We are so very, very tired of everything going wrong 🥺😔

We've had issues ongoing for years, but everything just keeps getting worse and it feels like every week brings a whole new opportunity for things to go wrong.

Here are just a few of the highlights of the last year and a bit:

• Mental health worsened, entering full AuDHD burnout, with increasing anxiety and mood instability.
• We got made redundant from a job we were clinging on to.
  • It also took us about 6 months to finally get any benefits, so we ate through our entire redundancy payment, final salary payment, and some savings.
• Wife broke her ankle very badly, requiring an awful stay in hospital.
  • When she got out, 17 days later, we became her primary carer.
  • We had already been increasingly looking after her, as her health issues had worsened over years, but this dialled it up to 11.
  • We entered carer burnout, on top of the AuDHD one.
  • Even after her ankle fully healed and she'd done months of physicaly therapy, our wife's health and mobility declined due to issues unrelated to the ankle, which has further increased her reliance on us for care, and the NHS is going at a snail's pace.
  • She's pretty much in constant pain, struggling massively, and there's very little we can do to help, despite her being so grateful to us 😔
• We started ADHD meds, and eventually started to feel like we were getting somewhere with a combo of meds, only for them to email us today with a suggested backwards change they want to make that will fuck us over royally, and gave us a mild panic attack.
  • We had to contact them immediately to request an urgent call to discuss, but we now feel like the rug's been pulled out from under us.
• We tried to get actual mental health support through the NHS as far back as May, but due to incompetence, poor administration, and an unwillingness to meet basic accommodations, it's still not happened and is unlikely to happen.
• Our already fractured relationship with our assigned gender clinic broke down to the point where they no longer respond to us.
  • They wouldn't even let us know what an appointment they'd scheduled was about.
  • They wouldn't even respond to the relevant NHS PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Service) when we asked for their help.
• We finally got offered some voice training assistance through the NHS, but they completely wasted our time and broke us more.
  • Over 3 separate hour-long assessments, including one with their lead speech and language therapist, they decided that they couldn't help us voice train, that the problems we were having were all in our head, and tried to fob us off to a psychologist to overcome our perceived issues!!!
  • When we asked them to support an Individual Funding Request (IFR) for Voice Feminisation Surgery (VFS), they not only refused, but the reasons given were a mixture of misrepresentations and outright untruths.
  • Despite saying that they couldn't help us, their refusal to support an IFR advised that we could always come back to them in 6 months to try again 😑
• We finally progressed enough through the NHS "care pathway" to discuss options for genital reconfiguration surgery (GRS), but -- as we've written in detail here, it went very, very poorly.
  • Had to do 2 very difficult emails to try to work out next steps, if any, to go with our backup option, but it's looking increasing like we're not going to be even able to get that from the NHS, and we cannot afford to get it done privately.
• Trans+ rights and access to healthcare are continuing to be rolled back and further limited, piece by piece, with no hope of that changing in the near future... or even at all.
• Oh, and the senior partner at our NHS GP surgery -- whom we very much trust and who actually cares -- is semi-retiring this year, and they were kind of our last lifeline in the NHS for wading through most of the shit 🙃

NGL: if we didn't have responsibilities and obligations to wife, cattens, and friends, as well as certain others in the community, we'd be seriously planning a homebrew version of Dignitas-level stuff right now.

It no longer feels like we're just treading water.

It feels like we're caught in rapids, desperately clinging to any rocks we can along the way, trying not to drown as the water increasingly fills our lungs.

But it doesn't matter how exhausted we are, how much it hurts, or how much everything sucks: we don't have the freedom to let go.

So instead we're doing everything within our limited power, resources, and capabilities to keep on swimming, staying conscious as we drown, and learn somehow to breath underwater.

If you've read this far, apologies for all of this. We could have said nothing, but we needed to be honest about how bad everything is.

