#best case scenario: car is Funked. worst case scenario Death

[argiopi]

got the cops called on me for the most hilariously sensible reason last night

So i have a new industrial piercing (my first piercing..! i love it •w•), and it got infected because of course it did, it's a cartilage piercing and i live outside. Context i've been living in my car for the past few weeks, which has been pretty good but one of the tradeoffs is i do not have a bathroom. The piercer told me if the piercing got infected I could soak it in saltwater, so i needed a source of 1. salt, 2. water that is warm or at least not the below-freezing ambient temperature i currently exist in.

Gas stations have both these things. (I have yet to purchase salt for my occasional propane stove cooking). Only problem is it was past midnight in a rural area, so I didn't find a 24 hour convenience store until around 100 miles into my route for the evening.

At 3 AM local time the store was inhabited by just One stern-looking employee who was mopping the floor. My grungy ass walks in carrying a small collapsible bowl and immediately begins casing the place like the world's shittiest thief, looking for those little free salt packets. I looked around the (empty, no hot food at 3 AM) hot dog stand and saw only wet condiments so i circled back around to the grocery section in case they were selling salt shakers I could buy. No luck so i desperately returned to the hot dog counter in case I missed the salt, and noticed a cabinet labeled CONDIMENTS below the dog cooker, which did conceal salt packets. I stuffed a handful of them in my pocket and hoped the mopping woman wouldn't ask, then pivoted to the bathroom where I locked myself for the next fifteen minutes.

I filled my bowl with hot water which was actually cool water but at least it wasn't frigid, and mixed salt into it and held it to my ear. After a few minutes the staff, who had been understandably watching me from around corners the entire time I was searching for salt, knocked on the door. I replied "hello?" and she didn't respond, so I assumed she was just checking if anyone was in there before she tried entering to continue mopping. I finished cleaning my sad little ear and bought a bag of yogurt pretzels as a gesture of good will because I felt bad for taking her salt and taking too much time in the bathroom when she needed to clean.

Enter The Pig. I had returned to my car and grabbed my first aid kit to apply antiobiotic ointment, when an officer entered the store. Trepidation when he arrived since I knew I was being a freak, but then i thought he was just doing his own shopping, then he came back out and approached my vehicle.

Rolled down my window and he asks what was going on in the bathroom. (What if i had been just taking a long shit??). So I showed him my ear and my bowl and explained, as Alertly, Calmly, and Soberly as i could after driving for multiple hours after midnight, to the face of someone who can ruin my life with a penstroke, that I was on the road and had to soak this infected piercing. Luckily it was a confused young cop who was too bewildered to inquire much further, not an old hardass who might start asking more challenging questions such as "where are you going" or "where are you staying tonight and why are you washing your ear at the gas station and not there." He clearly barely even looked at my car - asked if i was a local when my license plate is from two timezones away - and let me go without even collecting my information.

That was the sixth time that police have confronted me for acting outside social norms. The first time was because I was plucking an invasive plant species from the side of the road and he thought I was falling when I walked up & down the slope. The second time I was walking home alone at night, and maybe someone called because I had a backpack on and they thought I was trying to rob a house. I was just walking home from the train. The third time I had been biking home in the dark without a headlight, and i fell on my face and didn't know I was bleeding until a bastard pulled up and told me someone called because they thought I got hit by a car. The fourth time was when I fell in the river last winter and i was knocking on random doors asking for directions home to minimize my risk of hypothermia, and I suppose the woman who drove me home called to send someone to make sure i was okay? The fifth time was the first time I slept in my car, which ironically was before I started serially sleeping in my car. I was falling asleep on the highway after an all-nighter so I took the next exit and took a nap in my driver's seat at the end of a random residential street before I ended up on the news, and that's how I learned suburbanites are paranoid as all hell about anything out of the ordinary because a cop knocked on my window and asked me if I was drunk (who would say yes to that question?). Now I select my sleeping sites very carefully, which is probably the most annoying thing about hashtag vanlife, but I haven't gotten The Knock again yet and sometimes when I pull into random public lands after dark I wake up to mountains I've never seen before and that fuels my soul.

