Normal blog of a regular snowflake🫧Chronically ill, Disabled writer🫧They/them🫧Artist🫧Finishing bsc. philosophy & Theater science🫧Published author🫧 speaks German, English, Russian
36 posts
The last weeks were somehow mentally heavy. I mean, I know why, it’s just that I always hope, that this time my body and mind will be used to it. But the only way how we are used to it is to not see it until some weeks in the situation already. It sucks, honestly. I now have to, again, make up a new routine with little to no knowledge about my working hours at the internship, pretend like everything is fine there and then spontaneously change the plan every time someone else wants it changed. I didn’t know that an internship in a theater can be THAT autism unfriendly?? Sure, was clear that it will have some chaos, but really not having no palm at all and not even trying to give the interns some sort of knowledge? Nobody even told me upfront “hey btw we are a theater that has no scripts or anything, we just do stuff in the process, so you need to be prepared for changing hours and not knowing more than one day ahead”. It would be horrible news but it would be better than to find it out on the second day (on the first day nobody told us anything really).
I really really need to stop giving a damn haha
But how when Disability bE DiSaBiLiTing?😭🥲🫠
P.s. it’s a so called “inclusive theater” btw and yes they might be mostly good to the acting group but I am also Disabled can someone include me please T___T
Internship in the Theater turned out to be quite an underwhelming technically and overwhelming morally type of disaster… I have the hope, that it will get better, once people start trusting me being on fellow human being, but for now they just alienate me most of the time. Only the acting folx are truly nice and don’t care for my looks and the mask, they treat me kindly. Once again, Disabled people behave more humanly than non-Disabled folx while the whole world pretends like Disbaled people need to be dehumanised.
Sadly I don’t read atm, but started to play Sims Medieval (Pirates and Nobles) and it’s quite fun except of a racist name for Roma people. Treating roma and sinti like they are mythical creatures out of fables, putting them together with “the knight, the wizard, the elves, the princess..” like it’s a school play.. really not cool. Don’t understand why they still didn’t change it.
While working on a telegram Chanel for the clothes and other items I make I tried to count every item (excluding pinns, patches, sticker, postcards, posters) I have made since starting the project in 2019 and even having quite abbreviated in between years… 93 items is what u could count. But I don’t remember all of them and definitely don’t have all of them photographs either •_• so there is actually more. Probably over 100.
„Suffering is cheap as clay and twice as common. What matters is what each [person] makes of it.“ (Ruin and Rising, Chapter 7)
Review: Ruin and Rising
I enjoyed it more than the previews two books. I actually laughed and cried too. The end („After“) was the best part, it’s a shame it was so short. The whole story is 99.9% just suffering, grief, horror, more suffering, pain, frustration, hopelessness for happiness. It was refreshing to read something soft in the end, but I feel like if the books would have a little more of it in between the story we would feel the horrors and grief even more. You know, balance and stuff. (Yes, I am here to ask you to break my heart, I know)
I definitely wanted more diversity in characters, but it had a little bit of queer characters and I enjoyed it. I thought there would be more.. I was really waiting T.T but it’s a 2014 book so I think it did pretty well for its time?
It’s hard to write a review without spoilers, but I honestly did not enjoy Mal :) because what the hell dude, I get the whole complicated situation started from the second book but what was wrong the whole time before it? Also, I did not understand if he actually did other girls or not, Zoya said it in a way that actually sounded like he didn’t, I don’t understand (sorry, I am an autistic and I read as an autistic). Because if he did, why the hell? And if he didn’t, also, why the hell? Anyways, check out the trigger warnings and go read the trilogy.
I hope to find more time to read soon, but I am so busy with doing things and having anxiety T.T I finally came around to film a YouTube video about the books I read in the last 11 months, but editing it will be so annoying because I don’t have money for a program that would put proper subtitles in..
Finally re-doing my altar after so many months not getting to it. I miss praying. Sure, nobody needs anything to pray, but last months were very stressful and now finally it becomes easier, so, it’s time to reconnect again. Religion is beautiful when not abused.
