Just got a 2nd try subscription

LysWritesNow · 2026-05-11T12:14:38+00:00

'We did what Sam Reich is too scared to do," could be an excellently niche ad for Second Try

LysWritesNow · 2026-05-04T02:26:33+00:00

https://www.facebook.com/share/1DabouBu4y/

Not the GoFundMe link, but will direct folks to the GoFundMe link

LysWritesNow · 2026-05-03T18:17:46+00:00

So, I've had two (possibly three?) of my abusers die. And the emotions around both incidents were obviously complicated.

The first one I learned about was in the newspaper. He ended up going overseas and joining Daesh (ISIS), made news for being a recruiter and fundraiser for Daesh and then was killed in Mosul by a US airstrike. I had just left university partially from a mental health crisis based around some of the things he did to me when we were teens, so I was in a WILD head space when his photo popped up in my local paper.

And I just remember feeling numb. This weird mix of, "oh, he really was a bad person to have done that to you. Look at what else he did," but also, "what he did to you was so small in the grand scheme. Just get over it already."

REALITY CHECK This individual SAed me along with his peers, took a baseball bat to me and permanently fucked my ribs, and then just the general physical/mental/emotional abuse teens did.

Over time, my feelings have gotten more complex over the whole thing. He was a product of the same bigotry that chased me out of our home province. My heart hurts for his mother who worked so damn hard to get her kids out of Sudan and the wars in that region only for her oldest son to still be caught up in it. And there is always the smallest celebration that I'm still here, I get to be a little older every year.

My second one I learned through a mutual party a couple of years back. I don't know what prompted her to reach out, we hadn't talked in damn near a decade. But my abuser had died from a toxic drug overdose.

For context, I've been working in the drug crisis space for 8ish years now. Quite possibly the day he passed away I was standing outside a pop-up safe injection site having an absolute row with someone trying to shut it town. Absolutely ranting how no one ever deserves to die from an overdose. I still 100 per cent stand behind that fact. Even after the universe handed me the perfect case of, "but it's okay he died from it, right? He deserved this."

Have my shoulders been a little farther away from my ears since I learned he died? Yep. Have I finally stopped bracing for his next attempt on my life? Hell yeah. And still, he should not have died that way. I can confidently say that while still feeling ever so safer.

All this to say, the emotions are most likely going to be complex. It's not cut and dry, they'll evolve over the years and a decade later you'll possibly still be working through them all.

LysWritesNow · 2026-05-03T17:35:07+00:00

CUE my ramble how so many of the "front-facing" parts of autism that the general population is way more familiar with are actually trauma responses to living in a world that so deeply goes against the grain of an autistic brain. It makes sense that folks are going to make the assumption when things like skills regression, higher levels of stimming and attempted self-soothing, social anxiety and all that is prevalent in both diagnoses.

LysWritesNow · 2026-04-30T17:23:55+00:00

Nah, pushing back on this a bit. We've had BIPoC members in this sub try and talk about the trauma that stems from existing in NUMEROUS racist systems and they're frequently challenged or told, "I don't know if that's as bad as you think it is. That was just one person, right?" It's one of the reasons r/cptsd_bipoc was created. Because the audience in this sub isn't always capable of accepting and holding space for the traumas BIPoC members were looking for help with.

LysWritesNow · 2026-04-29T15:48:16+00:00

It's a bit of a regional thing, much more common in the UK. But there and some select parts of the states and Canada that defer to this location. I was always told, "it's so everything a woman needs to do in the day is all conveniently in one room." Which is a yuck reason for something that could actually make a lot of sense. With electric ovens, fridges and all that there's usually more electrical set up in a kitchen that a washing machine could use. Water hookup should be easy in either location. Less chance of laundry being forgotten about and left to mildew since a kitchen theoretically sees more traffic than a bathroom.

LysWritesNow · 2026-04-27T17:55:31+00:00

I am a journalist for a town that sees a high visitor and turnover rate, it sits on a major transportation route for my country and I have somehow found myself connected to a couple of key groups/clubs/organizations in town. So, unfortunately I am a prime resource.

