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lubdubsworld · 2 years

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Hey Shyn! There's something I wanna ask you about if you don't mind? This may get a bit long though so sorry for that and you totally don't have to answer if it makes you uncomfortable!

How do you forgive yourself for making mistakes? Especially when they involve other people despite how much you love them?

I'm currently in therapy for anxiety and habitual overthinking and recently started feeling for guilty for the smallest to biggest mistakes I've made. Especially the ones that involved other people and ones that were not out of the best intentions on my part. I remember there have been times when I've done unfair or wrong things to someone in my life out of my own insecurities, jealousy, frustrations, etc. And suddenly I'm remembering them randomly and I'm realizing how wrong and unfair I was and how I didn't think about their feelings at times. And I can't stop thinking about it.

I've apologised to some sure but it still makes me feel guilty that I thought of them like that or tried to take advantage of someone. Honestly, that person said they don't think it's as bad as the way I see it because they think I'm a much nicer person and that makes me feel crazy honestly because what's good about someone who has done that?

But another thing I realized is the "cancel" culture where we see quotes like "You are not at fault for what they said to you." Or "Its their fault and not yours." And I talked to my therapist about this and she told me that we shouldn't forget that at times its US who's in the bad position or the one who does the wrong. And that made me realise how these quotes on social media send this "message" where we look at everyone who makes mistakes or hurts others as the "bad" person and end up forgetting that everyone has been in that compromising position at some points. It's definitely not an excuse to do something that's wrong but it's about not making people the "villains."

So then how do we not overthink our mistakes? I mean....does hurting others without realizing or even intentionally out of our own negative emotions.....after accepting our mistakes and learning from them, does that allow us to move on from it? Do we deserve to move on from our mistakes after learning from them? Do we deserve to let it go and live on?

Sorry if that was too heavy 😭 I just love your replies to asks so I wanted to ask about something that has been bothering me too for the past week. Thank you 🤍

Ahh anon .. let me give you a big warm hug.

As I grow older , I realise that it gets more and more difficult to tame my feelings and emotions, to not act out impulsively and to not do thing or say things in the heat of the moment. Even here on this blog o sometimes answer asks that I should probably just block and move on but then I've always been a speak your truth kind of person.

I also realise that whether we do it intentionally or unintentionally, the hurt we cause is often the same in magnitude. So yes, when I make mistakes especially involving my loved ones ...I have a very hard time forgiving myself for it.

I haven't fully solved this myself. So I'm not sure if I can help you. I just wanted to tell you that I understand what you're saying and your feelings are valid.

And yes... You're right about not making people villains because we've all been villains at some point. I think the line is between seeing if there's something that makes you behave that way , continuously and to adress the root cause.

Like if you hurt someone in passing in some way then that's fine as long as you apologize

But if your potentially toxic actions have a pattern.... If you continually treat people badly or if there's a particular facet of your personality that makes you prone to treat people in a bad way, that maybe worth addressing.

Guilt of course helps no one. Guilt is alright just to the point of triggering a change or a conversation or an apology...beyond that it just becomes a hurdle...

❣️❣️❣️

Sorry for the late response... I have been reading and re reading your ask for a while and it made me think of a lot of things to about myself.

Here's to being better people as we grow older ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

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divine-mistake · 3 years

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hi i just followed u but i’m already so obsessed w ur blog and seeing some of ur posts from tonight i just had to send something in because wow

first of all— we are really similar in age so i feel compelled to tell you that you are not at all alone in your feelings regarding where your life is right now in regards to school, socially, and everything else. i think that this age is one that brings on huge transitions in all facets of life, and that the pandemic only heightened that. it’s a lot of adjusting; it will be a lot of adjusting for a long time, probably. however, you are right where you need to be. your experiences are your own: your journey is unique and is not linear. comparison can feel plaguing and suffocating at times, and it’s very easy to forget to apply the love and care we give others to ourselves, so i’m happy to read that you are choosing to be gentle with yourself and to have empathy for yourself today. hats off to you, my dear.

additionally, i have no clue what you are studying in school, but if you ever feel like you might want to be a therapist or some type of mental health care worker, fucking go for it. i’m currently studying to be a therapist and you have the language, the validation of emotions, the reflection of feelings, EVERYTHING down to a tee. you just seem like such a genuine, empathetic, and kind individual and i wanted to let you know that. and i’m so happy that i found and followed your blog <33

aaaaaa hi friend, i really appreciate you sending me this!

the pandemic has really affected a lot of people and i know i'm not the only one who has felt significantly worse because of it. at the beginning, i used to tell people to check in on their loved ones a lot and to be careful with people they know struggled with mental health, but i did not realize how much it would affect me, personally haha. so i'm just recovering. trying to get back what i lost. sometimes you have to be the one to love yourself, even if all the others around you love you too. my brain and my body needs ME to love them. so thank you 💖

i'm actually studying sociology right now haha. i am a student researcher studying inequality, specifically gender, sexuality, and race inequality. i have tossed the idea around of being a social worker, and i have always wanted to do therapy, but i worry that my own mental health or my own struggles will be too much in that field. there is a lot of death in social work. a lot of blame. a lot of burn out. and while i'm a helper at heart, i'm also a researcher and my research means a lot to me. but i do wonder what i'll end up doing most days, bc a degree in sociology leaves a lot of paths open for me haha.

thank you though, i really appreciate that! i try to be kind and to put love into the world because while i think there's a wealth of love in the world, i worry that so many people are using up all their love on other people and not themselves. so i try to be the person that can love on them when they can't love on themselves. all my fanfic has the same kind of thing haha, i just love to remind people that they can, and are, loved by their comfort characters. and if their comfort characters love them, then they can love themselves too!

anyway i'm rambling but feel free to drop in and chat anytime lovely 💖 i hope you enjoy your stay for as long as you're with me!

#divine answers #gray-reads #this is a nice thing

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there-will-be-a-way · 4 years

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1/?? ok so first off im really sorry for sending this ask but you seem as good a person to ask as any. dont feel any pressure to answer or even read through this all tho if you dont want to. this will be a really long series of asks so definitely feel free to ignore them if they overwhelm you, because i cant really keep my thoughts straight atm, but ill number them all and sign off with a '- H.'

2/?? So for starters, I’m not asking for a diagnosis, obviously you’re not a therapist, I’m just asking for any advice/opinions you might have and want to offer up. So I’m 19, I dropped out of school when I was seventeen, almost never attended before that, tried to get a job a few months ago but was fired after a few days of work because I stopped showing up (I was in a numb, dissociative state for the full work days, and I had to get drunk just to be able to have the courage to go in) - H

3/?? I was diagnosed with anxiety, depression, autism and c-ptsd all when I was 16 because it was obvious that I was having a lot of trouble functioning in society and socialising with anyone. I have always dissociated a LOT, having out-of-body experiences, talking to people without feeling like I was really personally choosing my words and they were instead just coming out of my mouth from nowhere, feeling numb and having a lot of problems with memory. - H

4/?? I thought for a little while at the beginning of this year that I might have DID because of all the dissociation and occasionally having short spurts of lost time, but I quickly dismissed it because I didn’t think I had any other personalities in my body (I don’t know if that’s the right way to talk about them, forgive me if I say something confusing or wrong, I didn’t know much about DID until very recently). - H

5/?? Anyway, in recently I found your blog and looked through a few of your posts (not many, just the last couple of pages here), and I thought, what if I do have personalities? I often feel like im not fully in control of myself and I have heard voices before, although it doesn’t happen much and I never connected either of these to a definitive personality. - H

6/?? So I decided to try to separate myself into different people (I don’t think that’s the right term but bear with me) and I came up with a list of nine initially. And the more I tried to categorise my behaviour/opinions/hobbies into each of them the more afraid I got, because I think i might actually have DID after all? It was very easy to do, and its very easy for me to see everyone as seperate entities - H

7/?? Except im nineteen so surely SOMEONE would have noticed I had it before now? Even if I didn’t, someone else should have? Although most people who know me would probably write off my behaviour as a combination of the effects of aspergers and ptsd, so they wouldn’t even consider something else. - H

8/?? Also, I read about switching, and different personalities having very distinct voices and presences and I don’t know if its just that I haven’t examined these facets of myself before, but I don’t think I have that? Maybe i just need to think on it more than i have, but im worried im just lying to myself because im so desperate for answers as to why i am the way i am. - H

9/?? So ultimately what im saying is, I don’t know if im lying to myself or if it might be a real possibility I have DID. Just from what ive written here, do you think theres any way I could have it, or is it obvious I probably dont? I think it would be useful to know if it would help me get more in touch with myself, because a lot of the time I don’t even feel like a real person. - H

Hey there 👋🏻

First of all, you are brave for reaching out and wanting to figure out what's going on with you so go you! However, it would be irresponsible of me to judge your situation based on the little information I have about you - and this goes for any stranger on the internet. This is definitely something you should bring up with a therapist, if you can, especially since your symptoms seem to cause you a lot of distress and disrupt your everyday life. Whatever your symptoms stem from, you deserve professional help.

