Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
call me soft or whatever but i find it so incredible that people manage to keep themselves alive. like you’re paying rent?? maintaining relationships?? going to work?? every day single day?? in this economy?? on the mental diet we’ve all been raised on?? the effort you must be putting into your life simply by living it is olympian. and it is impressive
Dr. Julian Bashir, Head Medical Officer of the DS9 station, would like to remind his fellow bi people to take care of themselves both mentally and physically, and leave links and tips for finding a doctor or therapist.
I don’t know if I’ve spelled it out on tumblr yet, but I want to talk about The Mammal List.
The Mammal List is something I came up with when I was in a mental health intensive outpatient program four(!!) years ago. The premise is that we are at our core animals, and if I consider myself the way I’d consider a pet cat, I’m much more likely to practice good self-care:
1. Mammals need food. Eat something! If the Hellbeast doesn’t pass judgment on a piece of cheese, neither should you. (She also eats anything small enough to fit in her mouth, so be judicious in that respect. Food is good. Lint is not.)
2. Mammals need hydration. Drink something! It doesn’t have to be water. It could be delicious tuna juice. You’re a discerning creature. I trust you.
3. Mammals need sleep. Make a soft nest and let yourself enjoy it. Knead it until it’s comfortable. Let yourself rest as long as you need. Just existing is hard. You’ve earned a break.
4. Mammals need movement. Take your precious body and do something. Don’t hurt yourself. Be kind.
5. Mammals need stimulation. Treat yourself to a new jingle ball or mousie toy. Get a bird feeder and stare at it. Let yourself really enjoy it. Play is in your nature.
6. Mammals need socialization. I know this one is particularly difficult these days, but if you don’t keep reaching out, you’re going to forget yourself and start biting people.
7. Mammals need cleanliness. Nobody likes scooping the litterbox, but it has to be done. Don’t forget your own body. Make your fur shine. Treat yourself as the luminous creature you are.
And most important of all: don’t feel guilty. This isn’t about deserving (although you do deserve it). You’re an animal and you need these things to survive, and I very much want you to survive.
I was talking about being afraid of people leaving me behind because I’m too sick, and my boyfriend just looked at me and said: “It’s my choice to be your boyfriend. It’s your friends choice to be your friends. You don’t have to understand it, but you have to respect our choice. Don’t try to make the decision of whether you’re worthy of people on their behalf because that’s not your decision to make.” I think that’s an important thing to remember. That whether we’re worthy of someone’s time and effort is something others can decide for themselves regardless of whether or not we agree with them. There’s a lot of peace in realizing that literally all you have to do is accept the love other people choose to throw your way. That you aren’t the one who gets to determine that you aren’t worthy of their love. That other people can choose to love you regardless of how you feel about yourself - and that you can learn to respect their choice even though you’re feeling unworthy.
Sometimes people hit a place in their life where things are going really well. They like their job and are able to be productive at it; they have energy after work to pursue the relationships and activities they enjoy; they’re taking good care of themselves and rarely get sick or have flareups of their chronic health problems; stuff is basically working out. Then a small thing about their routine changes and suddenly they’re barely keeping their head above water.
(This happens to me all the time; it’s approximately my dominant experience of working full-time.)
I think one thing that’s going on here is that there are a bunch of small parts of our daily routine which are doing really important work for our wellbeing. Our commute involves a ten-minute walk along the waterfront and the walking and fresh air are great for our wellbeing (or, alternately, our commute involves no walking and this makes it way more frictionless because walking sucks for us). Our water heater is really good and so we can take half-hour hot showers, which are a critical part of our decompression/recovery time. We sit with our back to the wall so we don’t have to worry about looking productive at work as long as the work all gets done. The store down the street is open really late so late runs for groceries are possible. Our roommate is a chef and so the kitchen is always clean and well-stocked.
It’s useful to think of these things as load-bearing. They’re not just nice - they’re part of your mental architecture, they’re part of what you’re using to thrive. And when they change, life can abruptly get much harder or sometimes just collapse on you entirely. And this is usually unexpected, because it’s hard to notice which parts of your environment and routine are load bearing. I often only notice in hindsight. “Oh,” I say to myself after months of fatigue, “having my own private space was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a scary drop in weight, “being able to keep nutrition shakes next to my bed and drink them in bed was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a sudden struggle to maintain my work productivity, “a quiet corner with my back to the wall was load-bearing.”
