disability, writing about heavy things in personal webpages

[cryptid from the north]

hello to fellow disabled people and people who struggles with heavy (you can decide for yourself what's "heavy" and what's not) problems. i mean mental & physical health issues, bad life situation and similar.

my question is: do you feel isolated or judged if you write about heavy stuff? and if you write about different things, do you receive less feedback on your depressing texts?

after social media (especially mastodon and tumblr i guess) i'm pretty anxious to write about it. i feel like i need to put 999 TWs, censor myself, make things sound less bad than they are, hide everything potentially "uncomfortable".

as a note: i don't think putting TWs is bad overall. i think i'm just used to put it to every single separate post, not just to the whole site or journal page.

what do you feel about it? do you have similar experience? if yes, do you continue to write anyway and try to accept yourself, or you have troubles with it? what reactions did you receive?

upd: damn, i'm not sure if i should put this to writing topic or leave it here...

[thearistocats]

My site is still new and I have no idea if anyone has been viewing it, but I actually feel much more freedom to share heavy things on my personal site than I ever did on social media. With social media I felt like I was in a shared space with unwritten social scripts that I didn't understand, and I felt really uncomfortable with the idea of sharing something very personal or intense and having someone take issue with it as cringe/wrong etc. Now I have a blog on my site and if anyone has a problem with what I write there, tough! They can move on, it's my site to do what I want with it.

Personally, I think if you feel limited in your expression by having to add a ton of trigger warnings and having to downplay your own experience, it might be helpful to act against those impulses. I think a warning at the top of the site saying something like "heavy stuff here, readers beware!" is enough. I have one heavier blog post right now and I did not add trigger warnings because that required me to name things that I felt uncomfortable naming in that space. Ultimately the site is there for you, not them, and while we should try to be kind to our fellow netizens, especially with accessibility, you can only do so much until you're punishing/limiting yourself.

[cryptid from the north]

@thearistocats thank you thank you thank you for understanding and sharing your experience (T_T)

you can't even imagine how validated i feel!

[Y2KStardust]

Personally I have a separate part of my site for rambling about disability but I've found that people seem really accepting of heavy pages like that on the smallweb :]

I think an option is having a splash page ahead of the writing w/ potential TWs, I do this with my main site anyway so I did a similar thing w/ my disability page and went into a little detail, albeit not explicit, on what to expect ^.^

[haumeaGeth]

Personally, I think if you feel limited in your expression by having to add a ton of trigger warnings and having to downplay your own experience, it might be helpful to act against those impulses. I think a warning at the top of the site saying something like "heavy stuff here, readers beware!" is enough. I have one heavier blog post right now and I did not add trigger warnings because that required me to name things that I felt uncomfortable naming in that space. Ultimately the site is there for you, not them, and while we should try to be kind to our fellow netizens, especially with accessibility, you can only do so much until you're punishing/limiting yourself.

I'm going to second this response.

The small web is not social media. It's not a curated, shared space, it's a town. Your website is your own house. You're not going to curate your house to suit other people's preferences. That just doesn't make sense, does it?

On the wider internet, everyone is ultimately responsible for their own net safety. It's not any one webmaster's responsibility to pad their site to make every single person on the internet feel comfortable. Not only is that just not feasible, but it would defeat the purpose of having a personal site altogether. If someone comes across a page they don't like, they should leave. They should not berate the webmaster for making their own site uncomfortable for other people. If they do, that makes them a huge, entitled jerk-

The way I handle this sort of thing is this: on the front page of my site, I have a little Censorship Panda button ('cause it's cute and fun and handy). My site is currently rated Web 14, but if I start tending towards darker topics, I can change it whenever I want. At this time though, I don't tend to write about darker stuff - mostly because it just hasn't come to mind. So, on individual blog posts that do mention some such or whatever, I put a brief trigger warning on those blog posts. If I ever started writing like that more frequently though, I'd stop bothering, and just update my Censorship Panda, possibly with a specific note on common topics. This way, visitors have fair warning, and they can make the choice for themselves whether or not to proceed.

