On Abuse and Amber Heard

Content advisory: I talk about being an abuse survivor. I will readily admit to not paying much attention to the Depp/Heard suit; the things celebrities get up to are not typically of interest to me. However, thanks to Cancel Me, Daddy, the one podcast I listen to near-religiously, I understand quite well what was going […]

Shame and Accountability

A while back, I saw some folks talk about shame with reference to individual accountability regarding institutional events. There are at least three things wrong with this, though. Shame is a harmful, negative emotion. Deliberately inflicting it on people is emotional abuse, as it leads to feelings of powerlessness, worthlessness, etc. Individual action cannot solve […]

Parashat Lekh Lekha (Genesis 12:1–17:27)

This parashah’s unfamiliar ground to me, as unlike Creation and the Great Deluge, this section of Torah is new to me. 12:10–20: It’s really not clear to me how Abram could have come to the conclusion that deception was necessary here. Did the Egyptians have a reputation, or is this just xenophobia? 13:1–13: There’s not […]

The Journey So Far

Not so long ago, in a city not so far away…I first had an inkling that there was something not-quite-right about me in fifth grade. At the time, I had no idea what it was–I didn’t have the vocabulary. I want to say it was during or shortly after we learned about sex in class […]

Medical Scare

About 06:50 this morning, I had a sudden sharp stabbing pain in the lower-right abdomen. Given what that could’ve meant, I went to the hospital as soon as I could confirm it wasn’t going away. After bloodwork, urinalysis, and a CAT scan, however, the medical conclusion was, “We don’t know.” Aside from an atrophic left […]

Introducing Amethyst and facets

Hi, folks. Amethyst here. You may not know me, but I’ve been here the whole time, just behind at least two different facets. You absolutely do know the facets, though, or at least one of them. The reason I use ‘facets’ is that there’s only one personality here (me); Síle and Aerdan may have their […]

Attention Deficiency

A lot of people, when they think about attention deficiency, think about ADD, or Attention-Deficit Disorder, with an optional H for Hyperactivity. However, that defines ADHD from what is observed from outside. But ADHD isn’t about not paying attention, not really, and I’m not here to talk about ADHD anyhow. The sort of attention deficiency […]

Exhaustion

Between last week being the (second) anniversary of my dad’s death and developments in the US and elsewhere, I’m feeling…overwhelmed, I think, is the word I want. And I don’t know what to do about it, so I’m just going to list off the shit I’m dealing with. The Wi Spa incident, which was manufactured […]

“Fiction affects reality”

This is a statement I’ve seen several times over the past year or so, and I want to break it down and address some of the issues surrounding it. Primarily, I see “fiction affects reality” specifically for content involving underage characters in sexual situations. Very occasionally I’ve seen it in reference to violence toward marginalized […]

Emotions

Recently I came across a thread on Twitter that taught me the word ‘alexithymia’. In broad strokes, alexithymia is a deficiency in understanding, processing, or describing emotions. It’s co-morbid with a bunch of things, including autism and ADHD. I was diagnosed with autism back in 1998 (when the clinical term was a Nazi psychologist’s name), […]