The meadow of a fluffy sheep

This week has been so eventful. One of my biggest highlights from it was that my bestie @TabbyCat97 got into college!! I am so so happy for her and I am sending loads of love to her. I know how thrilled she was and I am so happy and excited for her.

I asked my dog's breeder if I could call her because I might want to breed dogs when I grow up, specifically the Japanese Chin breed, and although I had researched on the internet, I wanted to talk to an actual dog breeder who could give me some insight and walk me through what it would be like. We called and she gave me lots of helpful information.

For those of you who didn't see the earlier post or who want a summary, I went to my school's orientation day. I have friends who are incoming 9th graders and my ex best friend is also an incoming 9th grader. I was super extremely happy to see my friends after so long, but I was also really nervous about seeing my ex best friend because I didn't want things to be awkward between us. I gave my friends a tour of the building and showed them where their classes were. Then, after the open house was over, I invited two of them over to bake cookies for a get together we're having and it was their first time coming over to my house. It was such a great time and it was wonderful to be with them.

And again, for those of you who didn't see the earlier post or who want a summary, one of my friends told me about some difficult stuff going on between her and another person who goes to our school and it made me feel really grateful that she trusted me enough for us to have this deep conversation and for me to be able to support her like she's supported me before. I'm glad I could be there for her and that we have a good understanding of each other. It was really nice to connect with her in that way.

I ordered $100 worth of stuff for only $29 on Temu and it arrived in the mail. I was not disappointed at all! I got four slimes, a karaoke microphone, a heart belt, and fuzzy slippers. I usually get my slimes from kawaii slime company because they're high quality (texture and how long they keep), but they're expensive, usually $12-$16 per slime, so I usually buy a bunch only once a year. The karaoke microphone is super useful for singing, I recorded myself singing Choose Your Fighter (Ava Max), Weapons (Ava Max), Enchanted (Taylor's Version) (Taylor Swift), and Diamonds & Dancefloors (Ava Max). The heart belt is cute and the fuzzy slippers are very comfortable.

I cooked meals for myself for while my mom will be gone on a work trip in Korea. She left yesterday. I'm staying at her fiance's house for the weekend, and then this week I'll be staying overnights at a friend's house during the first week of school.

I went to open ring with my dog, and we practiced agility. It was less hot this week and he did a lot better. We got some videos. I love how bouncy he is when he runs (boing boing boing!) and how his little ears go up and down, haha. It's a Bichon thing. It's part of why I love Bichons so much, they're so adorable and endearing.

Have a great weekend everyone! Thank you for reading.

A quick note about pronouns: when we use the pronoun “we” or another plural term we’re referring to all of us or multiple of us, and when we use the term “I” or another singular term it means whoever is fronting is writing about just themself.

This week has had a lot of ups and downs. Some really great things have happened for us, but it’s also been difficult in some ways.

We visited an ethical pet store and got to pet puppies. They were so small and cute and precious. We absolutely adore puppies, they’re one of our favorite things in the world. We made tuna casserole and did our homework. A highlight was that we got first place in our science quiz game twice in a row, out of a class of over 30 people.

Something difficult from this week was that we had a lot of touch cravings. We were touch starved as a child and so we sometimes get touch cravings and always want to be hugged and held by our friends, so we have to limit ourselves so that we don’t become socially inappropriate by initiating too many hugs. We haven’t really had touch cravings like this for a while, and we’re not entirely sure where they’re coming from. We were also not doing well mentally one night and three people were coming to us for support. We tried to support them because we didn’t want them to feel alone, but that resulted in us feeling more drained. We tend to be the therapist friend. Some of our friends checked in on us and made sure we took care of ourselves, which we really appreciate.

We met with the gender clinic, 16 months after we had gotten on the wait list. The wait time was so long because it’s the only pediatric gender clinic in the city we live in, and there were about a thousand kids and teens in front of us. I’ve wanted top surgery since I was 12 because I have severe gender dysphoria and after meeting with the gender clinic we’re a lot closer to top surgery than we were before, which is a huge, massive, enormous deal. We are extremely happy about this.

