Whale Hewlo

Yes.

[hazedxg0]

Been seeing too many pop-psychology attachment theory posts that demonize avoidant attachment lately, so for the record:

You are not entitled to anyone else's time or affection.

People are allowed to leave you if they do not want a relationship with you.

People do not have to give you a reason that you approve of, or even a reason at all, to leave you if they do not want a relationship with you.

Your own co-dependency issues and attachment to someone else does not trump that person's ability to deny consent.

No-one is obligated to give you attention just because you want them to.

No-one is obligated to stay in a relationship they don't want to be in, even if the other person hasn't done anything wrong.

No-one is obligated to stay in a relationship they don't want to be in, even if the other person is mentally ill.

Attempting to force someone to stay through coercion, guilt tripping, or threats of suicide/self-harm is abusive.

[gender-incinerator]

some more thoughts, as someone who has a very distant type attachment and has been through a lot of rough relationships:

nobody owes you physical affection, regardless of what label you have on the relationship. they do not owe you a kiss, a hug, cuddling, holding your hand, sleep in the same bed as you, etc.

people are allowed to have boundaries in a relationship, and if those boundaries are not acceptable to you for any reason, it is your responsibility to communicate that in a mature and respectful way

No-one is obligated to stay in a relationship they do not want to be in, even if the other person has a physical disability

people do not owe you forgiveness, even if you have apologized, even if you have improved your behavior. They do not owe you forgiveness for any reason.

spreading rumours or secrets in order to get your ex-partner fired, rejected, or to break up their new relationship is abusive, even if you are no longer in a relationship. abuse does not end just because the relationship has ended

[underwhelmingalchemist]

As a poly person, it will never not be weird to me that so many people are still functioning under the impression that you can't love more than one person romantically at a time.

Like, yeah you can have multiple friends, multiple best friends even, and you're expected and encouraged to have close platonic feelings and connections with all of them. You can be sexually attracted to multiple people at the same time, and that's also expected in most company, even when you're in an exclusive sexual relationship. People also expect you to love your family all equally, especially if that family contains multiple children.

And then you talk to someone who expects all that as a default and more often than not, they're like "romance is the one exception tho" and you're like "why" and they're like "romance is different" and you're like "how" and they're like "it just is"

[arthoesunshine]

i like to pretend i already died and asked god to send me back to earth so i can swim in lakes again and see mountains and get my heart broken and love my friends and cry so hard in the bathroom and go grocery shopping 1,000 more times. and that i promised i would never forget the miracle of being here

[makomoriz]

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, Amy Krouse Rosenthal

[thoughtkick]

“If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.”

— Mik Everett

[beardedmrbean]

Swamp kitty

[coolhumanoidbeing]

Shout out to people with Complex Dissociative Disorders (parents edition):

If your parents genuinely changed and improved overtime

If your parents were absent when you were a kid because they were sick / ill / working / otherwise indisposed

If your parents were not your abusers

If your parents would have acted differently if they knew you were being abused

If your parents didn't have the resources or knowledge to help / understand you

If your parents were loving and yet still neglectful

If your parents inadvertently invalidated / didn't believe you, but now do

If your parents weren't your primary caregivers when the abuse happend

If you weren't abused at all and your trauma was medical / environmental / etc

Had emotionally and physically present parents but you still had disorganized attachment with them as a kid because of your delusions / paranoia / etc.

If your parents regret how they treated you

If your parents loved and love you but acted the way they did because of substances / mental illness

If your parents are not completely bad people, or bad people at all

If you still get along with your parents regardless of what they did

If you ever invalidated your own traumatic childhood experiences because your parents were "too nice"

Your trauma is not less valid if you get along with your parents today. Sure, you needed disorganized attachment to your primary caregivers as a kid to develop a CDD. But that can take plenty of formes, and they don't all include your parents being monsters.

Edit: any other emotions regarding your parents are also valid and okay, and I couldn't mean that more. Childhood trauma survivors go through so many rough emotions, and self-invalidation is sadly way too common. Your feelings are a direct result of what happened and that makes them normal.