[ValyceNegative]

As we are all webmasters on this forum, and the main topic is about smallweb/personal sites, I don't feel the need to introduce the concept of online blogging on this post. OP, I'm sure you're familiar with the benefits of having a space where you can freely talk about anything, and replies already have underlined how writing a blogpost on one's own website is much more genuine of an act rather than writing on social media. The key difference is percieved audience: you are bound to know that something on social media is much more public and easily accessible, with any kind of post having the potential to attract any kind of people. A personal site (even a popular, frequently visited one) by design already is a filter as it is viewed only by people who want to actively explore it. If they are looking at your pages, and know your site is centered on such subjects, they are aware of what they could find. The smaller, more curated audience helps you open up more and treat your blog like a personal diary.

However, what I'd like to add is that when writing a post that focuses on personal or sensitive subjects, many bloggers have forgotten to analyse who are they writing their post for; a lot of times, the reply is for oneself.
Writing to oneself for oneself's sake is a cathartic, purifying act that can help digest and overcome traumas/difficult moments and tidy up thoughts. It requires, however, that the author is as honest and open with themselves as much as possible. And I think, unfortunately... that is impossible to do in an online space, however private that might be.
If you're writing something intimate online you will always feel, even if just a bit, that percieved audience: unconsciusly, you will always alter your thoughts to be more palatable for the readers, orderly, you will add warnings. Try instead writing on an offline file or even better on a real paper secret diary! You can be as messy, cryptic, open, sincere as you want: a world of no rules nor warnings where the only audience really is you.

Offline and online journaling can coexist, neither are cancelling the other! If you still want to talk about a sensitive matter on an online personal space with the intention of gathering feedback, similar experiences and support, then it makes sense to add the post to your site. If you want to talk about it to let the thoughts out and read them by yourself, try out offline. Maybe try writing about the same subjects in both manners, then analyse the differences afterwards :)

[Rosaria Delacroix]

This is something that I've thought about ambiently for years, though it has been thrown into much starker relief as of late- with venturing out into curating a personal website.

My writing has always been a source of catharsis for myself, primarily. It has been a vehicle through which I have transformed intense trauma into something I can handle without wincing at even a glimpse of it- the layering of artistic technique and craft allowing me to spend more time in contemplation with the hurt, such that it becomes less overwhelming: inuring myself through a tempered, safer handling.

It has been critical in my PTSD treatment- and something encouraged by the professionals I have worked with. Other people have always come secondary, if they register- I write because I feel as if I have to, because it is a foundational means through which I understand myself, and that deep self knowledge is far more important to me than whether people might find it palatable or not.

Blogging has put an interesting spin onto things- as it is a far more raw, less polished approach than the Confessional movement of poetry, (one of my favourites, and one in which I write-) or the various pieces under different pen names I've transmuted my trauma into: (some of which were very well received by others: awards, accolades, reviews- inspired fanworks. In the end, the human connection that sparked between writing in a relentlessly authentic, painfully earnest fashion were what stayed with me: like someone's quietly expressed comment that they appreciated how I'd depicted alcoholism in one game: how it rang authentic, the discordance between wanting to overcome an addiction and the struggle of chasing relief and loss of control.)

My disabilities are not something I can hide. Having the sort of life that I've led: it radically, drastically fucks up my presentation to the outside world. Having a traumatic childhood means that casual conversations about family stories, childhood nostalgia, and holidays all become minefields. Having a physical disability that people can see on you, that limits your ability to perform and act like others do- it is not something I can scrub away. No matter what stories I might try to spin, whatever polite masks I slip into place: my body gives me away. It doesn't lie. Why would I bother trying to?

For years, I felt like the raw edge of a wound- like the cutting edge of a knife slipping between your fingers. I felt disgusting. People around me made damn sure to hammer it in, over and over and over again- what you are is repulsive, unpalatable, dangerous: you are the mere summation of your hurt, you are only what has been done to you: what has happened is your fault, your hurt is too much, too unbearable: disgustingly selfish, for continuing to live, and making others have to stare in horror at the depravity that can be inflicted onto another living being that still has the audacity to want to live.