I was writing my theater science assignment and thought, why not use the time? Also, learned a lot of new stuff on DaVinci and CapCut for this video.
I was learning DaVinci Resolve today but ended up working on the next YouTube Video with CapCut, because it’s hard for me to learn new Programms without someone sitting next to me and answering all the questions. I am still very proud of me, because this is the first Study With Me video and it’s really nice ❤️🩹✨
🐦⬛On chronic illness and existential dread (not edited)🪺
I hope this year I will do more things. Choose to do more things I want to do instead of being afraid. This year I might have the privilege of spending the small amount of energy I have towards things I wish I would have already experienced. But this fears, oh, this fears.. their claws hold me tightly. They whisper „it’s not the right thing, you only have so little, don’t give it away for the perfect or the most important thing“… and I end up not using the small amount of energy. Like a fool. Like a naive, hopeless fool.
I wish I could save energy in a way, that I can stay curled up for days be then have a big eventful trip or just a day where I don’t need to „look at the watch“ (the energy-meter, if you will). But every time I go to sleep, I wake up with a feeling of regret. Every time I go to sleep, I am afraid of the next day. And I long for it, desperately, because maybe, just maybe, it will be the day when I finally move the claws away and am allowed to live?
Scared to disappoint myself, scared of what I have already lost, of the time that already passed. And longing for a fresh day, a fresh start, a fresh chance, just one more chance, I will not fuck it up! And then I do. But I am so tired of myself… it’s not a choice I keep telling myself, because 99% isn’t a choice, but this 1% is so painful. To see my Trauma and fears guide me instead of my knowledge and my hope. Good thing, that hope is patient. But am I? I have to be.
I shall walk when I can, cook when I can and laugh when I can. I shall experience what’s there to experience, no matter how small it seems to be in comparison to others, to those, who don’t live my life. To those, who, (for now?) are healthy. Or can afford the Great Denial. I shall write, I shall paint, I shall sing, as long as it’s possible. I shall get up early when I can and go to sleep early, because my body needs it. I shall be kind to my body, because it’s suffering from the same illness I do. Because it feels, like we aren’t the same, like there is me and there is my body. And there is the tiny child who wants to play, and the most scared adult, who is afraid to move at all, because what if violence will return?
But it will not. I deserve to live what’s there. And next time maybe I will have more.
I deserve to experience the beautiful simple things, because they are what makes life worth living.
Since the autism acceptance/awareness month started yesterday, let’s learn a basic: what’s up with neurodiversity and neurodivergence?
All people are neurodiverse as a group.
Like all animals and plants are the biodiversity
The neurodiverse people are separated in neurotypical and neurodivergent people.
Some neurodivergent people are autistic
Neurodivergence is a huge spectrum and there is much more to it than just autism or adhd. It’s not synonymous with autism and/or adhd.
Allistic is a term to describe non-autistic people. But allistics can be differently neurodivergent, for example because of borderline or epilepsy.
Neurotypical people are allistic because they are not autistic.
Neurodiverse (if 🦔 is neurotypical)
🦔🦉🐌 🦔🦔🐺🪿🐒🦔🌿 or
🦔🦔🪱 🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔 or
🐌🪱🦆🐴🦐🦇🐡🪿🪱🪿🪿
As you can see it can mean a lot of things.
