so while i was writing the book, i became violently suicidal.
this was mostly due to the fact that i had a very bad reaction to some meds and my brain stopped producing any serotonin. also i was in the last semester of grad school where it’s actually illegal to feel anything but dread. so it wasn’t going well.
somewhere in the fog of it i became aware i needed help. nobody was taking clients or my insurance. i didn’t want to do inpatient care - it wasn’t right for my needs. there’s not really an “in between” stage between “inpatient” and “no care,” but i was trying to do the right thing. i was trying to activate the chain of command that was my emergency plan. i knew i needed help now.
i used betterhelp.
i know, i know. i’m a straight-A student and so smart and so clever, how could i ever use something so blatantly bad. to be honest with you, i didn’t feel particularly keen on it from the getgo - things that seem too good to be true usually are. also, if something online is free, the price is usually your privacy.
the thing is that there was kind of a global pandemic happening at the time and i worked 5 jobs alongside of being a fulltime student and also like writing a book on the side. it is a miracle that i even thought about getting help. i would love to tell you i had the mental wherewithal to like, process whether this was the right choice for me. mostly i was desperate. i was so suicidal that i was trying to find a reason to stay inside of fortune cookies. i was the kind of suicidal that looks like splatterpaint. i hadn’t been that bad in an entire decade.
they took my data. i gave them it freely. somewhere out there, they have a dossier on me. on everything i survived. my story in little datapoints, scattergraphed beautifully.
the first woman told me that really i should be grateful, because (and this is a direct quote): “at least you’re not anne frank.” i said that i felt that statement was antisemitic, as anne frank’s life and experience shouldn’t be compared to like, a nonbinary lesbian in western massachusetts. the therapist said that i should try to use lucid dreaming to try to picture myself in an actually scary situation, like running from nazis.
i applied for another therapist. i was willing to accept the possibility that there was a bad apple in the bunch. the next therapist and i even laughed about how inappropriate that statement was. and then, in our next session: the new therapist said if i was struggling with body image issues, i should just work harder on my appearance. she spent 3 sessions in a row talking about how she was grieving, and made me memorize facts about her grandmother so “she can live on through my clients.”
i am a three’s-a-charm kind of person. okay, so what if the last person made me uncomfortable. i figured it was just a misunderstanding of priorities - she had felt she was sharing with me, i had felt like i had to take care of her. i applied for another therapist.
the last woman asked me to help her pray. she bowed her head. i stared at her, frozen, while she said: lord, i beg you: cure her.take the pain of being gay away from her.
i spent somewhere between 2.5 and 3 months on betterhelp. in that whole time, i was not getting the professional help i so desperately needed, even though i was fucking trying.
in the end, i survived this because i finally could get off the meds that were literally killing me. a request for a real therapist finally went through. i survived because my friends saved my life. because nick let me sob myself dry in his arms. because maddie took the razors out of my room when i asked them to. because grace slept over in my bed for like 3 weeks in a row since nobody trusted me not to hurt myself when i was alone. i survived because i got fucking lucky. because even when i was desperately suicidal, i was too old and too self-aware to take “you need to be prettier” as good advice.
the thing is that there’s a 19 year old me who isn’t like that. who would have heard “just think about how grateful you should be” and said - oh, i see. i would have assumed that is what it means to be in therapy: the same thing my abusers used to tell me. that i am just pretending and lazy. that i am ugly and unworthy.
betterhelp positioned itself to take advantage of an incredibly vulnerable community. it preys on desperation. it knows it is serving people who are not doing well mentally. it saw that there is a huge need for real, immediate, compassionate mental health care: and then it fucking takes your money and privacy.
i still get their ads on instagram. last night i watched as a woman in a pool pretends to talk to a different woman. they discuss her anxiety.
there’s a 19 year old version of me, and she didn’t survive this. she was too tired, and drowning. i almost fucking died. this thing almost fucking killed me.
in the ad, the woman playing the therapist takes a note on a clipboard and then nods once, sagely.
i have to admit it’s a pretty scene. the steam and light coming off the pool water lands on the actresses. like this, it almost looks baptismal, holy.
I actually wanna chime in here and give my two cents since I’ve done a lot of anxious research for similar fears of mine. So here goes. Summary/TLDR at the bottom:
The more browser extensions you have installed, the more fingerprintable your web browser is!