So yeah, my advice would be to bring this up with a therapist and be open to all possible explanations. In the end what matters isn't so much the diagnosis but getting help for your symptoms. In the meantime I'd advice you to look into grounding techniques and practice them since you obviously struggle with dissociation. It can also be helpful to keep a journal and write about your experiences.

Lastly, there is a common misconception in your ask that I'd like to clear up: Dissociative Identity Disorder most often is a covert disorder. The disorder's purpose isn't to make the most elaborated and noticeable 'personalities' but to survive severe childhood trauma. That means different things for different people - and therefore the disorder is different for everyone - but most often dissociated parts of self (= the 'personalities') are so covert that it's common even for therapists to not notice the person has DID. Many people with DID have parts that act very similar and are hard, even impossible for others to tell apart or notice.

Anyway, I hope you understand that I didn't not answer your question because I'm being mean but because I don't want to cause you harm by misjudging your situation (I'm just a stranger on the internet).

I really hope that you can get the help you deserve since what you describe does sound distressing and is worth looking into. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you and sending my support.

Take care!

#answering asks #anons #tw drinking mention #didn't not answer?#didn't answer not because?#I have no idea how to say this but you get what I mean #language machine broke

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ardenttheories · 4 years

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If you don't mind me asking, what makes you a Page of Heart? What made you come to that conclusion? I'm always curious about someone's reasonings for such matters and would like to hear yours! But only if you're okay with sharing, I know it's a very personal question!

I’m more than happy to answer this!

So, I should probably begin by saying that, personally, figuring out my Classpect was... hard. I have a tendency to put up fronts for various people in different situations, which made pinning down my actual personality difficult. I was at a point, a few years back, where I couldn’t say what my aesthetic was, what my style was, what my sona looked like, what my favourite colour was - because I genuinely couldn’t settle down on any one thing that I liked. I had no idea if blue represented me best, or orange, or if I liked the way a singular sona represented me.

It was a point in my life where I genuinely didn’t understand Heart enough to figure out who I was. I overcompensated by trying to position myself as specific things for people - a father-figure for my best friend, a stoic and capable partner for my boyfriend - and I actually relied really heavily on fictional characters to base my sense of identity around.

So, this made actually determining my Classpect part of my journey to figuring out the real one, in a weirdly paradoxical way. I spent so long trying to Classpect myself based on these facets of my personality that I never noticed the facets existed to begin with - yet, when I actually looked closer at them, the Page of Heart just... clicked.

Furthermore, I tended not to consider myself, and had a habit of letting myself suffer or let my own issues boil up in my desperation to be good for other people. I self-sacrificed for no good reason, and it tended to mean two big things happened:

- People came to me with every little issue they had, parked their anxieties with me, and left me fretting over them for the rest of the day because I didn’t realise they just needed to vent, and weren’t in actual danger (the part of a Page of Heart that just misunderstands situations and events, and has an incorrect Emotional response)

- I exploded on people over incredibly minor things further down the line, almost consistently when I was at my least emotionally stable, to the point that my boyfriend began to fear my montly (which always fucks me up) and my best friend begged me to see a therapist (the part of a Page of Heart that tends to overreact)

Though, to be fair, I’ve always struggled figuring out emotional consistency (which hits home on how Pages of Heart give disproportionate emotional responses). I tend to flit back and forth between extremes, which has led to... a lot of negative situations; me chasing after boys, screeching, for something as minor as calling me a “maneater”, or me having a severe mood drop after being cut off over something I was talking about, even if it wasn’t intentional.

This is what made me realise, after some thought, that I probably wasn’t a Mind Player. Heart is all about Impulsivity and Emotion, and I was definitely showing that over the concept of Logic and Distance. I was too Passionate, too Illogical, even though at first I thought I was just someone who maybe struggled with their Mind and ghosted Heart.

The problem was, Logic has never been my issue. I can be very Logical. I can think things through to a fault, I can even overthink, I can analyse and pick apart and tell you exactly what was going through my Mind at that exact point; it’s just that my Emotions were what overruled. It’s the Heart that I focused on most, and the part that I struggled to contain.

Pages of Heart start with a Lack of Heart - start with almost no understanding or power over Heart - and then get better and better at it as they go through life.

This is what pegged me into the idea of something like a Page, rather than a Bard and Prince. Because I was good at Heart-stuff, just not all the time.

I’m really good at figuring out peoples’ Emotions. I can read a situation pretty well (though it’s taken time for me to figure that out, and at first I almost always got it wrong), and I can pretty easily Classpect people with a fair amount of accuracy (which has come from me analysing people down to the ground and building up my own understanding of Heart over several years).

I accurately guessed what a new friend’s favourite animal, colour, and style was, despite not having spoken to them for long and having had no prior information about them. This, compared to several years ago, when I couldn’t tell my boyfriend what his favourite colour was even though he actively reblogged yellow things all the time.

I had a tendency to try and shove my nose into every problem a friend had because I wanted to be helpful. I thought I knew how to fix everything, knew how I could be the one to save the day, and I loved it whenever I was even vaguely right - though most of the time I was almost painfully wrong. I got into arguments with friends who just wanted to vent because I tried too hard to be empathetic and to help, or I related back to myself too much as an example.

I’m much better at that now. I can usually diffuse a situation without much issue, can pick up on when something’s wrong with most people, and have a much easier time connecting Emotionally now than I used to. I find that my advice tends to hit home to people more now that I can understand them and their needs better - and people tend to open up to me more now, too! But I’ve also gotten better at setting up my own boundries, and that... that helps a lot.

I think it’s also safe to say that I was a bit... super-obsessed with my likes and my passions.

I know, for sure, that I’ve pretended to be obsessed with something just to try and validate my own feelings. To connect that flimsy sense of identity, I’ve claimed that I love puppetry when I know nothing about it, or that I adore horses when at the time I was probably more connected to cats or rabbits.

I also know that I have been obsessed with things to the point that throughout my life, I’ve always had that one main fandom hyperfixation, and pretty much nothing else besides. I still like other things, of course - I just can’t get into them as much as that one hyperfixation I have. That, though, never stopped me from pretending I knew a bunch about Transformers for a friend.

All of what I’ve said above hits pretty much every point on Dahni’s Page of Heart analysis and Sylph of Hope’s Page of Heart analysis. I used these two sources to help me figure out my Classpect (with the assistance of my boyfriend, so that I wasn’t falling into the Page trappings of only picking up parts of my Identity), and especially reading Dahni’s post, it all just seemed to click.

My journey was to learn to be “balanced and sincere with their emotions, their affections, and with themselves”, to be “passionate, sincere and truly honest”. I have been fluctuating through such extremes throughout my life, with very little honesty towards myself or my identity - finally reading that, accepting that I have to settle down, to learn, and to take care of myself before I can truly help others? It’s made understanding who I am so much easier. It’s made being better for my friends, for this blog, for my family, so much easier.

Essentially, it felt like the challenge fit. And it’s a challenge I’m still facing, for sure - one that’s in no way been easy, and one I’ve definitely fucked up on a few times along the way - but I know that I’m becoming a better person now than I used to be by facing it.

I know my Classpect, now. I know the name I want to go by. I know the way I want to be seen. I know my favourite colour, my favourite animal, and I can say with some degree of certainty that I know what my aesthetic is. This improvement has meant so much to me. I have a stable sense of me in a way I didn’t have even just a few years ago.

That’s how I know I’m a Page of Heart, I think. I vibed with it, it explained parts of me I didn’t think anything really could, and the challenge has made me a better person.

#long post//#ardenttheories #classpect analysis #windy15

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alecthemovieguy · 5 years

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Being Nicole

‘Supergirl’ star Nicole Maines’ passion for transgender rights makes her super in real life, too

Transgender activist and actor Nicole Maines knew she was a girl around the age of 3 or 4.

“My case is kind of unique because I have a twin brother (Jonas),” she told Ellen Degeneres during an appearance on “Ellen” in 2018. “So, growing up with him, he was identifying with all these male things and feeling very comfortable in his body, and I wasn’t.”