Lesson learned is that if you need to snort sodium chloride in a gas station bathroom at 3 AM, just have an ear piercing and dampen the hair around it and carry a bowl around, and you've got a story that's Too Weird To Be Making Shit Up.

#seriously how do y'all stay out of trouble #I Am Just Living My Life why does that incite so much suspicion. #this time was fair though i 1000% looked like a criminal who was about to drive home under an influence #blogging #FOLKS WHO FOLLOWED FOR ART I HOPE YOU ENJOY STORYTIME TOO LOL. #I saw THIRTEEN!!!! shooting stars while driving last night #i think that is a new personal record. was there a meteor shower? surely there was. #Two of them were bright enough to leave a dust trail.. ⭐︎つ⭐︎ #mountain roads are so scary lol what do you Mean there is no guard rail on this narrow winding road that drops off into Death Zone #not to mention when there is snow on the road..? #my tires spun out the other night because i was clinging too close to the uphill side of the mountain and went off the road #in my defense i could not see the lines on the road on account of they were covered by snow #anyway i sunk deep but luckily i have 4WD so i could wiggle out without help #but the snow gripped my tires and pulled them in the opposite direction i was trying to go.. #what if i was driving on the side facing downhill and slipped off the road and the snow gripped me. #best case scenario: car is Funked. worst case scenario Death #anyway i think my ear is slightly less painful & inflamed this morning..? i am going to go wash it at a much less sussy hour #the sky is so clear and bright here... #madly in love with the milky way. #i wonder how often ppl assume ppl are sneaking hard drugs when they actually have a completely legal reason to be acting strange. #not that i'm not living on the fringes of the law rn with the whole car thing and that's the only reason i had to be weird at a gas station #but like... lives be strange and complex and human behavior is rarely as simple as it seems there is always a story!

[autisticsupervillain]

I really love your Security Breach Zombie Apocalypse AU

I wanna see your headcanons and scenarios also involving survivors

Well, I have a few ideas.

The Daycare Attendant has repurposed themselves into teaching kids basic survival skills, in case the worst happens. Their daycare area has been refitted into more of an exercise yard, though they still keep their old toys on hand. Kids still need playmates, after all, and they're happy to provide.

Freddy still kept the zombified Gregory hidden in his chest cavity for a long time until his friends talked him out of his funk. He's still sensitive about letting anyone in there and the other Glamrocks hypothesize that his chest cavity had something to do with how Gregory got infected. The only thing I'll confirm is that a certain bunny was involved...

One time Chica accidentally traumatized a bunch of kids when she had to eat a zombie in front of them. Long story.

Freddy having to cope with Gregory's death has made him the best at comforting the shell shocked survivors. The animatronics are entertainers, not therapists, so they're really not equipped to handle severe mental trauma. Freddy, at least, can relate to those who lost their families and loved one in the initial outbreak, so, if nothing else, he can be there to tell people "you are not alone". Thankfully, some of the adult survivors are therapists, so he doesn't have to carry the burden of everyone's trauma.

Monty was always jealous of Freddy and Bonnie's popularity... until they day he met his biggest fan. Monty had the misfortune of finding a bitten child wearing his merchandise trapped in a locked car while on a supply run. The kid expected Monty to make it all better because "you're so strong and cool! Stronger than Freddy and Bonnie and all of them! You're the best! ...Right?" All Monty could do was reassure the kid that everything would be alright as he passed on. Freddy was the first to realize that Monty was carrying a zombie kid around in his chest cavity. The two later become friends in this timeline.

Stepping away from the angst, Chica is the resident cook. After a few disastrous first attempts that resulted in her trying to serve up literal cooked garbage, some of the survivors sat her down and taught her what is and isn't safe for human consumption. Her friends note that she's more passionate about food now than ever before now that she knows how to cook.