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

just read “to be loved is to be worth the inconvenience” it blew my mind away

[moveslikekeithrichards]

lately my kids have been playing Baby Knife, which consists of somebody acting as a baby with knife hands chasing people while going "baby knife baby knife" over and over. is this a thing or are they just insane

[moveslikekeithrichards]

we have a new teacher this year who has never had kindergarten before & she rounded em all up & told em No Baby Knife and No Zombies and idk how to tell her that 1. all kindergarten recess games boil down to Give Birth And Kill Each Other and 2. the absurd vaguely inappropriate games they make up are usually better than when they try to play an Actual game like soccer

[moveslikekeithrichards]

Baby Knife is straightforward. theres a baby knife. baby knife chases you. thats about it. when they try to play Real Sports every single child is playing by a different set of rules unbeknownst to the others and none of them are playing by the Actual rules. everybody is mad at everybody else and running up to tell on their colleagues for cheating every 3 minutes. this doesnt happen when they play Baby Knife

[kedreeva]

if no one's said it, it's normal. It's just Tag with flavor. Tag is boring so you gotta add imagination.

Our baby knife as kids was Raptor Tag. Raptors hunt in packs so the person who was "it" had to run around pretending to be a velociraptor and to tag people they had to actually tackle them and "eat" them for 5 full seconds (others could come to the rescue and save them in that time, but risked getting eaten too or instead if the raptor switched targets). Eaten players then became raptors, until the whole pack was teamwork-hunting the last wily or lucky kid. There were no winning survivors- the game was won as a group once everyone was a raptor.

[gallusrostromegalus]

My kindergarten played "wolves" where a pack of 4-12 children, usually all the girls, would try to chase down and "kill" the deer (usually me)

I was bulled extensively in elementary school, but 1. Mostly by my teachers and 2. Not during this, because we ALL had PBS Nature and as Deer, I was allowed to gouge, kick, bite, keep running even after being grabbed, or body-check the larger children into the picnic tables and other architecture.

You know, for realism.

In point of fact, I was usually The Deer because I was the best at evading/ not going down without a fight, whereas most boys would just start crying or tattle, which is no fun at all.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

We were incredibly boring. We played "murder ball" which was just Capture the Flag over the whole school grounds (outdoors only) and violence was permitted using the ball.

[pascalcampion]

late night thoughts

[webweabings]

IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS ONLY THE OCEAN

“Accepting the Universe” (1920), by John Burroughs; // “Literary Paper” (1855), by Edward Forbes; // “A Thousand Flamingos” by Sanober Khan; // Sylvia Earle; // “Wither” (The Chemical Garden Trilogy), by Lauren DeStefano; // “The Immense Journey” ch. The Flow of the River (1957), by Loren Eiseley; // Jacques-Yves Cousteau; // Heinrich Zimmer; // “Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems” (1962), by William Carlos Williams; // “Sandry’s Book” (Circle of Magic Quartet), by Tamora Pierce; // “The Sea”, by Barry Cornwall (Bryan Waller Procter); // Speech at the America’s Cup Dinner (1962), by John F. Kennedy; // Jacques-Yves Cousteau; // Erica Billups; // Robert Wyland; // “Eragon” (The Inheritance Cycle Tetralogy), by Christopher Paolini; // Christy Ann Martine; // Robert Wyland; // “Le testament d'Orphée” (1960), by Jean Cocteau; // Speech at the America’s Cup Dinner (1962), by John F. Kennedy; // “The Infinite Moment of Us”, by Lauren Myracle; // “American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps”, by Julian Hawthorne

[machine-unlearning]

Just discovered the queue, this thing is amazing

[machine-unlearning]

[machine-unlearning]

I love how everyone silently agreed to queue this and it's only now crawling out of the processing vortex. Tumblr posters love being contrary so much

[feral-ballad]

Joy Sullivan, from Instructions for Traveling West: Poems; “Of Wildflowers”

[ur-daily-inspiration]

[catchymemes]

[parkermonroesweat]

What I'm enjoying most about my FWB situation is that unlike every other "romantic" partner I've had in the past, my FWB has continued to be a FRIEND since we started having the "benefits." When we hang out, we talk about our lives, separate things we're pursuing, new ideas to try together, etc. In past relationships it was like once we decided to make it official everything flattened down. We were no longer deeply intrigued with one another. Feelings of curiosity and hopefulness were replaced with a sense of insecurity and possession, needing to be the most important person in one another's lives, yet ceasing to see each other as complex and multifaceted people. Why does that happen? Is it just me and my experience? Why is romance weirdly dehumanizing while casual sex with a friend feels so wholesome?

[innerchaosgardener]

No matter how many times I play your video, you are still not alive

But I like to imagine that you are. Safe and sound

at home

[softwaring]

[soberscientistlife]

[strawberry-crocodile]

"Genocide is bad, actually"