I Got The Top 4.47% On This English Vocabulary Test

I love going viral on tumblr.com. It’s like if you stood in a field and said some of the stupidest shit a human being is capable of and then like fifty thousand crows attacked you

It is okay to mourn the child that you were, or the child that you could have been. It is okay to be sad or angry that no one protected you like you should have been protected. It is okay to grieve.

growing up, my mum always told me, whenever i went to the doctors or any sort of health professional, that it was important that i told them that i was hypermobile. she'd done the tests with me (herself being hypermobile and disabled in large part because of it) and though she didn't know the details, she knew that hypermobility was important to have in my health record.

so it was to my great surprise and displeasure that, whenever i told doctors i was hypermobile, it was skipped over. never addressed, never touched on, not even a comment to belie what that meant for me. i myself didn't know the impact hypermobility could have on a person, but my mother had been insistent about that fact. it was important, so why did no one else seem to think so?

i grew up with kids in school who were on the extreme ends of hypermobility. i knew a boy in middle school who could put both feet behind his head. i knew a girl in high school with long, spindly fingers who showed me how far backwards her arm could bend.

both of them had health problems, which became more profound as they aged. i never knew the details, but it stuck out that they were hypermobile, and so was i, and with my own health declining there HAD to be a connection.

common knowledge gives the vague definition of hypermobility as extra stretchy muscles, of being double-jointed. it comes with warnings not to push your hypermobile body into the extremes. don't overextend, you will hurt yourself.

the warnings are warranted. the importance isn't overplayed. these things i knew, but i didn't know why. and without knowing why, they were warnings that i could never truly obey, despite how conservative i became with my movements in a vain attempt to protect what little ability i had left.

hypermobility is NOT stretchy muscles. muscles are supposed to stretch. in fact, it's important to their health (those conservative movements prolly hurt more than helped!). hypermobility affects connectives tissues, and lands under the umbrella of Ehlers-Danlos Sydromes (there are a few) which can range in severity from affecting skin and tendons to affecting blood vessels and organs.

severity is rare, and much easier to catch. this post is for the people who are "a little hypermobile" so that they can understand what makes their body different.

a muscle and its associated tendons are like a hammock. the muscle is the fabric you lie in, stretching to accomodate the load. tendons are the rope that attaches the fabric to the trees, providing a secure anchor for the muscle to operate.

so, what happens when the ropes on the hammock are also stretchy? well, you sit in the hammock and your ass hits the ground.

now imagine that the fabric of the hammock has the ability to clench like a muscle. a normal hammock doesn't need to work that hard to stop ass from meeting ground, because it has sturdy anchors. a hammock with stretchy rope, however, must exert several times more effort, because the more the muscle pulls, the more the tendons stretch.

in short, hypermobility forces your muscles to work harder, because they must first pass the threshold of stretch the tendons are capable of before it can actually do the task it's meant to do. the stretchier the tendons, the harder the muscle needs to clench, the easier it is to overwork.

this info reframed everything i was doing with my body. small tasks of strength required the effort of much larger tasks, and larger tasks ranged from extremely difficult to impossible. holding my arms up so i could work above my head required monumental effort. with an anatomical peculiarity of the feet, i needed to use several muscles in my calves and hips just to stand without losing balance.

so no fucking wonder i crashed and burned in my 20s, when everything i did took all of my strength to accomplish. no wonder i would contort myself out of shape, so flexible that i could anchor myself into extreme poses just to give my muscles a moment of relief, overstretching myself without ever realizing why, and what damage i could be doing.

so, some things to remember:

overextending isn't good for you, but it shouldn't be your biggest concern. instead, be aware of overexertion, both how LONG you are using a muscle without breaks and how HARD you are using it.

small, frequent breaks are your best friend if you need to do something for awhile.

when you take breaks, stretch the muscles you'd been using.

if you need to exert effort to maintain a pose (whether it's sitting, standing, etc) examine whether you need to be clenching those muscles, and why.

actually whenever you are using muscles, try to train yourself to use as few as possible. you can practice by sitting or standing, and relaxing as many muscles as you can before you tip over. finding a sense of balance can make your life so much easier.

become acquainted with what relaxed muscles feel like. chronic tension can distort your perception of this, and result in habitual tension.

so yeah. if you're hypermobile, that's important. don't let a doctor's dismissal make you think otherwise. take care of yourself and know what you are and aren't capable of.

