#rebloggable

I’m too old and tired for cattiness, bickering, grudges and “feuds.” I don’t put effort into cycling bullshit negativity. I just wanna get along with people in my fandoms, and at the very least be civil.

ease up a little. most of us are just doing our best

I hope you get the closure you deserve, and if you can’t get that, I hope you let yourself heal knowing it wasn’t your fault.

@storiesandnarratives and @sinesalvatorem wrote lovelyletters to their 10-year-old selves. I liked this idea, but my 10-year-old self was pretty content. My 14-year-old self, though, I could muster a few choice words for.

Hi 14-year-old me,

​I’m going to try to build credibility by starting off with something you won’t want to hear: sadness still haunts you. I know that one of your small secret hopes is that this too shall pass, that this worthless sad feeling is just a phase induced by teenage angst. Sorry.

It does get better, though, which I think won’t be a cliché phrase for another year. My future is uncertain, but it feels full of waiting possibilities rather than waiting failures. There comes a time when the years of life stretching in front of you no longer seem an inconceivable burden that cowardice will force you to bear. You stop collecting all the jagged hurts of the world and turning them inward to stab at your self-worth.

Right now, you feel like life has given you everything you could have asked for and all you do is take and take and break and break, squandering the gifts you’ve been given. Your mental alchemy transmutes gratitude to guilt and then the guilt feeds itself on the knowledge that it ought to be gratitude. Here’s what I think you need to hear:

You can’t deserve your life.

You can never earn your birth.

Life is just something you have. There is no end point at which someone will judge you worthy. There exists no way for you to be accomplished enough or helpful enough or exceptional enough or just enough that someone will finally nod and say, “Yes, you’ve done it, you’re now officially a good person. Carry on being alive.” You know this, of course, but you don’t believeit.

Remember in the play where you were Arietty, you messed up your cue and someone tried to comfort you backstage, saying, “Everyone makes mistakes,” and you shouted, “I don’t!” and felt shaken and childish? Even at age eleven, you refused to give yourself permission to be a person in progress.

Think of that tender feeling you have when one of your little cousins tries to do something new. When they try to rescue all the monarch larvae in the field by bringing them to milkweed or attempt their first backwards somersault on the trampoline? When they fail, you don’t get angry at them. You feel proud that they’re growing. Can you try to feel some of that tenderness towards yourself? You’re growing, too. So am I. We’re going to be in progress as long as we’re alive.

In your diary (thanks for writing it, by the way, you were right that it would be fun to look back on) you spend paragraphs listing what you hate about yourself. You let yourself believe that you are a bad person who never does anything, while simultaneously telling yourself that anything less than perfection is failure.  It’s overwhelming.

Letting go of your painful need to be perfect will happen gradually. You will let go. You will let go because the people you love, like your Nana and brother, are ordinary, not perfect. They will convince you that they will love you even if you never do anything exceptional. They celebrate your mundane accomplishments, sure, learning a new language or publishing a poem or winning a science contest, but their desire for you to live is never conditional on how impressive you are. Life is just something you have.

You’re homeschooling yourself right now, at your Academy of Vegan Learning. This was a good decision. It makes you anxious when your friends recite the fullness of their days in school, but don’t worry: you’re not falling behind. I’m so glad you took some time to read and e-mail your friends and do hardly anything. You don’t have to be productive to be progressing.

I don’t think this reassurance will be enough for you. You are dangerously good at convincing yourself that you never do anything. One thing I suspect may be a fundamental personality bug is that you always feel like you’re wasting time when you work alone. I suggest finding a project to work on with other people. Maybe go to Hacklab with your dad or spend more time making community theatre puppets.

You feel lonely sometimes, even sprawled out on that couch on the island with your eight closest friends. You feel isolated from their conversations about school and dating, because you really do just want to talk about genetics. You know what, though? Emotions and people are systems just as fascinatingly complex as protein signalling networks. It’s not necessarily less intellectual to analyze them instead. In fact, you feel really good when you have a new insight that helps explain people. Start chasing those insights now and maybe you’ll feel better about the conversations you so often dismiss as gossipy.

Finally, you really do need to talk to some people about your sadness. Turning inward isn’t strength. It isn’t unforgivable weakness, either. It’s just not optimal. You are so afraid that your parents will feel like failures if you tell them about your self-injury, or that they will panic and force you into therapy or snatch away your plans. In fact, your mother thinks all smart teenage girls get incredibly sad for a few years. I promise she won’t freak out. After you talk to your parents, you may want to consider therapy. I suggest you look for something mindfulness-based: that flavour of therapy asks you to practice being and thinking a certain way, which is more interesting than overanalyzing your regrets.

Anyway, I like pointing at pictures of you and saying how cool you are. I usually follow that up immediately with, “Too bad I was so sad back then”. Your life may not be something you deserve, but I’m glad you hold onto it. There’s a hell of a good future next door; let’s go.

With all the tenderness I can transmit in words,

Your 23-year-old self

“È un mondo fatto per due, come le confezioni dello yogurt, dentro l'amore c'è una punta d'odio.”

-(Il mio diario segreto.)

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH TO ACE SWERS!

Let your shipping partners know what’s up.

Truth has to be blunt sometimes. & I am in no way being a “passive aggressive” or “controlling” partner, or being “mean” when I say affirmatively: 

If you feel our ship is ending/fading out, or you simply don’t want to do it anymore, I’m an adult. Tell me. Because ghosting your partners is something childrendo. Yes, youdoowe your long term partners some kind of an acknowledgment instead of leading them on with half-truths,  wishy-washy responses, or radio silence. Now, to me, that looks like you’re done with my muse/our ship, so I’m going to back off and assume you’re done with my muse. But if you come back later all: “weeee let’s ship again!” or send romantic memes after ignoring me/our ship for so long, it makes for mass confusion. PLEASE. TELL. YOUR. PARTNERS. WHAT’S UP. Even if it’s in the form of an ooc post in general, let your dash know what’s going on. Obviously you shouldn’t have to post personal details, because every partner/verse is different and personal, but please, please,pleasebe mature and let your partners GENERALLY know you’re dropping verses. Communication is key in everything, not just imaginary pretend time.