I know that MH Awareness Month is over, but I think I should do an educational thread on what trauma flashbacks are *actually* like. Their depictions in media are often a far cry from such a distressing, common reality.

This month does include a lot of...trauma..so it feels apt. So what are flashbacks truly like?

Very rarely are they the full, complete, hallucinatory experience depicted in media. The kind where a person is 110% entrenched in the very traumatic moment they were once in. Seeing, hearing, feeling everything JUST as it was but in real time.

We all know an "I listen to anything but country" person. Probably dozens. "It's all just sad songs about trucks, booze and dogs."

That's not true. But I still no longer listen. Bc the ONE thing I will never ever understand about country music as a genre or its listeners... Country music cornered the fkg market on storytelling. Songs of substance. Lyrics before vocal or a sick beat. Evocative, emotive, make you wanna sob shit people live for now. Most of all, *political* and *controversial* for the time.

But NOT like you'd think OR how it is today.

Oh yeah! Tonight madre and I rearranged my living room and did a flip flop of some things. Makes it 20000x more accessible for my wheelchair!

Swapped the TV for my piano/guitars/etc, the table for the mat, and put me back over on the "bedcouch".
Look how easy to get through! Lol, ignore the general mess, it was all done quickly on a week and a lot of things still need homes. But for those who remember how it used to look we're back to this!

🗣 MOST WHEELCHAIR USERS CAN MOVE THEIR LEGS 🗣

In fact, most can walk. So why does the public - including other disabled folks - struggle to understand this?

One, paralysis is the only narrative they've been shown
Two, most of us feel pressured to PERFORM immobility for safety I genuinely feel most people need examples and information to truly understand and check their biases.

Telling them we exist isn't enough when it comes to in-person exchanges, bc they don't have enough intellectual info stored to challenge those deep internal pre-conceptions.

Hi there. So I needed to go to the ER by ambu this AM so let's review - mostly for me, but also everyone else. (But to stay, I'm okayish and home again.)

First, I had the most bizarre seizure yet. After 2 breakthrough ones earlier this week for the first time in ages. We have no real clue why it's happening and I didn't even recognize I was having warning signs bc they were completely diff than my normal ones.

But hey, PSA, if you think you've been straight up poisoned by food? Bc it tasks like liquid nitrous prob does? Get to the ground.

I think we need a master thread of repressive, toxic quotes used against people that are actually incomplete or imply the exact opposite of what the author originally intended.

"They're not all bad, he's just one bad apple."
Ma'am, one bad apple SPOILS THE WHOLE BUNCH. "They're family, no matter what! Blood is thicker than water!"

Yeah no, "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”. Family is but biology, those we choose to love are a bond tighter than anything.

LATERAL ABLEISM and WHEELCHAIR SHAMING♿

I have a bone to pick w/ some wheelchair accessibility, visibility and edu advocates. I've been seeing this more and more, and it only seems to be growing legs. (Pun not intended but feels apt. Bc your privilege and ability is showing.) I've been seeing so many threads, videos, infographics, comics and more trying to discuss what "real wheelchairs" are like. You can see where this is going.

The INTENT is to take a stab at bad media representation, social ignorance, inaccessibility, etc, when it comes to chairs.

What the Disabled Community offered the world this past year:

▪️best ways to stay connected w/ friends and family from home
▪️hacks to stay productive while working remotely
▪️tools to manage (and cope w/) health anxiety
▪️honest, raw conversations about death or hospitalization ▪️education on virus transmission or effectiveness of any "hack" to avoid COVID
▪️tips, commiserations and resources to navigate healthcare and insurance
▪️ways to save money in all ways, but esp on the essentials for life at home
▪️dark humor; relief knowing it could be worse

This tweet alone contradicts itSELF. That's a new feat.

You REHEARSED with an autistic girl - meaning it was written and moving into production. But when that didn't work, you chose to WRITE IT for Maddie. Was it... not... written yet? To be able to rehearse?

https://twitter.com/Sia/status/1332297136680013826

Her own subconscious lied on her.

She'd been telling people sporadically for 5yrs she'd been writing a movie for Maddie...even teaching all Stevie's "tics and movements and vocalizations" herSELF.

But last wk it was always "they suggested I use Maddie" "I chose to cast Maddie".

I got several tweets since my original Sia thread, calling me a hater, someone who doesn't know her or her story, or just needs to know her heart like fans do.

Kiddies. Loves. Gen Z. I was a huge fan since Colour the Small One (2004) but also owned Healing is Difficult (2001). Her story through trauma, addiction and self-destruction spoke to me as a teenager. I shared her music w/ loved ones who complained they couldn't understand her but I NEEDED them to get me.

I sent her song Alive to tell my therapist I survived something we thought I never could.

Hey, my lovely writers.

I'm so glad my Sia thread really helped condense a lot of info for you and connect dots you hadn't!