We went to our school’s theater kickoff event. We’re doing crew, making sets and running things backstage and all that. Our friends are there and it was really great to spend time with them. Theater is something we’ve been looking forward to all summer because we want to hang out with our friends and be part of a goal (the show) together. At the kickoff, we learned about the production we’re doing, ate pizza, and spent time with our friends.

Something we’re proud of ourselves for is getting all our assignments in on time and working hard on them. It’s only the second week of school, but we have 100% in all our classes because we’ve been putting in effort and we feel proud about that. In our entrepreneurship class, we’re working on our business idea, which is a dog breed consultant website. Essentially, people who are in the market for a dog but don’t know which breeds would be best for their lifestyle can pay to have me ask them questions about their lifestyle and what they’re looking for in a dog and I will help them narrow down suitable breeds. Our entrepreneurship teacher says he loves our idea. This is an idea I’ve had since I was 11 but I didn’t have the time or resources to implement it. We’re looking forward to putting our idea into action.

We were struggling in school one day and I don’t remember exactly why. I think it was because we were having touch cravings and also because we were worried about if we did something wrong with our friend, and more that I can’t remember. We listened to music to cope with our feelings and once class started we were able to pause the music and pay attention in class and we’re proud of ourselves for that. It might seem like a small thing, but when you’re mentally struggling it feels big.

We had a job interview and it was our first one. The job was requiring too many hours to be feasible with our school requirements so we weren’t able to take the job, but we think we did okay with the interview. It was a big milestone, to have our first job interview, and I was nervous.

We’re camping right now and we have a wall tent. It’s a big canvas tent set-up with a wooden platform and raised wooden frames to set up our sleeping pad and sleeping bag. It’s nice that it’s not too hot and there aren’t mosquitoes out. We went hiking and it was very pretty.

We’re going to tell one of our friends about our attachment issues tomorrow because she’s become one of our attachment figures because of how kindly she’s treated us. We think it would be useful for her to know and we want to let her know that if we do something that makes her uncomfortable or if we become too obsessive she can always set boundaries and say something and we will always respect that. We’re a little nervous because we don’t want to scare her away. She’s been a super great friend to us and we don’t want to lose her.

Thank you for reading.

-Everett

A quick note about pronouns: when we use the pronoun “we” or another plural term we’re referring to all of us or multiple of us, and when we use the term “I” or another singular term it means whoever is fronting is writing about just themself.

Hello everyone! This week was so mixed for us. We'd like to start by saying we have a new alter, Mabel. She is 11 and a half. She is friendly, silly, and has medium energy (not super enthusiastic or super calm). She likes swimming and art, and loves to read and be outside. She's a typical preteen, not exactly a child but not a teenager yet either. She is an ANP (apparently normal part) which means that her role is mainly related to everyday life instead of trauma. That being said, when I was 11, I was in a relationship that lasted for a year, and not just one where it was like "She likes me, I like her, let's go get ice cream", no, it was a lot more serious and complicated than that. I needed that external validation because I was not getting it elsewhere. By the time I was 12, I had written documents with dozens of paragraphs trying to prove to therapists that I was mentally suffering and in pain and that I needed help. It shouldn't have had to be like that. At 11-12, I should have still been a kid, not in a serious relationship and trying everything I knew to cope and heal from things that were not my fault. Mabel is the developmentally appropriate preteen I never got to be due to trauma.

We went to see the gender clinic and it turns out we aren’t going to be able to have top surgery as soon as we turn 16 because they need to do a neuropsychological evaluation and the waitlist time for that could be up to 6-12 months. We are extremely disappointed, like EXTREMELY disappointed. We’ve wanted top surgery since we were 12 and we already waited 16 months to see the gender clinic, which was probably the hardest thing we’ve ever done, and we don’t want to wait another year to two years before having our top surgery. That just feels impossible. I feel disgusting and trapped and suffocated by our body and I'm not an impatient person but it’s been three entire years and we need it now. I cried at the gender clinic when we got the news because we feel so stuck and we hate the circumstances. Our friend had a top surgery consultation this week and we are super happy for them, they deserve this euphoria, but we have such mixed feelings too because we wish we could also be at that point.

