because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.
you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.
you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.
don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.
if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.
you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:
how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!
aren't you happy yet?
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im sure its been said already but as the election draws near more and more liberals will come out of the woodwork to shame people with a conscience to give away their vote to the democrats for free. i'm already seeing posts saying "why aren't people more concerned about a trump presidency?" you want to know why? it's because people already know he's bad. everyone already knows what he is and what he's done and what he'll do. there's nothing to discuss. he's a racist despotic worm of a man. there's nothing else to say.
biden is currently president. the genocide is happening under his watch. he's the one funding isra*l and arming them; he's sidestepped congress more than once to give them weapons. by oct. 27, the biden administration already knew that "Israel was regularly bombing buildings without solid intelligence that they were legitimate military targets." the state department/biden have engaged in atrocity propaganda, cast doubt on the legitimacy of the death toll recorded by the gaza health ministry, and so on. the united states is currently in the process of trying to pin the "war in gaza" on netanyahu (see sen. schumer's speech) after months of backing blatant genocide as a means to act as if they're "doing something" about the genocide (Instead of, say, threatening to cut off all aid to israel with the condition that all hostilities in gaza, the west bank, and occupied jerusalem are halted immediately and permanently, allowing palestinians freedom to travel, allowing aid into gaza, etc etc etc.)
the long and short of it is that liberals view their own lives as being worth more than palestinians'. that's it. they'll vote for another 4 years of the guy ushering in genocide and supporting apartheid + settler colonialism because he isn't outright attacking them (despite various laws and rulings happening both at the supreme court level and at the local level all over the country that will endanger people). they'll settle for the illusion of safety and security and shame anyone with a conscience and accuse them of "supporting the republicans" when in an actual democracy you would be able to use your vote as leverage to extract concessions from those who want to be elected. that's how it's supposed to fucking work.
democrats are not owed people's vote. if biden loses, it will be biden's fault; it will be his campaign's fault; it will be the democrats' fault. trump is bad; the republicans are bad. we already know this. this is not an endorsement of either. but if democrats are too cowardly and feckless and servile to the motivations of the american empire and never do anything for their constituents then why the fuck should anyone vote for them. you want to get mad at someone, why don't you do something useful and stop worrying about team-sports with a purely selfish basis and start hounding the people in power who are supposed to serve you, the voter.
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people always act like there’s such a hard line between “psychotic person” and “normal person”, and I feel like that plays a lot into the dehumanization psychotic people face. cause once a nonpsychotic person internalizes this logic, suddenly we’re attractions and interesting and a fun research subject cause we’re just so fucking other that we become wholly unrelatable. for the nonpsychotic person, it’s unimaginable what psychosis must “really” feel like. so they treat us like a fictional species just trying to understand our existence. and they don’t worry about how their actions might affect us any more than they’d worry about insulting a vulcan by calling the vulcan thought process “just so interesting!”.
but in reality.... the difference between a psychotic person and a nonpsychotic person is not so stark. all human brains are prone to psychosis. all humans are capable of experiencing psychosis in one way or another. anyone could develop a full blown psychotic disorder at any time, no one is born immune to this. and while there’s some contexts in which it’s necessary to differentiate who does or doesn’t experience these symptoms of course, largely I think nonpsychotic people are doing themselves a disfavor - and being ableist in the process - by ignoring the hard truth of the matter: us psychotic people are exactly the same as them.
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"I've grown these for you."
My first entry for the @rexobibingo - because what is a Gardener/Gardening about if not making leafy things grow out of love? (You can, of course, grow your leafy things out of spite too, I guess, that's always a very fair motivation if you ask me)
Keeping to good old habits from my previous bingo experience, please allow me to wholeheartedly and very passionately recommend @dharmaavocado's fic that has been on my mind throughout the whole time while I was working on this drawing We Who Love Our Hands in Dirt which was likely the first fic that has sold me on this ship, and Hanahaki as allergies will never stop being fascinating to me as a concept *w*
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The thing about Francesca is that it isn't just saying "loving you is worth any punishment," it's saying "a punishment that keeps me with you is no punishment at all." It's not that you can brave a hurricane if it's the cost of loving someone, it's that standing in a hurricane for eternity with the person you love is still an eternity with the person you love, and how could you be happy with anything else?
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I miss people using non-medicalized terms for other people's passions
like. well and good to talk about "hyperfixations," "special interests [in the context of an autistic person's favorite subject]," or "infodumping" if you have ADD/ADHD or autism, or are talking about someone who is, but...that's not everyone who feels strongly about something, obsesses, or loves talking about their interests. those words mean specific things, associated with specific forms of neurodivergence
don't assume everyone is comfortable with that language
"rambling" is a word; so is "ranting." "obsession" is a word. "passion" is a word. learn them and use them
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Your fears that you don't have a body that will transition "well" are, sure, understandable, but there isn't truly such thing as a body that's unworthy of transition. Perhaps your changing body won't suit everybody's taste, but would you rather live for yourself or for the whims of random people who don't care about your happiness as long as they're attracted to what they see?
Transition is for anybody who wants it. It's okay to be fearful. It's okay to be uncertain. But it isn't the end of the world. You are in control, and if you choose to transition to any capacity, it should be at your behest. You and your body are worthy of transition. I hope you are able to seize transition and do what you truly want for yourself.
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