed away
Another plea put to rest
As nobody hears, nobody hears
So what did I do to you
That makes you run from me?
Now I'm sitting here screaming inside myself
Don't understand why nobody hears
You figured it and shaped it to your perfection
Nobody hears
Subtracted my feelings from this equation
Nobody hears
Is it all in my mind?
All in my mind
Then it would be easy to find
Easy to find
When the last tear falls down
Nothing gets washed away
Another plea put to rest
As nobody hears, nobody hears
So what did I do to you
That makes you run from me?
Now I'm sitting here screaming inside myself
Don't understand why nobody hears
So if it's all
If it's all in my mind
Then wouldn't it, wouldn't it
Wouldn't it be so easy to find?
When the last tear falls down
Nothing gets washed away
Another plea put to rest
As nobody hears, nobody hears
So what do I have to do
To make you comfort me?
Now I'm sitting here screaming inside myself
Don't understand why nobody hears
So I'm sitting here screaming inside myself
Well I'm sitting here crying inside myself
So I'm sitting here screaming to nobody else
Don't understand why nobody hears
And nobody nears, nobody hears, nobody hears, nobody hears
Click the banners to find out more about the prompts.
Note:
For tonight's exercise in self-abuse, I have chosen the Rondeau. I don't know about you, but I find this to be a challenging form.
Here is how you form a Rondeau.
(1) A A B B A (2) A A B with refrain: C (3) A A B B A with concluding refrain C. The refrain must be identical with the beginning of the first line.
Christine says that while she encourages pieces that touch on the lived experiences of those who identify as LGBTQ for the Pride Anthem challenge, it isn't a requirement.
While I for one give not one single rip about anyone's sexual orientation and would ask that others return me the same courtesy, I will disclose that my poem was written from the POV of someone who hid their mental health issues for many years as opposed to someone who felt forced into the closet regarding their sexuality. However, the poem is for anyone who feels as if they have had to hide a key part of themselves in the often closed-minded world in which we live.