We went to our first crew meeting for theater and we mostly learned about how the lighting, curtains, and sound work. We also went into different parts of the theater area and backstage so we could become familiar with the different parts. Our friend who's doing crew with us couldn't be there because she had driver's education, which is a bummer, but she'll be there in two weeks.

A package in the mail arrived with stuff we had ordered. We got a love bunny plush for Evie. Since she is a traumatic memory holder and her favorite bunny is an animal, it is symbolic for her to have a sad heartbroken bunny plushie and it helps her express herself. We got some pink fleece pajamas with hearts and strawberries on them for all the littles (Fawne, Ruby, Evie, and Mabel) and a heart print v-neck vest for Ruby and Evie. We will post pictures of these things right after we're done with this post.

Our dog was sick again and that was really stressful and scary for us. Our parent who we live with full time took him to the emergency pet hospital and brought me with, but she couldn't stay because she had too much work to do so she contacted our other parent to sit with us and our dog and wait and talk to her about the medical decisions. We haven't been alone with our other parent for over six months and we were really not looking forward to that. There are reasons we don't live with her, she's not a good parent and we really don't want to be with her or around her or involved with her in any way. Thankfully, she was actually tolerable to be around and she got us food because we were hungry, although we were dissociating because it was late and we were tired and it was a big (uncomfortable) deal to be with our other parent. We wanted to text our attachment figure for comfort, but I had already initiated a lot of deep, long conversations lately and we want to give her space and time to breathe before initiating another boundary type conversation. It was hard, we really wanted to text her, but we resisted the urge and got through it. We are proud of ourselves for being able to tolerate the feeling and sit with it. Our dog is okay now, they gave him some medical treatments and discharge information. We really hope he will continue to be okay.

Fawne was out for a couple of hours earlier today. I keep telling her that she'll get to be out soon and then things come up and she can't be out because we have to be around people or get things done, so she was happy to get to front. Sara and I also needed the break from fronting because it was the end of a school week and we were tired and stressed. We needed to let go of our responsibilities and problems and slip into our littlespace. She took a bubble bath, wore our littlespace dress, ate applesauce, and watched Blue's Clues with our stuffed animals.

Littlespace: The headspace an age regressor is in while regressed (also used as a kink term in NSFW kink contexts but I will never use it in that context and the two definitions are very different and do not overlap).

TW; SH urges but no actual action

Today was really rough for me. I got triggered by something early in the morning and got really distressed and got sudden urges to cut. I went to the nurse’s office and got some rubber bands to snap on my wrist and arm to satisfy the urge. I wanted to cut all day. Active urges. But I was determined to stay safe and clean. I told myself that I can do it because I can do hard things and I’ll look back on today and be proud of myself. I told myself that cutting isn’t worth it even though it feels like a relief in the moment it would damage me in many ways. I thought about the trigger all day. I tried not to, I actively used a bunch of coping skills. I listened to music, wrote about it, talked about it, encouraged myself with affirmations, and I would have used slime and my scented spray for grounding but I had left them at home. When one coping skill stopped working, I would use another. I tried hard to not let the trigger ruin my day, and I tried even harder to stay safe. My thoughts and feelings were so intense, but I fought back instead of letting them consume me. I can’t control my attachment issues, I can’t control getting upset over a trivial thing, I can’t control how I feel, but I can control how I react and respond to it. I can’t control how other people act, I can’t make people love me, but I can control my actions and love myself. I felt empty and angry at myself. But I redirected it into things other than cutting. At first, I felt like cutting would be the only option, especially as the feeling and urges persisted, but I trusted myself and believed in my ability to get out of the situation. I looked at my list of hard things I’ve done, I looked at my list of goals for life, and I knew I didn’t deserve to bleed. I knew I was worth it.

