Hi friends.

Some of you know me personally or have followed and talked to me for a while so you already know, but I really need to do better with honest about my healthy because it is critically impacting my income and I unfortunately don’t have a lot of options.

(THREAD)

I hate to preface everything this way but I am not looking for advice or a prognosis, I got that, I am just trying to explain my situation and circumstances and how that’s drastically changed how I work and exist fundamentally.

I am disabled.

You may have seen me mention this in passing but you may not fully understand what this means or where I’m at because I haven’t really gotten into the details in a cohesive way all at once.

I have had multiple TBIs, strokes, and other forms of life altering injury to my brain. I’ve reached a point where the state of my brain cannot be helped much. My short term memory is so bad that my phone reminders look like a novel. I sometimes lose days worth of time.

On top of this and related to one of my other TBIs, I have a back injury from a car accident that by the time I’m in my 30s-40s will put me in a wheel chair and surgery is the least safe and cost effective option for me.

I am in pain literally all the time.

These are not going away and they are only going to get worse as I get older. Attempting to treat them in any sort of preventative way would just be throwing money into a hole. It is not an option I have or something I monetarily have access to.

I also don’t have insurance (yet, working on it) and don’t qualify for disability in my state or have the time and security to pursue disability when it takes years to attain.

All of this drastically impacts my ability to work.

Photography and content creation are things that are incredibly close to me, they’re the only things keeping me together right now and are also my only source of income.

My disability forces me to frequently drop projects.

The time it takes for me to pick up projects, complete, and upload them with my combined memory issues, chronic pain, neurological and physical symptoms from my TBI and back injury, is not short and is also very scattered and finicky.

I know that there are times when I seem flaky and unreliable and that is incredibly detrimental to any source of income. It’s been really hard for me to keep up with despite this being my only way to make money and survive right now.

My main focus with direct regard to my health is making myself comfortable and safe. I am frequently neither of those things because of my health and I cannot prioritize anything else especially with newly emerging symptoms as my injuries advance.

There are some days that looks like huge spurts of progress and activity, getting so much done and playing catch up. Most of the time it looks like a mind numbing stagnation, me losing income drastically, and being physically incapable of doing work.

I have major insecurities tied to this and my inability to be open about my health does not help how others perceive me when this happens. It’s something I spend hours and hours literally sobbing about because I feel as though my brain and body are just slowly deteriorating.

It is difficult for me to feel like people understand me. Many times I explain the things that are happening in my brain and I feel as though it’s written off as “aw they’re so quirky” when I am actually in legitimate peril both with my health and financially.

I know I don’t help my case when I am Funny Online but I really hope some of you all realize that I am struggling and it is a struggle I do not get to come back from and that will only progress.

I am incredibly sorry if there are times with my creative projects and work projects that I seem unavailable, lazy, flaky, difficult to work with, and sometimes just not even present...

Trust me, I understand how this looks from the outside looking in and it’s agonizing.

The only way for me to go forward and continue to do my best to have an income and produce content that makes me happy is transparency. So that starts right now with this thread.

There’s no easy way to say this but I need your support.

My goals are irrelevant when the deteriorating nature of my health commands my attention. The majority of the time I am making the sacrifices where I cannot talk to people I love, I cannot get out of bed, I cannot work.

Every day for me is about pain management, mitigating risks for myself, and navigating permanent memory loss.

I have not been open enough about this or clear enough about the specific nature of my disability or the severity to which it impacts me even to people closest to me.

This is the hardest thing for me to admit. I lose sleep over it. It is the reality of the situation and my health and it’s why I am just trying to optimize the authenticity of myself, my interests, and my life. There’s a certain point where I will never enjoy this again.

Admitting that to myself and to thousands of people who follow me and hundreds of people who enjoy my content and support me financially is the most vulnerable I have ever been. I’ve sat on this since it was first explained to me where I’m at by professionals.

I haven’t explained this to my parents, I haven’t properly explained this to my partners and I have to stop that.

It just feels like something I’ve been carrying inside me and that slips out from time to time and has people scratching their heads but never fully understanding.

I’m struggling. Admitting that, regardless of the kind of ridicule it opens up, is vitally important to my ability to live as comfortably as possible until I can’t anymore. That is my priority alongside loving and helping others as authentically as I can.

Thanks to everyone who has listened to me earnestly and seen me at my absolute fucking worst yet still extended me kindness.