Maines, the subject of the Mount Washington Valley’s One Book One Valley community read “Becoming Nicole,” slowing began publicly transitioning in the first grade, and officially presented herself as female in the fifth grade, when she changed her name from Wyatt to Nicole.

Maines, who is turning 22 on Oct. 7, became the center of the precedent-setting Maine Supreme Judicial Court case Doe v. Regional School Unit 26 regarding gender identity and bathroom use in schools. Maines had been barred from using the female bathroom after a complaint, but the court ruled that denying a transgender student access to the bathroom consistent with their gender identity is unlawful.

In 2018, Maines debuted as Nia Nal/Dreamer, television’s first transgender superhero, on “Supergirl.” She is returning as a series regular for season five which premieres Sunday, Oct. 6, at 9 p.m. on The CW.

One Book One Valley has a series of events throughout October culminating in an evening with “Becoming Nicole” author Amy Ellis Nutt on Thursday, Oct. 24, at 7 p.m. at Loynd Auditorium at Kennett High School in North Conway, N.H. In addition to Nutt, the plan is to have the Maines family be part of the discussion through a Skype connection.

I recently talked with Maines about growing up transgender, activism, privilege and the upcoming season of “Supergirl.”

“Becoming Nicole” is beautifully written, but it is very journalistic and academic in its approach. Is there anything you would’ve done differently or included in telling that story?

I don’t know. I think, of course, Amy did a phenomenal job, and I am so happy with how the book came out because I think it really does have something for everyone, whether or not you’re just starting to learn about transitioning and you’re looking for something new. But there was so much that had to be cut out in the final editing process and, unfortunately, a lot of what did get cut out was original writing from Jonas’ perspective. I don’t know if it was something I would’ve done differently, I think it is more of a shame that it couldn’t make it into the final cut. It was just so long before it was cut. So, I do hope at some point people do get to see that because it is really, really beautiful.

In “Becoming Nicole,” a therapist told your parents that you weren’t transgender because you were peeing standing up. What are some other examples you’ve encountered of misinformation about what transgender is?

Where do I even begin? So many people think that it is one of those things that you can kind of slap a label on and say, “This is what this is,” and with something as expansive as gender it is really impossible to paint it as very black and white. So many people have tried to say “Oh, all trans people look like this. This is how you spot a trans person.” And that’s 1) offensive, and 2) not true or realistic.

I think a lot of that has to do with how historically we are represented in the media: men in dresses and this and that. It is so much more expansive than that. No one group of people looks a certain way, and it is dangerous to try to categorize people like that. So, I think besides the peeing standing up, which is ridiculous, what is equally ridiculous is the idea that some people think that they can spot a trans person, and that’s sort of the whole basis of their argument.

You know how sometimes you read certain blogs or you read certain Twitter accounts just to make yourself mad? I stumbled across one, it was a really popular TERF account — which stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminists, which is pretty much feminists who believe trans women aren’t women, and they use recycled rhetoric from the ’70s saying that trans women are just men trying to invade women’s spaces and stupid shit like that. It was this person going on and on about, like, “Oh, none of you pass. None of you look like women. Yada yada yada.” And I was like, 1) no room to talk because her haircut was atrocious, and 2) come say it to my face. It really made me mad. It is atrocious that people think they can spot something like that. It is ridiculous.

It is kind of like the back-handed compliment that I receive a lot, that is “Oh, you don’t look trans,” or “Oh, never really would’ve guessed.” A lot of the time, I try not to jump on people for that because I know it is coming from a place where they’re trying to give me a compliment, but what does trans look like? What did you think I was going to look like?

And, of course, everyone thinks that we are supposed to look like men in dresses, which — even if we did — is rude as hell to say something like that because, not only is that stupid, but it is also reinforcing negative beauty standards among women, not just trans women, but women. Because you hear about the bathroom bills and they are like, “Oh, we are going to enforce no trans people in bathrooms.” Well, how are you going to enforce that? And then you get cases of cis women getting kicked out of the bathrooms because they look more masculine than others. Even for cisgender women that is not a black and white line. People look different, and it is totally unfair and unreasonable to say just because someone has harder features than somebody else that this is what is going on in your pants. That feels like a wild, crazy assumption to me.

So, obviously your father always loved you, but he struggled with your identity. Was there a specific moment when you finally felt truly seen by him?

I know a lot of moments where he really started having light bulb moments. I think for me, one of the first moments where I felt like I started being seen was when I started wearing girl’s clothes to school. My transition started going there slowly, but between second and third grade I had gone from wearing longer hair to wearing girl’s clothes all the time. I don’t know if it was even just my father, but by everyone, but that is when I started feeling like I was being seen. Then in fifth grade was when I had fully transitioned. I was allowed to pierce my ears and I was allowed to wear skirts and dresses. That really felt like I am seen. And then, of course, when my father finally started fighting for me. Because I knew, at that point, he still didn’t fully understand, but when he started defending me and defending my transition and my using the girl’s bathroom, I felt like I had him on my side.

I love last season of “Supergirl.” One of my favorite moments was when Nia Nal/Dreamer publicly announced herself as both an alien and a transgender woman because it put a positive face on a group who were being demonized in the show. How important do you think it is to give a face to marginalized people?

It is incredibly important. The best way to fight against marginalization and the most effective way that we fight back against people who are trying to erase us is with visibility. When you have an administration who, for incidents in a crazy hypothetical, removed me from the 2020 census, then the best way to combat that is to be more visible than ever. By saying, OK, you’re trying to make people think that we are not valid, you’re trying to make people think we don’t exist and that we are not solid and valid in our identities and our existence. Well, then we are going to show you that we are. We are going to show you: no, you cannot ignore us because we are here and it doesn’t really matter what you believe. It doesn’t really matter if you say, “Well, I don’t really believe in transgender.” Well, it isn’t really something for you to believe in because whether you like it or not, we are here. We exist and that’s not a matter of opinion. You do not get to choose whether or not my identity is valid because I am not doing it for you and we are not going to let you erase that. So, I think visibility is the number one method of defense against erasure.

Based on the trailer, the new season of “Supergirl” partially deals with the betrayal and anger Lena Luthor feels toward Carol Danvers hiding her identity of Supergirl from her. This seems like an apt metaphor for the similar sense of betrayal, hurt and confusion some people feel when a loved one comes out as trans or gay. Do you think that is intentional?

I don’t know if it was intentional. I think because there are so many different layers with Carol and Lena’s relationship, and especially with the Kryptonian-Luthor relationship. I think it is hard to boil it down to just that, because I get why Lena is upset and I get why those feelings are floating around, but personally, I’m kind of like nobody owes any facet of their identity to anybody but themselves. If they did not feel that they wanted to share a part of their identity with you, you don’t get to be mad about that. That is something that belongs entirely to them and if they did not choose, for whatever reason to disclose that part of themselves, that’s not because you necessarily did anything wrong, that’s because they had a choice and that’s not necessarily on them either. But, like I said, it is different between being trans and being a superhero. It is hard because, at the same time, it is like, “Oh, you were treating me like Lex, and I’m not Lex. You can trust me.” So, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff floating around, but I don’t know if it was a 100 percent intentional, but there are definitely connections.

That’s the great thing about sci-fi is that it can always be used as a metaphor for exploring social issues.

Absolutely.

How will Nia Nal be challenged in the new season?

The theme of this season is communication, and so something Nia is struggling with the first chunk of the season is communicating with how she feels with Brainiac because they’ve been dating and they have been having communication issues. Neither of them are the best at relationships, and so this is kind of a new area for her and she’s trying to work out, “How do I express how I feel without hurting you?” And that’s something she struggles with a lot. It is being open and honest with how she’s feeling and trying not to bottle up what she is feeling for the sake of other people.

What I also really love about Nia Nal is when she puts herself out there — kind of going off the whole thing of passing — she does pass as both a human and a woman, and so she doesn’t need to put herself out there, but by doing so she empowers others. Do you also try to lead by example in your own life?

Absolutely, I recognize 100 percent as Nia and as Nicole that I have an insane amount of privilege. I’m white and, like you said, I pass and I’m on TV. And I mention that I am on TV because when we look at issues like HB2 and we look at bathroom bills and stuff like that, that is not necessarily going to affect me as someone who passes and as someone who is in Vancouver. I’m working in Vancouver, HB2 will not affect me. I am not there. But I recognize that there are issues that are affecting members of my community who don’t have the same significant platform that I do. And so it is my responsibility as a member of that community, as someone with that platform, to lift them up and to start to shine a light on issues that are affecting members of my community, even if I personally will not feel the impact of that harmful legislation.

