Discover Top Posts Tagged with #making a stand

Rost: “Why did I bring you here?”

Aloy: “Not to answer questions.”

Rost: “Aloy...”

Aloy: “Survival requires perfection. It was a test, to hone my skills against a dangerous new machine.”

Rost: *sigh* “No. Follow. These are Nora hunting lands. They must be protected. If you hadn’t destroyed the Sawtooth, how many Braves might it have killed or injured tomorrow? The lesson lives within the question, Aloy. For years you’ve trained to win the Proving, but only for yourself. As a brave, it will be your duty to fight for your tribe-”

Aloy: “My tribe?! You said I wouldn’t need them.”

Rost: “But I never said the tribe wouldn’t need you! The strength to stand alone, Aloy, is the strength to make a stand. To serve a purpose greater than yourself. That is the lesson you must learn. And remember it...after the Proving, and after I am gone. We are finished here. Follow.”

-----------------------------

Later That Day

Aloy: I understand the final lesson, Rost.

Rost: “Do you?”

Aloy: “But if I’m going to stand for something, it’ll have to be something I believe in.”

Rost: “Then I hope you find it, Aloy. I hope you do.”

#Horizon Zero Dawn #Making a Stand #Others needing you #Spoiler

Tryna stay focused... All 18’

y'all wanna know something that's completely fucked up?

i'll tell you, here goes.

when i was in secondary school, i hung around with a couple of girls i considered to be my best friends.

here's the fucked up thing - i never realised it until after i stopped hanging out with them, but they didn't even consider me their FRIEND. to them i was just 'that weird girl' that hung around with them, because we'd been 'friends' since primary school.

you wanna know how i realised this? various things.

for future reference, i will refer to them as S and E.

the one thing that stands out to me is this one time when i got put into a group project with S, and her reaction was to complain about everyone she'd been dumped with - including me. i was standing a foot away from her, staring at her, while she complained about being put in a group with ME. she later asked if she'd done something wrong, because i was suddenly keeping the fuck away from her and not talking to her or E, and i told her "you made me feel like i'm unwanted" and her reaction was basically "get over it".

another thing is how they treated me, aside from that incident.

here's a bit of trivia about myself - during year nine, when i was like 13 or something, i was selectively mute. no one actually bothered to do anything about it until the teachers noticed me using my made-up sign language to talk to someone, but you wanna know how my so-called 'best friends' reacted?

they ignored me. more or less pretended i didn't exist even though i was right there, and if i ever did force myself to speak (i often pretended i had a sore throat just to avoid having to speak) they acted like they never even heard me. also, whenever i got out of class before them, i ALWAYS waited for them. because i wanted to walk with them, because they were my friends, and i didn't like walking alone.

wanna know what they did? they didn't do that.

one time i specifically remember asking them if they could please, please wait for me after class, because i hate walking alone in a sea of people who hate me for no reason, and they said they would - cut to the end of class and they walked out, i expected them to be waiting outside, but they were already long gone before i get out of the classroom.

there was also the way they treated my other friends, ones i made without their 'help' or introduction. there was this kinda lonely girl who i'm gonna call SO, and at some point i guess i introduced her to my so-called 'friends'. this one time i was sitting with my so-called 'friends', without SO there because she was doing whatever, and they were talking shit about her.

i don't remember exactly what it was they said about SO, but what i clearly remember is them suddenly realising that i was sitting RIGHT FUCKING THERE and they turned to me and said 'don't tell SO we said any of this'. like they were threatening me.

at that point i began to wonder if they talked shit about me behind my back, cus if they did it to someone who actually cut herself on a regular basis and silently suffered an abusive public relationship with a dick that didn't deserve to exist, what were they saying about me?

one more thing - i was bullied literally all the time at school. it got to the point where i would actually try to fake illnesses or use the first one or two days of my period as an excuse to actually not go, out of fear of being bullied and humiliated every five minutes by everyone, even complete strangers, who knew about me only because i was 'that weird girl that's an easy target for everyone'.

no one ever stood up for me. not even SO, but i can forgive her, because she had far too many issues of her own to deal with - but S and E had no such problems. Their lives were, in comparison to mine and SO's, absolutely perfect.

and yet, even when i was being bullied RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM, they never did anything to defend me. i was basically incapable of defending myself, purely because i knew that if i tried i'd only make it worse (though on a few awesome occasions i got pissed off enough to physically attack whoever was bullying me, or i would just simply walk out of the classroom even if the lesson had only just started).

so basically my so-called 'best friends' didn't give a single solitary fuck about me, and i'm ashamed to admit that i never figured this out until year eleven, when i was 15, and i stopped hanging around with them.

i thought my life would change when i stopped hanging with them, but guess what? it didn't. everything was still the same, i was still getting bullied every day, i occasionally had relapses into selective mutism and no one gave a fuck, i also tried to fake illnesses to get out of school, but you wanna know what actually did change?