Hu

We’re looking forward to participating in several programs we recently got involved in.  We’re speaking in a government-run Preventing Youth Hate Crimes and Identity-Based Bullying Virtual Symposium, talking about what bullying means to us, why it’s damaging, and ideas we have on how to reduce it. We’re also participating and competing in DECA, which is an entrepreneurship program for high school students. We’re super excited about this; our business idea is a dog breed consultant website business. Our target market is people who are in the market for a dog but don’t know which breeds would be suitable for their lifestyle. We’re writing up a business plan, making a presentation, and presenting it to the judges, who will grade us on a rubric. If we qualify, we will go to state, and if we qualify after that, we will go to nationals. Our goal is to get to state. We don’t want to get our hopes up too high with nationals, as this is our first year doing this, but we are really passionate about our business idea. Another part of DECA is learning interview skills, like how to ask good questions and what things to elaborate on. We have a job interview on Wednesday for a nursing home server position, and we’re nervous. We want to get the job because the position sounds ideal for us and the hours are also realistic. We are also getting involved in a year-long against vaping paid opportunity for bettering our community by reducing vaping by 30%. Because we recently got involved in all these projects, we had to discontinue with theater crew. We aren’t too disappointed because our friend couldn’t continue with it either, and we really only wanted to be in it to have that experience with our friend. It’s also a big time commitment and it doesn’t have a positive effect on resumes and college applications, versus DECA, the against vaping opportunity, and the preventing bullying virtual symposium will look good on resumes and college applications. We will still come and watch the production, especially because our friend will be in it.

Last weekend, we went to our grandparents’ place and they took us to an apple orchard. It had the best apples we’ve ever had! They were honeycrisp, but better than any honeycrisp we’ve tasted before. We picked a bunch of apples and made three apple pies! One for my parent who we don’t live with and our brother, one for our grandparents and our great aunt, and one for us and our parent who we do live with. We also then went on a scenic bike ride, which would have been nice but it was unseasonably hot.

Thank you for being here, and have a great weekend!

-Everett and Sara

@mariainfj

Thinking of you and missing you lots, bestie. Hope you’re doing well. Always here for you and sending lots of huggle wuggles.

Hey all, it's been a while! I'm going to share some updates on these past few weeks.

I had a DECA meeting. DECA is a high school entrepreneurship program. My business plan is a dog breed consultant website. Essentially, when people are in the market for a dog but don’t know which breeds would be best for their lifestyle, they can schedule a consultation with me. I’ll ask them questions about what they’re looking for in a dog and narrow down suitable breeds for them. In DECA, there’s a regional competition, a state competition, and a national competition. My school’s DECA chapter leader says our school district tends to do pretty well in DECA competitions, and that there hasn’t been one person from our school who went to regionals and did not qualify for state. If I have a good business plan, which I do, and present it to the judge well, there’s a good chance I’ll then qualify for nationals. I’m super excited for that opportunity because I’m very passionate about my business idea. I’m not sure where the national competition will be held this upcoming year of 2024. I'll ask my DECA chapter leader at the next meeting, but I do know it’s in a different state. We’ll stay at a nice hotel and that entire opportunity is just super exciting for me. 

I started my job as a dietary server at an assisted senior living home. I’m training in right now, but when I’m on my own, I’ll be serving four tables. It was extremely exhausting to learn all those new things and adapt to and process this new experience of my first job. The people who trained me in said I’m doing really well, and I’m super proud of myself because I’m 15 and autistic and this is my first job. 