It is important and that’s what we talk about in feminist circles. We are always talking about how can people with privilege use that privilege to lift others up, to better the situation of others who don’t have those some privileges. We ask that of men, we ask that of white people, we ask that of abled-body people, of trans women who pass. We ask that people use their privilege responsibly. And so that is what I try to do and I hope that I am succeeding. I just try to use my platform and use my voice to talk about issues that I feel matter.

Going back to “Becoming Nicole,” the book discusses “The Little Mermaid” as a metaphor for being transgender because Ariel doesn’t feel she belongs in the ocean and everyone tells her you have to be with your own people blah, blah, blah. Ariel was one of your favorite characters growing up, do you feel even at a young age you were drawn to this character because your struggle paralleled her struggle?

I guess subconsciously, yes, but on a surface level, I liked mermaids. I don’t know why I liked it so much and that’s why I say subconsciously I was drawn to it. I remember loving that more than anything else. I loved everything about her. I remember I was like, “That is what I want for myself.” I was like, “She is so beautiful, and she is so graceful,” which is not a trait that I’ve been able to replicate in my own life. I remember being so drawn to her, and I was like “Mom, Dad, that is what we are going for. That is the look.” Between her and, I’ve said it before, Storm from the X-Men. I remember watching “X-Men: The Animated Series” as as kid and she had that hair and the cape and was like “Oh, that’s drama. I love it.”

And now you have your own cape.

Well, metaphorically speaking. I don’t have a superhero cape. I feel a little cheated.

Well, maybe you can get one.

No, I have the best supersuit. It is shiny and holographic. It is awesome.

One part I really liked in “Becoming Nicole,” I think it was before you were going to enter fifth grade, you were asked what kind of story you’d tell and you said it would be this mystery/comedy/fantasy with a sassy character and a sidekick who was even sassier. If you were to write that story now what do you think it would look like?

Oh my God. Well, it would definitely have the sassy character and the sassier sidekick, because I remember growing up I was always the biggest fan of the sassy comic relief characters, which is why I tried to play that role in my own regular life, which took some getting used to. I remember in middle school people didn’t exactly get the whole me trying-to-be-funny and I think it just came across as annoying. If I was going to write that story now, I think it would absolutely be about murder that would be the mystery. The comedy that would manifest itself in probably macabre, offbeat humor about murder. And then the fantasy ... they are all vampires. I’m just describing “Bit.”

I haven’t been able to find anyway to watch “Bit” (which stars Maines as a transgender teen who falls in with four queer feminist vampires, who try to rid Los Angeles' streets of predatory men), but I am very interested in that film. What was it like making that?

It was so amazing and I hope you’ll be able to watch soon. Right now, it is making its festival rounds, and hoping someone will choose to distribute it, and we’re like, “Pay us, please!” It was so incredible. Everyone on set was amazing and our writer/director Brad Michael Elmore is the coolest dude on the planet. I was talking about using our privilege to tell stories that matter and to raise up minority voices, and that’s absolutely what he did in this situation. I know a lot of the festivals we have gone to have been feminist festivals and gay festivals, and we’ve had a significant amount of people kind of be like, “Oh, you were written by a straight cis white guy,” and we’re like,“Yeah, and he’s doing exactly what we want him to be doing, which is using his privilege to create this super awesome movie featuring queer and interracial talent, this intersectional group of feminists.” We had a female DP which how awesome is that? We had this super awesome kaleidoscope of different identities in this film and I feel like some folks are very quick to write it off because it was written by a straight cis white guy. 1) I don’t feel that is fair to Brad, and 2) I don’t think that is fair to the movie. The movie is so cool and the movie deals with such cool issues and it approaches them all in such a fucking awesome way. To write it off because of who our director is feels very shortsighted.

And obviously you wouldn’t say or do anything that felt disingenuous to your own experience.

Yes, absolutely. I was like, “Ye of little faith.”

When you were 13 years old you went to the Maine statehouse and spoke to dozens of representatives to convince them to vote against a bill that would make it legal to discriminate against trans people. Do you have any interest in getting into politics either working for a campaign or as a candidate yourself?

I think I would be willing to support someone else’s campaign. Politics are not for me. I do not have the stomach for that. I do not have the patience for that. I know where my lane is and it is absolutely not going for an elected position. I am more the person who shows up when the politicians are not doing what they are supposed to be doing. That’s when I get involved.

The big thing I took away from “Becoming Nicole” was that prejudice and hate is something that is taught, because the boy who started harassing you the most was told by his grandfather that you were wrong and that he should go after you. And so I guess the question is, what do you do to undo these wrongheaded lessons that are passed down by parents or grandparents?

I think the first step comes from within. You cannot make anybody do anything. You cannot make somebody unlearn hate and prejudice. That journey has to start with themselves. With my father — and, of course, he was never outwardly hateful or anything, I always knew he loved me — but his journey to acceptance started with him deciding to pick up Jennifer Finney Boylan’s book (about being a transgender woman) and read it. He had to ask himself what he was so afraid of if his son was his daughter. He had to ask himself what about that terrified him so much. And that’s what every person has to do.

Every person has to be aware of their own prejudices and their own biases. We all have them. We have to be aware of them. We have to actively work to undo them because it is something we are taught, not even just by our parents or caretakers, but through television and society. We are pumped full of biases and prejudices that we are not even aware of, and so we have to pay extra care and extra caution to do undo those. And when we catch ourselves, we have to recognize, “No, that’s not right” and go from there.

It has to be a conscious choice, and so that is hard. It is a hard thing to do. It is a really gross feeling to try to unlearn stuff like that, and so a lot of people won’t do that because a lot of people are more comfortable being like, “No, I don’t get it, that’s gross, I don’t like it and I’m going to hate it.” That is much easier and much more comfortable then asking yourself what you are afraid of. As socially responsible participants in the community, we have a responsibility to ask that question anyway. All of us have to ask that question and not just about trans issues, because if we don’t do that, if we are looking for what is easy and what is comfortable at the expense of other people, then stay inside.

And I feel like the biggest thing is if you’re afraid of a gay person or trans person or black, Hispanic, whatever social issue, if you actually talk to these people that you are afraid of, that you’d see that they are just human beings.

That is the number one thing. It is so much easier to marginalize a group of people when you are not putting names to faces, when we are not putting faces to groups, when you are dehumanizing them. It is so much easier to sweep their plights under the rug and be like, “Oh, they don’t matter,” because you are not talking to them, you’re not seeing them as people. That’s why I always say, “Come say it to my face.” It is so much harder to be an asshole to someone’s face because you have to look them in the eye and tell them their rights don’t matter.

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justafewsimplewords · 4 years

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Hello friends and folks!

I logged in today for the first time in three years as I forgot I had this account and wasn’t in a very good place mentally. My life looks very different now from when I first started it and I wanted to write a small life update.

I created this account while I was still in high school/near the beginning of university. I didn’t really know how to work tumblr per say. I used it to mostly like and reblog stuff. I was suffering badly with loneliness and depression. I felt stuck. I was facing a number of things personally and I wanted a place where I could look at fandom content and pretty pictures.

Then I started taking English courses in university (English ended up becoming my minor) and I decided I wanted an outlet and a place to learn how to improve my writing.

I followed a bunch of writing blogs and wanted to learn more about creative writing. I love reading stories and telling them. Writing is a facet of that and I wanted to learn how to improve my writing, even if I was going to be the only person reading the pieces I wrote.

I reblogged tips and tricks, writing prompts, advise from other writers. I decided that I would work hard to work on a piece each week in my spare time and potentially share it here. I enjoyed being on tumblr.

While this was all going on, I had a lot of stress in my personal life. In my fifth year of university (I ended up taking six years to complete my Bachelor’s degree with a double major) I was balancing 4 classes, working 4 part time jobs, and commuting to and from school 5 days a week on the city bus which was an hour and twenty minutes each way. I was not taking care of myself or my mental health and - as is typical when you’re stressed - I stopping doing the things that brought my joy. I stopped giving myself self care time and activities. I stopped this blog and writing among many other things.

Then in March of 2018 I had a mental break down over an assignment. I had a panic attack that lasted 3 hours. I cried and was frozen in place the entire time. My mom (as I still live with my parents and did so through out school) came home on her lunch to find me curled into a ball sobbing on my bedroom floor. My family and friends didn’t realize the extent of my stress and how bad my mental health had gotten. I didn’t let anyone know.