The main reason the Daycare Attendant is the one tasked with teaching young kids survival skills? The animatronics are programmed not to be able to handle guns. The sole exceptions being the STAFF robots... and Sundrop. It was just a programming oversight in his case, STAFF are allowed to use them thanks to being security guards but someone just forgot to add the right code to the Daycare Attendant. As such, they're the only animatronic that can actually teach kids how to safely handle a rifle in case the worst happens. ....Once the adult survivors teach Sundrop how to handle a gun that is. That is not a job the others envy having to do.

Speaking of the Daycare Attendant, they're not allowed to go out and look for supplies like the rest of the animatronics. Sundrop and Moondrop are so unintentionally terrifying that most wandering survivors tend to shoot them on sight, assuming them to be a monster or zombie. So, they're stuck in the daycare looking after the kids. At least the bullet holes give Sundrop new stories to tell.

The animatronics take shifts doing various important tasks. One of them will go out to look for supplies and survivors while the rest manage the essentials, such as cooking, training, and so on. They have STAFF bots, yes, but those are comparatively cheap and tend to break down, so the animatronics do have to do a majority of the work while they're in maintenance.

#five nights at freddy's security breach #glamrock freddy #glamrock bonnie #glamrock monty #glamrock chica #daycare attendant #sundrop fnaf #fnaf moondrop #gregory fnaf

[ladykristianna]

A Mental Health Story

It's time to get up close and personal here guys. If talk about mental illness is triggering for you, please stop reading now. Writing this is more of a cathartic self introspection that I wrote for myself that, after some serious thought, I have decided to share. So here we go. Get ready for over 2400 words of Story Time with Kristin...

I have never been officially diagnosed as bipolar/manic depressive, but depression, etc. does run in my family. Combine that with my chronic anxiety, and it freaking SUCKS. I promise I am not being a hypochondriac. I may not be a doctor, but I like to consider myself a somewhat intelligent person (hopefully not in an egotistical way). I have done a lot of research in the subject of mental illness, most particularly anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder. Psychology is an interesting subject whether you’ve got issues or not. (And trust me when I say that I’ve got more issues than Cosmo.)

The way these problems affect people are as different as they are. What I am sharing are my own personal experiences which may be different from others suffering from the same problems. Dealing with these mental issues can be incredibly debilitating, especially when I go "dark." I don't really have perfect explanation for this, but work with me here.

The best way to describe "going dark," as I like to call it, is almost like a creeping sensation in the back of your mind of anger, sadness, and/or just a general “wrongness.” Sometimes it comes on suddenly, where I will be content/happy/generally okay with the world and then BAM! I don't want to talk to anyone or do anything, and the way I feel is more than just "a little sad." (NEVER tell a depressed person this because it is more that just being "a little sad." If you haven't been there, it is hard to explain.) Other times, I can feel the darkness coming on gradually over the course of a few days or even a couple weeks, in which my mental state just gets lower and lower, and the world just gets grayer like the color has leeched out of everything. (Not literally. I'm speaking in metaphor here.)

But sometimes, it is more than just “going dark,” which for the most part is manageable; I can go about my life, but it takes an almost Herculean effort. There is another layer of this depression that I call the “Deep Dark.”  (It may sound like a stupid name, but when you are trying to explain these things to people who have no frame of reference, you have to work with what you’ve got.)

The Deep Dark is a bad, bad place to be. I can count on one hand the number of times I have gotten that bad. In February 2016 I was there. I got into bed and didn’t get out for over a week. I ate nothing for six days and lost about ten pounds. I hardly drank any water, so I didn’t need to get up to go to the bathroom. I did not shower. There was one specific point of time that I remember vividly. It was a strange existential moment where I was listening to the sound and feel of my heartbeat in my chest. I was actively willing it to stop, and I don’t know whether it was my not quite sane state of my mind at that time or if it actually happened, but for a moment it did stop before slowly starting back up again. There was no panic or terror, but a strange almost meditative feeling of acceptance.