I feel very trapped in this world and in my body and it means a lot to me the gestures of support many continue to extend to me when I cannot be present.

There’s so much I am dealing with behind closed doors that even my most cherished friends and family so not know and that I feel like can’t understand and it really is the little things and messages that reach me when I need them most.

Worst thread I’ve ever had to write but I gotta stop pretending that I’m not dealing with this stuff when there’s so much confusion it causes and so much pain that then causes me. I’m sorry if this seems dramatic or unsettling I just cannot keep hiding away behind bullshit.

The friends I’ve made here are a part of me getting to be happy and live comfortably and I won’t sacrifice that. I get to laugh and be weird and occupy this space how I want, but you also deserve answers to why there’s been so many changes for me and how I interact with others.

Ultimately that’s where this comes from. I care incredibly deeply fr the people I have grown close to here and the way my disabilities impact me do not present in easy ways. Being dishonest or quiet about that has jeopardized a lot for me.

My survival hinges on me being honest with the people and connections I’ve started to make having this knowledge of where I’m at.

So this is where I’m at. I love you all very much and cannot overstate the ways in which this account has given me peace I desperately need.

Cried writing this btw and am a snotty fucking mess eyyy but thanks also to those who have listened to me vent about this in private and have helped me muster my strength to say it out loud.

I lose chunks of time. This can sometimes look like a few hours or I will lose days. It feels like sometimes my memory is a worm hole and theoretically there is another side and an exit point but I have no clue what that looks like and never get that time back to find out.

I’m not productive when this happens. I can’t be. I have snapped out of hour long dazes literally staring at nothing and with 50 new messages I have not opened and did not know I received. It’s terrifying even when it’s just an hour of time.

My thought to speech ability is also garbage. Something doesn’t translate properly that way any more and sometimes it can be genuinely funny but mostly it is frustrating and impedes my ability to express my actual NEEDS in a timely fashion and puts me in danger.

I’m in pain, but I also have physical symptoms that potentially point to a spinal injury or neurological problem with seizures. I am also not productive when this happens because I cannot physically move myself and once I can move I am exhausted emotionally and physically.

I can’t do the things I used to. I can’t work out anymore, I can’t go for walks, I can’t be on my feet for long periods or there is a weeks long recovery period. I am just at a point where my body cannot keep up with these things that I want to do without there being a toll.

Sometimes I legitimately would rather pay the toll for a breath of fresh air and trying to learn how to long board than I would spending that energy working because that is the only thing making me happy right now. It’s extremely crushing sometimes.

The fragility of my emotions is immense and there are points when in order to not lose myself completely and d*e, I have to do those things and sacrifice money I do not have in any way, to be with the people I love for as long as I can before I no longer have that anymore.

Like there is going to be a point where I cannot run in the park no matter what. There’s going to be a point where I cannot remember the things my loved ones have told me. I cannot sacrifice those experiences for money and I refuse to do that to myself when it’s all I’ve got.

There’s also very legitimately a degree to which people who are not in my position, will never understand what that feels like to realize you will one day never do, see, hear, remember the things you love.

It’s very hard to feel heard and understood.

To many people I look like a child with no impulse control.

In my real life right now... I am just holding on as tightly as I can to the things that give me happiness so that I have them when I can no longer do them. That doesn’t make sense to a lot of people.

Neurotypical, abled people will say “live your best life” and genuinely think it means getting Starbucks on a cheat day (whatever that is), being disabled and knowing your condition is degenerative means that I will not remember this one day or ever be able to do it again.

I have made myself sick over that fact on more than one occasion.

I don’t want sympathy and I know some folks will never get it. I just need some form of income and I need people to have some knowledge of where I’m at to do that.

There’s a long list of symptoms and problems I can never turn the clock back on and all I want more than anything else is to be able to say I got to be me before that chapter closes.

I am sometimes ashamed and embarrassed of this. I don’t want it any other way though.

In conclusion:

Capitalism destroys the lives of disabled people. I am out of options. I am just maximizing my comfort before I am permanently incapable of doing so and from there maximizing my security until death.

It is not easy. It never will be.

That all being said... THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to everyone and huge solidarity to all of my friends and followers with degenerative disabilities. I cherish you and love you so much and I personally have work to do with my internalized ableism.

It shouldn’t have waited until my symptoms were impossible for me to ignore to be proactive in speaking up about where I am and what help I need and in part it’s because of ableism.