The Justice League playing fuck, marry, kill, but you can’t play fuck, marry, kill, without Gothams Most Eligible Bachelor coming up at least once, so someone mentions him and Batman decides he does not need to know what his colleagues would do to his civilian identity and he stands up to leave

But Flash (trying to joke around) says “What are you friends or something?” and Batman doesn’t pick up on the joke because he’s halfway between revealing his identity or never showing his face in front of the Justice League ever again and so he just says “Sure that… yeah friends! Friends is good.” and he walks out like he’s trying really hard not to run and picks up a bottle of whatever’s strongest and as Batman leaves and he starts drink it without even pausing to breathe.

So Flash says “Holy shit did Batman go through a bad breakup with Bruce Wayne?!?!” and everyone starts arguing over whether they’re still dating or if they broke up and no one pauses to think that maybe they were never dating in the first place so they accept Batman x Bruce Wayne as fact.

The next time Batman has to meet the Justice League he’s fully prepared to never acknowledge anything happened but now there are three sides, one side thinks that they’re still dating, one side thinks they broke up because of Bruce (for varying reasons though), and the other side thinks they broke up because of Batman (again for varying reasons).

And so every single hero is trying to get Batman to admit/tell everyone else that their side was right and he’s sitting here questioning his every choice as some of his closest friends are trying to get him to tell them he was/is in a relationship with himself and how it ended.

(It’s also not only trying to figure out what happened, they want to know why Batman did whatever caused them to break up, what Bruce Wayne did to Batman, or hows it’s like to be dating one of the richest men alive)

This ends in one of two ways, the short way and the long way. In the short way he just pulls off his mask in the middle of a meeting to reveal that he is Bruce Wayne, he’s about five more comments away from a breakdown.

In the long way he runs back to Gotham and goes out of his way to never EVER have to see another hero ever again and so Superman chews everybody out because they obviously made him uncomfortable and it was none of their business, and he keeps trying to find Batman and Batman uses every skill he’s ever learnt to hide from Superman.

The media is in shambles trying to figure out what caused this, has the Justice League gone rouge and Batman is the only sane member left? Is it because he doesn’t have powers? Is Superman on the Justice Leagues side or Batmans? Was there an attack that revealed a secret? The only up side to the speculation was that no one paused twice when Bruce Wayne jumped out of a window after an attack at Lex Luthors gala because Superman was coming.

Eventually the world is going to end or something if Batman doesn’t help and he swoops in just in the nick of time and the minute it’s over he runs like his life depends on it but someone catches him or he’s to injured to get far or whatever and everyone is only not bothering him because Superman is glaring at them, DARING them to mention it and upset Batman.

And Batman just sits there for a long seconds, and pulls off his mask.

It’s absolute chaos. Everyones minds are breaking, Batman looks like he’s about to cry, J’onn is laughing so hard he can’t stand, the noise is so loud and all the heroes are freaking out so much that any nearby civilians are wondering if they didn’t manage to save the world after all.

Throughout all of this J’onn (the mind reader) knows his identity and is both comforting Batman and trying not to start laughing at everyone else.

just wanted to let you know, i'm proud of you and i'm glad you're here. you are cared about. you do belong on this planet. it's good you're alive and i hope the world treats you kindly. <3

batman has gotta be one of my favorite heroes only because he’ll go through the most borderline traumatic series of events possible where he may or may not have proved an afterlife existed just to drive away in his stupid fucking batcar with his stupid fucking bat ears peeking out

Fuck yeah it has

(Source)

For the ones that need it today

*me, checking my own AO3 account to see if I have posted any new fic I’ve been waiting for yet*