darlingarmadillo

[darlingarmadillo]

Hi! Just a genuine question, I was curious as to why you dislike the Rainbow Fish?

Because Rainbow Fish can be retold like this: 

A fish has a part of their body - their physical, incarnate body, what they were born with - that makes them very happy and that they are very proud of. They also have an unfortunate habit of thinking that they are better than other fish. That part isn’t good, and causes the other fish to be unhappy with them and avoid them. 

The fish is now very sad. The only person who likes the fish anymore tells him to go to the octopus, the animal framed as the adult in the story. 

The octopus tells the rainbow fish that they have been a snotty jerk and that the only way to make people like them again is to take off their scales and give them away. That in order to have any friends and make up for their behaviour, they have to rip off pieces of their own body and self and give them away to other people to make the other people happy and make up for their transgressions. 

And the rainbow fish is upset. And then another fish comes and asks them for a scale. And the rainbow fish takes off a piece of themself, their body, the thing they were born into, and gives it away. And now that fish likes him, and is materially benefitted by this piece of another fish’s actual body that has been given to it. 

And then the other fish come, and the rainbow fish rips off more parts of its body - all of the parts that used to make it happy and that it was proud of - and gives them to the other fish, because it’s not fair that the rainbow fish’s body was so much nicer. And when the rainbow fish has ripped all but one scale off, tearing out of themself all but one of the things that they possessed in their self that made them happy, then all the fish are friends with them! And everything is great! And everyone has a fair share. 

Of the rainbow fish’s, and I do quite mean to keep hammering this point, own body.

What the book says is: 

1. if you are born with something nice - like, for instance, an attractive body or a clever mind or a talent or whatever - and it makes you happy and proud, you are a horrible person and deserve to be shunned. Absolutely no line is ever drawn between Rainbow Fish’s self, their actual own body, and their behaviour. In reality, it’s their behaviour that’s the problem: they are mean and aloof to the other fish. This could be the case whether or not their body was all covered with magnificent scales. However, the book absolutely conflates the two: their behaviour is framed as a natural and unavoidable outcome of being happy about and proud of their special, beautiful body. So don’t you dare ever be happy or proud of anything you have or can do that everyone else doesn’t have exactly the same amount as, because if you do, you are horrible and by definition snotty, stuck up and mean. 

2. That in order to make up for the transgression of having something about your actual self that makes you happy and proud (which, remember, has automatically made you selfish and snobby, because that’s what happens), you must rip pieces of what makes you happy out of yourself and give them to other people for the asking, and you must never ever EVER have more of that part of - again, I hate to belabour except I don’t - your self than other people have, and that makes you a good person that people like and who deserves friends. 

To summarize, then: to be a good person you must never have something about yourself that makes you happy and proud and if you happen to be born with that something you must absolutely find a way to give it away to other people and remove it from yourself, right up to tearing off pieces of your body, in order to be a good person who deserves friends. 

This, I am absolutely sure, is not what the author intended: the author definitely meant it to be a story about sharing versus not sharing. But the author then used, as their allegory/metaphor, the fish’s own actual body. Their self. It was not about sharing shiny rocks that the rainbow fish had gathered up for himself. It wasn’t even about the fish teaching other fish how to do something, or where to find something. 

The metaphor/allegory used is the fish’s literal. body. And so the message is: other people have rights to you. Other people have the right to demand you, yourself, your body, pieces of you, in a way that makes absolutely sure that you have no more of anything about your body and self that is considered “good” than they do. 

And that might just suck a little bit except, hah, so: Gifted adult, here. Identified as a Gifted child. 

This is what Gifted children are told, constantly. All the fucking time. 

(Okay, I overstate. I am sure - at least I fucking HOPE - that particularly by this time there are Gifted children coming to adulthood who did not run into this pathology over and over and over and over again. I haven’t met any of them, though, and I have met a lot of Gifted adults who were identified as Gifted as children.) 

Instead of being told what’s actually a problem with our behaviour (that we’re being mean, or controlling, or putting other people down), or - heavens forfend - the other children being told that us being better at something doesn’t actually mean moral superiority and is totally okay and not something we should be attacked for, we are told: they’re jealous of you. That’s the problem. 

Instead of being taught any way to be happy about our accomplishments and talents that does not also stop the talents and accomplishments of other children - whatever those are! - from being celebrated, we are left with two choices: to be pleased with what we can do, or what we are, or to never, ever make anyone feel bad by being able to do things they can’t. And the first option also comes with two options: either you really ARE superior to them because you have skills, abilities and talents they don’t (or are prettier), or you are a HORRIBLE stuck up monster for feeling that way. 

(It is not uncommon for Gifted kids to chose either side, which means it’s not uncommon for them to choose “okay fine I really AM better than you”; this can often be summarized as “intent on sticking their noses in the air because everyone else is intent on rubbing them in the dirt”; on the other hand I have met a lot of Gifted women, particularly*, who cannot actually contemplate the idea of being Gifted because to do so is to immediately imply that they are somehow of more moral or human worth than someone else and this means they are HORRIBLE HORRIBLE SELFISH PEOPLE, and so will find literally any reason at all that their accomplishments are not accomplishments or that they don’t deserve anything for them.) 

