I stopped dreaming about her. For a few months, at least; after the 1-year mark they stopped being weekly occurrences.
I still feel like I lost a piece of myself, but I’d come to terms with it? Like finally accepting that your arm will never grow back, and you’ll never use a t-shirt the same way, and your balance will always be off...
And then I dreamed about her.
And she broke up with me (again?) _in my dream_. Talking about how it wouldn’t work out, the distance was too great. So I thought about that last conversation while I ate breakfast the next morning and realized what I’d said was true; that, from my perspective, we’d already stopped being in a romantic relationship, because the markers that I use to signify the romantic aspects of a relationship weren’t present.
But then I was cleaning out my voicemail-box (mostly so I could get voicemails from the maintenance guy so he’d finally fix our dishwasher; pretty mundane stuff) and I stumble across some voicemails from *her*.
Asking for help. Talking about how mush she liked me, and missed me.
Talk about a swift kick in the feels.
Nothing like tearing open a not-fully-healed wound.
When you and your ex kept “happy memory” jars, and you’ve been having trouble letting go, so you re-read them all, smile at the happy memories, and then burn the whole fucking thing.
You wrote a poem about second chances
And I thought you were over your shit
Thought you’d stopped casting me as the villain in all the plays you wrote
for the shadows on your bedroom wall
But then you wrote a poem about how I counted too much
called it “keeping score”
And I knew you still treated my name like a curse
When I was younger, for a couple years, I thought I had OCD.
I’d count the number of times I chewed with each molar
and if it wasn’t even I was worried my teeth would break
When I told you I’d spent 120 hours just getting to you,
I guess you thought I kept a ledger
A logbook of every minute spent on the train
But I came to see you every other week for six months and it was five hours each way
twelve times ten isn’t hard math
you just add the zero
you know
like the number of times you visited me in those six months
zero
I’d actually stopped counting, with you
didn’t check the price of dinner when the waitress came
any amount was worth an hour of your time
Didn’t worry about you paying me back when I bought you groceries
I just wanted to help
I was reading a book about recency and availability bias
How we tend to forget what’s not right in front of us
When you said you couldn’t remember the last time I showed you that I loved you
should I have just agreed?
The only reason I know how much it cost to come see your graduation
is because I had to front my parents the cost of the hotel room after my mom retired
Guardian News: “‘You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,’ climate activist Greta Thunberg has told world leaders at the 2019 UN climate action summit in New York.”
Me: I wonder if there actually are long-term mental health and societal harm being done with how ubiquitous the internet and digital communication has become
Some Artist: Here’s a picture of phones sucking out people’s souls
Me: y'know what if there are we’ll just all have to die cause I am not throwing in with you
contrary to popular belief not everyone has an innate sense of internal gender or care to have one or seek a name for it, some people go their whole lives without questioning their occupation in one of two gender roles, but for some people, if pressed, they don't feel that internal sense of 'i am a woman' or 'i am a man', and in that case i feel the switch over to transgender vs cisgender relies on active identification of a gender other than the one they were assigned. if someone's like 'idk dude I just work here' then that's valid
#i would describe my gender as not exactly 'idk dude i just work here' #more like.....when someone assumes you work somewhere that you don't #but you know how to help them so you do it anyway #my gender is wearing a red shirt at a target
Hate is a powerful drug. Not rose-colored, your glasses are filled with rage. Everything is the color of blood and you wonder if painting the walls the shade they already are would make the ache in your bones stop.
It won't.
You don't need to spill your heart's ink on anything, you've already wounded yourself. Carved my name into your heart with sharp thoughts and asked the sky why I did it to you.
No, you did this to yourself.
Every time I hear you ask how you weren't enough, I want to ask you whose measure you're counting by.
"Actions speak louder than words" I agree! In six months, I came to see you 5 times. 5 hours, each way, each time. 50 hours sitting on a train, waiting to see you. Looking forward to your face, your voice, your stories. And in those six months, you didn't come to see me once.
"But I was busy!" Absolutely. And you were clearly only interested in seeing me when you had time, whereas I made time to see you.
"But it was important!" Absolutely. And to me, you were important. It was important to me that we have the ability to spend time together, since we'd stopped texting. Years ago, we'd sit on skype for hours just doing our own thing. Now you had other people to spend that time with, or you had to go to sleep, or it was family time. You used to always respond, and now I got your spare time.
You always said it made you uncomfortable when I paid for things. It made me uncomfortable to think you might not eat lunch for a week. It made me uncomfortable to know how much you were stressing over money. You saw it as me trying to throw gifts at you to make up for affection that I couldn't actually show you because I didn't actually feel anything anymore, really it was a quiet "I love you, I care about you, I worry about you, I know money stresses you out, here's some money so hopefully you're less stressed about not having any."
