Rain | a queer disaster | somehow a full ass adult | I like comics, the MCU, kpop, goth/alternative, feminism, weird indie video games, general fantasy and sci-fi, and tropes in story telling | monbebe, black rose, choice | member of the rose net [link in sidebar]
in the sixth months after graduating from college, with my very expensive degree from a good college, i ate nothing but bread. i worked at a bakery / cafe / restaurant and got half off one meal per shift but it was still too expensive even then. but at the end of every night we would throw out all the bread loaves that hadn’t sold, which was most of them, every night. we would fill up ten boxes to give away to a shelter and then we could take anything we could carry, and i couldn’t afford a half off deconstructed sandwich, but i could fill the cabinets of my apartment with bread. everyone who worked there was just like me, subsisting on discarded, overpriced bread.
(when the managers’ backs were turned i was taught to leave the trashbags of bread behind the dumpster rather than inside it, because it was locked after everyone left to prevent people from stealing from it. we would say we were going out to stack chairs and instead stack prepackaged salads prepared that morning in the narrow space between wall and dumpster, but that’s not what this is about.)
we were working valentine’s day, a little bit miserable about it, because customers are somehow worse on a holiday about love ,and even if we were single we didn’t want to be here, and most of us had people we’d rather be spending the day with, and the snappish, hardass manager was working that day, and everyone could not wait for the day to be over.
we had a boxes of those bakery tissue sheets around and i was twisting it in my hands and i thought about how the first night my uncle spent with my aunt he had to get up early for work but didn’t want to wake her and the whole thing hadn’t been planned, exactly, so he (a roofer by trade and a golden glove boxer by sport) went into the kitchen and took some paper towels and twisted them between his big, scarred hands until it formed a sweeter shape and when my aunt work up it was to a paper towel rose on her pillow.
so i used a couple sheets of bakery tissue to make a rose and walked up to my coworker who stared at me with a rictus smile and i gave it to her, trying not overthink if it was a weird thing to do. her smile slipped and she asked “you made this?” holding it carefully, like it wasn’t something her two year old son could have made with his pudgy hands, and i shrugged and got more milk from the back.
then another coworker held the steamer too long when frothing milk, not on accident but because he was irritated, so i rolled another rose and tucked it in his apron pocket as i walked by. then it was just one more of us up front and it was nothing, thirty seconds of twisting paper to take the stack of cookies out of her hands and hand her a tissue paper rose, her lined face lifting into a grin as she proudly tucked it into the chest pocket of her shirt and i may as well have been standing in front of the ovens for how hot my face felt.
it was such a silly thing to do, i felt ridiculous, giving away hastily constructed tissue paper roses on valentine’s day, clumsy artful garbage. then one of the servers walked by and noticed and so i made her one too, and then other servers came by, leaning over the glass, and complimenting the flowers with big eyes, and i laughed and made more, still not sure if it was sincere, but even if it wasn’t, i figured making them one and handing it over was better than saying no.
then i went to the back again and the dishwasher yelled out “where”s mine? what about us?” and he was too sweet to ever be anything less than sincere, so someone kept an eye on the door to the manager’s office as i stood in the sweltering kitchen and rolled clumsy tissue paper roses, enough for everyone
and by the time the day ended, everyone had one, everyone wore one, tucked in their shirt or their apron or stuck in their hair or taped to the top of their pen. everyone was a little less miserable, smiling like we were all on in on the joke, although i don’t think any of us knew the punchline
this story doesn’t have a punchline either. i just sometimes think of how much better some crumpled tissue paper made things and think that it can be that easy, sometimes, if we’re sincere and don’t overthink it too much
More people need to understand this. My hips & knees are in constant stabbing pain. Unless I physically cannot put weight on them, I will still be doing stuff because life continues & shit needs to get done.
Actually, realistically, even if my leg won’t bear weight, I find a way around it to get shit done.
This is part of why I think most pain scales are absurd. I found one at my pain management office that doesn’t base the rating on physical activity, but on how much it invades your thoughts. They understand that I (and a lot of chronic pain patients) can physically function with high pain levels because we have to.
So the question for the scale becomes, is the pain just background noise? Does it intrude into active thoughts? Is the intrusion only when you do certain stuff, at random times, or constantly? Is it making it harder to focus than normal? Making it a bit tough to articulate in conversations? Is it overwhelming all other thoughts?