My mom ended up getting my off the floor and calmed my down. We ending up talking a lot and she pushed me to get help at school through the counselling we got for free as students (it was included in our tuition). My mom helped me drop the class that was causing me the bulk of my stress that term. It was 2 weeks before the end of my term. It was marked as a WD (for withdrew) and I ‘earned’ 30% in the course, which I later petitioned to have the 30% removed from my transcript and only marked as WD (and I won!)

I ended up needing to take a summer term to try and get all my courses completed in time and to graduate the next year. I knew that I needed to just finish the degree. If I had stopped school, I honestly don’t know if I would have finished it. And I only had 6-8 courses left. It was easier to take things slower and finish without stopping for a term.

I started counselling through the university with a different therapist than the one I had been previously seeing and it was so helpful. Nothing against the previous one, but the new therapist and I got clicked better and I found it to be more helpful. They helped me find/create the tools I needed to pick myself back up and finish my degree. I also got closer with my friends and let my mom and sister in on what was going on, and I kept them updated.

I graduated June 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts in History & Sexuality, Marriage, and Family Studies, and English Language and Literature minor with distinction. It took me 6 years, and it was worth it. I enjoyed (for the most part) every moment of being in university. I learned a lot about the subjects I studied and I learned even more about myself. I gained some amazing people as friends and have memories with them that I will always cherish.

I’m 25 now. On top of graduating, and even more importantly, I learned to be a little kinder to myself and to recognize the signs of my mental health suffering. 2 years later and I still feel the after effects of the burn out and break down, but I am taking it day by day and rebuilding my strength. I make sure I do things weekly to take care of myself and am in the midst of introducing other measures to take care of my physical and spiritual health as well.

I now have a permanent, full time job, with a company that has moved me to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic and plans to keep us all at home until it is safe to return. I started there in September 2019 on a 8 month contact and was offered a full time permanent position in the department I was helping in Feb 2020 before the end of my contact in the other department. They have been wonderful with safety measures and I have been working from home since March 16 2020 with no current plans to return until it is safe to do so. I have benefits and RRSPs with them!

I have improved my credit score vastly in the last year, and put into works the process of buying my grandmothers house. I had the conversation with her, my aunts and uncles, and my mom and sister. Hopefully in the next year or two I will be able to do so.

My life looks vastly different than it did it three years ago when I stopped posting. I’m glad for all of it, even if it was hard to handle. And I am glad to be back to myself in come capacity and still discovering the rest.

I have slowly started reading and writing again too (school took away most of the enjoyment of reading and writing for me). I’ve outlined a number of stories, done some world building, and character development. I honestly don’t know if I would post any of the creative writing I have done on this blog - I can’t predict the future - but it feels good to be back at it. Writing again in some capacity even if no one is going to read it.

I redid my blog’s theme and plan to login every once and a while, read about how to improve my writing, reblog a few things, and so on.

Anyway, it’s good to be back.

#life update #mental health #student #university #writing #creative writing #blog update #hello friends and folks

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yourfaveisyanderematic · 5 years

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Hi! Just wanted to drop by to ask what the writing process is like for you? What kind of facet of the story do you focus on the most? What motivates you to write diamond-level-sexy writing? And how long have you been polishing your writing to the point that it's this emotionally riveting and interesting? From a nonnie who adores your blog. In all-caps.

Oooh boy! This is a fun question, because it’s a complicated one! (Wow, who knew I’d be at a point where someone thought I was qualified to answer this question?)

Under a cut because wow this is gonna get long.

I struggle with ADHD and executive dysfunction; of the time I spend ‘writing’ a prompt, maybe 90% of it (hours or days, in one case well over a week) is rolling the idea around in my head until I come up with an idea or angle I think would be really interesting or exciting to write about. Once I have the outline/idea in my head, I sit down for a couple of hours and bang it out, proofread it for typos, then post it. Second draft who? Editing what? Don’t know her, bitch!

The first couple of ideas that immediately come to mind are usually rejected outright. For example: “Cioccolata falls for a mafia member who doesn’t know who he is”. Simply having him do kidnapping and then nonconsensual surgery is scary, sure, but it’s also too easy. (I also…basically did that for my first Ciocco request but hey. Hey. Shush, you.)

To clarify: there’s nothing wrong with doing ‘easy’ prompts. Execution is always, always, always more important than the idea you write, and can elevate a simple concept or hamstring a great one. But I personally rejected this first option because it felt too stereotypical to pick for this character; what about Cioccolata sets him apart from every Evil Doctor™ ever? What scenes was he in that made my gut twist with fear? For this fic, I decided it was the psychological aspect of someone experienced with driving others to suicide/self-harm. In a previous request, I was fascinated by an online description of an experience with a drug. Essentially, I picked a ‘centerpiece moment’ of the request and started to build around it.

This next part is going to vary for everyone, and you kind of get a feel for it if you read a lot or watch a lot of media. Basically, you gotta know what’s important and how to pace things. In the original outline, I was going to have the prompt take up two “therapy” scenes, where another mafia member makes an offhand remark about suggesting you see a therapist and Ciocco using that as his in, and set up him ‘collecting’ information about you for the second half. I cut this because I realized it was unnecessary. There was nothing about those scenes that justified their word count, so I took note of what I wanted from them and folded it into the rest.

Once I knew what to write and how, I just sort of…did it? The most important things to me personally are an attention-grabbing opening line, and a snappy finisher, bc it forces me to start the story at what’s important. When I edit work for friends I get a lot of “ugh I know this is bad, but I just had to set everything up to get to the good part”….don’t do that. Don’t do that! Start the story where the story starts, and it’ll all go from there. You just gotta, you just gotta trust your gut on this. The gut that will develop a sense for what’s good or bad based on all that reading I KNOW you’re doing, because I told you to read a lot. If you don’t like it, it’s probably for a reason. If dialogue isn’t sounding right to you, read it out loud to yourself and see where you stumble, then restructure the sentence. If you’re writing about something you’re unfamiliar with/too familiar with, go look at some pictures or read some accounts so you’ve got the pertinent information captured. If you’re writing along and wonder “hmm…but WOULD DDR exist in an arcade in 1989?” then get distracted for three hours researching it and six other tangential factoids that won’t ever be important in the work, JUST IN CASE.

Actually, hang on, don’t do that last bit. Nobody notices.

Anyway, that’s my writing process. Touching on what you asked about “how long” I’ve been “polishing” my work…not very! I’ve “written” since I was an awkward preteen selfshipping with Naruto characters, but I took a loooooOOOOONG break from writing proper, narrative fiction for literal years. Depression will do that to you. What got me back into it was running DnD and WOD games, where I developed greater flexibility with working with characters and improvisational storytelling. The instant feedback from players also helped me zero in on what was important and what was ‘fun’. Eventually, I got frustrated with the fact that none of my storytelling existed outside of game sessions, and started seriously working on individual, written work again. By which I mean I tried NANOWRIMO for the first time in a decade, made it to 20k words and then stopped to regroup because my project was, surprise surprise, not up to my standards.

When I’m reading, I tend to make notes on what I like and don’t like about a piece. If something is jarring or irritating, I make sure to avoid it in my own work. If I like something, I try to zero in on just what it is that gripped me and then emulate it.

This last bit’s gotta stay between us, but the reason I fixate on horror, and why I put so much into these stories, is because I am someone who is afraid of other people. My primary motivation for these stories is to express even a small fraction of the fear in my heart. If it’s on paper and separated from me, in a form that others can experience, it becomes a source of entertainment, and I can live with myself again. Things just happen to get horny sometimes because let’s be real here I Am A Sub, but 90% of what I write is literally me telling the world how I live (but like, allegorically, so nobody calls me out on it or worries about me too much).

The other 10% is just my hatred of the government.

#writing haze feedback #me: yeah I'll just sit down and bang out 6k words no biggie #like a fucking liar

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animezinglife · 6 years

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First-Rate Friends and Heart-to-Hearts

Lately, I haven’t been able to tell if I’m being irrational towards the prospect of love and relationships or if I’m being reasonable given my own history. I think loneliness and fear can really cloud our judgment at times, and my reservedness often makes me feel as though I’m my own worst obstacle (and usually, I am). When I expressed concerns along these lines, one of my best friends offered me this advice:

“My brother didn't get a real girlfriend until he was 29. And he was married at 30. My grandmother met and married a wonderful man when she was 70-something. My parents were married at 21. There isn't a time limit on these kinds of things. There are men out there who would be interested in getting to know you--you're beautiful, interesting, tough, and intelligent. Finding them can be hard, but not impossible. There is no such thing as a person who is just unlovable by every person in the world. That person doesn't exist. Sometimes we feel that way because of our own insecurities, but that's just fear talking.”