I went to an event for ANSR, association for nonsmokers Minnesota. I met a boy named Ethan there. He’s in 9th grade but he’s really tall. He was polite, friendly, genuine, approachable and easy to talk to. Almost all the time, with boys, I’m like, ahhh different species! I don’t know how to interact! Hence I’m not attracted to them. They’re just so different to me and they feel like a different species a lot of the time but Ethan was really nice. The ANSR event was at the city council. The mayor and city council members were meeting to talk about flavored tobacco regulations, and Katie (the leader of ANSR), Ethan, and I were attending to show support. There was a city council member who was completely against everything ANSR was for, she was like, “If you’re trying to limit tobacco stores to 5-7 per city, why shouldn’t it be 15? Why should you make people go to the next city over to buy their products? It’s a business, we need to keep the money coming in.” She actually was absent this time, which was a good thing, but Katie said that last time she attended one of these that is what she said. Then, there was a city council member who worked in healthcare and she was supporting ANSR. The rest of the city council members were white men and they all wanted to move on and not talk about or change the flavored tobacco regulations, but this woman said she disagreed. Katie said the last time she disagreed with the other members, she was kind of verbally attacked and her voice was shut down by the bad council member, so it was good she had the courage to speak up about this.

Another ANSR update: During the first meeting, we met everyone, did some get to know you activities, ate pizza, and talked about what the goal of ANSR is and how we were going to go about getting there. I met and sat with a girl named Clara and her friends. She smiled at me as soon as she saw me and I immediately felt welcomed by her. When we started talking, I could tell she was a genuine, friendly, and a good person to be around. The leaders of ANSR aren’t super organized, so they missed some people when sending the email invite to the last meeting, and I was one of the people they missed, so I didn’t know there even was a second meeting until I went to the city council meeting and asked. I was going to ask about what happened at that meeting, but there was a lot going on between reading the written laws about tobacco restrictions, talking with Ethan, and listening to the city council, and I forgot to ask. I texted Katie and asked for Clara’s phone number and I texted her “Hi Clara! This is Everett from ANSR, Katie gave me your ph0ne number. I didn’t get an email about the November meeting and just found out yesterday that there was one. I was wondering if you went to that last meeting and could fill me in on what happened? Thank you!” She replied almost immediately and said “Oh hi! Yes, I’d be happy to! So basically we talked about child labor in the tobacco industry and all the health effects that come with it. We also discussed which range of people we would like to talk to whether that be peer to peer, the school board or something at a state level. Also about the environmental impact when people don’t dispose of the e cigarettes correctly. These were the big things that I remember :)” I replied and said “Thanks! That’s really helpful. I went to the City Council meeting yesterday, and that was illuminating. Are you going to the next meeting on December 4th?” She replies not even a minute later and says “Of course! Glad the meeting went well! Yes I believe I’ll be there” I say, “Oh great! Looking forward to seeing you there. Would your parent be interested in carpooling? If so, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll just see you there, thanks!” She texts back “Ya! I think they would be interested in carpooling. I’ll check with them and get back to you” So now I’m waiting for her to get back to me and I’m really happy about this interaction because I haven’t made a new friend in a while and so this is exciting. 

I went to the Mall of America with my grandparents. It’s the biggest mall in America, about 30 minutes away from where I live. I love bath and body works so I got enough to last me all year because of the Black Friday discounts. I got two sweaters from H&M and another sweater from Old Navy. I got Panda Express and some really good boba tea. 

Thank you for being here! Have a wonderful wonderful week, my friends.

Welcome back to my meadow! 

I’ve been insanely busy this week. I have 139 things on my to-do list, 126 of which are repeating tasks. I have three upcoming entrepreneurship competitions which I need to put a huge amount of time and energy into. I’m in association for nonsmokers Minnesota, big brothers big sisters, and distributive education clubs of America. I don’t even have time for dog agility class anymore which was one of my favorite parts of the week. I’ve missed two therapy appointments in a row because of events and fundraising for programs and organizations. I also have chores and work Fridays and every other weekend and that I haven’t had time to hang out with friends outside of school in almost a month.