And if per chance some of you are more-technically-savvy, and know what we mean by TOR and Dread, and could perhaps privately offer to share some info over Signal or Matrix regarding backup "supplies" for the ADHD stuff, we'd be much obliged. (We've got the GAHT stuff covered at least, as well as certain other meds. Just struggling with the ADHD stuff, particularly guanfacine / Intuniv.)

#MentalHealth #anxiety #depression #MoodDysregulation #MoodInstability #neurodivergent #neurodivergence #neurospicy #neurospiciness #AuDHD #AuDHDBurnout #burnout #CarerBurnout #NHS #NHSEngland #trans #transgender #NonBinary #enby #TransRightsAreHumanRights #TransRights #LGBTQ+ #LGBTQIA+ #FuckTheUK #HereBeDragons

Hopefully the CW we've added for this is sufficient, but if it's not, please do let us know what amendments we can make to it 🥺

We felt we had to share this though, as the song and corresponding music video are both so intense, powerful, and haunting.

Lydia the Bard - Feed Us Your Girls (Official Animatic Video)

Lyrics:

A young girl or a pretty meal
The line is just so fine
Little Red walked out alone
Joining the buffet of the night

See the wolves they wait and watch and howl hoping for a bite
Of fresh meat on a busy street the minute you're out of sight

Little Red walked out alone
Joining the buffet of the night

But Little Red, she knows these streets,
So why should she be afraid?
She walks out with her blood red cloak
But red's his favourite shade

You'll attract the wrong attention wearing colours such as those

Boys will be boys, wolves will be wolves
But what does mother know!

Feed us your girls
The wolves shout out
Feed us the ones with curves the ones without
Feed us your girls
From plate to mouth
Honey you're the entrée when you dress like that
And mother's not around

Dawn arrives and dinner scraps
Are on the street from just last night
People whisper "it's her fault
with a red so very bright"

A silly girl
A common whore
Someone cover up that sight
No one likes to see leftovers by the dawning light

And there's a buffet every night

But Little Red she knew those woods
Each tree and every stone
Doesn't matter either way
When there's a wolf inside your Home

You can hear the growling
So You throw the dog a bone
You'll catch more bees with honey dear
But what does mother know

Feed us your girls
The wolves shout out
Feed us the ones with curves the ones without
Feed us your girls
From plate to mouth
Honey you're the entrée when you dress like that
And mother's not around

Little Red was not a meal
A little girl is not a tease
A cloak is not an invitation for what's underneath

Our no does not mean yes
There no riddle, there's no test
Blood red clothes alone at night shouldn't equal death

But the wolves are very hungry
Gnashing pointed teeth
Don't care what the wrapper's like
It'll eat you if you breathe

So maybe it doesn't matter
How we choose to wrap our skin
Cos you'd prefer to blame a girl
Then deal with your own sin

Feed us your girls
The wolves shout out
Feed us the ones with curves the ones without
Feed us your girls
From plate to mouth
Honey you're the entrée when you dress like that
And mother's not around

#LydiaTheBard #FeedUsYourGirls #HereBeDragons #music #MusicVideo

Life is like a game, except some folks get all the DLC and game hacks, whilst others get the base or light version, their installation might be missing files, or get corrupted.

Whereas some will get good or even the best hardware, others will be running on damaged or limited hardware, or even have their gamer account limited from the start!!!

(pauses)

Like any game, you need to learn the rules and mechanics.

People with auto-aim or cheats enabled, and/or with upgraded hardware, will tell you just to "get good", but you might just never be able to.

Some will say it's a "skill issue", but there might be multiple options missing from your version of the game that make it far more difficult for you to progress.

Over time, you might start to internalise the insults, the losses, and the game overs that tell you to press start in order to continue playing.

You might start to question why you keep on playing this game, but it's not like there's any other you can play, so you keep on pressing start, you keep on trying to do better, and you hope and plead for better RNG.

