April's Brain Journal

also i think i finally learned to articulate some things about my anger/aggression problems today, so that's a good start for fixing them

 

things i am still laughing about: that it's basically impossible to actually get me with gore/shock images unless i choose to look at them because i'm so bad at parsing visual information that it usually takes me a few seconds of looking at the thing to actually tell what i'm looking at

i can pick out specific details great! they just tend to be so laser-focused i often have to look at/watch the thing repeatedly to fully parse what's happening, unless i'm filling in the blanks from context the way i do with speech. there's a reason i'm good at reading blurrytext and reading with my glasses off and that's because i use the same skills involved to parse most information instead of doing it automatically

 

i mean also they tend to not really bother me viscerally so much as intellectually/consentwise/concern about other people having to see them, so there's that, but like

 

every day i thank god for strickler's shitty face and bitchqueen facial expressions

 

mood

 

good things about meds so far, now that they've reached their full dose for now: i have a lot more energy and endurance for stressful situations in which anger, articulation, standing up for myself, and doing my best to make sure i have facts straight are required, and not having one pissfit, yelling and swearing a bunch, and breaking down into a pathetic exhausted intelligible mess who goes silent and avoids all further mention of or interaction with what happened until the next time it becomes unbearable

like i felt bad about getting Nothing Done the last four days off until i realized i spent those last four days being incredibly fucking stressed by many spoon-draining things, and am still standing at the end of them after mostly doing my best to be productive about it

i didn't do a great job especially at first but i didn't Totally Collapse into an incomprehensible mess of half-assed apologies and triggers so i'll count that as a big improvement

 

that is absolutely a big improvement man

 

things that irritate me: the total lack of interest most people in the trollhunters fandom have in exploring aaarrrgghh or blinky beyond 'pure fluffy gay husbands' or '#1 nerd dad' or '~uwu sad pure soft boy too good for this world~'

they're both fascinating characters

(blinky for one thing is way more interesting as Kind of a Dick whose arc is learning how to legitimately respect and care for life after trying for centuries to do so as an ideal and just. Not Getting It because the only society he's really ever known intimately is Fucked)

but god, aaarrrgghh being essentially relegated to 'big fluffy body pillow who's occasionally good for a Kick the Dog moment' because he's not particularly verbal is. enraging >8T

 

god you're not wrong

 

I feel it :/ Aaarrrgghh is so interesting to me exactly because he is big and low-verbal. I was expecting initially for him to be the Big Stupid Guy but his lack of words doesn't make him less intelligent or compassionate and that's super meaningful for me

 

SERIOUSLY IT'S SO GOOD?????? like he's goofy and chill and kind of a cloudcuckoolander most of the time but like. that's part of his actual personality, it's really clear the writers know there is an adult person with feelings and history and motivations in there

it took me so long to figure out why my interest in writing for blinky and aaarrrgghh nosedived so much shortly after getting into the fandom and tbh The Cinnamon Roll-ing is pretty much it. pure fluffy gay troll dads are fucking boring give them their personalities back you cowards. write aaarrrgghh as the character he is and not an oversimplified object for other characters to feel things about you absolute fools

 

Things to Not Do: drink a cup of full-strength breakfast tea right before bed by accident and stay up until 7am the next morning when you have to leave for work at noon

don't be me kids

 

actually went ahead and called in because i am Not Going to Be Safe to Work Today. especially because my job involves a lot of working around cars, making sure my negligent coworkers don't run over kids and little old ladies with carts, the usual. and also because fuck that noise i'm getting Sleep

 

in happier news i heard people talking about how the asshole i reported for gross negligence toward a blind customer had his Last Day yesterday. i have no idea if the two are connected but good fucking riddance, what a piece of shit