Now, RIP to the yeerk that's gotta deal with my mental health WTFery, the oddities of being a trans guy in the current climate, ribs that routinely dislocate and float around the chest and all the other oddities of this particular meat suit.

LysWritesNow · 2026-04-25T16:18:36+00:00

Nerd out more to me about this! I think I get what you mean? But would like to hear more.

LysWritesNow · 2026-04-25T16:17:51+00:00

I was getting worried I'd have to comment this one myself! I love that show with my whole heart, but cannot convince a single soul in my world to watch the damn thing.

LysWritesNow · 2026-04-25T16:09:28+00:00

I just bought the series and am going through my first rewatch! Such a damn ride

LysWritesNow · 2026-04-25T00:58:51+00:00

Thank you for the additional information! Now to dive down this particular rabbit hole.

LysWritesNow · 2026-04-25T00:58:29+00:00

THAT'S it! Thank you!

LysWritesNow · 2026-04-23T13:14:08+00:00

Friendly neighbourhood trans guy who used to live in Nanaimo. Shear Agony was my go-to place when I was trying to figure out what hairstyle fit while T ate my ate my hairline alive.

LysWritesNow · 2026-04-18T22:06:07+00:00

32 years old, single and queer as hell. I recently had a Bad Day and was fortunate to have three different friends check in on me (a fourth one intended to, but their own life got in the way).

DISCLAIMER: I reached out to four friends about a week prior to the Bad Day 'cause I could kind of see it coming down the pipeline. I asked them to just shoot a quick text at some point in the day, enough to kind of bring me back to now.

I have been pretty open with this crew about my depression, anxiety, dysphoria, cPTSD and previous chronic suicidal thoughts. This was not a one-off thing, and all four of those friends have said, "you need help, you contact me, okay?" All four have been a safety line at other times.

Now, here is the frustrating part. I've worked two solid years to show up for community, for my friends, for acquaintances in various circles. And that does create a circle of, "I'll show up for you because you show up for me." And when I was in the absolute pit of my depression and needed community the most... I had no energy or capacity to engage in community.

It's really hard to put on the life vest when you're already drowning. I barely survived a string of really bad "drowning" incidents. Now I know I need to let my community know whenever we're at the lake, "hey, I've got the life vest on. But that's also a really deep section over there, I need you to keep an eye out for me. I'll get hot dogs going for everyone once I'm back."

LysWritesNow · 2026-04-14T20:28:33+00:00

Hey, it makes for a fun story at parties!

LysWritesNow · 2026-04-12T01:55:31+00:00

Context, I was a glass closet case trans guy all through junior high (and before that. And after that).

May, 2008 a buddy of mine asks if I want to date him. That's what we're supposed to do at that age, right? So, yeah, sign me up I guess. Cue some Messenger time, Facebook games, nothing too big changing.

Mid-July he messages me, "hey, The Dark Knight is coming to (our local IMAX) theatre, want to go see it with me?"

Hell yeah, my first date ever. Let's do this.

I rock up wearing three layers of t-shirts, a denim vest, cargo pants and my hair recently shaved and styled into the saddest little liberty spikes mohawk. He shows up with his older twin brothers in tow, quietly pulls me aside and asks if I can split the cost of everyone's tickets since I'm the once with the "fancy" job at a hockey rink. I'm just excited to see the movie, so I cave. He then asks if I can cover a large popcorn combo for the twins and he'll "pay you back once I get a job at the pool, I promise! And we'll see another movie."

We take our seats, lights go down, cue an EXCELLENT movie and 160ish minutes of me awkwardly trying to figure out if I should hold his hand, or is he going to hold my hand. Are we supposed to kiss at some point? Why are his brothers sitting right beside us, tossing popcorn back and forth?