Neurodivergent:
🐒🐥🦆🪿🦅🦉🐺🐴🦇🐦⬛🦉🐌🦆🪱🦐🐡🐿️🌿+
As you can see it means everyone but 🦔
Autistic (if 🦆 is autistic)
🦆🦆🦆🦆
Neurotypical and allistic
🦔🦔🦔🦔
Allistic and neurodivergent
🐥🐦⬛🦋🫎🪱🦗🐙🐳🎄🦦
As you can see it’s everyone but 🦔 or 🦆
🤎✨Feel like cotton✨🤎
My comment:
Yes! This! Sure, screens not cool, Social Media ruining Generation after Generation BUT no social media and no screen actually made damage to all the parts of the body, made your immune system weaker in a way that you are constantly ill with a new thing, made your immune permanently Disbaled, made you so ill that you cannot leave the bed, have a smalltalk, smell stuff or cope with light, cannot remember simple words on a permanent basis, forget the things that you are actively doing in the moment, isolate you from most of the people and almost all places due to lack of acessability and/or your health state, made every condition you have much worse and with every re infection you become worse and worse and actually even if you have been healthy and have been using no screens and no social media you still can become Disbaled and chronically ill in the worst way possible (but even the mild/moderate cases are horrible believe me please). So yeah… phones, right?..
P.s. the way people are in active denial being like “yeah but have you seen research to the way phones alter our brains?” Well yes, but it’s reversible and you can literally just do your best and make yourself busy without the phone. But there is no way you alone can prevent a covid infection and there is no cure or treatment for ME/CFS (which is so often the main chronic illness end up after covid) and LC. So… I would choose the phone and do what I can to not have a problem with it. But even though I mask and have been isolated by people who have been my friends and also by academia, medical institutions, states decisions ect., I am still at risk of re-infection and loosening even more of my energy, brain capacity, concentration and NOTHING is under my control. I can only do things and hope but there is no evidence that some things actually always help. None. You can ”cure” phone addiction or short attention span as a result of social media but you cannot cure ME 🥲 so how about stop the denial, take the mass disabling event seriously and stop comparing apples with oranges?….
It’s always “phones are ruining our brains” and never “the virus known for post-viral cognitive decline, which causes short term memory loss, brain fog, and decreased spatial reasoning, that we let run rampant through our communities for years is ruining our brains”
No Visability without acceptance⚧️🏳️⚧️
Trans* day of visibility means nothing, when visibility is putting us in more danger. We need medicine and medical professionals to catch up on the fact, that there is more than just cis people (cis peri people for that matter, even though inter* is not trans*). We need them to really UNDERSTAND that their gendering is harming real people especially by slowing the progress of medicine. We need social workers, teachers, psychotherapists, who do the same, who choose people’s life’s and figures over the old books and dusty believes that never have been correct. We need people around us stop thinking in binaries, to stop gendering clothes and perfumes, cables and babies (let’s stop genitalia parties for unborn fetuses, wtf?). We need people to stop putting the cis woman over everyone else on terms of suffering and therefore importance. They become only worse when thinking they only can be victims, not perpetrators (people can be both. People are both.)
Visibility is ok, it’s important, but who wants to become a bullseye for the hating uneducated crowd?..
Review: Anarchism: Arguments for and Against (by Albert Meltzer)
Very tiny book, less than 100 pages. But quite easy to understand for someone who reads stuff in english besides social media content. I did not know some words and there are definitely some things I need to do research on because I did not complitely understood how smth is ment. But it’s a book full of short answers, which in itself is a great concept. If someone needs/wants to dive deeper they can, but if they don’t want/cannot afford it atm they will have some closer to reality picture of anarchism and how a lot of things that are called anarchism actually are none. I am planing to read some things by Black authors on topic of abolition, but this was definitely helpful to find some ground from which I can move forward.
The book is older and it has no mention of genderqueer people (though it has mention of what’s usually called sexual minorities). I did not see anything about Disability as well.
In the Summer 2023 I started my jurney of ✨re-wiring my brain ✨ to learn again how to read, how to draw, how to write. How to LET MYSELF do those things. I had a huge blockage in my head for many years due to reasons. You know, trauma alters brains. Also, when you work through Traumata or masking or similar, you might “delete” some connections which leads to #skillregression. Skill regression is a real thing, look it up. And we can sometimes alter it as well by re-learning, by creating new connection. Also, learn something that was “lost” to skill regression. I wish people would research it more, it actually could help so many folx to be able to do things without suffering or do things in general.
