[grumpy rant] When you sit down to actually get stuff done like homework and tags and your body decides it's time for a headache instead. 
[cw: mental health talk, alcoholism, and suicidal thoughts talk in here.]
Yule Cat
[grumpy rant] When you sit down to actually get stuff done like homework and tags and your body decides it's time for a headache instead. [cw: mental health talk, alcoholism, and suicidal thoughts talk in here.]
[grumpy rant] When you sit down to actually get stuff done like homework and tags and your body decides it's time for a headache instead. [cw: mental health talk, alcoholism, and suicidal thoughts talk in here.]
Yule Cat
That emote is both my frustration at my body's betrayal and the feeling of the damn headache to begin with.
Yule Cat
I swear, I'm approaching some graduate student or something with the idea to study the correlation between migraines and concussions.
Yule Cat
It can't be proved by science yet but I'm CERTAIN getting two from getting into two different car accidents when I was a teenager and my brain was still developing had something to do with it.
Yule Cat
I was actually in three car accidents total, thankfully in the third one I had put the seat down to sleep so I didn't bang my head.
Yule Cat
To be clear, I wasn't driving in any of these incidents, I was just unlucky.
Yule Cat
And my family always stuck me in the seat that was the farthest back in the car because I am the smallest in the family and could climb more easily back there, so I always took the hardest hit since in both accidents we were rearended.
Yule Cat
And while this isn't a migraine right now, I'm definitely more sensitive to fucking headaches as well ever since.
Yule Cat
Those two drunken assholes owe me a job and a TON of money from all the days of work I missed.
Yule Cat
Though at least in the latter case the police did charge him for a DUI and it was like his.....third one or something, so he got bonked on the head by the law with a hammer.
Yule Cat
I dunno the law but I feel like if you get three DUIs, they should just take away your license.
Yule Cat
You're clearly not responsible enough to be driving.
Yule Cat
Talk about God having a plan though. In the latter accident, there was a motorcycle cop ahead of us. If we hadn't been there, the guy would have slammed into him at about 50 MPH and kept going. So that poor cop would've been dead, paralyzed, and/or permanently injured thanks to get dragged along.
Yule Cat
Since we were between him and the car the drunk driver was in, we got off with relatively minor injuries and just a smashed in rear end. So I comfort myself with the fact we might have saved that man's life. Our poor guardian angels probably got a bunch of grey feathers watching over us in that incident!
Yule Cat
And since the cops were literally RIGHT THERE, they went to bat for us when we sued the guy. They could just be like "Uh, yeah, we were right there and saw the whole thing and we've got all the paperwork right here."
kingdonkey
Bodies are rude af
Yule Cat
Very much so! R U D E!
kingdonkey
Wed, I lifted up on my knee in such a way that made a sharp pain in the middle of my knee every time I stood up or sat down all night
kingdonkey
It was awful
Yule Cat
See, I am thankful every day I apparently inherited my Nana's hearty cowboy genes (no really, her dad was a legit cowboy in the era of cowboys, her side of the family lives a RIDICULOUSLY long time) and my body is mostly stable except for this problem.
kingdonkey
I wish I inherited having good joints from someone instead of terrible joints
kingdonkey
But also nursing fucks your joints unkindly
Yule Cat
Alas, my mind inherited the EXTREMELY strong depression and bipolar genes from my maternal grandpa's side of the family. We traced it back and I'm at least the FOURTH generation to have it, so apparently those genes are unstoppable or something!
Yule Cat
Good thing I was born in the era of modern medicine and a mom who recognized the signs or I would have been much worse off.
Yule Cat
So it's basically one bad mind vs. one good body. Which will win out? I shall see in sixty years or so.
kingdonkey
Turrible
kingdonkey
I hope I get my living grandma's brain genes...but none of her anything else
kingdonkey
Oh yeah. My brother was an alcoholic and did cocaine, but he's been clean for almost 2 years now
kingdonkey
WOo
kingdonkey
So that's nice.
Yule Cat
Yes! Congrats as well!
kingdonkey
Yeah! He is doing really well and I'm happy for him. We were all stressed for a while
kingdonkey
His friends did a lot of the heavy lifting to get him on the path
kingdonkey
So I'm glad they were able to get through to him
Yule Cat
Alcoholism runs in the family sadly as well, though it's a coin toss as to whether it's genetics or because it was the only real coping mechanism for the last 100 years or so the family had for the mental illnesses since there was no effective way to change brain chemistry back then.
kingdonkey
Yeah. He's got a lot of good people around him and I'm happy for him. Seems the middle children in our family have the substance abuse problems...which is a weird thing to look at.
Yule Cat
The alcoholism runs two generations deep (grandpa and great-grandpa) but my mom and her sisters saw their dad and like....half of his brothers go through that (out of 7 kids in the family, all 6 brothers got the gene we suspect) as their way to self-medicate and were like "How about NO".
Yule Cat
Yeah, it was difficult, since when they were up, my grandpa and my great-uncles were apparently very smart, handsome, charming men who could do just about anything they put their minds to. Unfortunately, what goes up, must come down and they'd crash HARD. Which is also why half of them took their own lives in the end.
Yule Cat
Yeah, the fortunate thing is my mom IMMEDIATELY recognized the signs since she'd seen her dad go through and dragged my ass kicking and screaming to therapy. I legit canceled the first appointment three times before she threatened to drive me there and drag me in like I was a child and the thought of that embarrassment finally convinced me to cooperate.
Yule Cat
The BEST MOM. No joke, I'd be dead without her, of that I have no doubt.
Yule Cat
Yep and the silver lining to the family saga is that it's been eleven years since we got the diagnosis and seven years since I was put on the right dosage of medicines, so I'm doing great these days! So the happy ending is the cycle has officially been broken. 
Yule Cat
I've only had like.....two manic episodes since then, one of them last year, and instead of lasting weeks they only last days. My last cycle I figured it out day one and figured I'd just ride it out, so my brain hyperfixated on a story I was writing and I wrote about forty pages in three days. No eating. No sleeping. ONLY WRITING.
Yule Cat
Someday science shall learn how to channel that manic energy without the crashes and then I shall be invincible. 
Once, during a manic episode, I cleaned my entire room from top to bottom in about eighteen hours. Now if only I could find the motivation to do that again WITHOUT the mania instead of being a lazy bum.
Once, during a manic episode, I cleaned my entire room from top to bottom in about eighteen hours. Now if only I could find the motivation to do that again WITHOUT the mania instead of being a lazy bum.