tree | that obligatory introduction post

there are people who are good at writing these things, but i am not one of them. so, have a list.

things you ought to know in no particular order based upon what occurs to me right now and that i will ~~probably~~ continually add to over time:

01. sometimes i take an unconscionably long time to reply to comments
02. i have a mental illness or three
03. my fascination with personality typing is deep and longstanding
04. i'm a 4w5 (enneagram) and an INFJ (meyers briggs)
05. i'm also a white, asexual, cis-gendered female, married to a white, pansexual, (maybe)cis-gendered male
06. but i really like ladies
07. it's confusing
08. in order to be able to talk about things, i sometimes talk around them, in code
09. i'm a feminist, pro-choice, child-free, and a pacifist
10. (sometimes i think my pacifism is actually a defence mechanism to counter my innate violence)
11. my fannish activities (mostly) happen at

borrowedfable
12. i suffer from misophonia, joint hypermobility syndrome, and a ridiculous number of allergies and intolerances
13. i have both a BA and an MA in english literature; they live in a box under my bed
14. my body is pierced, stretched and tattooed (oh, my!)
15. i generally prefer animals to humans
16. but for various reasons, i don't currently have any pets
17. it's a small, daily ache
18. winter is my favourite season, rain my favourite atmospheric condition
19. bed is my favourite place (see icon)
20. i love language and the way we construct and deconstruct our selves and our worlds with words
21. "i already feel like an idiot most of the time anyway."
22. sometimes i talk about menstruation and other bodily happenings in detail
23. i'm shy, apparently; i never really thought i was
24. by the time i was ten, i'd lived in four different countries
25. i find it difficult to answer questions about where i grew up
26. my accent is constantly shifting and i can't really control it
27. which is probably one of the reasons i don't like talking
28. i kind of love gillian anderson a lot
29. i have opinions and i'm not afraid to use them
30. in recent years i've become very fond of novels that have one or more non-human animal protagonists
31. not so much dragons, though. or horses.
32. maybe not cats, either. domesticated ones that is.
33. lions are acceptable.
34. i'm an atheist. (a recovering catholic.)
35. sometimes i sort of wish i'd done a degree in mathematics
36. i don't wear makeup
37. ~~or own a hair brush~~
38. i do not sign up for or comment at love/like/affirmation/praise/gratuitous flattery memes
39. semicolons are my favourite punctuation
40. i dislike capital letters (unless we're talking about capslock, of course) and i have a philosophical objection to capitalising the pronoun 'i'
41. if someone asks, though, i'm happy to type their name how ever they prefer
42. please don't capitalise mine. i'm tree, not Tree. <-- this is actually very important to me okay?
43. i've recently started puffing my cheeks out when i'm thinking, for some reason
44. if i get a present with one of those pre-made stick-on bows, i stick it on top of my head
45. and i stick the stickers that come on fruit on my forehead
46. i hate taking showers
47. i sleep with four stuffed animals
48. they are my squishy friends
49. sometimes i sing little songs about them
50. i like bubbles
51. and magnets
52. and windup toys
53. i really don't like infinite scroll. it ruins any sense of anticipation.
54. i really fucking hate daylight savings
55. no seriously. it is horrible. AND POINTLESS.
56. i suffer from trypophobia (also horrible and pointless)
57. but i love toe socks
58. and feet in general. not in a kink/sexual way, just in a generally appreciative way. people should care more for their feet.
59. as a child i wanted to be a podiatrist for a while
60. i am not a podiatrist
61. i like words that are both nouns and verbs
62. well, really, i just like words
63. cephalopods are awesome. i am partial to octopuses.
64. oxford comma or gtfo
65. i like knowing when in the world people are. (hey, baby, what's your time zone?)
66. my favourite number is zero. if you're in any doubt about how fantastic it is, i recommend the nothing that is: a natural history of zero by robert m kaplan.
67. after about a decade of not owning a hairbrush, i now have one again
68. hair is gross, really
69. i love it when women cover songs originally performed by men
70. i'm getting better at liking male vocalists
71. but i still prefer women
72. this is true of pretty much everything

last updated 20 may 2017

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It took three times reading #15 to realize you'd said prefer and not refer. And I didn't even think that statement would be all that weird. My brain, I don't even know. /nonsense

hee! i think if i'd said 'refer' it'd be the other way around.

have you always had a lot of allergies and intolerances? i've only recently started developing allergies towards lots of foods. challenging and strange.

yes and no. when i was a baby, my mum couldn't produce enough breast milk to feed me, so i ended up on formula. unfortunately, it turned out that i was allergic to cow's milk and ended up going on soy formula. when i was old enough for solids, my mum made all my food. and i know that until i was in my teens, eating more than one piece (or drinking a glass) of citrus fruit made me hyperactive. there's also been some mention of hyperactivity when i was little, but i don't know much about it. i don't think anyone paid much attention at the time, it was more "don't feed her the stuff that makes her hyperactive."