So, anyways, since summer 2023 I have been trying to teach myself to read again. I could only read scientific stuff and stuff for my uni (not always, but sometimes) and never finish anything, it was super duber hard labour, my anxiety was yelling and I was trying to concentrate on words in a text while being screamed at by different parts of my brain the whole time. Very tiring. But yeah, it worked, I can sit down and read when the brain fog is not very strong and on some days I can read the whole book in one sitting. Or two books, depending on the size.
So, I just wanted to say, that since then (summer 2023) untill now (March 2025) I have read 38 books of different nature. Sure, some people read 52-60 books a year, but I am not some people. I have issues :) and my Disability is disabiliting 24/7, sometimes more sometimes less. So, I am super proud of myself. I did not believe that it was possible, but it worked. And there is a loooong way to go to learn doing other mostly fun things without feeling like I actually went through an underground passage where everyone is crying, screaming and yelling in fear and despair. That’s how reading felt like 2023 and beginning oh 2024..
(In the last pictures are not the books i‘ve read but I did finished most of them)
Review: Siege and Storm (Leigh Bardugo)
Very intense in my opinion. A lot of new characters, drama, you can feel how lonely and tired the main characters are, it’s great written. Also with more funny sentences because they break the intense atmosphere easier. You know, because the story is SO intense. More diverse Charakters, but I misunderstood some reviews about queer folx being in the story I guess… I have some guesses but I feel like I see queer Charakters just because I want them to be queer, not because they might be. Looking forward for the third book of the trilogy, but will read something else first because yeah. Intense.
This is the pile of things I am planing to read while working through “Who’s Afraid Of Gender” (Judith Butler) for my thesis.
P.s. I already read Plato’a “Symposion” and wrote a paper in the uni about it, but I liked it so much I wanted to read something about Symposion since I have nobody to talk to about it.
Review: L‘Étranger (Albert Camus)
Too bad I could not read it in French. I wish I could.
I really liked HOW it was written. The first half of the story is just cis men being cis men in a nutshell (ignoring, supporting each others in the violence they do, pretending like nothing happens, even helping each other while being like oh yeah he is a good guy you know). The other half is more philosophical. It hit differently also because I had an Ex who was pretty much like the main character: not interested in anything (except YouTube videos), not having opinions, not experiencing emotions very much (not expressing them is one thing but feeling bored by literally everything is different), not being able to have deep connections and be vulnerable with himself or others. On the other hand, the main character is wildly autistic coded for his inability to cope with physical stimuli (I feel that a lot) and remembering things others would not remember while reacting „inappropriately“ to stuff. So I don’t think I liked the story, but it’s on me. I liked how it is written though, Italien watching a film, so many details but it’s not too much. It’s like a strange diary of someone, who does not need people and actually doesn’t mind to die because people are too boring and everything is useles anyway. Something like that. But I would need to read some interpretations for sure, especially since I have bel reading in German.
Review: the WHY café
Read this today and uff, no, I wrote a book on similar topics and my book is simply better. Don’t wanna brag, but it’s true.
The idea, that once you have found your reason for existence, the thing that you want to do every waking minute of your life, that after that you will have enough money to survive, a job, and oportunities will come to you like it’s universe working for you… it’s fun untill you ask yourself “and what’s about the ill?”
Why does nobody ever thinks about the ill? The Disabled? Those, who don’t have the same room full of “you can do whatever you want”s to choose from?
Made me very angry. So, if I knew what makes me the most fulfilled and happy, and I was knocking at all doors and I was talking to all people about it, learning, creating, trying, working my ass off for this… but then got chronically ill and hat to reconsider everything and give up on bunch of dreams… that means I what, did not want it hard enough? If knowing what you are here for and working towards the fulfilment gets help for universe to make the road easier, does it mean I got punishment? What about people who are d*omg in wars and from diseases? The children even, literal children, why does it happen? Why do most passionate dancers loose legs and writers get brain injuries? I don’t believe in a Christian god who is “testing is”, nor I believe in punishment from “something bigger than we are”. I don’t think people deserved to get ME/CFS and become unable to get up, have a chat, read a book or even deal with smells/light/sounds. I don’t think I was ment to not being able to dance, jump and run, to not be able to wake up and feel rested (ever), to not be able to remember words or what I was doing just in this moment. It’s silly, I need to look for clues when I do things and then forget what I am doing. It’s silly untill it happens to you and you understand, any day your intellectual abilities can just leave you and there is nothing anyone can do.