People are incredibly cruel, when faced with the reality of just how bad life can be for some people. It disturbs them, disrupts their perception of righteousness or fairness or inherent goodness in the world: for people who have always had cause to be happy, it is easy to be kind, to believe in goodness as something that is easy come, easy go. For those who have had to fight and wring out every last drop of their dead eyed optimism: kindness is not so easily disregarded.

It's in those people- who have similarly stared down the barrel of the metaphorical gun, and who still choose, who make the choice every single day to live, to be kind in spite of what life has demonstrated to them, not because of it- that I find a sense of kinship, compassion. People who have to make the deliberate, conscious decision to be as good to people as they can, because they know there is no such thing as an inherently good person incapable of inflicting harm: they understand, in a way that others who have never been through that pain can never really quite grasp.

If people are going to reject me out of hand, are going to make comments like their blatant disgust and request for me to immediately shut up and go be overtly disabled elsewhere- if they treat me like an inconvenience, why the hell would I want to court their favour? Why would I wish to cut myself down to size, render myself easy to digest, palatable: for people who wouldn't spit on me, if I was on fire? So, I don't concern myself with what those people might deem worthy of judgement. They don't deserve that level of consideration from me. They would never accept me- why pine and contort and twist my spine out of shape for them? Their acceptance means less than nothing- it would be an insult, for the betrayal and harm I caused myself in exchange for it.

If people take more of an issue with the fact that I am wounded, rather than the wound: they do not deserve such acrobatics from me. I am not only my hurt, but my hurt is a distinct part of me, something that has shaped my life and who I am: and I do not want to be accepted only in part, only for my utility- only for the beautiful, shiny, useful pieces. My emotional intensities deserve equal room in my life: I only know just how sweet life can be in contrast to the bitterness of survival, my capacity for love and tenderness wells forth not in an absence of suffering, but because of it. I treat the people that I love like I love them, precisely because I know the agony of being hurt by those who claim to do just that. I have known hurt: I do not want to inflict it onto those I love- but it is the initial wound that bloomed into that steadfast devotion: you cannot pick and choose only the good parts.

That being said: I do find that trigger warnings can be a valuable tool to help other survivors make informed decisions about what they are capable of handling and experiencing- as one's window of tolerance can fluctuate. This is more pertinent in works of art that I create: things that are shaped to be experiences to be interacted with, deliberately created for others to pick up and examine: it is a courtesy, when I am asking for them to engage thoughtfully with my work.

I do not self censor to that extent in personal contexts. My pen and paper diaries are a ruthless, relentlessly authentic exercise in my purging myself of whatever I have or want to say: there are things that simply needed to be expressed, but that I would never say to the people they concern: because it would not be productive, it was not meant to facilitate communication: and it wasn't about them.

It was about me, and making space for myself and my emotions: such that I am able to show up in my everyday life and be the kind of person that I want to be: it's the difference between screaming into a pillow and not lashing out in unwarranted rage at your loved ones because you're boiling over with emotions that direly need an outlet. There are details I would be ashamed to read aloud- purged pettiness and silly grievances, things that will never be acted upon: and there are, too- intense delight and joy, enthusiastic gushing of adoration and near worship, a dizzying rollercoaster ride of the unfiltered human experience. My nearest and dearest have a similarly intimate portrait of me: to be loved, is to be known: to see all of someone, and to not turn away from them in light of that knowledge.

Living like this is part natural temperament, and part conscious choice. I've been referred to as radical, iconoclastic, divisive- polarizing. (And many, many less flattering remarks.) It is sometimes a lonely path to walk: but I am the kind of person who would much rather be entirely isolated and alone than surrounded by false friends who would throw you off the wayside the second you fail to conform and perform. The exchange for such few relationships is that they go deep, are intensely personal and loving: the catharsis in knowing you are truly accepted and loved for by one person well outweighs the empty flattery and admiration of dozens.

I know that because we have walked through the worst years of my life together- and came out the other side, singed and still smoking: but hand in hand, a relentless, furious devotion: a dogged, steadfast promise to be there for each other, through thick or thin- come hell or highwater. I would not trade that love even if it meant intense popularity, or widespread admiration. I will never be the kind of person it is easy to love- but for those who choose to, I know that it is a clear eyed decision they make: one they commit to, over and over- as I do for them.

