OCD Symptom I Struggle With But Don't See Talked About A Lot: Inability To Trust Your Own Memory And/or

poor memory is a huge deal and i wish people wouldn't diminish it by saying "oh yeah i can't remember what i had for breakfast lol."

i can't remember the first 10 years of my life. i can't remember entire days, weeks, months at a time. i can't remember entire people, i can't remember names or faces. i can't remember when things are scheduled for, my calendar app on my phone is booked to the max with reminders and task checklists. i can't remember when i moved into what home when, i can't remember important milestone dates like when i got or lost certain jobs, or when i started a new hobby.

that's what i mean when i say i have poor memory. poor memory is so scary for the person who has it. it's not a quirky thing, everyone forgets small details. memory problems are scary because you can go through entire events or days with no memory, or plan for things in the future that you can't recall ever even looking into or scheduling. it's not a funny haha kind of thing, it's serious, and it affects a lot of people in very unavoidable ways.

not being able to plan for appointments or work schedules, not being able to remember people's names or faces, not being able to recall whether or not you were present for something or whether or not you met someone, not being able to keep track of what's happening on what dates and losing track of items because you can't remember where you put them are all very real problems, and anyone dealing with them deserves to be taken seriously, and not diminished when they choose to speak up about it.

On the topic of trans men experiencing erasure and other problems that are not talked about, we should probably talk about when we actually DO get recognized and it's usually the white skinny trans men who get the most recognition. Which, is awesome and I'm not complaining because getting any recognition is a win. But we need to start also having our black poc, asian, native, hispanic, etc brothers in mind if you have not done so already. They have been erased from history even more than us. The same goes for the fat plus size men, the men who don't pass either because they can't or just don't want to (which is valid!), the men who can't transition or feel comfortable in their agab body (which is also valid), the men who are femme presenting, the men who are butch, men who are disabled etc etc.

Listen to when your black poc, asian, hispanic, native, etc men SPEAK. Listen to them. Listen to the men who are severely underrepresented in our community. Don't you DARE tell them to sit down or shut them out when speaking up about their experiences as trans men. If you see it shut it down immediately! That toxic shit is not safe in our spaces and we will not be quiet about it.

Keep our brothers safe!

i wish more people understood that maladaptive daydreaming is not some fun quirky thing and it is genuinely difficult to live with

this 🤏 close to clawing out my ovaries with my nails

nothing makes me more exhausted than remembering my pmdd is only going to go away with menopause and that i've got to deal with this for at least another 25 years

to the next person that says adhd isn't disabling i wish you a very week of isolation, binge eating, and getting kicked out of your job because executive dysfunction wouldn't let you do your work

can we normalize talking about how fucking debilitating agoraphobia is cool thanks

I’m not gonna lie, the whole “what if a big, hairy trans man started using the women’s bathroom? what are TERFs gonna do then?” thing kinda pisses me off being used as some checkmate, because it insinuates that passing trans men would have any kind of power in that situation. If a passing trans man is forced to use the women’s bathroom, you know what will happen? Security will be called on him, he’ll be thrown out, and he’ll be forced to out himself as trans in order to avoid punishment, which will put an even bigger target on his back. He’s still going to be harassed. He’s still going to be forced into an uncomfortable and potentially dangerous situation, and he probably won’t avoid punishment anyway because the current laws in place are never going to favour any trans person’s defence over a cis person’s.

It also completely ignores trans men who aren’t “big and hairy” and don’t pass enough to be mistaken for a cis man. Non-passing trans men (or even men who look or sound effeminate enough to be suspected) who are forced to use the women’s bathrooms are still at a huge risk of harassment or even violence, especially young trans boys who are forced into their assigned bathrooms at school. Nex Benedict was literally murdered in a girl’s bathroom. Girls and women aren’t these inherently non-violent, peaceful and submissive beings (for one thing, that’s misogynistic). Trans men and boys get beaten up by them too, because most of us pre-T aren’t considered a threat, and we fucking die.

That’s not even to mention the trouble we already have in men’s bathrooms, because if we don’t pass, cis men will interrogate us on whether or not we’re “real men” and then sexually assault us if they discover we’re trans. Corrective rapes that trans men face is not something to be ignored, and I have trans male friends that it’s happened to who are lucky to be alive right now.

Bathroom laws will affect us just as much. The violence that trans women face is something that trans men can also relate to, and both need to be talked about without people categorising all trans men as “big, hairy, strong men able to beat up anyone who tries to threaten them” when that’s not the case like 90% of the time. Acting like passing trans men are just there to make TERFs look stupid, when TERFs are the ones who are violent towards us no matter how much we pass, is just diminishing our experiences.

ever since I was a young lad I knew I wanted to be a middle-aged man with an undone tie around his neck who’s having a crisis so he goes to the bathroom to splash water on his face only to look up at himself in the mirror and wonder at the stranger looking back