During that week I thought a lot about suicide. I had even planned out exactly how I was going to do it and when and where. I researched the medical side of it. I looked up the definition of exsanguination (noun. to drain of blood; make bloodless or to bleed to death). I held a scalpel in my hand and stared at it for hours, days possibly. Time is fluid and strange when you are in a mental state like this. I won’t go into the details, but there was a well thought out plan in place of when, where, and how. I know there are suicide hotlines and support systems in place online and elsewhere, but you have to realize that when someone is in that place mentally, they are drowning in negativity. Every bad thing you’ve ever heard or thought or experienced is on repeat in your head: I will never be good enough… No one cares about me… I am a burden… Life is meaningless… There is no point to anything… No one loves me… No one understands my pain. Even if they are lies, your mind just sees it all as truth. I didn’t think about talking to people, let alone “getting help.”  

Another metaphor I have used in the past (instead of the “going dark” and “Deep Dark” analogy) is to imagine a cliffside where you are getting closer and closer to the edge when you suddenly fall into water where everything is dark, cold, and muted all around you. Sometimes you just hang on the edge of that cliff for days just trying to keep from falling, but sometimes you fall in and you're doing everything you can to keep your head above water. Once you fall in, it is really hard to get out.

This is where the importance of having a support system comes in. Having someone (a special person like a spouse, friend, mom, etc.) physically there to talk to you, hold you, or just sit there with you can be incredibly important, and in my case, possibly life saving. It can be confusing for your person to know the difference between when you just need some space or when you really, really need them there though. It is so very complicated to explain and sometimes hard for them to understand. Sometimes your friends or family won’t even realize how bad things are until they’ve gotten really, really bad. A person and a change of scenery go a long way to getting out of the funk. It takes a lot of time and patience, but it it possible.

And this is just the depression side of things. I haven't even touched on the anxiety yet. Sometimes all it takes to "go dark" is some small (or big) triggering event such as an argument with the spouse, seeing an animal get hit by a car, remembering traumatic childhood memories, seeing a news article about a shooting somewhere, or going into a "what if" anxiety spiral. And that my friends, is where the anxiety comes in.

Depression on its own is bad enough, but add anxiety into the mix and you've got a match made in hell. If you have never had a panic attack count yourself lucky. It's more than just a jangling of the nerves, and some attacks can be worse than others. I mentioned the "what if" anxiety spiral earlier. Imagine laying in bed trying to sleep thinking about all the things you didn't get completed that day, then you're thinking about all the things you have to do tomorrow, what if this something doesn't happen, what if I don't have the money to pay that bill, what if because I didn't pay that bill so and so happens... It can be stupid minor things or huge things in your life. It doesn't matter. What matters is that your mind goes into overdrive thinking about all of the possible worst case scenarios of everything, and this will often lead into a panic attack. (This is how my panic attacks go. Your mileage may vary.) A racing heart sometimes to the point of pain, shaking, ragged breathing/hyperventilating, sweating, etc. It's a bundle of fun.

My panic attacks can be triggered by any number of things, in addition to the "what if" anxiety spirals. A trip to War-Mart (no joke, I hate the place), being in a large crowd, loud noises such as my kids screaming up and down the hallways or someone blasting the base while driving down the street, thinking about my upcoming schedule, etc. so on and so forth. I have mostly gotten over my social anxiety and public speaking issues, which took YEARS, but I will still occasionally have panic attacks leading up to a play performance or public speaking event/speech even now.

So between my bipolar depression, anxiety, and 180º violent mood swings (yay!) how the heck do I even manage? It’s a lot of work, I tell ya.