These are the types of questions that should be asked when dealing with a chronic pain patient in any setting. Doctors, nurses, and emergency room staff should be taught this & adjust their line of questioning if dealing with a patient who has a chronic pain condition.
Additionally, it should be specified as to if they are questioning a specific or new pain or if they are questioning overall day to day pain. If I go into my doctor with a migraine, obviously my answers will be specifically about the migraine. When I go to my monthly pain appointment, we are talking about my condition over the last month and then specifically my condition that day.
When you have sustained high levels of pain, you develop coping skills to deal with it because it’s unacceptable to just lay down crying all the time. This is also poorly understood.
Example: I went to the ER because I had suspected that a fall had resulted in some sort of fracture or tear in my hip. It was more swollen than a fall usually caused, was discolored, & while I could put a bit of weight on it while heavily leaning on my cane, doing so for more than 5 minutes made me vomit. I was told that wasn’t possible because if it was broken at all or even slightly out of place, I’d be sobbing & not putting any weight on it. I reminded them that I have vEDS with very unstable hips & that I’d broken every bone in the top of my foot multiple times without even knowing until I came in because of swelling, walking on it for a day or two beforehand. They looked skeptical. So I slid my other hip & my shoulder out of socket, ever so slightly but still noticeably. They still looked skeptical but said they’d do xrays.
Later a different nurse came in & asked how I managed a small hip fracture at my age. She remarked upon how well I handled the pain & asked if I had a chronic issue. I explained & she nodded, saying “yep. That’ll do it.”
We need more education about chronic pain. The impact it has on our bodies, our ability to cope, our ability to function, and our cognitive health/function. More studies need to be done about the short term and long term impact. Because having been in some level of pain for as long as I can remember, I assure you that there certainly is an impact. (RIP my photographic memory)
If digging too deep into the mines was the first mistake, this was the second.
Somewhere in the underneath, a barrier cracked. Memories awakened. Bones and flesh
defiled, burnt and offered. An invitation. An invocation. Worship. A darkness stirred
and the path to the world of men stood open…
I got to marry my wife, and our pupper was our flower girl. 2.5 years ago this wasn’t possible, as it wasn’t legal in Australia. It rained our whole wedding day, but was so worth it in the end with our phenomenal photographer.
op this looks absolutely magical
I forgot homophobia was a thing and i spent about 5 seconds wondering why it was ever illegal to have a dog as a flower girl
I’m jumping on this, because I think they left out the coolest part! And I’m only saying this because it took me a really long time to learn myself.
When caterpillars turn into butterflies, they don’t just go into a chrysalis, shrink their body, and grow some wings. Nope! If you cut open a chrysalis halfway through a metamorphosis, a bunch of goo will fall out. And that’s it. Because, when caterpillars turn into butterflies, they don’t just grow some wings - they liquefy completely and build a new body from ions and molecules up.
That’s why this is so rad. No part of their body is spared this liquefaction. Not even the brain! So, if the brain turns completely liquid, where are the memories stored?
Not alternate history, but reimagines a fantasy world inspired by ours, where Judaism is a more prominent religion, where Europe doesnt enslave/and is prevented form profiting off Africa, and basically every bad thing in the ‘Age of Exploration" is met with “But what if we didnt allow that to happen?” (Also frequent callouts for missionaries, colonization, imperialism, trophy hunting and more in the past and now)
There’s a worrying amount of “what if nazis won???” alternate history and not enough “what if X genocide never happened” alternate history and I think about that occasionally
“The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” by Michael Chabon is an excellent novel about “What if the Holocaust never happened”.
Memoirs of Lady Trent by Marie Brennan has this going for it.
In the Temeraire series, the existence of Dragons changes everything. All that imbalance of power via firearms and money? We got Dragons now, mate
. European Imperialism… does not go as it did in our world. Not in North America. Not in Africa. (the uprising of Africa against the slave trade is amazing in this series) It’s a very exciting alternate history to me as a Native, since the Native Americans had dragons and do NOT get genocided into reservations in this story, no, the Colonies of settlers were obliged to make nice with the locals because DRAGONS. North America is a thriving trade network of Native people and dragons. it is very cool.