I’m pretty old-fashioned in some ways. I always fall back on the old sticks-and-stones mindset, but the reality I’m beginning to see is that more than twenty years of nonstop verbal and emotional abuse surrounding one specific facet of yourself really does leave scars. Those scars can be pretty deep, even if we’re able to pick ourselves up in other ways.

I’ll never call myself a victim. Yes, I’ve endured some situations that were shocking even to my therapist, but that’s in the past and I’m paving my own way now. It’s true that even she doesn’t know the extent of my past, but I’m confident the strategies she’s helping me develop will one day push me beyond the fears that developed because of it.

I would never be the type to let someone else determine my value again, though like everyone else, I still have chinks in my armor.

I’ve fallen into that irksome dichotomy of not wanting to open up to anyone and wanting someone to understand me. At this age, it’s difficult to make sense of it and determine the best solution. Putting myself out there is a risk, while not doing so only means more of the same. Don’t get me wrong: I have no intention of rushing into a relationship if a potential one were to present itself. I just have to wonder if and when that type of companionship might present itself.

All of this makes me wonder where I’ll go from here. I can’t decide if not knowing scares me or not. Such is the nature with any unknown.

Normally, I would post this on my writing blog in my journal tag. It’s a bit heavy and personal for this one, though because I have a friend here who I know has been through something similar, I thought it worth the change of pace. My best friend’s advice is something she really needs to hear, too.

Much love and support to all of you reading this, too. Hopefully, it will help anyone who may be in the same, odd state to not feel as alone in it.

#personal #deeply personal #friendship #love #hope #relationships #fear #the unknown #the future #loneliness #encouragement #major depressive disorder #depression #girl talk

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thehappymessproject · 5 years

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50/100 - What does trusting the process even mean?

Story time, for all my fellow lost souls out there

I almost cannot believe that I have been writing everyday for the past 50 days.

Fifty days ago, I was so nervous about writing that way for the first time. I had never tried to start something destined to be so huge for me. Learning how to read and write were an incredible revolution for me, they gave so much meaning to my life as a child. After a couple of years of avid reading, my head was full of stories and characters, but I never dared to put them on paper.

The first thing I ever wrote was a (very mediocre) poem (the only I’ve ever written) in French (1st language) about the eyes, and what a look can convey, the most important being the look of love in someone’s eyes.

I started a few fictions as a teen, that I consistently got rid of out of embarrassment after a couple of badly written chapters. After that, writing took a heavier tone, being all about studying. Until writing helped get over a major depressive episode when I started a cooking blog (that I quit after only a few months and posts).

Cooking helped at that time, giving me at the same time a way to practice creativity, and also food to give me comfort and some extra joy. But I’m always a bit wary about going solo and cooking instead of following a recipe. It was quite frustrating to me, perfectionism and poor self-esteem always make things harder than they are.

That year, out of boredom and frustration that I took out on my skin by looking for “the perfect beauty regiment”, I also discovered homemade cosmetics : an activity at the crossroads with cooking and chemistry (I always had a soft spot for chemistry), while allowing me to lavish into delicious smells and scrumptious pampering? Please sign me the heck in!

I started writing out of frustration : I was focusing so much energy on learning everything on how to make my own products and how the human skin and hair work from birth to death. I created a Facebook group about it, and helped as much as I could making it a place where people could find a lot of information, as well as a helpful community. After months of writing the same things over and over, it got way less fun, but the idea of writing everything I gathered and discussed in a year really was. THAT was the last time I wrote that much in so little time before here, ten years ago.

And it was so much easier since quite a few people were expecting my articles, demanding more, creating conversations about them. It was incredible to feel supported that way while going through that writing journey and the sense of community it brought me was so meaningful to me.

Sadly, I never felt about homemade cosmetics the way I do about psychology. I actually worked as a cosmetic chemist freelancer and hated most of it. At some point, I also found ways to practice self-care that were more meaningful to me than beauty regiment. But I was sad to have lost that special place in my life and even more to lose the writing momentum for almost ten years.

I went to a different university to study psychology the way I really wanted to for my last year, and explored so many other facets of my personality. It’s one of my favourite years of my life so far. I had another depressive episode when I arrived in London a year later, and had to get an awful nanny job to pay the bills. Finally starting to work as a therapist helped me greatly to focus on others and finding new things I still wanted to study got me both through that dark time. I was quite busy for a few years.

I started to write again 5 years ago, and it was as exciting as it was terrifying. My perfectionism made it hell. It’s only when, two years ago, I started to focus on cultivating creativity in my life again that I was able to begin to really challenge some of the stories about myself that were making me miserable, like thinking I was that girl that started out very excited but would give up anything she started eventually, or that I wasn’t that creative : it was simply not my thing given how little talent I had at anything that wasn’t purely intellectual.

I began to publish the art I was making out of frustration : I was taking so many classes, having so much fun painting, drawing and lettering, but was oh so frustrated to have the opportunity to share it with so few people. It was quite fun to discover Instagram and all the amazing communities one can find there.

I started writing those super long captions everyday, and quickly realised I was more into writing the captions than sharing the art itself. But the idea that so few people would actually read them and the lack of dialogue, made me, again, so frustrated. After trying different things, I came back to the only thing I found to truly help me with discipline : a container that I was finding important and interesting enough.

I took on a few challenges over the years : first to keep doing yoga, then to learn how to meditate regularly, then to explore art making in a deeper way. Until I arrived here again, doing this 100 days challenge to learn how to write everyday.

Honestly, I still don’t know what I want to write. I mean, now, I know with certainty that I want to write books at some point, I know they’ll be about the things I am talking about here, I just can’t tell what format, what topic or even the way I want to do this thing yet.

The only thing I know for sure is that I love writing everyday more than anything I’ve done everyday ever. I also know part of me wants really hard to try to make sketch notes and visuals about articles, studies and TED talks I’m reading and watching. So I am in the middle of trying to figure out how I want to explore those. And I know from experience now, that that’s more than enough for me to know.

If I told you that story today, sharing my kind of weird and scattered journey of nearly 30 years, is to say that if there is ONE thing I am taking out of all of this is that we can trust our life process. Wether it’ll be through tough periods or by falling in love with things, it will never be linear or easy, but as long as we follow our heart and are ready to flex our bravery muscles, we’ll find our way.

See you tomorrow, Love, L.

#creativity #writers helping writers #writers tips #artist tips #lost #personal #writer #100 days project #100 days of writing #psychologist #therapist #the happy mess project #recovery #healing #depression #perfectionism #procrasination

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pekofskyinparadise · 3 years

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on the upswing

as someone who is now feeling much better... here’s Leah’s Guide to Not Feeling Like Shit.

Are you also feeling stuck, unhappy, isolated, bored, and hopeless?

Yeah, sounds like we kind of all are right now. I’m sorry to hear that. But the first step to getting over it is to let ourselves feel it. Journaling is my favorite way to get to the bottom of how I’m feeling: processing through all of the facets of why I’m feeling crappy, feeling it fully, and then releasing it. You can do it publicly like my blog post yesterday (I don’t always do this, but it definitely helped me-- and hopefully some others-- feel a little less alone) or privately in an actual journal, or just on a piece of paper that you can then do whatever you want with (burn it? rip it up? put it in a box and forget about it for a few years? bury it in the backyard?)

Sometimes journaling immediately lifts the weight, and sometimes there’s a bit more that needs to swirl around, but it’s definitely important to feel the crappy feelings, name them, and sit with them for as long as you need to. I struggle with this sometimes (a lot) because... I don’t want to feel bad! I want to feel good! But as many therapists will tell you, you have to process the feelings, or else they’re just going to pop back up later. And now they’ve had time to marinate. And the marinade is not tasty. (that last part was not from therapists.)

Then, the next step is super important for me, especially in quarantine life: move ya body, girl. (girl is gender-neutral in this instance) Getting my heart rate up is so crucial. I go on a lot of walks (having a puppy helps), but lately I’ve started playing “Just Dance” for the Switch again, which also helps with my next recommendation. Putting on some music and dancing is good, or I literally told one of my friends yesterday to do 3 jumping jacks. She said that 3 is a lot, but I think 3 is the perfect amount to be like UGH okay I’m moving! My mom literally has a course through their house that she walks when it’s crappy outside. There are SO many ways to do this, but it almost always makes me feel better. Maybe it’s moving the shitty feelings through, maybe it’s just exercise endorphins, maybe it’s feeling proud of myself for doing something healthy... but either way, gotta move.