Humor. “But, Kristin! If you are so depressed, how can you even think about funny things?!” Well. That’s not exactly how it works. (And just for clarification, I’m not depressed all the time.) Using humor for me is almost like a self defense mechanism. It may not be healthy, but I will often use humor to cover up how I’m feeling, or even poke fun at my anxiety or mental stability that day with some good ol' self deprecation. Sometimes it will even help me get past the negativity. It depends on how bad I am that day. Again, not exactly healthy, but there ya go. Keeping myself really busy. If I don’t have down time, I don’t have DOWN time. Keeping my schedule full helps me keep my mind off the bad things, and in turn keeps me surrounded by interesting people. Having a social outlet with people of similar interests is extremely important, for me anyway. Staying social is a hugely important factor in managing my mental health. Even the scientists and their studies think so. Eating healthy and exercise. It goes without saying. Healthy body, healthy mind. After years of keeping a close eye on my mood and overall mental stability, I have noticed that the times that I’m not eating well or exercising I’m more likely to “go dark.” Again, there are scientific studies linking diet and/or exercise to mental health. Vitamins and herbal supplements. I can tell a difference when I don’t take my multivitamin, St. John’s Wort, ginkgo biloba, vitamin D, etc. Maybe it’s the placebo effect or maybe they’re genuinely helping me. Who knows? But when I don’t take my vitamins/herbals, I am more prone to negative moods and or mood swings. Read up on St. John’s Wort if you’re dealing with depression. Fiction. Ahhh. Escapism. I am a pro at the ostrich head in the sand trick: If I ignore it, it will go away. For those that know me well, you’d know that I am quite the avid reader. I have a really big problem with insomnia induced by my anxiety. I will often read until I’m so tired that I finally pass out. Not exactly healthy, but when it’s a nice book vs. a panic attack, I’ll take the book any day. Sometimes a good inspirational story will keep my head above water when I have gone dark, especially when I’m in the Deep Dark. Sometimes, I’ll watch television, but reading just works better for me on the escapism front. Getting a change of scenery. This goes back to the having a busy schedule, but could also be a little different. Removing yourself to a different location can sometimes get your mental state to a different place as well. Go for a walk, go lay in the grass in the backyard, go to the library, yada yada yada. The “It could be worse” mantra. When I find myself in times of trouble this mantra comes to me, speaking words of wisdom… (See what I did there? I am so sorry. I apologize for the dumb Beatles reference.) Seriously though, this has helped me a lot. If I find myself spiraling, reminding myself that there are worse things in the world can be helpful. Support system aka friends/family. You may have noticed that I mentioned depression ran in my family. It’s sometimes nice to know that there are others that understand how you feel, even if not in exactly the same way. Also having people available that will kick your ass out of bed and take you on a drive when you are in a depressive funk helps too. Having people to talk to, especially about your past traumas can be incredibly helpful.

We live in a society where mental illness has such a negative social stigma attached to it. No one wants to talk about their mental issues. It's like Fight Club. We don't talk about it. Getting help (a psychiatrist and/or medication) can be prohibitively expensive. I don't want to get too political here, but it is really hard not to. The United States' health care policies don't really care about the health (mental OR physical) of its citizens. It all comes down to the great green dollar. A lot of people are just trying to get by and will avoid going to the doctor or get help for mental issues because they simply can’t afford to.

We live in a time where we are bombarded by information. Educate yourself on mental illness. Go to a suicide prevention workshop. Do your part to help those around you that are suffering from mental illness. Stay positive, both for yourself and those around you. Everyone is facing their own inner demons, big and small. Some may be up front about it, and some may be hiding it from those around them. If you do nothing else today, give someone a hug or a smile. They might be needing it.

I feel obligated to share the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline number (1-800-273-8255). (This is an essay on mental heath after all.) If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide please call. Doing a Google search for suicide help can bring up a lot of useful information as well.

So here comes the end of this strange little endeavor of a writing project I have embarked upon this morning. I’m not even sure why I felt like writing this, but as a writer you sometimes get those urges that you can’t say no to. I may not have the most healthy of coping mechanisms, but they are working for me, for the most part anyway. Should I go to a psychiatrist? Probably. Should I be on medication? Also, probably. Can I afford it? No. But I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got.

#mental health #bipolar disorder #depression #anxiety #suicide #suicidal #i've got issues #my writing #a mental health story #coping mechanism #coping with depression #dealing with mental illness