(CW: Just plain whining)

So I fully admit I'm going on this tangent because the internet's out again and I have to complain about it somewhere. I decided to flesh it out into a whole thing.

I was born and raised in Texas. I've been in the same house here all my life, in a "suburban hell" as it's called. I've only had a single vacation, to Philadelphia, for about two weeks, and that's my only experience of life outside Houston Texas. Call me sheltered, but I find it a vastly preferable place to here, even with only a two weeks' stay.

The weather? How could I not make this the first thing I talk about. It's hotter than you could imagine. I don't know how everyone else acts like it's tolerable. It could be my autism, but I feel actually so unwell just from being outside, and I always have since I was a child. I'm sensitive to heat and bible belt texas is NOT the place to live in like this. With global warming, the weather's only gotten WAY worse. The air is always so humid it splits my head, it's almost always above 90 F in the summer, often going above 100. We need a fierce amount of A/C indoors, and even then I use blackout curtains so I don't get a migraine from all the bright light coming in. It's at times debilitating.

Next on the list, the culture. I live in a "progressive" area, all the kids I made friends with in school were pro-LGBTQ+, but there's still always going to be bits and pieces of texas culture everywhere you look. There's churches everywhere, constant ads for the texas rodeo, I had several teachers who had a nigh-obsession with sports culture especially american football. Several of my neighbors tried to convert me to christianity when I was, like, seven. And if you've ever heard of the "bro county" aesthetic, that is everywhere here. The culture I grew up in was heavy on toxic masculinity, religion, and american propaganda. I quickly grew sick of it. It felt like I was having ideas shoved down my throat since I was little. I could feel the way people wanted to mold me, and I resisted. Nowadays? The culture is the same, but it's way worse when you factor in politics. More on that later.

The power situation. It's bad. You may have heard rumors about the texas electrical grid. Indeed, it's separate from the rest of the united states' grids, which led to the famous texas blackout. But that's not all. We have our own power companies, such as Centerpoint energy, the one I have, which all compete with one another. And they have their own problems. Centerpoint in particular has been known to have very poor customer support, random outages during the tamest of storms, and sometimes up to hours to restore power. Hurricane Beryl certainly didn't help, as they removed their outage map completely which hurt people like me just trying to make it through. It is seriously a test of patience when you're deep in focus on something and the power surges for a single second, turning off everything in the house and losing you your progress, because of a mild drizzle outside. It happens embarassingly often.

As for internet, we have comcast at my house. You can hear lots of opinions online about how comcast has the worst customer support service ever. While I haven't had to use customer support as of yet, their internet service really sucks sometimes. I started making this post because, at time of writing, the internet died again and has yet to return for over two and a half hours. This happens at pure random, often in the middle of game sessions. I feel ashamed and embarassed getting kicked out of activities with my friends and getting so frustrated and angry over this. My serverbox is constantly losing connection to things, I'm always being notified of my stuff being down, to the point I had to ask for help with my discord bot to make it auto reconnect after xfinity fluctuations. I just felt embarassed to admit this was a problem.

Additionally, comcast has extremely poor options for people like me looking to port forward or otherwise manage their routers. They moved everything to an app a few years ago, which requires an account, and the app has its own problems like not updating the devices list, not loading some menus, and especially in my experience, spamming "sorry, something went wrong" with no explanation when I try to do anything. Amazingly, the app requires an already working internet connection to manage offline settings and restart a router. It has been nothing short of a struggle to get my serverbox working with comcast as the ISP.

Transportation and roads? When I said I live in "suburban hell", what I meant was there's no public transport at all here. There are some options downtown, but I don't live downtown, I've lived in this house all my life. Roads are okay, some are disproportionately busy compared to others. The poor power situation mentioned above leads to frequent traffic light outages. I'm lucky to not have to use the highway here that everyone has to use to go places - I've yet to drive on it alone, actually. From what I'm aware, Houston has a reputation for having extremely wide highways, and I can confirm it's true. I'm mostly scared of the speed, though, and, god, the drivers. Some other people are absolutely insane in their cars here. What I've heard from my IRL friend has not inspired confidence. Not to mention my driving course specifically cited my county as having the highest drunk driving incidence in the US several years ago...

Doctors and health. An absolute joke. I'm sure it's fine for neurotypical people, or those without as many problems as me. But I just want to stress that several doctors have ghosted and blocked me and my family for no reason, one once told me I was lying about my health problems, some will wait weeks to get back to you about appointments and referrals. I saw an orthodontist as a child who plucked baby teeth without permission, made a mistake during surgery, and kept me coming back for years for more money. I got roped into seeing a cardiologist who put me through several months of tests only to admit my heart was perfectly healthy, and I don't need to come back, but I should, obviously to give him more money. When I started HRT, I got placed with an uninformed nurse who gave me meds at the wrong time and stunted some of my body changes. I've been to a hospital that doesn't have a single patient bed for drawing blood on, for fainters like me, and literally referred me out to another hospital downtown that they think has a bed.

And I mentioned this in my last post, but I've been bouncing between therapists for a long time because every therapist I've seen in Texas is just after my money and doesn't care about helping me. Since I was a teen, I've grown a vast distrust for doctors and health professionals here. The overall message I want to impart is steer clear.

I can't speak much for the food scene because I do have ARFID and I have steered clear of most food for all my life. That being said, Texas has a huge emphasis on stuff like barbecued and mexican food. These things often have strong smells and are made with spices, which trigger my sensory issues something fierce. That's why ever since I was very little, I've pushed and pushed to only eat out at fast food places, where the food is the same every time. Speaking of, I really dislike the local food chain Whataburger. I grew up with it but I guess I outgrew the taste. I prefer burger king now, when I can stomach it, because it does give me indigestion.

Lastly I've got to bring up the politics. I've steered clear of political anything for many years because of just how heated it gets. But you bet my blood started to boil when I learned all about the governor here, and when I heard a few years ago texas was making motions to push the most anti-trans laws in the US. I'm lucky to already be a transitioning adult by the time this started, but even I've had issues. I submitted my legal name and gender marker change in May. I've received no updates at all, and when I called, I got vague and conflicting answers, ending with a notion about waiting 12 weeks that I don't see anywhere else online. I tried to vote 2 years ago and was told texas has a law that prevents people from voting until they've been registered for a month. Thinking about this stuff just leaves a nasty taste in my mouth, and I feel a familiar mix of disappointment and anger every time I hear about the governor here doing much of anything. He did leave everyone to suffer during the texas blackout, including his own dog, I heard.

Overall, I've been longing to just be teleported somewhere else, somewhere father north, for most of my life. Especially now. I don't think jobs and moving are in the cards for me for at least a few years, but one day I really, honestly, truly want to escape this hellscape. Move to a trans sanctuary state. Bring London. Get a house...

Sorry for dropping this so suddenly and for the sheer complainy nature of this post. I've not been doing too great lately and I just need to let off a bit of steam somehow, I guess. Also I'm just really mad at comcast for the outage because I was mid-call with my boyfriend who was comforting me after a sleepless, depression-filled night of tossing and turning. The internet finally came back after 4 hours of downtime, and my IP changed again. I'm posting this hours later cause I think I said some really important things and need to keep my feelings written out here.