When you know what’s important to you, you can fight for it, or at least be equipped to notice right away if it goes and some of your ability to thrive goes with it. When you don’t, or when you’re thinking of all these things as ‘nice things about my life’ rather than ‘load-bearing bits of my flourishing as a person’, you’re not likely to notice the strain created when they vanish until you’re really, really hurting.
Almost two weeks after reading this, and I’m still kind of blown away at what a ridiculously fruitful definition this is. Like I had no idea that load bearing things were a thing that needed to have a word for them, but now I’m like holy shit I’m so glad that there’s now a word I can use to refer to this really important class of Thing.
This is astounding. Load-bearing. Forget spoons, this concept is wonderful. I’m going to update my Spear Theory with this.
In highschool I wrote a story about a middle-generation of stellar travelers. Their parents were born on earth and left as children, and the middle generation will not live long enough to see their destination. They live their entire lives on the ship and I wrote about them trying to find their place in everything. They will never know blue skies and warm beaches and open fields with warm breezes. They’ll never know birdsong or crickets or frogs. They’ll never hear the rain on the roof of a dreary day. I never could find the right way to end the story. I wanted it to be a happy ending, but I didn’t know how to do it.
I realize now that it was a book about me dealing with depression before I even knew it. Looking back at how blatant the projecting was, it’s obvious now. It wasn’t then.
In the story, the middle-generation people are lost. They’re apathetic. They’re just a placeholder. The only job they have is to keep the ship running, have kids, and die. As the middle generation of people began becoming adults, suicide rates were skyrocketing. Crime and drug rates were jumping. This generation was completely apathetic because they felt that they had no use.
In the story, a small group of people in the middle-generation create the Weather Project. They turn the ship into a terrarium. They make magnificent gardens and take the DNA of animals they took with them and recreate them and they make this cold, metal spaceship that they have to live their entire lives on into a home. They take what little they have and they break it and rearrange it into something beautiful. They take this radical idea and turn the ship into a wonderful jungle of trees and birds and sunshine.
And I realize now how much it reflects my state of mind as I transitioned from a child into an adult while dealing with depression. You always hear “it gets better” and “when you’re older things will be easier” and I was so sick of waiting for it to get better. I was in the middle-generation stage. And I was sick of it. I was so sick of waiting.
When I was in highschool I didn’t know how to end the story. I didn’t know how to have a happy ending. I didn’t have the life experience then to finish the story in a meaningful way. I didn’t know how to make it better for these middle-generation characters.
But now that I’m older, I’m learning. That if you sit and wait for things to get better, it never will. You have to take your life and break it apart and rearrange it into something beautiful. You have to make the cold metal ship into the garden that you deserve. You have to make your own meaning. You have to plant your own garden.
You have to teach yourself that being happy is not a radical idea.
God you guys I never thought this would become so popular 😱 I was gonna name it The Weather Project after the art installment that inspired it
By Olafur Eliasson
This is the most important post that I’ve ever made. Its for screaming out with every fiber of your being that you’re worth something. You’re worth everything.
i mean this in the kindest way possible, but a discord vent channel is not a suicide hotline. it’s not a crisis line. it’s not therapy.
obviously leaning on your friends for support is a very good thing to do, but you’ve really really gotta use your judgment & decide what issues your friends will be able to handle & what is best left to those with proper training. i’ve seen way too many instances during my online life where someone has taken an extremely serious or dangerous situation to a fandom chat server & absolutely no one there had the qualifications to handle it appropriately. in mental health crises or situations of domestic violence or abuse, bad advice can have massive consequences. i really cannot emphasize that enough. yes, ofc your friends have only the best intentions & want to help you, but they are usually not trained to handle these sorts of situations & may unintentionally tell you to do something that will make the situation worse.
pls, for your safety & well-being, treat the vent channel only as what it was intended to be: a place to vent your frustrations during a challenging day or in a stressful situation. but do not rely on it for crisis management. you gotta leave that to the experts.
i want to add that if someone comes to you with a big problem (like, the kind of problem that they should literally go to the police or an authority with), it is not your responsibility to fix it. you are one person, not a social worker or therapist. it’s awesome that you want to help your friend, but please do not fall into the trap of thinking that if you don’t solve that problem, you’re a bad person. even if they insist that no one can help except you, you will need to find them professional support. go to a friend, a teacher, a parent, a mentor - anyone who can help you figure this out and guide you.
again, you should be there for your friends (and obviously it will require your best judgement to figure out if you can help or need to bring in the big guns), but it’s not your job to fix them on your own. you are not a bad person if you try your best but can’t handle their problem