At the end of the day: the singular most important thing to me is whether I can look into a mirror, lock eyes with myself- and decide whether I am willing to live like this: if I can continue to live, being the sort of person that I am, leading the sort of life that I do. Can I endure being the kind of person that I am- that my words and actions and the absence of the very same paint? And if I can, if this authenticity is something I can swallow: then it's enough. It is all that I need. I refuse to apologize for who I am, after years of being made to feel guilt and shame for what others have done to me. The only accountability I am willing to take is for myself. I will not preemptively beg for forgiveness for what I have not done. That mantle of guilt was never mine to bear- the shame is not in my having been hurt, it belongs on the shoulders of those who hurt me.

It is a self acceptance borne out of life or death stakes- and hard won, fought for. When the stage lights flicker out, when the theatre dims- who will I be, when I am left alone? When no one else perceives me, no one else bears witness to my life- the audience disappearing after the performance? Can I live with myself? Will I be enough for myself? On a deep, fundamental level: the only person I have is myself. That is the only person that is absolutely guaranteed to walk beside me in life, who I can lean in on and trust utterly, completely: who I know to every subatomic particle, can control and cajole and predict. I have myself, if I have no other. I damn well strive to make it so that that sense of self isn't false- isn't suffocated beneath what others want of me, from me- what about what I want? What about what I need? I am the only person who I know with deadset certainty will care for me. It only makes sense to ensure that that relationship is as honest as it can be.

It isn't something I can tell you to, or not to pursue. It is only how I've led my life, how I continue to do so. I can tell you that I have not regretted it- that the resilience it has built has borne me through the worst days of my life- through near death experiences. My fundamental commitment to myself before any other has been a deep, abiding source of comfort and strength. The times that I have wavered, or contemplated hacking myself down to size: those have been when I felt most keenly, the shame others wanted to bludgeon me into a neater box with. I would not willingly step back into that perspective.

Life is hard. It can be excruciatingly cruel. It is a deliberate choice to be kind in spite of it- not just to others, but also yourself. People who turn away from the hardship in life just because it makes them uncomfortable are not worth my time, or the effort in changing myself for. I have enough to handle without coddling people who would look at me and judge me as monstrous for the crime of having been sullied by hurt inflicted by others. I categorically refuse to feel shamed, to feel dirty, sinful- lesser than. I am not only the ways in which I have been hurt- but they have fundamentally shaped my perspective, my life experience: and if someone can't accept that other people may have led a less charmed existence and been shaped by it, that's their fucking problem, not mine.

And hey- if they don't like it, they can look away. It's not on you to make sure every last scrap of your life is ripe for consumption. Do what you feel works best for you- but don't let the spectre of judgement crush you into a wet pulp.

[Noah_S]

Socially I seem to be in a similar situation to Rosaria Delacroix, but I'm not at a point where I could've written that.

It's not about preserving privacy. It's that unless I do my best to imitate a bot, I am taboo. Not the things I've experienced, me. Otherwise supportive places can write about how it's narcissistic of people like me to not want to die because if we exist we ask others to risk knowing about us, and they face no backlash at all for essentially telling people with extreme trauma to just die already because we're uncomfortable. I can't get close to anyone without them knowing. My answers to regular getting to know each other questions are taboo.

"What do you do for a living?"

"I'm disabled"

"Oh, from what?"

The answer is taboo.

"How did you get interested in shipping (meaning large watercraft) history?"

The answer to that is taboo.

"What are you doing for [holiday]?"

"Probably watching some movie"

"Oh, aren't you gonna celebrate with your family? Why not?"

The answer to that is taboo

"Do you want a drink (alcohol)?"

"Nah, I don't drink. Feel free to have some though"

"Oh, why not?"

"Doctor told me not to drink with my medicine"

"Oh, that's too bad. I hope it gets better"

It's taboo for me to not pretend that it will when it won't. And if I don't the next question is about how I'm so sure or maybe they're wrong or that they thought that antibiotics were supposed to be temporary. And any response I could give is taboo.

