we’re watching the new season of queer eye and my dad is actually crying over the ep with the trans dude, like he’s talking about his top surgery and my dad is in tears going “when you sculpt marble the sculpture is already inside, you’re just getting rid of what isn’t part of it! he’s just getting rid of what isn’t part of him!”
so from my oldass 70 year old dad to all my trans followers, y’all are marble sculptures and you’re perfect
Just because I can’t explain the feelings causing my anxiety, doesn’t make them less valid.
Trauma often messes with one’s ability to say “no”.
You either consciously or subconsciously think, “I don’t want to hurt this person’s feelings” or “If I say no, then they’ll hurt me” or “It won’t really be that bad” or “I can handle this” or “I need to do this to prove myself” or “I deserve this”, or you forget that “no” is even an option.
It’s still not your fault if you didn’t say “no”, even if you think maybe you could have. It’s still not your fault. You didn’t deserve what happened to you and you didn’t bring it upon yourself. It was never your fault.
“Yesterday, I spent 60 dollars on groceries,
took the bus home,
carried both bags with two good arms back to my studio apartment
and cooked myself dinner.
You and I may have different definitions of a good day.
This week, I paid my rent and my credit card bill,
worked 60 hours between my two jobs,
only saw the sun on my cigarette breaks
and slept like a rock.
Flossed in the morning,
locked my door,
and remembered to buy eggs.
My mother is proud of me.
It is not the kind of pride she brags about at the golf course.
She doesn’t combat topics like, ”My daughter got into Yale” with, ”Oh yeah, my daughter remembered to buy eggs”
But she is proud.
See, she remembers what came before this.
The weeks where I forgot how to use my muscles,
how I would stay as silent as a thick fog for weeks.
She thought each phone call from an unknown number was the notice of my suicide.
These were the bad days.
My life was a gift that I wanted to return.
My head was a house of leaking faucets and burnt-out lightbulbs.
Depression, is a good lover.
So attentive; has this innate way of making everything about you.
And it is easy to forget that your bedroom is not the world,
That the dark shadows your pain casts is not mood-lighting.
It is easier to stay in this abusive relationship than fix the problems it has created.
Today, I slept in until 10,
cleaned every dish I own,
fought with the bank,
took care of paperwork.
You and I might have different definitions of adulthood.
I don’t work for salary, I didn’t graduate from college,
but I don’t speak for others anymore,
and I don’t regret anything I can’t genuinely apologize for.
And my mother is proud of me.
I burned down a house of depression,
I painted over murals of greyscale,
and it was hard to rewrite my life into one I wanted to live
But today, I want to live.
I didn’t salivate over sharp knives,
or envy the boy who tossed himself off the Brooklyn bridge.
I just cleaned my bathroom,
did the laundry,
called my brother.
Told him, “it was a good day.””
1. Become aware of how and when you tearing yourself down.
2. Now that you can catch yourself doing it. Offer counters to the negative self talk. A really useful thing I read was to talk to yourself almost the way you would child. Gentle and patient. Even when they fuck up.
3. Take time to celebrate your small accomplishments. You’ve been attacking yourself for every little mistake. Apply that same fervor to the positive things in your life. Did the dishes even though you didn’t want to? Fuck yeah! Got up and took shower? YES!!! You are taking positive steps to feeling better. Celebrate it.
4. Make lists of things you’re good at/ like about yourself. The first time I did this the only two things in my list we’re that I liked my hair and I had good friends. It was start.
5. Don’t beat yourself up if you screw up steps 1-4. It’s counter productive. When I catch myself calling my self stupid for some mistake or other my response now is,“We don’t talk to ourselves like that anymore. What’s something constructive that could actually help solve the problem.”
Most of the time that seems to work. Not always. But more and more Everytime.
gifted student™ brains are about as functional as horses when you get right down to it
which sounds like a shit post but consider: horses? hypothetically MADE for running. look at this magnificent muscle beasts. look at those legs. they must be so good at running, right? wrong. horses are fragile as fuck. horses break their gotdamn legs so so easily, and if they break their legs you just have to fucking shoot them. if they run, the thing they are MADE FOR, too fast their lungs will start bleeding. I just googled horses to see if I was missing anything and apparently if they lie down for a day their organs start collapsing or something so they can’t rest from their One Horse Purpose even when they’re hurt. they’re made to do one thing but they can only do it under Very Specific Conditions and if a single thing changes they just die.
which, you know. gifted students™ get applauded for being naturally smart when we’re five or whatever and then develop a terrible inflated sense of self that makes us highly averse to anything we’re not naturally good at, because it challenges our fragile childbrain egos and if we wait too long we’ll develop mental fences around entire subjects and skillsets (mine are math and studying) because we think we’re Bad at them, when in reality we just need to practice but are frustrated by that because it’s harder than being ~naturally talented~ was. we get applauded for doing One Thing but the second we run into slightly different things that our brains don’t comprehend as readily? it’s a Bad Time. I still have so much anxiety over things I don’t feel Naturally Talented at that I’ve been sitting here writing this post for like 10 minutes rather than read the feedback on my religion paper. I got a 100% on it, but I’m still That Scared of anything other than straight heaps of praise because that’s what my childbrain was acclimated to. just send me to the glue factory already.
I…..I needed to hear this
that’s intriguing because this is not a particularly happy or uplifting post but I hope that whatever you got out of it was positive and that it could be a good thing for you
Sometimes it’s incredibly freeing to hear that other people are familiar with a feeling. No falsely spun cheery “positivity” needed.
boys with scars aren’t ruined. If you have acne scars, self harm scars, or any other scars, your body isn’t ruined. It’s healed and it’s handsome and it’s whole.
Gay Ryan 