We used to laugh about the idea of breaking up. "We'll still be best friends. We'll still share everything." When I told you I wasn't happy, you took it as an end, I took it as an admission of something that had been heavy on my heart. I wanted my best friend's help to fix it. You decided we weren't friends anymore, because a friend wouldn't treat another friend like that.
What kind of friend abandons their best friend?
"I'm moving across the country but I want to try to make it work"
"I don't"
But clearly it's my fault.
And you know, maybe it is my fault.
Maybe if I'd butted heads with my landlord less (over things that I knew would bother you, cleanliness standards I picked up from you, wanting the space to be inviting to you) he wouldn't have evicted me.
Maybe if I'd taken less time off for work (weeks upon weeks to come see you, "working remotely" when really you and I were shopping and cooking) I wouldn't have gotten fired.
Maybe if I'd cared a little less about you, I wouldn't have felt like I needed to move across the country, because the city I'd tried to turn into a home had become inhospitable.
But that's the catch isn't it? I *couldn't* do anything less than love you with my whole heart.
And now you claim it was never really love...
I wondered why I spent so little time grieving this. Grieving us. Grieving you.
Then I realized.
You've remade yourself multiple times since we first met.
The young woman I fell in love with died after two years (to be fair, so did I). We fell in love again, but it was a different love. A distant love.
A year later we were reborn again, and we loved, but it was hard. You were never happy. I was never quite fully satisfied.
And then, I stayed alive while you remade yourself.
And I tried my best to love the new you, but I don't know if I ever really felt loved in return.
And now, when I told you I was *thinking* about remaking myself, you were... affronted?
How dare I? When you'd told me you didn't want me, you were upset I was leaving. When you told me I had no place in your life save the occasional visitor, you were in the same breath distraught that I might try and make a place of my own without you?
You were always the one I wanted. You were always my first choice.
But you turned that down. I wasn't your first choice. So I chose another, and you just couldn't stand that could you?
No, the woman I fell in love with wouldn't have taken that path.
She died years ago.
In some sense, I'm glad you seem to hate me now.
At least you have a direction for your emotions.
Hating me masks your insecurities, and you have enough insecurities to destroy you. Distraction isn't always the best coping mechanism, but I'm glad your hatred of me can distract you from your hatred of yourself.
Ride that high for as long as you need to.
Maybe in three years, when you've changed your face again, we can be friends again.
Until then, I'll miss you.
It’s like millennials do not understand that middle east has been at war for 1000′s of years. That we intervened on behalf of Kuwait. That without “bombing” people that want to kill and oppress others, millions will be murdered and tortured.
you clearly know nothing about Afghanistan nor the middle east
here’s Afghanistan in the 1950′s, 60′s, & 70′s
if you really want to know what caused all the instability & growth of extremist groups I suggest you take a look at the US foreign policy towards Afghanistan during the 80′s
It’s interesting to note that when the communist government came to power in Afghanistan in the late 70′s, one of the first things they did was declare equality of the sexes, made education for girls mandatory, & banned child marriages. The conservative tribal leaders who the US armed & funded (& who later became the Taliban) declared this to be a “war on Islam” & fought against the central government.
The US had no problem back then with encouraging the growth of Islamic conservatism to counter socialism/communism. You created your biggest enemy & you have no one to blame but yourselves.
its crazy to me how the US talks about war in the middle east as if its this ancient problem inherent to the area instead of a recent problem created by western countries to further their own interests.
the CIA took out the democratically elected leader of Iran in the 1970s over oil and that set off an entire chain of events leading to ISIS, here’s more about multiple other countries we’ve fucked over
what if i told you that a lot of “Americanized” versions of foods were actually the product of immigrant experiences and are not “bastardized versions”
Chinese-American food is a really good example of this and this article provides a good intro to the history http://firstwefeast.com/eat/2015/03/illustrated-history-of-americanized-chinese-food
I took an entire class about Italian American immigrant cuisine and how it’s a product of their unique immigrant experience. The TL;DR is that many Italian immigrants came from the south (the poor) part of Italy, and were used to a mostly vegetable-based diet. However, when they came to the US they found foods that rich northern Italians were depicted as eating, such as sugar, coffee, wine, and meat, available for prices they could afford for the very first time. This is why Italian Americans were the first to combine meatballs with pasta, and why a lot of Italian American food is sugary and/or fattening. Italian American cuisine is a celebration of Italian immigrants’ newfound access to foods they hadn’t been able to access back home.
(Source: Cinotto, Simone. The Italian American Table: Food, Family, and Community in New York City. Chicago: U of Illinois, 2013. Print.)
that corned beef and cabbage thing you hear abou irish americans is actually from a similar situation but because they weren’t allowed to eat that stuff due to that artificial famine
Everyone knows Korean barbecue, right? It looks like this, right?
Well, this is called a “flanken cut” and was actually unheard of in traditional Korean cooking. In traditional galbi, the bone is cut about two inches long, separated into individual bones, and the meat is butterflied into a long, thin ribbon, like this:
In fact, the style of galbi with the bones cut short across the length is called “LA Galbi,” as in “Los Angeles-style.” So the “traditional Korean barbecue” is actually a Korean-American dish.