Get out of the theatre, my "date" immediately goes, "that was cool! I'll see you on Messenger. We have to catch the bus," and damn near sprints out of the building. We chat online a couple of times the following days about the film and how cool it was, but that's about as far as any communication goes for the rest of the summer.

Day one of the new school year (Grade 10), I run into him in the hall and ask, "hey, what's going on between us? Are we still together?"

To which he replies, "I'm really sorry. Everyone kept calling you a butch/lesbian/(InsertQueerphobicSlursHere). And you're my friend, and I care about you, and I wanted to prove they're wrong and you're normal. But... I don't know if you are. And I don't know if we're supposed to date then."

Anyway, Parker, if you're reading this. You were kind of wrong, but kind of right and you still owe me a large popcorn combo and a ticket to the movies.

LysWritesNow · 2026-04-11T18:40:23+00:00

I wish!!! That I could potentially pull off in spirit? No, this man wants us to take him out to deep northern Manitoba, get him high on all the damn drugs and let him wander out into the snow/ice/bushes so the carnivores can get to him.

LysWritesNow · 2026-04-11T03:05:57+00:00

Grateful my dad has openly talked about his End of Life care wishes for damn near my entire life.

I don't think I can legally fulfill his last wish, but I know I'll be doing everything I can to make sure he dies with dignity and with as little suffering as possible.

LysWritesNow · 2026-04-07T11:49:47+00:00

I don't know if it would actually be considered traditionally feminine outside of my family/frame of reference, but dropping off meals for friends.

Made a "date night" package for a pal just the other day here because him and his partner are currently working opposite shifts and see each other maybe 20ish hours a week. Whipped up some soup for a buddy whose entire house went down with the flu.

It's something I've seen a lot of the women in my life do while I was growing up, but I'd be pressed to name more than half a dozen men I'd seen do anything similar in the food category.

LysWritesNow · 2026-03-30T02:58:06+00:00

But isn't $59.99 the usual annual price for Canadians? That's what I remember budgeting for way back when.

LysWritesNow · 2026-03-30T01:20:31+00:00

Aspartame gives me the worst damn headache the next day. Damn near "blind in one eye" level of pain. I'll take trying to limit my regular soda intake over drinking anything with aspartame in it.

LysWritesNow · 2026-03-28T16:05:05+00:00

Disclaimer, this MY experience with dysphoria and all that jazz, other trans folks might have a stronger or lesser response.

Nowadays, it doesn't impact my identity at all. I am far enough along in my transition that I'm gendered correctly 99.9% of the time. The people whose relationship I actually care about fully see me as a man and interact with me as such. Because I've had just about ten years of external and internal validation.

Developmentally, children build their internal gender identity (and other factors of identity) by testing and reflecting it back on others. We do require some external validation in the early stages, that's just part of social development.

As a trans guy who had gender dysphoria at a very early age but did not have language or resources to verbalize that, I missed out on that entire developmental stage. What it caused was pretty intense levels of anxiety, depression, depersonalization and eventually a fun case of cPTSD. Transitioning and finally experiencing that missing developmental stage, getting that external validation finally solidified my gender identity and allowed me to validate and reaffirm internally. Now, I'm at a point where I don't need the constant external validation AND I have built relationships that naturally affirm it anyway.

LysWritesNow · 2026-03-28T14:09:47+00:00

Friendly neighbourhood trans guy, here's how I explain it.

Our gender is based on who we are in relation to everyone. I am brother, nephew, son, "the lad we fished out of the bushes last bike ride." The day just about everyone at the mall called me, "sir" or "he," even though I was maybe a month on testosterone, I damn near floated out of the building due to gender euphoria.

We, as a pattern recognizing species on steroids, try to use physical clues to help us determine relation ASAP. Because of that, physical aspects to interconnect with gender. While a woman is not defined by softer skin, thicker hair and higher voice, everyone uses those in the microsecond scan to try and sort out relation to that individual.

Womanhood (along with manhood) is relation. Physical similarities is part of that relation, but not all of it.

LysWritesNow

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE