[Art] Work!

What I've been working on lately.
All work and no play makes...
makes me...
er...

be nice and send chocolate?





And now to sleep. Too much work.

[PTSD] So I have this thing called aphephobia/haphephobia or a 'touch phobia.'

I wrote this as a reply to someone, but decided to repurpose it (to upcycle! Lol) here (it's been a bit edited):

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Imagine your favourite food in the whole entire world was chocolate. It wasn't just your favourite food, it made you feel better to eat it, it improved your mood, and nothing else really compared to it. It's more than just a food. It's something that you're dependent on. You love having it, sharing it with others, experiencing it. It's great.

Then - one day, for reasons that aren't entirely clear - it makes you throw up, and feel itchy and scared and aggravated all at once. It's horrible. For a year - because you love chocolate so much - you make yourself eat it sometimes thinking 'maybe it's the type of chocolate, maybe it's the brand, maybe it's the ingredients, maybe I just need to stand upside down while eating it,' every crazy thing you are thinking of. You are that desperate to get back the 'feeing better' and improvements of eating it. You try other foods. You try lateral thinking. You try crazy stuff that makes you feel more sick while eating it, and you try scientifically prescribed stuff that doesn't make a difference.

Nothing else makes you feel as good, nothing compares to it; one day you remember that humans are biologically designed to need chocolate. Tests show that without nourishing, healing chocolate, human babies are more prone to die, to get sickness, to wither, to be emotionally stunted later in life. Damn, you think, I need this stuff. Not because of science, or my biology, but it just made me feel good. I was more human with it. It was part of my shared collective experience of what it was to be a human.

Then, one day, after thousands of dollars and years of painful therapy and problems with your friends and family members who don't really understand it, you are considered 'recovered.' But your recovery is that simply - you can eat chocolate without throwing up or feeling itchy, most of the time - but you'll probably never be able to taste it again. It will never make you feel better again. Or improve your mood. And people tell you that this is reasonable and okay and even think that this is a Good Thing (TM). You can functionally eat chocolate without being sick, so...goal achieved?

They are wrong.

*

Now, substitute 'chocolate' for 'touch', and you have haphephobia (aphephobia, or touch phobia). This is what I have. And this is what I've had for almost five years now (along with PTSD).

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