But when you write an article, delineating all her inconsistencies, in order, include references to exact written interviews I found, and even bullet points I listed out as notes to consider but didn't have time for, it starts to just feel like plagiarism, not reporting.

We've ALL had screenshots of our tweets thrown into articles while many just add words around our Good Thoughts™️. But when you don't even do that?

You ever have a moment where it sinks in that Joe Biden is the President? President. Of the United States. Not a temp, not some exceptional circumstance where he's just there til Trump comes back.

He's really the 46th President. For 4 years. And Trump is done. It's.. it's over. Has it started to hit you that this...fever dream, the daily trauma and years of unspeakable horrors and disbelief is really and truly...ending??

Imagine a clear, sensible, thoughtful, respectful, and kinda...casual(?) leader. Someone you'll even forget about for wks at a time.

ICYMI: Maddie wasn't comfortable with this from the jump. She cried on set, so upset. Sia convinced her it was good and right and she'd never let people question Maddie.

https://twitter.com/rollwthepunches/status/1330028493485301761

Oh! Also. I didn't include this in the orig thread bc I'm exhausted and fried, but if you have the stamina to watch the full interview, Sia also discusses training Maddie 'like a dancer' to mimic Stevie's "tics and movements" exactly.

To study our physicality w/ 100% accuracy.

Just some of the manyyyyy inconsistencies in Sia's abysmal story.

*was researching for 3 YEARS*
*somehow never knew Autism $peaks is a hate group*
*turns out she DID know they were horrid awhile ago*

But also, A$ didn't come on-board for 4yrs after the 3yr research began? Wut? *claims she tried a FEW autistic actors, but some phantom overhead suggested she use Maddie*

*jk they tried one non-verbal autistic girl, she didn't cope well, so Sia herself picked Maddie*

Update.

I tried to make jokes last night but this isn't funny now.

I actually did email my landlord last night - something I've never done in the 7yrs I've lived here - and she was great about it.

But it's possible we have some retaliation and I'm sooo sick now.

https://twitter.com/rollwthepunches/status/1329660980763258881

Bc it was addressed I reopened my window (on this 70° day). Cigarette smoke flooded my apt soon after. This has happened before from ALL my neighbors. But this was different somehow.

I got suffocated quickly and so nauseous I thought I would puke. It got trapped and Im so sick[

Why isn't there a lock screen button on basically EVERY phone that only opens up to relevant emergency medical information if enabled?

This should be standard.

I would HAPPILY look at a big red button every time I unlocked my phone if I knew it'd save my life. And if we all KNEW this was something almost everyone had and likely had on them, it'd be what we all automatically look for in an emergency.

Medical ID bracelets aren't accessible or even helpful for me. But no one even knows to look in my phone...and can't if locked.

To me, this is what happens when you make receiving absentee ballots on time nearly impossible - in a battleground state like PA. Less than 2wks after voting day, PA is exploding in ways it hadn't - even at the start of the pandemic when it was bouncing from #3-5 for several months.

We hung in there for awhiiiile. Then suddenly, in mere days, everything fell apart. Voting and a certain someone's rallies🤬

I'm having such a visceral, pained and admittedly 'flashback-y' response to imagining all the currently undiagnosed children w/ OCD (or trauma) going back to school where they're forced to wear masks.

Young me would've had a straight up terrorized existence that I cannot fathom. Ofc some kiddos will feel relieved by masks if they have germ-based obsessions, understand the virus, and feel safer w/ others in masks. But most who are too young to rationally walk through that will still panic about surfaces, distance, washing, etc anyway.

What about others?

Why the concept of person-first language is inherently ableist, from its inception:

If you have to go out of your way to remember and communicate that disabled folks are still PEOPLE, it means you're constantly aware of, but just trying to reject, our dehumanization. Even some of the most frequently dehumanized identities, those consistently compared to animals (Black and/or LGBTQ+ folks), aren't referred to as "people w/ Blackness" or "people w/ lesbianity".

You aren't constantly fighting the notion they're subhuman or "it defines them".

I am growing increasingly frustrated by the rhetoric around COVID (esp masks, distancing, prevention, etc) that says the only thing we're trying to protect people from is dying.

Or that, if death doesn't seem a high probability for you, it's fine to "go ahead and get it". Death is NOT the only concern here and the number of people coming out of this permanently disabled and chronically ill is massive.

COVID - even the "mild cases" - is being shown to cause:

Irreparable organ damage (not just to the lungs, but to kidneys, livers, hearts, etc),

When the COVID numbers spike -- and they will -- instead of blaming protesters, take note of which cities used the most unlawful force.

Did they... oh, I don't know, trap protesters between two highways like cattle and then gas them?

Did they mow down large groups of people? Did they specifically use tear gas -- making people cough, gag, spit and cry all over their neighbors?

Did they entrap them, impose a sudden curfew, and then start firing to create a stampede?

Did they walk by and yank masks down before macing or spraying them?