Over time though, if you don't get better, don't have better luck, and you keep on losing match after match for long enough, you might begin to realise that you really don't enjoy playing a game that you can't ever win, and which isn't bringing you joy... at least not any more.

(pauses)

Maybe you used to enjoy playing the game.

Maybe you had friends you used to team up with who made it fun, or at least made it feel less awful when you lost matches together, as you were there for each other.

Maybe you enjoyed the daily and weekly quests and events, unlocked some achievements, found and adopted some familiars, and/or met another gamer or even other gamers to regularly or even permanently co-op with.

But even then, maybe you just kept on losing matches regardless.

And when you play a game like this, some folks will inevitably end up ragequitting.

(pauses)

There will sadly always be many players who will harshly criticise players who ragequit.

Some players will even brutally mock them for not having been a "good player", despite those players having tried their damned hardest to keep playing and keep trying to progress through the rankings for decades, all whilst their bodies were aching and sore, their heads were pounding, their eyes were throbbing, and their games were glitching and crashing and barely playable at the end.

(pauses)

It's all too easy and unfair to criticise those who ragequit the game.

Some folks will lash out at former teammates or clan mates for leaving them suddenly and unexpectedly, sometimes right in the middle of a chat, round, encounter, or raid.

However, the player who ragequit might have been discussing their game struggles for months or even years, with insufficient or even no support from gamer friends, the mods, or the devs.

And not everybody who stops playing the game ragequits.

Some will discuss it long and hard with those they game with, say their goodbyes, leave their loot and gear to them, and then shut down their game for good.

(pauses)

The fact is that not everybody will play the game until their hardware finally gives up the ghost, and most won't ever really do well.

(pauses)

Many gamers will experience good moments, maybe at the start or later in the game, but it won't always be enough.

Sometimes people you know, like, and/or even love will stop playing the game.

And for those who continue playing, it may hurt to lose them, but we should never blame, demonise, nor stigmatise them for doing so, nor make it about how we feel, because them stopping playing the game ultimately isn't about us.

(pauses)

If we truly want gamers to play the game for longer, we need to work together for a world where:

• everybody gets to play the full game on quality hardware that's suitable for their gaming needs;" the top 1% of players who cheat their way to the top of the rankings get perma-banned; and...
• corrupt devs get called out, held accountable, fired, and blacklisted across the entire industry.

Unless we do all that and so much more, we are going to see more and more gamers deciding that their only winning move is to not continue playing any more.

(pauses)

As sad as we may feel personally, we won't judge or blame anybody who stops playing for any reasons, especially the ones we've got to game a lot with.

All we hope is that, before they close their game for the final time, they'll give us one last chance to say goodbye, to tell them how much we appreciated them as a gamer and friend, and to thank them for playing as long as they did 🥺

If that's ever you, thank you for playing with us.

GG 🫂🩷

#MentalHealth #RightToDie #DarkThoughts #HereBeDragons #CaveatLector #ThankYouForPlaying

So many posts today of #dragonsMilk, #hereBeDragons too!

Reserve Oatmeal Cookie barrel-aged #stout

Can’t go wrong with a Reserve. Rich with oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and a hint of dark sweet raisins

#itsAlwaysStoutSeason #letItWarm

Last of the Thanksgiving turkey and sides, and #hereBeDragons for dessert

Finally found #dragonsMilk Reserve Oatmeal Cookie BBA stout - a sweet body with notes of vanilla, bourbon, cinnamon and raisin. My wife says it’s almond nutty.

#itsAlwaysStoutSeason #craftBeer

Communing with the water dragons down by the Lane Cove River yesterday morning.

#LizardPosting #LizardsOfMastodon #Lizard #HereBeDragons

It’s Tuesday and it’s already been a very long week. And my beer lost its label…

No mistaking #dragonsMilk Crimson Keep, naked or not. Barrel-aged, ruby red, malty and tart, caramel, cherry and bourbon finish.

#craftBeer #ale @beersofmastodon #hereBeDragons