u/punk_w1tch

Hello! I’m 19 and never really had a strong connection with anyone in my family due to my father and some other personal stuff that’s not the most important but the anniversary of my grandfather passing is soon so I’ve been thinking about him more this month. He was half native american on his mothers side (one of the Iroquois tribes I believe my uncle has more on the specifics) but he either wasn’t very connected to the culture or he just never talked about it after coming back from Vietnam. I believe it makes me about 1/16th blood wise and I’m no doubt the whitest looking person in the family so I would never consider claiming myself as native to other people. But would it be offensive or even just silly if I learned more about the cultural practices for myself? I’m a very spiritual person and I’d love to incorporate some of my heritage into my practice but I also don’t want to overstep even if I’m just doing it in private. I know I don’t really need “permission” from anyone but I just wanted to get some opinions from people more connected to these cultures and I will totally delete this if people find it offensive!

Edit: After talking to my mom I might be less than 1/16th so it might just be silly

Hello, I’ve been thinking a lot about this experience lately because I’m in a new relationship for the first time since this happened and it left much more of an impact than I thought it would. Basically when I was in 7th grade (11-12yo) this new kid moved to our school and joined our friend group (15-16yo). The ages are so different cause he was held back a year or two at his old school and my birthday falls in the calendar weird and my mom didn’t wait the extra year whatever not that important I just figured I should mention it. It was a totally normal friendship before we went to pride that year and he said he really wanted to make out with someone while we were there and somehow through us all joking around that turned into him paying me 5 dollars to make out with him (which was unfortunately my first kiss). After that all my friends were telling me that he had a crush on me and he was acting weird and eventually he asked me out. I said yes cause I liked him a lot as a friend and at 12 I wasn’t really having crushes so it didn’t seem that crazy to me to say yes (I’m 19 now). Once we started dating he would force me to sit in his lap every time we hung out together which usually had other people around. He also made a huge habit out of licking my face despite me telling him to stop and getting visibly upset every time. He did a similar thing with kissing, I HATED kissing him, but he would pin my legs with his while i was sitting on his bed and kiss/make out with me. If I wiped the spit away afterwards or asked him not to kiss me at all he’d get upset with me and he all around pressured me to kiss him. He would also nonstop ask me about sex and when we’d have sex and egg on our other friends at the time about us having sex until it was like a group discussion. I ended up having to tell them all I was asexual to get them to leave me alone about it which followed me all the way through high school (I just had a friend from high school who I wasn’t even friends with at the time tell me she thought I was ace). The whole thing made me develop a really weird relationship with dating and sex that I only just really worked through but I never know what to actually consider the situation. I don’t think it really occurred to him how much of an age/experience gap there was because he wasn’t exactly the brightest but I also have no idea what his intentions were. He never actually SA’d me as far as I can remember (I had the whole thing blocked out of my memory until I started dating again) but I almost feel like I was if that makes any sense? Like unless I really really buried a memory somewhere he genuinely didn’t but I relate really heavily with other peoples experiences about being SA’d or groomed. I think I just really want to fully wrap my head around it before I can start really digging into healing from it but I wanted some outside perspective cause my knee jerk reaction is that it wasn’t really “on par” with other peoples experiences and i’m being dramatic but it’s also apparently effected me more than I realized.

I got diagnosed in early May when the genetics office my old rheumatologist referred me to about 2ish years ago randomly reached back out to me. Before they even did that though I had gotten a new referral to a new rheumatologist for 2 weeks from now. I asked the geneticist if I should keep the appointment and she said yes but that was kind of it, I’m just wondering what you guys go to a rheumatologist about rather than your primary after your diagnosed. Also adding on at the end that I’m gonna go either way this isn’t me asking for medical advice I honestly just don’t know what happens now after being diagnosed!