As I hinted at earlier, attempting to keep up with dance moves to a Psy song (not Gangnam Style!) helps immensely with the next and possibly most important step: find something to laugh about. Conveniently, I think I’m hilarious, and often very weird, so I laugh at myself a LOT. But, if you need external help, I recommend asking your friends to send you their favorite memes, go look at Luke Cook’s instagram story highlights with people’s crazy confessions, and if you think dick jokes are funny, I highly recommend Nikki Glaser’s stand-up special on Netflix. (if you don’t.... I’m sorry?)

And finally, probably the most important part: self-love. Clearly music is a theme for me, so I like to put on music that makes me feel like a badass and dance in the mirror (this covers all three because it usually also makes me laugh) and think positive thoughts. Sometimes I make a physical list, sometimes a mental list, of things I love about myself, even if it’s a short list that day. I look into my own eyes and remind myself I’m worthy of love-- ESPECIALLY my own. I think about things I’ve accomplished that I’m proud of, no matter how small, AND I think about how worthy and valuable I am regardless of any of those things. And I know this part takes work. It’s taken me years to love my body in the way that I do now, and I’m nowhere near perfect. But even if it’s literally wrapping your arms around yourself and giving yourself a hug. Brushing your hair. Sitting quietly by yourself for a few minutes and just enjoying your own company. Please know that you are loved, you are so worthy of love, and you bring something to this world that no one else does. I’m so grateful to know you, or whoever linked you this blog post is.

We’re all going to get through this, and as I love to imagine, we’ll all be at brunch with a big group of friends, maybe a little bit tipsy, laughing about “hey, remember that time we lived through a global pandemic? wow, that was wild.” Looking forward to it. If you need someone to talk to in the meantime, you know I’m here.

Bonus suggestions:

-Watch a Disney movie (or something else sweet and childlike)

-Do something creative

-Put on lipstick (also a gender-neutral option. if you need to borrow one, let me know)

-Try to laugh without smiling

-Dye your hair pink (this has honestly made me happier than almost anything in quarantine times)

-Google “congested pony gif”

Happy laughing and self-love-ing!

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selfiecharmedlife · 3 years

Text

RE: Violent Femmes or "My mind created that demon"

TW: discussion of self-harm

It’s been a minute. A lot has happened but between SRS recovery and COVID-19, it doesn’t feel like that much time has passed. I’d like to go back to updating this again.

Lately, I’ve been getting more into streaming and decided to revisit one of my favorite games, The Missing: J.J. Macfield and Island of Memories. It’s a gem that has lived rent free in my head since I first played it and revisiting it after having sorted more of my own queerness opened up some new interpretations in my mind. I’m also writing a longer video essay script, but there is one thing I wanted to get onto “paper” as quickly as possible; I want to talk about the Hairshreiker.

Quick spoiler for the game. The Missing follows the protagonist, J.J. Macfield, through an increasingly surrealist adventure across an island in pursuit of her “friend” aka girlfriend Emily. Along the way, she discovers she has the ability to recover from grievous bodily harm. What follows is a journey of setting yourself on fire, dismembering yourself to just a head and throwing your limbs around in order to solve puzzles and progress. As your progress, things become increasingly surreal culminating in the reveal that J.J. is a trans woman currently dying following a suicide attempt. With the exception of the text messages that outline the events leading up to her attempt to take her own life, everything in the world has a deeper symbolic meaning relating to her history and sense of self.

At various points in the game, J.J. encounters the Hairshreker. As it gives chase, the player will need to run away and solve puzzles in order to escape to the next area. For as much as there is to say about this game and as much has already been said, I didn’t find much about the Hairshreiker while googling around. The consensus I did find proposes that the creature represents J.J.’s dysphoria or regret or having been assigned male at birth. I don’t disagree with that, but there are some specific things about the way the creature was designed speak heavily to me and so I’m gonna tell you about them!

So breaking it down, the first thing that jumps at me when I look at this design is that the creature is unmistakably feminine. When they first appear, they saunter and sashay before breaking into a run. They even playfully place a finger on their cheek and pop out their hips at points during the chase. Simply put, the Hairshreiker is hot, seductive and showcases an exaggerated notion of femininity. Despite this, the creature is also grotesque with alien movements, a shrill wailing voice and sickly white skin. These two dissonant facets of the design are in chorus rather than at odds and combine to create a creature that is both alien and alluring. It’s also worth pointing out that the wig J.J. is wearing in the image sent around her college is very similar to the Hairshrekier’s own hair.

The second thing that comes to mind, is the image of the bright red box cutter contrasting against a ghostly white hand. It went over my head at first, but a friend pointed out to me that Japanese media has a strong association between box cutters and self-harm. Considering that the art gallery also has an image of J.J. self-harming with a box cutter despite it never occurring in the game, this choice must have been deliberate. The Hairshrieker is never seen without the box cutter in hand. Since the story of the game is a dream, we can only assume that the connection between these different forces represents something significant in J.J.’s mind. To her, this warped image of a feminine self is deeply connected to her suggested history of self-harm.

I’ve talked on this blog before about how I knew I was trans from a young age. I also knew that my position as the oldest child and having been named after my father meant that my parents had big expectations for me. I knew that telling them my secret wouldn’t go over well so I lived for ~26 years knowing for every minute that I would have been happier having been born a girl. My parents took me to therapists trying to find out why I was so unhappy. My memory of that period is hazy, but most of those therapists must have had some idea what was really going on with me. One of them even tried to suggest to my mother, without outing me, that their child wanted to be someone else. My mother disagreed and we started seeing someone else soon after.

Knowing that my parents wouldn’t approve meant that I had to repress my desire to be a woman. Repression isn’t a passive process, it’s something you have to actively keep up with. Dysphoria and the desire to transition would creep up on me and I’d have to find new ways to choke it back down. As a kid, I remember visualizing my desire as an over-the-top feminine sentai monster that I would have to defeat. Other times, coping with dysphoria meant punishing myself for once again having such a selfish desire to be a woman. After all, how could I be the good kid my parents wanted me to be if I had this awful secret that I knew would hurt them?

Years of repression warped my relationship with femininity into something monstrous. It was something that I had to actively avoid and it only got worse as I got older. Seeing a partner’s vanity table stressed me out. Even walking past cosmetic isles in stores was harrowing. I had created a monster out of myself. All those fantasies about striking it down never worked, it always came back. Deep down, I knew that if it caught up to me, then I would have to accept a truth about myself. In a sense, I would die.

So how does this all come back together with The Missing? In a game where J.J. is able to recover from almost any injury, the Hairshrieker is one of the only things that can actually kill her. In her dream, being caught by the monstrous image of femininity that she created is one of the only real threats. As the game progresses, it becomes harder to escape. During the final escape sequence, there are even some cases where getting cut is unavoidable. The only way to progress and temporarily escape from J.J.’s monstrous sense of femininity is to give in to self-destruction. Sometimes those injuries feel like they’re helping you in the moment.

That does change however when you reach the finale of the game. J.J. accepts herself, her desire to transition and that the Hairshrieker is a part of her. That acceptance gives her the power to finally put it to rest and find peace living as her authentic self.

Maybe I’m reaching here, but at least some of these connections between femininity, shame, repression and maladaptive coping feel deliberate. Even if they aren’t, the image of the Hairshreiker will stay with me for a long time. There are some other thoughts I have about characters in this game that I might share in the near future as well. For now, I can at least say I didn’t go a year without updating this blog!

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thescholarlystrumpet · 7 years

Text

85 Statements Tag Game

Rules: you must answer these 85 statements and tag 20 people.

I was tagged by @elloette AND @marvella15! Feelin’ the LOVE!!