Now, here’s where things get interesting. You see, flanken-cut ribs aren’t actually all that popular in American cooking either. Where they are often used however, is in Mexican cooking, for tablitas.
So you have to imagine these Korean-American immigrants in 1970s Los Angeles getting a hankering for their traditional barbecue. Perhaps they end up going to a corner butcher shop to buy short ribs. Perhaps that butcher shop is owned by a Mexican family. Perhaps they end up buying flanken-cut short ribs for tablitas because that’s what’s available. Perhaps they get slightly weirded out by the way the bones are cut so short, but give it a chance anyway. “Holy crap this is delicious, and you can use the bones as a little handle too, so now galbi is finger food!” Soon, they actually come to prefer the flanken cut over the traditional cut: it’s easier to cook, easier to serve, and delicious, to boot!
Time goes on, Asian fusion becomes popular, and suddenly the flanken cut short rib becomes better known as “Korean BBQ,” when it actually originated as a Korean-Mexican fusion dish!
I don’t know that it actually happened this way, but I like to think it did.
The Irish immigrants almost solely bought their meat from kosher butchers. And what we think of today as Irish corned beef is actually Jewish corned beef thrown into a pot with cabbage and potatoes. The Jewish population in New York City at the time were relatively new immigrants from Eastern and Central Europe. The corned beef they made was from brisket, a kosher cut of meat from the front of the cow. Since brisket is a tougher cut, the salting and cooking processes transformed the meat into the extremely tender, flavorful corned beef we know of today.
The Irish may have been drawn to settling near Jewish neighborhoods and shopping at Jewish butchers because their cultures had many parallels. Both groups were scattered across the globe to escape oppression, had a sacred lost homeland, discriminated against in the US, and had a love for the arts. There was an understanding between the two groups, which was a comfort to the newly arriving immigrants. This relationship can be seen in Irish, Irish-American and Jewish-American folklore. It is not a coincidence that James Joyce made the main character of his masterpiece Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, a man born to Jewish and Irish parents.
Ahh, similar origin to fish and chips in the UK then.
That meal came about either in London or the North of England where Jewish immigrant fried fish venders decided to team up with the Irish cooked potato sellers to produce the meal everyone associates with the UK.
Because while a bunch of stuff from the UK was lifted and adapted from folks we colonised (Mulligatawny soup for example, was an adaptation of a soup recipe found in India and which British chefs tried to approximate back home), some of it was made by folks who actively moved here (like tikka masala, that originated in a restaurant up in Scotland).
If I give you an apple and an orange and I tell you to choose, how many choices do you really have?
Two? Nope. You have FIVE, minimum.
You take the apple
You take the orange
You take both
You take nothing
You take something else
And this works EVERYWHERE.
“Are you with us or with them?”
I’m with you!
I’m with them!
You both have good points!
You’re all insane!
I’m going with that other group over there!
“You need to vote Democrat or Republican!”
Democrat!
Republican!
I switch depending on the leader and the issues!
I don’t vote!
I vote for a third-party!
“Are you Christian or Muslim??”
I’m Christian
I’m Muslim
I think God is one and the same and follow good doctrines of both
I’m atheist
I’m Jewish
And it’s often more subtle
Like a salesperson handing you two products and pressuring you to buy one of them, making you forget that
You don’t have to buy anything if you don’t want to
You can leave the store and buy something elsewhere
And sometimes it can be as important as
“Are you gay or are you straight?”
I’m gay
I’m straight
I’m both? So Bi?
I like no one, I’m ace.
I’m anything else, really, this is a spectrum and I define my own orientation.
So remember- If someone if pressuring you to pick between two choices, they’re probably trying to manipulate you by making you forget you also have another three options.
People are constantly saying that you should offer toddlers choices so that they feel empowered. Like, don’t ask if they want to go to bed, because they might say no! Ask if they want to take the bear or the bunny to bed instead!
Sometimes there really are two choices that someone can think of that they’re willing to accept, like… we have a rule that Baby X CANNOT go play in the front yard with no pants or at least underwear on. This might be my only actual hard rule, tbh.
So yesterday I said, “you can either put these pants on and stay outside, or we can go back inside.” (Baby X, as you can see, had already discovered choice #3: run outside when I foolishly leave the door open for a minute.)
But like, even then, there were totally other choices. Go inside and put on pants and THEN come back out. Go pick out a different pair of pants, or even underwear. Stay in the toy car where nobody can tell you’re only wearing a shirt, I GUESS.
You’re always allowed to negotiate. If you’re not allowed to negotiate, they’re not respecting the fact that you have boundaries too.
I’m happy to say that when I tried “do you want a car nap, or a bouncing nap?” their answer was “NO, car nap NO bounce NO!!”
They already know the two choice thing is bullshit.
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