#im......handling this.........................

[rennerei]

...😎😎🌟

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

in bed after a terrible awful no-good day, the thought struck me that "and I didn't even tear up once in frustration! i deserve a gold star"

and then: "someone should give me a gold star"

and then: "im an adult. im in charge of giving myself gold stars"

and i remembered i keep a box of glitter stickers for this exact scenario.

and that's how my terrible no good awful day ended with me covered arms-to-legs in glitter stickers. there are tiny stars scattered over my bedsheets. i understand why my parents didn't let me do this. it felt amazing. i will definitely be repeating this behaviour.

anyway. give yourself stars.

[dimeadozencows]

Not that I know anything about alcohol

[stemmmm]

bad youtube clickbait thumbnail that reads "I think I just had a therapy session with a DEMON???"

[inkskinned]

everyone says "oh repair in a relationship might be difficult but it will feel good after it's done."

but you weren't raised in a safe house. like generational wealth, it just skipped you. neither of your parents really know how to apologize or to talk to you with peace in their hearts. at sixteen, just once, you'd written down a little speech and tried to give it to your mom: hey i don't like it when you comment about my body and she'd given you this strange look, almost alien, and you'd felt stupid and small, then. and your father? fuck no. many years later you'd describe it to your therapist: in my house we just pretended like nothing had happened. like, overnight: all the pain was gone.

and since you weren't raised right, you struggled in school, too, didn't you. you struggled making friends because the architecture of appropriate behavior blindsided you. you weren't cruel - but you obviously seemed off to the other kids, strange in a way that was somehow always abrasive. and in that state - unhappy at home, unhappy during the school day - you would have given anything to have been loved. any person and any context.

so it's fine when your friend is a little pushy or mean or controlling. sure, she keeps you up late with threats of suicide but tells you never to call an ambulance. sure, he constantly pressures you for sex. sure, they are overly clingy one day just to disappear the next. all of them are still your friend, which is new. you don't understand this idea on the internet that you could just "cut people out" if they don't "serve" you. if you cut out the people in your life who take from you; you would have nothing and no one. maybe the people who can exile others just have more to choose from. maybe they had good parents. maybe they just have had an easier life, and have never needed someone.

not that you need people (you do. it makes you sick how badly you need people to like you), you rarely ask for more, don't you. so when you finally get into a relationship - well; now you're really chosen. and what's more, they make you feel wanted. even if it's just for a fraction of a second, you get to say: this is my person. holy shit.

nobody is perfect. hell, you're not perfect either. and how many times do you hear the words relationships take work. it's work but it's worth it. your hands shaking on the steering wheel. you have tried podcasts and audiobooks and self-healing and (in utter desperation) even a chatbot (it was a bad night. inside of the yelling, you'd thought: this is just the normal shape of my life). and the thing is that you want to give people grace. you want them to feel like you don't take everything personally. maybe that's why you're terrified to set a boundary.

and everywhere the positivity like an earthquake at your feet. all of this should feel like healing! you should practice gratitude! repair will feel good, right? it will feel good, eventually. the problem is probably you, actually: maybe you are just bad at it. you need to control your emotions more, you're always lashing out at the wrong things. some part of you is still sixteen, writing a dramatic letter to your mother. some part of you is still hiding from your father.

it must be like how they name mascara better than sex, then. repair is something you can buy lessons for; it is likely that repair doesn't really feel good - you're just being marketed to. the people who are able to have hard conversations and actually feel good: those are also people who have that generational wealth where their parents are normal or even kind and their friends were supportive and gentle and their partners never raised their voice. it feels good to them, but you probably will never feel safe enough for it, how could you.

but then you meet her, and she hurts you by accident. shaking, you bring up your handwritten bulleted list of things you have condensed into the smallest, gentlest packet of information. you have codified it into the perfect therapy speak. you have practiced it for three days, trying to make sure it is the best and least offensive version of things.

and she just... accepts it. and holds your hand. and asks you gentle questions about everything. she apologizes immediately. there's no fight, no yelling. you walk away feeling - good. it feels good to be cared for, it feels good to be seen.

the problem is that it has now thrown everything else into a terrible kind of relief. because this entire time - this entire life - it could have actually been that fucking easy.

[hinamie]

i look so pretty when i lose my head

[caladbolg]

i wasn't supposed to love you, but i do

[bogkeep]

oh boy i saw a Post that i know was at least partially a joke about how we should get to appeal people who've blocked us... i made the mistake of checking the comments. oops. lots of people who don't understand how people can be such meanies and block people over almost Nothing at all, or that blocks should expire after a year... and, well.

i have several people blocked for safety reasons/peace of mind, people i want to have the least amount of access to me as possible (harassment campaign, terfs, etc). i figure most people agree that these are good and noble reasons to Block. but i also have lots and lots and lots of people blocked for seemingly petty reasons (bad opinion, annoying to me). i have also found myself blocked by several people - some i know exactly why, some complete strangers i have never interacted with and cannot figure out the motivations of. so let's explore some angles here:

- Receiving An Appeal: i did actually have someone email me to ask if they were really blocked or if it was a mistake. i was put in the very fun position of having to find a nice way to explain that yeah, sorry, i soft blocked you several times because the commentary you kept adding to my posts was driving me nuts but it didn't stick so i had to hard block you. no hard feelings, you're fine, i just personally find you annoying but please don't take it personally. i mean i didn't HAVE to reply to that email, and maybe i could have found a way to tell that person to give me some space, but. the internet is so loud and so full of people and i have a threshold for how much i can handle, i do not have the capacity or patience to sit down with every person i find annoying and tell them to please repress their entire personalities for my sake. i don't WANT to do that! i want people to be their loud and vibrant self but sometimes i need to slam my door shut before i snap at someone. or everyone. taking care of myself is to everyone's benefit okay!!!

- Wanting To Know Why: look, i get it, it's frustrating to not know exactly WHY someone blocked you, but my honest advice is that... you probably don't actually want to know. maybe if it was someone you have a personal relationship to outside of tumblr, sure! that's a whole other can of worms to deal with. but you probably don't actually need to hear a stranger tell you you're annoying or that your headcanon sucks or whatever. there's a parallel here to wanting to hear the Exact reasons for why someone broke up with you and it's just gonna make you feel like shit regardless of what it is - except it's an online random who doesn't even know you probably. you literally do not need a stranger's approval to exist in a space and do your thing, and the stranger did the right thing by curating their space. i'm sure there's lots of examples where people get blocked for a "small" reason and the blocker forgot Why and could probably easily unblock them and carry on. But. do you really really really need access to This particular stranger online? maybe they have a really cool blog you enjoyed! but there's so many other cool blogs. you'll live!!!!!! i promise.

- Is Blocking A Declaration Of War And Ill Intent? no. it's just not. it's a tool for curating your internet space. nobody gets along with literally everyone else on earth and we were not made with extreme exposure to millions of other people worldwide in mind. maybe it seems extreme to yeet people out of your blog just for being a little bit annoying, but it's not so extreme if you have a larger following and lots of people making noise in your notifs. it doesn't have to be deeper than that!!