holy hell, so many new people all at once! i wish i could say hello to all of you individually, but i guess i’ll do a little ... introductory thread??

(but first, a disclaimer: my brain is full of dirt. i’m trying to keep up with all my follows and replies, but please lmk if i missed you!! similarly, i this thread may not be comprehensive)

umm ok. the essentials: i’m margo! i’m 21, i’m trans, i live in upstate NY, i don’t know wtf is wrong with me but i’m deffo disabled, i’m sober, i’m a student, i’m a rape survivor and i WILL talk about it, i live and die for community building & queer family.

re: transness; i have been all over the map, spending various stages of my life in all sorts of gender configurations & flavors of transness. my body & my history are probably not what your first or second guess would be.

(i have my differences with all the pronoun options, but presently i ask that people refer to me with whatever their own pronouns are. if people are interested maybe i’ll talk about this at some point lol)

re: illness/my story; i developed significant mental illness symptoms pre-adolescence, for a while underwent a great deal of psychiatric treatment w/o much success. this dwindled as i lost both faith in it & the general life stability that precludes treatment.

i spent much of my teens with no stable living situation, a serious substance abuse problem (i was addicted to painkillers, go figure ), and generally losing my shit. ignoring my bodily experiences came with the territory!

i was incredibly lucky in finding some really strong communities. with that support i graduated high school, got sober, & went to college. thus began the life chapter in which i started to perceive myself & my experiences with greater clarity. namely: EVERYTHINGSOHARDANDIDKWHY

so, college was (is) a struggle. at first i figured it was “just” my lifelong mental illness. but i remained “treatment resistant”, saw notable differences btwn myself & peers (even mentally ill friends!)... something was not adding up.

“i don’t understand why i can’t do this,” frustrated & confused, etc, you know the drill! finally my psych referred me for a sleep study, which led to a dx of idiopathic hypersomnia. thus begins the “holy fuck, my body has problems too??” chapter.

primarily i struggle with chronic sleepiness, pain, and physical & mental fatigue. i’m a junior in college, and those 3 years have seen a gradual worsening of symptoms alongside a series of epiphanies that this is not in fact what everyone else is experiencing.

ultimately, i arrived at “i think theres more to uncover here than IH.” and... here i am! feeling lost, angry, scared, overwhelmed by the sheer number of chronic illnesses out there, the universally impossible quest for dx, and my ongoing realizations about how ableds live.

plus, at this point its not clear to me if i’ll finish my BA. (my max credits per semester grows every smaller.) and its hard for me to imagine any livable lovable future. basically: having all of the feelings & currently trying to find a primary care doc during a pandemic.

but the chronic illness online communities have already been beyond helpful. i’m so grateful for everyone who has interacted with me, anyone reading this ABSURDLY long thread, for everyone putting wisdom and experience and stories and warnings out here for me to see.

you have all presented me with such an incredible wealth of culture and knowledge, and i have SO MANY questions!! probably all this account will be for a while is me asking questions to the hive. i hope my experience can be of service to others too.

THATS ALL!! thank you so much for existing and living your lives and talking to me!
with sick bitch love,
margo