The last…

1. Drink: Water. Stay hydrated, folks.

2. Phone call: My boyfriend

3. Text message: @rowofstars <3

4. Song you listened to: Colors by Halsey

5. Time you cried: Last week, reading the final Shades of Magic book

6. Dated someone twice: Off and on but never after it was over

7. Kissed someone and regretted it: Eh, not if it was just kissing

8. Been cheated on: Probably?

9. Lost someone special: Yes.

10. Been depressed: Clinically.

11. Gotten drunk and thrown up: Yes because all alcohol makes me ill. Long story.

Favourite colors

12. Purple

13. Blue

14. Red, especially deeper shades.

In the last year have you…

15. Made new friends: Yes!

16. Fallen out of love: Nope. Just further in ::moony eyes:: (I know I’m gross)

17. Laughed until you cried: I think so...

18. Found out someone was talking about you: Not in a bad way, no

19. Met someone who changed you: Yes! The other therapists at my clinical site have been life-changers.

20. Found out who your friends are: I’m always rediscovering this. Still trust too easily.

21. Kissed someone on your Facebook list: Haha, yes.

General

22. How many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life? I’ve met almost all of them IRL but I need to do a purge of those I’ve never really hung out with or talked to...

23. Do you have any pets? No, sadly. Apartment won’t allow them.

24. Do you want to change your name? Nah, I’m used to it

25. What did you do for your last birthday? Dinner with the bf and a party at my place with friends.

26. What time did you wake up? 8am ish. Construction in the neighborhood so I was really awake earlier, ugh.

27. What were you doing at midnight last night? trying to fall asleep

28. Name something you can’t wait for: Time goes too fast anyway. I can wait.

29. When was the last time you saw your mum? New Years

31. What are you listening to right now? My bf have a phone convo with his dad

32. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom? Sure.

33. Something that is getting on your nerves: The fucking construction that starts at 7am Mon-Sat. I work late and I like sleep. Fuckers.

34. Most visited website: this one, no doubt

35. Hair colour: Blonde at the moment.

36. Long or short hair? Hitting my shoulders again. To me that’s short but most probably call that medium

37. Do you have a crush on someone: Have you *seen* my blog??

38. What do you like about yourself? My capacity to learn. I like growing as a person and as a student.

39. Piercings: 3 in each ear but I think one’s closed up

40. Blood type: ... I should probably know this, huh?

41. Nickname: Just call me Strumpet

42. Relationship status: living in delicious sin

43. Zodiac: Aquarius

44. Pronouns: She/her.

45. Favourite TV show: Oh fuck, I dunno if I can choose. BTVS, maybe, because I can rewatch it anytime and still be excited.

46. Tattoos: Nope!

47. Right or left handed: Righty but I can do some things with my left.

48. Surgery: Adenoids removed as a kid

49. Piercing: Ears only

50. Sport: No thank you.

51. Holiday: Halloween

52. Pair of trainers: ... I wear a pair of black and white sketchers a lot so, let’s say those.

More general

53. Eating: Pasta dish made by bf (who is a much better cook than me)

54. Drinking: Water.

55. I’m about to: watch a movie?

56. Waiting for: I don’t wanna jinx it so I won’t say just yet

57. Want: a lot of intangible things. Also a Clara Pop.

58. Get married: We’ve discussed it

59. Career: Just beginning...

60. Hugs or kisses: Yes but only if I like you.

61. Lips or eyes: Eyes.

62. Shorter or taller: Most people are taller than me. Shorter is okay too, though. I love girls who can fit on my lap :-)

63. Older or younger: Me or a partner? Ya’ll know I’m thirsty for older men. I like myself at this age although I miss the body I had in my early 20′s.

64. Nice arms or nice stomach: I usually like my stomach but not at the moment. On others... I probably notice arms more on men and overall body shape more on women.

65. Hook up or relationship: Depends on the need and the person.

66. Troublemaker or hesitant: Hesitant troublemaker.

67. Kissed a stranger: Hahahahaha. Most my 20′s, yeah.

68. Drank hard liquor: Years ago. Now only sips.

69. Lost glasses/contact lenses: No, thank goodness.

70. Turned someone down: Sure

71. Sex on the first date: It’s been known to happen.

72. Broken someone’s heart: Yeah...

73. Had your heart broken: Yes.

74. Been arrested: Nope.

75. Cried when someone died: Of course. Even the fictional ones.

76. Fallen for a friend: Sort of?

Do you believe in …

77. Yourself: It’s a work in progress

78. Miracles: small ones

79. Love at first sight: No. Love takes time. Lust, attraction, connection can all happen quickly but love takes familiarity, shared history and values. Love is work but it’s worth it.

80. Santa Claus: Not since I was 5.

81. Kiss on the first date: If I felt like it.

82. Angels: No.

Other

83. Current best friend’s name: I can’t rank my friends in term of “best” because there are so many facets of so many different people that are so meaningful to me. But the friends on here I probably talk with most consistently are @rowofstars, @maplesyrupao3 @elloette @iambicdearie @rufeepeach @petyrbaelish and @bettercall-gameoftywinning but I’ve had wonderful conversations with so many more (like @shipperqueen93 @theladyofthedarkcastle @rbennetwrites @ripperblackstaff @chatteringwench and @evilsnowswan)

84. Eye colour: Blueish, greener or grayer depending on the light.

85. Favourite movie: Probably Labyrinth but I can also watch Death to Smoochy a remarkable amount of times and still laugh

Tagging everyone already tagged in this post as well as @emospritelet @thatravenclawbitch @veradune @quinninthenorth @rose-tylers @thatexactleaf

#85 statements #tag meme #tagged #thank you!!#long post #strumpet overshares

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facts-about-bisexuality · 7 years

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1. So a little bit of background. I was busy moving around as a teenage and dealing with mental health issues so I never really got around to exploring (or even questioning) my sexuality. I think part of it may have been internalized homophobia as well. I was teased for being a lesbian as a kid, really nasty, rude stuff. So of course I always denied it.

2. However the last few years my life has really improved, benefit of getting some stability in my mid-20s. It’s a bit of a stereotype, but I was invited into a friend’s relationship and a mild curiosity about women, turned into a full fledged, um, thing. It really through me for a loop, I had always considered myself an ally to lgbt, but I figured I was straight and wouldn’t I know if I wasn’t?

3. I didn’t really tell anyone for a while, and a fun, sexy secret started to feel like a burden. It made me question every past relationship and choice, and wonder about my future. I figured even if I like women in the bedroom though it was no one’s business, and I didn’t expect to date a woman romantically.

4. Throughout all this time I had another friend I was growing closer to, she was my best friend. I eventually confided to her, and started to come out to my little group of friends I knew I could trust. She’s gay, but I had put her into a platonic “box” right from the beginning. Friendship was most important, and I’d never want to make anyone uncomfortable, I basically just wanted to hang out with her all the time.

5. Already long story short, she eventually asked me out (another shock), and we got over our awkwardness about going from friends to more and it’s been amazing. However, I was left with the realization that my bisexuality wasn’t going away, that it was more than just sex, I care more about the person than the gender and the person I love is a woman. On top of that, outside a very small group of people nobody knew.

6. I’d heard stories about how you choose to come out over and over and it can be exhausting. I’ve been at it doggedly for a year. And I’ve been pleasantly surprised every time. I’ve answered some odd questions along the way but it’s also been liberating to assert this facet of who I am.I spent a month (maybe more…) really worrying about Christmas. I was determined to introduce my girlfriend to my parents (after only coming out to my dad this September).

7. I’m a worrier, I imagined every bad scenario and a couple more. I realized (after hashing it out with a therapist), I was more worried they’d mistreat my girl even more. I haven’t always had a healthy relationship with my family.

8. Anyways, night comes and my Dad just hugs her when he meets her (he’s not a hugger). My parents insisted on cooking the entire meal (and planning it) themselves and they cooked to suit her allergies (and my veggie preferences). I could tell they were on their best behaviour and I just couldn’t have been happier to see them getting along. I was ready to go to war for us, but I didn’t have to.

9. I guess what I’m saying is try to worry enough to be prepared, but not to the point of ridiculousness (not an easy task). And sometimes things work out, drama free. Also, where are my late comer-outers at? I feel ancient at 27 but also a little like I’m 13 again. I’m also the most “me” I’ve ever been. Very grateful for this blog, also your f.a.q. is very eloquent.

—-

I can’t thank you enough for sharing this. I think it’s so important that we as a community share as many different kinds of stories as possible, so we can celebrate all of the many ways there are of being bi or any other identity, and so that we can all feel a little less alone. I’m so glad that your family was so supportive and that you found a wonderful girlfriend in the process of coming to understand your orientation!

I am a (relatively) late comer-outer myself. I am 23 now, and I figured out last year (age 22) that I’m bisexual. I’m still not out to my family but hoping to in a few months when I move out. You’re never too old to figure out more about your identity!P.S. I’m impressed you found my FAQ. I haven’t figured out how to make it easier to find because I’m lowkey bad at tumblr

#bi stories #answered #anon #positivity

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