How many bad OKC opening messages are you allowed to send before you’re forced to die alone?

Do you want the honest truth about looking and feeling so different in the workplace? Yes, it is difficult to have multiple marginalized identities AND also dress differently/have visible tattoos. There will always be people who will hate me before they get to know me. There will always be whispers. There will always be stares. But you know what? Being open about who I am has literally saved my life, again and again. I have seen too much and have fought too hard to let ignorance and fear stop me from being a full, participating person in this society. I am aware that I was also born into groups with privilege, and I will continue to use those privileges to fight for others. My mission is to help in some small way to tear down this broken system and create a better world - for you, for me, for all of us.

I am awkward and I have no filter and I don’t know why women speak to me but here we are

I sent that to someone on OKC. I’m officially the actual worst at this.

Me, explaining why I don’t connect with people

I was called the “patron saint of awkward girls” when it comes to dating and I’m okay with that.

Thank you to so many followers who have stayed on despite the hiatus. So! Important post about thoughts and things. I never do this and I am going to GLEEFULLY mix metaphors. Oh yes.

I’ve started doing exposure therapy to try and expand my world, to get back out from under the rock of social anxiety and PTSD. This follows a couple of years of dealing with the police, applying for victims of crime financial assistance, and disclosing to my parents about childhood abuse. They took it quite, quite poorly. As things stand currently I’m essentially excommunicated and victim blamed. At least the financial assistance part turned out well, not so much anything else. To be fair, the police themselves were awesome but the law is an ass. But no regrets for standing up for myself.

Anyway, exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is like the Bene Gesserit pain box from Dune. (I’m most familiar with/fond of the cult classic movie, but purists can refer to the books.) “The gom jabbar (meta-cyanide poisoned needle) test would be to determine whether an individual’s awareness was stronger than their instincts. If their awareness of the gom jabbar’s presence was strong enough, it would override their instincts to withdraw from the test, which usually involved great physical pain.”

Another related Dune comparison is the litany against fear. “I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” In a way it’s more pertinent than the pain comparison because it involves not only facing fear but observing it and accepting it and being aware of Self separate to it. Proving humanity through facing fear and instincts, rather than simple pain. Yeah.

So in my case, the exposure therapy is less like a pain box and more like a jar full of spiders. Except there are 10 jars of spiders, each one with a more fearsome and deadly mass of crawlies than the last, and I have to work my way from the first jar to the last, putting my hand it for an extended time thrice a week. But in reality the spiders are people and my hand is me doing a certain task or ‘quest’. And the quest reward for getting 50% used to the first jar of spiders is to move on to the next ones that are more hairy and horrible! YEAH MIXED METAPHORS WOO.

Basically my local shops are a jar full of daddy long legs, which are kind of horrible en masse but they can’t hurt me and I don’t worry overmuch about touching a single one. And once I’ve gotten halfway used to buying items from the daddy long legs myself I’m going to graduate to the big ‘regional’ grocery store which is equal to a jar of cockroaches. I fucking hate cockroaches. I shriek and jump on chairs. Going shopping at that big grocery store is like trying to buy toothpaste while someone is holding a gun to your head. Maybe the gunman is a cockroach. But it’s actually a cockroach person because people are the source of social anxiety.

And so on and so forth. I don’t really have a conclusion for this story. I don’t even know what’s in the 10th jar yet, maybe I have to put my face into a swarm of redbacks, no idea, I haven’t looked that far yet. But these jars, while only numbering 10 right now, will stretch into infinity for the rest of my life, if I’m human enough to face them. You can get used to anything, after all.

Match Masters

✨✨Things I was told✨✨

You’re too sensitive

You have no idea what a c*nt you actually are

You should feel privileged that I want you and no one else

You keep using your anxiety as an excuse

You keep playing on your anxiety

You need to man up and stop being such a pu**y

I’m not interested in hearing what you have to say

Shut the f*ck up I don’t want to hear it

Shut the f*ck up before I punch you in the face

Shut the f*ck up before I f*cking k*ll you

Shut the f*ck up or I’ll give you something to cry about

You deserve to have your f*cking head ki*ked in

You need help you are f*cked in the head

I want to st*b you in the f*cking neck

Good, go sleep in the park, I hope you get r*ped and k*lled

You keep saying you have anxiety but it’s all an act

If I end up hitting you it’s your own fault

Not to mention having things thrown at me. Telling her mum she would she doing me a favour by ending my life because no one cares about me….

If you notice red flags in the early stages that is your sign to leave and don’t ever look back