That’s why on the TOR Foundation’s website they recommend that you install ZERO extensions on the Tor Browser. Of course, in reality most people want or need some, so here’s what I’ve come to learn on a few vital and mentioned ones. The goal is to minimize your extensions as much as possible.
You don’t need two ad blockers. uBlock Origin is the best of the best, and has an element zapper if it ever misses anything automatically, which it rarely, if ever, does.
Privacy Badger is (allegedly) an outdated extension that doesn’t do very much other than make your browser more fingerprintable.
minerBlocker (while I haven’t don’t much research) doesn’t sound very useful. Because Firefox, if you change the Cookie Block settings, can block CrytoMiners on its own. uBlock Origin can also do this with a special script, but that’s beyond me, so you’ll have to turn to Reddit if you wanna use it for CryptoMiner blocking.
If you’re worried about viruses, the app Malwarebytes is cross-platform and open-source. It’s widely trusted by r/privacy and r/piracy. The free tier won’t run automatically after your free trial is up, so just run it every time you install a piece of pirated software, and then every once in a while after.
Also, you forgot the golden rule of torrenting. A good browser and extensions only prevent fingerprinting from a website, itself. This isn’t what’s gonna get you in trouble with the law. So: GET A VPN!! The ONLY way to prevent your internet service provider (ISP) from seeing what you’re doing is to encrypt your network usage with a VPN. Mozilla (the makers of Firefox) have a paid VPN which I personally use and is very beginner friendly and cross-platform. Most free VPNs cannot be trusted and usually collect, sell, and report illegal data, which defeats the purpose. Without a VPN, however, your ISP will be able to see that you’re downloading peer-to-peer content. Now, that isn’t always a bad thing. Some ISPs don’t care, and won’t do shit. For example, Mozilla VPN has failed a few times for me when I left my client running overnight, and nothing’s ever happened. If you live in Germany or another country with stricter piracy laws, or you have a stricter American ISP, you could get fined and/or have your service turned off. In Germany people have even gotten jail time. The #1 thing to do if you have anxiety about piracy is get a well-trusted VPN like Mozilla’s. In fact, if you only do one thing from this thread, THIS is the one to do. I highly recommend that you NEVER download to upload peer-to-peer pirated content without one, as it is a serious risk.
And finally, use r/piracy as a means to find reliable websites. Do not download torrents or files off random websites before looking it up on r/piracy. Stick to popular and active torrents, and I would suggest primarily using 1337x.to as a trusty website. Also, look for trusted crackers and repackers. For example, if you’re torrenting Mac Apps, a well known cracking group is TNT. If you want games and Windows software, FitGirl and DODI are popular repackers for them. DODI’s repacks are also among the only ones I’ve found that word with Translation Layers like Wine, WineSkin, and CrossOver on macOS and Linux.
Also, no amount of extensions on Firefox will make you anonymous. If want anonymity, you need to download the Tor Browser, add ZERO extensions, and NEVER change the default window size or settings. This level of security usually isn’t necessary for your average torrent downloader, though. I’d much rather use Firefox + a VPN than Tor. Tor is extremely slow because of it’s Onion Anonymizing Network, and is really only needed for people who have a reason to hide from the government, ie: political whistleblowers, protest organizers, etc.
There is also an extension called NoScript. It’s the only extension that comes with Tor, and it can be downloaded on Firefox as well. This extension is your gateway to preventing websites from collecting and sharing your data. HOWEVER, this extension will break websites, and it can be very frustrating to use if you aren’t privacy-minded, tech savvy, and patient. So, if you’re a beginner, I’d recommend trying this one at another time.
And finally, you need a way to download the torrented data (duh). The only two clients (apps) most people trust are qBittorent and Transmission. uTorrent is no longer trusted due to privacy issues. DO NOT USE IT. If you’re a beginner and want something with a pleasant UI, I highly recommend Transmission. I’ve been using it, and personally I love the simplicity over qBittorent; however, I know a lot of more advanced users really love qBittorent.
So, if you wanna get into the basics of piracy, here’s what you need:
Firefox
uBlock Origin
ClearURLs
“Strict” or “Custom” Cookie Setting on Firefox
Mozilla VPN!!!
Transmission
If you wanna go more in depth, add NoScript and swap Transmission for qBittorent.
And if you wanna go really advanced, replace Firefox with Tor Browser and download ZERO extensions. If you need me to tell you how to use Tor and what it’s for, though, then you probably don’t need it.