as i began to look back on how my 'friends' had treated me, i began to get angry. not angry enough to actually do something, like when i would attack someone or walk out of the classroom, but the kind of burning anger that's incredibly dangerous because there's nothing you can do about it and the people responsible aren't even aware that it's their fault or that they've even done anything wrong.

so basically S and E ruined over half of my life and they probably didn't even notice or care.

i made a promise to myself that i would never, ever speak to them ever again - and i almost kept that promise, except for one incident during sixth form when, surprise surprise, S was in the same tutor group as me and she tried asking me for some help with something.

i don't think she even knew why i was glaring at her.

this story has a bittersweet ending, actually.

fast forward to now, and i've switched from sixth form to college (and lemme tell y'all that was the best decision i ever made in my entire life). i'm now in second year, halfway through, and basically everyone in the class is my friend. even those i don't particularly know very well, i consider them my friend - because we share common interests, and they actually don't bully me.

here's the bittersweet part - i'm waiting for them all to turn on me. i'm waiting for that one moment where i fuck up, and suddenly i'm the target for bullying once again.

i also have a friend who i consider to be my best friend ever, but i'm not sure if he considers me to be his best friend (i know he considers me a friend at least, otherwise he wouldn't let me follow him around like a lost puppy half the time). when class ends and it's time to go home, i'm usually out of the classroom before him, and i've sworn to myself that i'd never abandon anyone the way S and E did, especially if i think of them as my best friend.

sometimes, though, he's out of class before me.

and he always waits, unless he needs to be somewhere, in which case he actually he tells me beforehand and i'm happy to walk to the bus station without him.

but i never asked him to wait for me, because i assumed that he wouldn't bother. i assumed - and still do assume - that he's gonna walk off and abandon me like S and E did, because even if i ask, no one wants to wait for me.

but he does. he waits. and i continue to be amazed at that, even after an entire year and a half.

oh, and another thing - and this is actually a really nice thing.

you know how i said i went selectively mute in year nine? i forced myself to get over it the next year because i didn't like going to the school's shit version of therapy (which did nothing except make me realise that it'd be easier to pretend i was okay rather than actually be okay).

over the past few months i've been going through some very, very tough family shit, and i'm always switching between 'terrified as fuck' and 'too tired to care anymore'.

it has nothing to do with college, but i've gone back to being selectively mute again.

the reaction of all sixteen of my friends? they're actually nice about it. if i speak, they don't patronise me and they actually listen to me. if i don't, and i use some other means of communication, they will make genuine attempts to understand me and they don't act like it's a chore for them.

one memorable occasion was before christmas, and there was this guy from another class using the macs in our classroom to get his work done - one of my classmates introduced him to me, and said "she's a bit quiet, but she communicates in her own way", and all i could think was "now THAT'S how you do it".

they're all also genuinely concerned about the reason why i've suddenly gone absolutely silent when, the previous year, i was basically the craziest person in class.

i love these people. they're my friends, my real friends - but i'm burned by my past experiences with people who i also called 'friends'.

i'm still waiting for them to decide i'm not worth their time and that it'd be easier to laugh and point at me rather than try to help me. i'm still waiting to be abandoned by my new and real best friend, who i believe just tolerates my presence.

so, everyone, you're probably wondering - what was the point in me pouring out my heart like this?

i'll tell you.

i've realised that i'm not the only person who this kind of shit happened to. i'm not the only one who was constantly being left behind by people who were supposed to be their friends.

so i'm writing this, even though i'm not very well known by anyone on Tumblr, and i'm hoping it gets reblogged enough for people to look at their fellow students or even co-workers, and wonder 'how do their friends treat them?'

or maybe it's enough to make people realise that they're the ones this is happening to, or maybe give them enough courage to say 'fuck you' to their supposed 'friends' and walk away with their heads held high.

or alternatively, if you don't want to say it because you're too scared or too shy, just walk away and never speak to the abusive bastards ever again.

this shit can damage people forever. it can and will lead to suicides and pure depression.

it's not okay. stand the fuck up, everyone - those who see it happening, those who it's happening to, just . . . fucking everyone, stand up and tell the bullies and 'friends' to go and fuck themselves with a mace or something.

Renny, out.

#bullying #bully is not okay #fake friends #and i mean actual fake friends #abandonment #i have serious issues and i can't do shit about it #selective mutism #making a stand #hoping this gets thrown around so people can fucking see it #bittersweet

Don’t be so easily defined.

“I don’t want to be a part of this kind of life,” I said. “Sometimes you don’t have a choice,” he said. “When you’re the only one around who can make a stand, you don’t have a choice. Not if you want to be able to sleep at night.”

Carrie Vaughn, "Kitty and the Silver Bullet"

#carrie vaughn #kitty norville #cormac bennett #kitty and the silver bullet #making a stand #fighting back #courage