 

man did i talk about that here yet, i forget

tl;dr my job is basically 'grocery bagging and general store gopher,' which means sometimes being assigned to accompany blind or otherwise disabled customers around the store to help pick out their items, bring them to the front, wait outside with them to make sure their transportation arrives safely, etc. it's actually one of my favorite parts of the job, all the people i've helped have been unfailingly sweet and friendly and have apparently been really pleased with my service, which is nice, so i get assigned to them a lot

so there's this one blind lady, i'd guess mid-twenties to early thirties, who i'll call 'melanie' here, and she is ridiculously sweet and knows how to streamline the process to make sure it Gets Done Properly, which is frankly refreshing as hell after dealing with some of the abled dumbshits who come through our store. she always takes an uber, and someone has to wait outside with her to make sure the person gets flagged down, because she can't see them and they're often really shitty about not bothering to do the slightest amount of looking for their customers before they cancel and take off. (she's right there in front of the store, you fucking dipshits, she's hard to miss)

so anyway, i help her out, things proceed as normal etc, i'm waiting with her out front and her first uber driver does The Thing like a piece of shit. i'm waiting while she works to arrange the next one, and then i realize that shit, i have to leave in like ten minutes, i might not be able to wait and flag down the car. so i tell her what's going on and that i'm going to find somebody who can help, and go inside. the first and only other bagger i can find on short notice is a fucking asshole, 'chris,' who's taken opportunities to get violent with and scream at great length at homeless people hanging around near the store. honestly i should probably have looked for someone else because lmao, but i figured shit, it's 10 minutes and he has one simple job, what are the chances of his raging douchebaggery seeping out in that short a period of time. i explain the situation to him quickly and ask if he'll help her, he says yes and goes outside to introduce himself

i look out the window to see them talking, figure it'll be okay from there, walk away. walk back to look again like 30 seconds later because i had a Bad Feeling and he's already fucking gone, when i went outside she was still talking because he didn't tell her he was leaving and she thought he was still there, he just wandered off and started doing other shit instead of helping his goddamn disabled customer

i made sure to ask her, too, and she confirmed that he left without telling her. he left while she was talking to him directly like what the fuck

anyway melanie's next uber worked, i reported it to a (new, presumably not yet steeped in this store's epidemic of bullshit) manager immediately after i got off work, and hopefully that had something to do with him leaving.

hasta la eat my ass, chris, i hope you stared at the sun yesterday morning. you seem like the type.

 

like. don't get me wrong, disabled customers deserve decent fucking accomodations even if they're assholes, but what kind of a raging hemorrhoid do you have to be to treat a person like melanie of all people like that???? christ

 

so i just had 'astrology perusal for funsies' time and




look don't call me out like this

 

so let's say you're out picking mushrooms.

you want to cook a nice dinner for yourself and your SO/s, your friends, some acquaintances you've hit it off with. you aren't an expert, and by default you have very little knowledge about which ones are poisonous. you're very anxious that you'll pick the wrong one and thereby poison the people eating your food.

now, the irresponsible course of action here is to disregard the safety of your guests and wing it, trust your own instincts and pick what looks good to you. maybe you're thinking, it'll be okay, they can pick it out of their food if they need to! maybe one or two of them are mushrooming experts, that means it's extra safe!

sadly, people actually do this.

then people get poisoned, at which point you would hopefully take them to the hospital instead of crying in the kitchen about how you ruined everything while your guests lie on the floor foaming and seizing.

sadly, people actually do this.

but what's the responsible course of action, you ask?

research. do your research. lean on the knowledge of people who are well versed in these things, seek out resources. learn!

now, you're still not an expert, which means you're going to run across a lot of cases in which you're Not Sure. the solution is simple: don't pick them! try to remember what you can about them, take notes, do more research.

if you're sad about how many potential good mushrooms you have to throw away because you don't have the knowledge or skill to tell if they're good, do more research that's not trial and error so you can tell.

congratulations! you've just made a safe and wonderful meal for people you care about. you've also just learned how to learn about consent.

you're welcome!

 

a thing i just realized how to articulate: i'm generally hyperaware of tone and body language, and dissecting what a specific piece of text communication is Meant to Achieve as a language cog (in contexts where there's not a codeswitching false-friend-communication thing going on), but i'm absolutely terrible at parsing the actual meanings of words that i can't follow naturally from the implications of the actual language they're using.

i am very tired. i'm going to articulate this more later.

 

more concise if not written while much more awake: my strong point is Words Mean Things. my weak point is also Words Mean Things