Do you see what I mean? It seeps into everything even when it's not the main focus. And there's a huge pressure on people like me to be inspirational. The thing I've been asked most often when people find out about my background is "how are you better off because those things were done to you?" People want me to wrap it up with a pretty bow to make it digestible. And there is no pretty bow. I get told that it made me who I am as if that's a good thing and I should be grateful. Like I would've been evil without these experiences and they were for the best. I have a question for those of you who do your best to be kind and haven't been abused. Do you commonly get told that you should've been abused so that you'd be even kinder?

I'm guessing that the answer is no. Please correct me if I'm wrong. But I frequently get told that it's a good thing that I was abused before I could walk because that made me kind and "kids are resilient". No, they're not. I was in survival mode before I could walk and I didn't leave it. I'm completely broken from it. The moment there's any pressure I shut down completely. I'm just now coming out of having been shutting down for a year the moment I tried to do anything creative because I've been trained by society to think that people like me have to earn the right to exist by being the best of the best to atone for what others have done to us. And I wasn't even able to keep a regular drawing schedule.

I've given up on online support groups because the youngsters in them who grew up on social media see me as bad representation. For example, I'm at the intersection of asexual and disabled. Many ace people in those groups don't want me there because I apparently reinforce the idea that ace people are traumatized and that it's a medical issue. This is no doubt coming from the fact that it was classified as a mental disorder until 2013. And meanwhile many disabled people are pushing back against the idea that disabled people shouldn't have sex, and here I am being bad representation and reinforcing stereotypes by not wanting it. I don't blame the people who weren't comfortable having me in those groups. I blame the society that pushed them to that point. If someone at this intersection has found a group that accepts you without you having to hide, I'm happy for you. I haven't had the same luck. And it adds an extra layer when even people who have been rejected for something they can't change reject you for not being palatable.

I don't want to have to go out of my way to hide anymore.

[rolypolyphonic]

My entire website is essentially about my experiences with disability (in particular mental illness), and I am far more 'open' about it than most. Generally this has caused two things:

- I do get hate and negative feedback, even from other people with mental illness, who think I am unpalatable and should straight-up vanish for it;
- People who have similar experiences to mine seem to find some comfort in it, in particular because some people feel that I can share thoughts or feelings they have had that they themselves may not find feasible to express

I agree with Noah_S that the situation itself is treated as 'taboo' no matter how you approach it, especially if your disability is 'unglamorous' enough. There's this tendency online to treat individuals not as, well, individuals, but as 'representation' for a larger demographic they belong to, which often leads to being held to specific standards that are often more about looking good/not making other people 'look bad' than anything else.

If one can't write about what it's actually like then it feels pointless and even counterintuitive to bother saying anything about it at all. Not that I think a person 'should' write about it or post in public either: rather, I feel people need to evaluate for themselves whether a more private avenue is more suitable for their own situation, and that this is better than forcing one's self to be 'sanitised' for public view. From my experience after all, it's definitely possible to get hate from it and that's not something everyone is prepared to deal with; if you feel for yourself that getting negative reactions cancels out whatever possible positive expect you would get out of expressing yourself in public, it may not be worth to do so. As ValyceNegative said, you could always try doing it in an offline or private space instead.

I also think writing about something that is inherently uncomfortable or heavy means that the reader should know what to expect, and if they don't and take an issue with it, that is frankly their issue to deal with. It is understandable that not everyone wants to read about upsetting or negative topics online, but a singular disclaimer on a front page or about section or even just labelling a website with what it is about is sufficient.

The type of person who will express backlash about that sort of thing is the type of person who is going to do it even if you put a million trigger warnings all over your page anyway, because quite frankly they are also the type of people who are not trying to engage in good faith in the first place. It's not the type of person worth trying to appeal to.

[Noah_S]

Yeah, I'd probably put a warning on top of the relevant pages. I'm still figuring this out, it's only 2 days since I figured out that I can put a traditional drawing of a ship on my website instead of sticking to only digital art of animals, which is what I was doing on social media. And large parts of my site are childfriendly, and I want to keep those like that. But I also don't want to hide. I'm not looking to write graphic details, I'm looking to not have to hide that things have been bad and not have to do the tiktok censoring words by making it sound cute thing.