This book is for health people who are in denial about the fact, that over 80% of Disabilities are not born with. And that at some point in a certain age we all become Disabled and need help and will have access needs. And everyone, especially since 2020, can get things like ME/CFS even if you were healthy before. And then no dream, no fulfilling idea, nothing will help and most certainly not the people around you who so desperately try to forget the existence of chronically ill and Disabled people and about them being just one accident or one unfortunate infection away from becoming one themselves.
Health people are just ✨different✨ in my opinion. If your main problem is not the ultra low amount of spoons, chronic pains, brain fog and not being able to do things most people don’t even think about while doing them.. yeah maybe you can gain smth from this book. But me, haha, I am like that, I just get angry and want to shake folx by their shoulders HONEY DENIAL IS A RIVER IN EGYPT!!
Anyways…
Tiny book review. Shadow And Bone (Leigh Bardugo).
Finished Shadow And Bone in one day. Ordered the rest of the trilogy + first Six Of Crows secondhand. Netflix defenetly spoiled me, but there was also a good thing about watching part of the story before reading it. I could imagine the characters more diverse than they were described in the book. I am a little confused about why there were almost no describtion about the way people looked. It would be such a cool thing to imagine the different cultural clothes, what the different ethnicities looked like ect.. I mean sure, I can imagine for myself how someone from the Shu Han place would look like (I personally think about the Tatar-Mongols because of their closeness to Zar Rus) but it would be great to see more details of their special things like acessories, ways to sit, gestures, foods, anything. In Shadow And Bone we know nothing about the Fjerdians Alina met except of all of them having beards xD and we know literally nothing about the third nation (there were Ravkans (Rus based), Fjerdians (Nordic folx), Shu Han (mongol based) and the other one which sounded German or Dutch but had no describtion whatsoever so I did not even remember their name)… that’s a shame. But I hope more will come in the next books. In addition to that it was a little confusing for me as someone who speaks Russian to see the choice of words for some things. And sure, they don’t SPEAK Russian, but it’s still strange to see an infinitive verb used as a subject, it just takes away something serious from the dialogue for me… but I guess it’s a me-thing, because folx who don’t speak Russian probably enjoyed every minutes of it (and I am very happy for them!)
I do admit, that the book inspired me to pick up the worldbuilding process after I am finished with my last theater science paper.
Am I asking for too much? Just a tea party with pretty cups and way too sweet pastry and open end gossiping session 😭
Granada's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes S1Ep11, "The Resident Patient" (1985)
Very hard researching for the Theater science paper writing about VANYA when Andrew Scott is just there. Just putting out all this characters by himself. Let them flirt, make love, suffer. Sometimes two people cannot act out the chemistry between two characters and somehow Scott manages to play chemistry between the characters all by himself. Live. On stage. Uff..😮💨 (in my opinion, VANYA is not good as a Chekhov piece, but it’s genius as Andrew Scott’s one man show, just like Akbar from The Guardian said in her Review)
https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/elfi_reads
My storygraph Account✨ it’s created by a Black cis woman (hope it’s true) and should be better than good reads. I really enjoy that people can submit trigger warnings and also upload their books themselves.
Just started Shadow And Bone. I watched some of it via Netflix adaptation, but once I have found out that there is a book I did not want to finish watching. Also, I remember very little if the story, so I almost get to know the characters for the first time.
While writing my last (jeppie!) Theater science essay decided to film some sort of “Study with me” but then my phone got a full storage :( so now I have 1h of footage instead of 2 as planned. But that’s ok. It was still fun.
🤎YouTube: Elfs_Tears_Society🤎