as i got older, i seemed to "grow out" of my food issues and was able to eat pretty much anything. somewhere during my first year of college, i developed an allergy to apples. my lips and the inside of my mouth and throat would swell and develop and sort of sore itchiness. i saw a doctor about it and she told me that it was a sort of anaphylaxis and the only thing to do was not to eat apples anymore.

over the next five years, i developed direct allergies to stone fruit, nuts, tomatoes, as well as intestinal problems.

i finally was referred to an allergist in late 2001. basically what he told me was that you don't really "grow out" of childhood allergies, but your immune system can learn how to sort of reset itself. nobody really knows why the immune system attacks itself to begin with, but he mentioned that he's treated a lot of women with allergy problems who have taken synthetic birth control hormones and he's of the opinion that the pill is a major contributor.

so i did an elimination diet regime with him, and he put me on a progesterone cream treatment to sort out my menstrual hormones, and things got a lot better. soy is one of my allergens and from what i've read, it seems likely that it's because i had so much of it as a child. it also didn't help that because my mum couldn't produce enough breast milk, i didn't get that immune boost.

sometimes i feel like my immune system is boxing me into a corner. it keeps taking things away from me without giving me anything to replace them. when i stick to an allergen-free diet, it feels like i can only eat about five things. the truth is that's not much of an exaggeration. so most of the time i don't stick to my allergen-free diet because i'm too tired, or too fed up, or filled with too much hatred for my body, and so i'm always sick, and i gain weight, and i have intestinal problems, and it feels like everything sucks.

um, this turned into quite the pity party, i'm sorry. i have a case of the sunday night blues. i hope some of this was useful, at any rate.

well, hallo...i just sort of followed you here, i admit. i was clicking around some poetry comms i watch on lj, because what else do you do at 1:30 in the morning, and i found your journal. and i think maybe we should give internet-friendship a go, because we share a ferocious love for language and gillian anderson and i also have a mental illness or three, which is always a fun source of bonding with strangers on the internet. yes. hi?

you had me at "gillian anderson"! which would be funnier and more meaningful if it had been at the beginning of your comment, rather than the end. so, um. hello! let's be friends.

oh wow, i have incredibly awkward timing. sorry for the belated reply! i posted this comment right before i left for boston for four days, so yeah, i just got home last night. anyway. yay, awkward first impressions, let's be friends!

no, you are timely! that thing on my list about taking a long time to reply to comments sometimes? months, on occasion. i mean to, always, and then somehow i keep not. i dunno. anything less than a week seems quite fast to me. :)

heh, well, if i'm timely in your universe, then i'll gladly accept it. i'm pretty sure it is the only existing universe in which i am timely.

also, since you replied within mere hours, dude, that must be, like, superman lightning speed! i feel dizzy. is this what having super powers feels like?

*snicker* well, y'know, sometimes if you catch me just after i've gotten home from work and i'm still high on that whole "OMG NOT AT WORK ANYMORE" feeling then i can be speedy. and, i mean, i do live in the future.

Hi

I found you because we have a couple of friends in common, and noticed that we have a few things in common. I'm also pro-choice, pacifist, child free, feminist, Gray A (leaning towards demisexual in my case) and have an MA in English Literature somewhere around here. I also suffer with a couple of mental illnesses, think the semi colon is the best, love rain and loathe daylight savings. That seems like a good start! May I add you?

hi! there's no need to ask; it's always open season here for subscribing and unsubscribing. thank you for reminding me to add the oxford comma to my list. :)

Thank you, I'll add you now :)

This is an awesome and excellent intro/info post. I do #44 too :)

i don't know how i got here, but i saw the tori amos quote in your most recent post and added you, hoping you'll update more.

i suspect you will come to regret this decision! but thank you for the compliment.

i miss you, lady. friends (again)?

*

i've been lurking your journal for a bit and have found it to be very interesting. we seem to have some interests in common, like mbti, the enneagram, and astrology. forgive me for any grammar mistakes, i am a bit of a rogue when it comes to writing. the rules of it have slipped through my fingers over time. i try to make up for this by reading more but, well. . .you know. perhaps i am stuck in my ways.

at any rate, i am leaving this comment here in the hope that we could become friends. i don't have an introduction post anymore but maybe by the time you see this i'll have something for you ( and everyone else ) to read. i've been using dreamwidth to be a bit of a lurker over the years and i've only recently decided to try to find people to add.

i saw your post about hating other 4w5s and i'd like to see if there was a exception to that rule through me. i'll be honest and say, that after being on forums and certain discords, that i had put the whole idea behind this personality typing to rest. there were a lot of unpleasant experiences. i mostly keep to myself and am terrible at having public facing accounts. i just think you're neat. i would love it if we were genuinely able to connect, even if it may take you awhile to reply to me, i will wait.

i am very interested in reading your journal so i am going to subscribe and comment to you. i have since remade and moved accounts and refuse to add anyone unless i stumble upon them myself. i am also an infj and i think that there could be kinship here. if you'd like access to me please let me know. it's nothing particularly interesting outside updates about my general emotional state of being, but it's good to see i'm not the only one who updates in this manner.

at any rate, my name is asher and it's nice to meet you!

that obligatory introduction post

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject