Hi! I have a longass username, call me Ams or Lyra
Please use they/them for me and refer to me with neutral language!
Asks and DMs open (or at least they should be) (sfw on main🤞🤞); if you talk to me about biology, musicals, or writing you're actually after my heart /hj
My Boyf and absolute best friend @homohabu is incredibly dear to me :3
Find my original poems under the tag #poemchritude!
July 2025 sonnets under the tag #july sonnet challenge
This may be the wrong place to write this, but I feel that it needs to be shared - even if only for my sake. For as long as I can remember, I have done absolutely everything for everyone in my life - but myself. I made choices to please others. I placed in top percentiles and performed memorized speeches on high stages. I earned the title of valedictorian, and I graduated high school with a 4.58 GPA and 25+ hours of college credit already completed. I earned a full ride scholarship studying nursing in order to one day become the nurse practitioner turned doctor of nursing practice that everyone has counted on since day one. I’ve made it to my junior year with a college GPA of a 4.0 - thus far. I’ve won awards too numerous to count, as well as scholarship money in abundance. I’ve maintained the “high school sweetheart” relationship that I formed when I was in 8th grade for nearly 7 years now. My life has been perfect? How could I possibly complain? What people refuse to see is that I haven’t felt a genuine happy in what feels like decades. I have been robbed of every choice that I could have ever possibly made due to the fear of disappointing those who have already invested so much time and energy into crafting me. What of them if I fail? What people don’t see is the generalized anxiety disorder I was diagnosed with as a senior in high school, the OCD tendencies, the vomit by the toilet due to stress-induced nausea, the numerous doctor’s appointments, the negative impact on my physical health, and the spiritual distress. In the past, I accepted these things as normal. I would tell myself that once I got through this semester I would be happy- or done with this year, or undergrad, etc. I used to think that it was because I wasn’t brave or smart enough. I always felt like I was “faking it,” despite having the grades and skills to complete the job. I’ve had the past four months of summer vacation to reflect on these feelings. I’ve come to the conclusion that I was “faking it.” Not in the sense that I didn’t belong in the field or that I wasn’t capable, but I was faking it because instead of taking another theater class I took more STEM. Instead of going to see Shakespeare in the park, I chose studying myself to death. I gave up reading romance novels for pharmacology. I stopped making art in order to create more time for making flash cards. Somewhere along the way I lost who I was in others, school, relationships, and illness. I don’t know how to go about rediscovering myself and finding balance in the world that I have created for myself for so long, but I think that I’m ready to break down my own walls. I refuse to be scared anymore. I’ve braved this storm for so long that I have now become it, and I think that is something worth fighting for.
I heavily relate to what you're going through op, even if you don't see this. I'm gonna be graduating soon as the valedictorian of my class and I can't help but feel like I've done next to nothing to deserve it. I do really well in school most of the time and get good grades, but I feel like that's just to survive school, not because I really wanted to get them I guess? I put 110% effort in my assignments which I'm not confident is worth it half the time when someone can pass with the bare minium; it makes me feel silly. But even then I'm choosing to go into a field of work that isn't always profitable or stable because I feel that is my calling, to animate and make stories. And even when I feel like I'm wasting time that I could be doing something more important or profitable, I just remember that there are people who care about my art and stories and are actively waiting for more.
Everything that you described sounds a lot like how I am with being a gifted kid. I wanted to please others out of the irrational anxiety I have of being hurt. But I learned that's no way to live and that I would slowly wilt away giving everything to everybody else, almost being a husk of my true self. I feared being selfish and having an ego, but sometimes you have to be selfish to do things for your own benefit. And those who support you will support you if they truly love you. It takes a lot of effort every day to remind myself what I want to do with my life and to wake up and actually do it, even if it's hard, scary, and I end up really busy. I didn't have to make this, but conquering that anxiety of speaking out feels right for me. It's gonna take a while I feel like to find yourself, but it'll be so worth it in the end.
Hi! Another hs valedictorian and first-year undergrad here who is absolutely loving college and also incredibly tired at the same time!! I’d say my story is definitely a bit atypical, but I definitely do relate to a lot of this. Where others had high grades and excellence as an expectation put onto them by others, those expectations were a benchmark I self-imposed onto myself not only to spite the world and people who I felt didn’t accommodate and support me, but to oxymoronically prove that I deserved to exist. And I freaking ran away with the valedictorian race - but in my senior year, it didn’t matter to me. It didn’t matter to me as much as the essay I wrote about my favorite musical which won its way into the MET; it didn’t matter as much as the paleoanthropology that I learned by myself when I had yet to take a single biology class since middle school; it didn’t matter as much as learning to give myself the space to love the things and people that I do now. And admittedly, I still give every assignment my all, I still sometimes hinge too much confidence and esteem on the margins of my grades, or neglect my self care in search of productivity - but I’ve also learned to handle conflicts better than I did a year ago, and to navigate my own limits easier, and a bunch of other things the me of three years ago would never have dreamt about.
This past week has reminded me of where I am and what I want to become. It’s reminded me how many things I love and helped pull me out of the slog of the end of the semester. It also makes me scared for the future I so desperately want for myself; but at the same time, I’m so thrilled to have the chance to chase all of my dreams. For me, one of my biggest passions is paleoanthropology. It’s very easy to lose myself in the minutiae of long bone morphology and Miocene ape genera, but on Wednesday I got to work with fossils for my first time,, and it reminded me of one of the things that make me love the subject. These fossils stayed untouched for 50 million years, and I was one of the lucky ones to be able to touch them, see them, wonder about them. Behind every passion is joy, behind every joy is wonder and awe. OP and anyone else, I sincerely hope you rediscover your joy. The world is a brighter place when people love freely.
Hmm well I'd say in general I'm more inclined towards the appendicular skeleton than axial one, but I do love me a good leg or arm. I would probably go with the scapula as someone who's quite into the shoulder - shoutout to the femur for being big and prominent but scapulas are really cool even though I dunno much about how they work as I'd like.
Hmm well I'd say in general I'm more inclined towards the appendicular skeleton than axial one, but I do love me a good leg or arm. I would probably go with the scapula as someone who's quite into the shoulder - shoutout to the femur for being big and prominent but scapulas are really cool even though I dunno much about how they work as I'd like.
People love natives in such a superficial way. People wanna stand with natives when we’re talking about the trees, and the land. People wanna stand with natives when we talk about philosophies of love and togetherness. But as soon as it’s time to talk about political side of being native. About dismantling a system built on the genocide of our people. About how we need a new system that isn’t built upon capital gain and benefitting white bodies. About putting up a fight. About how the colonial state we reside in is a disgusting imperial plague on this land. Suddenly y’all don’t wanna talk native.
"They spent hundreds of years trying to assimilate my ancestors, trying to create indians like me, who could blend in, but now they don’t want me either. They can’t make up their minds.
They want buckskin and face paint, drumming, songs in languages they can’t understand recorded for them but with English subtitles, of course. They want educated, well spoken, but not too smart. Christian, well behaved, never question. They want to learn the history of the people, but not the ones that are here now, waving signs in their faces, asking them for clean drinking water, asking them why their women are going missing, asking them why their land is being ruined.
They want fantastical stories of Indians that used to roam this land. They want my culture behind glass in a museum.
Hi anthro major here to completely agree with everything being said! Reparations are needed!
And in another vein,, I think that the old schools of thought which ended up killing cultures in the interest of preserving them (which is akin to making a species extinct to taxidermy it) are still very much pervasive in the thoughts of many at large today; it’s always worth noting that for as far as any given discipline and its discourses comes,, soooo many people stay far behind and when their thoughts on a marginalized group such as indigenous people stay basically untouched we have a communication and education disconnect as well. Let me know if I said some (or many) dumb things.
so my friend wrote a really good poem and the last stanza gave me an idea so i made a little sequel :) she's not on tumblr/doesn't put her poetry online but i'd totally share her poem otherwise!!
