Results for: you need help
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Sad in a Prettier Place
A big reason for my move was the fact that I’m immune compromised. Instagram’s creepy algorithm delivered me an image, “moving won’t solve your problems, you’ll just be sad in a prettier place.”
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How I Manage the Sexual Side Effects of PTSD
My care team couldn’t help me with the sexual side effects of PTSD — I had to figure this one out on my own.
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Is There Life After High School?
“I wanted to have nightmares about monsters or mass shootings. It was too embarrassing — in the midst of global catastrophe — to be concerned with something as frivolous as high school.”
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Ranking The National Songs by How Much I’ve Cried to Them
Trying to get sober was like pulling teeth.
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I Used Instagram Mantras As Therapy — And It Worked
They served as daily messages your best friend should tell you when you’re hurting — and in desperate need of a silver lining.
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Measuring My Queerness By Different Therapists I’ve Had
If I had a dollar for every therapist I’ve had, I’d probably have enough money to buy a relatively decent meal at a nearby bodega.
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Grief Exists in Its Own Time Zone
There’s a reason people say things like “grief isn’t linear,” and “you won’t feel this way forever,” and there’s also a reason it feels like you’re hearing those things through a set of ear muffs when you’re in the moment.
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Here’s What I Learned By Choosing to Step Away from Productivity For a Whole Day
I did nothing “productive” for a whole day: no email, no phone calls, no work, no cleaning, nothing that fuels my inherent Capricorn desire to win at Capitalism. Here’s what happened.
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When Thin is a Trans Requirement
Body fat is central to how we perceive gender. So what does that mean if you’re a trans person?
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The 5 Stages of Choosing Myself During A Pandemic
If you keep pumping your arms, your legs will know what to do even when the world is crumbling around you.
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How to Quit Smoking
Tell yourself that you’re not like one of those chain smokers, that you can stop whenever you want. Start smoking American Spirits, so it’s like, not even that bad for you because it’s natural, or organic, or something. You forget.
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Bipolar Disorder, Trans Dykes, and Celestial Catastrophe
One patient in the study “Observation of Trends in Manic-Depressive Psychosis” by O. Spurgeon English recounted that living with bipolar disorder “is like opening all my pores on a cold day and subjecting myself to catastrophe.”
I too have felt like a catastrophe of a person, a catastrophe of a star, a catastrophe of emotions. -
A Birthday Party No One Else Was Invited To
The first time someone described Casey as having “stalkerish” tendencies, I defended her. For the most part though, I didn’t talk about it.
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5 Years Sober (Or, the Meanest Lesbian I Know Punched Me in the Face)
“I knew that somewhere along the way, I stopped being sober for her and had started doing it for me — and that realization hit me harder than my own fist.”
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Sad Enough Songs: On Julien Baker and Depression
Depression is not forever because it always ends, and depression is forever because it always comes back. It won’t work if I only want to stay on the days when my brain breaks through the muck. Turn Out The Lights is a meditation on wanting to stay on the very worst days.
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Beyond Self-Care Bubble Baths: A Vision for Community Care
If I and other people with certain disabilities are going to survive, we need care — and not from ourselves. Because when it gets really bad for me, self-care is literally impossible. In those moments, I need community care.
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I Never Meant for My Hair to Be the Way Back to the Lighthouse
“I thought changing something on the outside would change the wrecked ruin of me on the inside. I thought somehow the inside would get a memo from my outside and get into shape. It didn’t, but my hair is the first way I was able to gain autonomy over my body.”
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When Community Complicates Healthcare for Sex Workers
“It became a running joke between my partners and I, that I was both too stigmatized and too famous to get my needs met.”
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Feelings Rookie: Hopping Off the Plane at L.A.X. With a Dream and a Cardigan
Fitting into Los Angeles wasn’t going to happen for me. Or so I thought, until I stopped trying.
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Trump Won, So I Finally Got Out of Bed
When the election results came in, it had already been a month since I gave up on trying to fix my own mental health issues. And so it turned out that the worst day of our generation collided with my own personal low.