I met with my DECA chapter leader to get the answers to some questions I had about DECA. I asked him what he thinks my chances of qualifying for nationals are with my business start-up written plan. He says that if I check the write-up rubric, make sure I follow everything there, check the penalty sheet, and make sure I don’t lose points on that, and that if I’m clear and confident, my chances of getting to the state competition are high. He says the state competition is much more challenging and that only the top 10% of state competitors qualify for nationals. For all three competitions, I will hand my written business plan to the judges, they will read only the executive summary, then I will do a 15-minute presentation of my business plan with the last 5 minutes being for the judges to ask questions and for me to answer. I will have a trifold poster with text and diagrams. He says that if I put work into my trifold poster and make sure it looks neat and printed and not like I threw it together in a couple of minutes, it will help my chances. I will need to do a lot of practicing with him. The national DECA competition is in Anaheim California and is from April 27th to April 30th. DECA Blazers are not required at the district or state competitions but they are required for the national competition. I carefully looked at the dress code on the DECA website. It is very strict. I’m going to wear a navy blazer, white blouse, navy dress trousers, and black round toed pumps. I’m also practicing putting my hair in a braided updo to look more formal. If I get into DECA nationals, I’ll stay at a hotel that DECA has rented out for the competition, meaning no other families will be staying there during that time. I would either share a room with a female identifying student since I am comfortable with that or get my own room. If I am the only person who qualifies for nationals then I would get my own room by default, but it’s likely a female student in my DECA chapter will also qualify just given that she’s experienced and this is not her first year doing DECA. If she and I both qualify and are expected to share a room, I’m pretty sure I will request to have my own room if money allows. Because of my personality type, I need my own space, specifically a room with a door that closes, especially in a very stimulating environment with so many people and so much social interaction. The very last thing I would want is to get burned out, exhausted, and dysregulated. Our DECA chapter leader would not come into my room because he’s an adult but I would be able to call him on the phone if I needed anything. After curfew hours, a piece of tape would be put over my hotel room door, so that if I left the room an adult would know because the tape would be broken, which is to ensure I don’t leave the hotel room for safety reasons unless there’s an emergency. I’m fundraising for DECA by selling frozen Heggies pizzas; I’ve sold 14 pizzas so far. The money from the first pizzas will be put toward basic and general DECA costs, and the rest will go toward me for whatever costs I’ll need for district and state, and if I qualify for nationals, then the hotel, food, competition, and special DECA blazer. I’m going to try not to take it too personally if I don’t qualify for nationals. I know it’ll be a huge disappointment for me, but I’ll try to handle it as well as I can, so even though I’m very excited for the opportunity, I’m trying to keep a realistic perspective in the back of my mind. 

I met with my English teacher to work on the last summative assignment of the trimester, which might not sound like a big deal, but I was really struggling with motivation to get schoolwork done that day so I was really proud of myself, especially since I did well on it. 

I had a meeting for ANSR (association for nonsmokers Minnesota) with my school’s principal. We talked about possible solutions to students vaping in the school bathrooms. We have another meeting on the 4th of this month, in two days, and I’m bringing Girl Scout cookies to share with Clara and her friends. Because vaping among teenagers and mental health are so related, I made a detailed list of coping skills categorized by both emotion and type. I’m going to hand out a copy to the leaders of ANSR and see if they want to mass print it to give out to students who are feeling stressed so they can use those coping skills instead of vape. 

This week, I called with three friends separately, and that was really nice. I called with Kalia, who is also in ANSR but was unable to make the meeting about vaping in the school bathrooms. I filled her in on what happened and also my opinions on it. We also talked about DECA and she was very supportive. I called with my friend Nora.  She’s a really great friend. I told her about DECA and she told me about how her family is having a baking contest. I love baking, and I actually had just made chocolate chip banana bread, so I told her about that too. Then, I called Kamillah, and we talked about ANSR and she gave some good example analogies of how it’s important to give firm consequences to the students who are vaping at school. 

Work has been going pretty smoothly. It’s still exhausting, but I’m getting more used to it. I get to take food home at the end of my shift, and it’s really good, fancy food. The co-worker who trained me in today was super kind and friendly to me. I’m getting to know more of the residents’ names. 

Thank you to anyone who replies for supporting me and giving your insight, I appreciate it very much.

@AnnaSilverberg @AvyIsKing @LavenderHere Thank you so much for taking the time to write such thoughtful replies, your support is truly a big part of what keeps me going. 💖