Instead of being given any kind of autonomy or ownership of ourselves, we are loaded down by other people’s expectations: we are told that because we can accomplish more we must, and that daring not to do what other people want to the extent that they want with what we are capable of we are selfish, slackers, lazy, whatever. We are taught that we owe other people - our parents, our friends, even The World - excellence, the very best we can possibly do, and trust me when I say people are ALWAYS insisting We Could Do Better. And we should, or else we will be disappointing them, or letting them down, because (because we are Gifted) the only reason we could possibly be failing is not trying hard enough. 

We are, in fact, told over and over and over and over again, to rip off pieces of ourselves to give to other people to make them happy, because those pieces are valuable, but forbidden from enjoying the value of those pieces - pieces of our selves - for our own sake because that would be selfish and arrogant. And we owe this, because we were born a particular way. 

Because, metaphorically, we were born with rainbow scales, so now we have to rip off those rainbow scales in the name of Sharing, and otherwise we are selfish and horrible and deserve to be alone.** 

That is why I fucking hate The Rainbow Fish. 

Because whatever the author INTENDED, the metaphor they chose, the allegory they picked, means that THAT is the story they actually told. (And is the story that child after child after child after child I have encountered actually takes from it.) I don’t hate the author; I’m not even mad at them. But I do hate the book with a fiery passion, and it is among the books I will literally rip apart rather than allow in my house when I have kids, because I’m not going to give it to anyone ELSE’s kid either. 

*but, I would like to note, not UNIQUELY: this is something I encounter in Gifted men as well. 

**I can’t remember who it was, in relation to this, put forward the thought: if people actually talked about the access and use of children’s bodies the way we talk about access to and use of Gifted children’s minds and talents†, the abusiveness would be absolutely clear? But they’re right. 

†because sometimes it is Gifted children’s bodies in an abstract way, in that its their talent for gymnastics or their talent for ballet or sport or whatever, so I mean in a very raw way, the actual physical embodied flesh we are. 

[darlingarmadillo]

[darlingarmadillo]

Choose one

[darlingarmadillo]

OH GOD MY ASS WHAT'S HAPPENED TO MY ASS

planter spotted on eBay

[darlingarmadillo]

Snowball in Hell, acrylics, 30cmx20cm

I used a random piece of wire to paint the smallest details..!

[darlingarmadillo]

Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness

[darlingarmadillo]

[darlingarmadillo]

Absolutely wild to me how sometimes you don't even realize the way you'd been taught to perceive things as a kid was kinda fucked up, actually, until decades later.

Example:

As a kid, I constantly lived in fear of damaging shit in my parent's house. The walls. The floors (especially the floors. The wood was beautiful. Shiny. But so easy to scratch). The cabinets.

As a sixteen-year-old, I once took my car to the dealership after work and paid a very dear sum of $250 ($10/hr cashier salary) to fix a slight scratch in the paint because I knew if my father saw it there would be hell to pay. It didn't matter that I parked far out, like I'd been taught, and someone scratched it anyway. It was my fault. I failed in my duties as a steward of my vehicle.

Every time I scratched a rim on a curb while parallel parking or got a door ding or, god forbid, didn't wash and vacuum that car every weekend, it was treated like some sort of moral failing.

Last year, when my husband and I first moved into our house, he scraped the side of our car when parking in our (Very Narrow) garage. When he told me, my first instinct was to be afraid for him. Like something terrible was going to happen to him because of this mistake. I urgently reassured him that it was okay, it was an accident, I wasn't mad. Baffled, he was like, "Yeah? I know? Like, thank you for the reassurance, but I'm only a little annoyed, I'm not upset. It's just a car." And I had to take several minutes to process that. It's...just a car.

We keep the car tidy. We maintain it. But we wash it maybe 4x a year. We only vacuum it after dirty road trips or when the dog hair starts to get annoying. It has scrapes and dings and the leather seats have stains. But that's ok. Because it's just a car.

This morning, I realized that a small rock had gotten embedded in the felt foot on one of our bar stools. Neither of us had noticed. There are now scratches on our beautiful hardwood floor. My immediate response was fear accompanied by a heavy measure of paralyzing guilt. "I'm so sorry," I told my husband, "I should have noticed. I'll figure out how to fix it, I swear. I can probably sand down that section and match the stain and--"

"Whoa, hey," he said. "It was an accident. And it's fine. Floors are going to get damaged. They're floors. We live here. There was damage in places before we even bought the house, remember? It's not a big deal. It's just a floor." Right. It's just a floor. Right.

My husband's mom is visiting and this afternoon, as I was sitting in the kitchen looking at the scratches on the floor, I offhandedly asked her if my husband had ever broken or damaged anything as a kid. "Of course," she said. Household items. A TV. A wrecked car during his teen years. I asked how she punished him.

"Why would I punish him for things like that?" she said. "They were all accidents."

Right. Of course. Right.

[darlingarmadillo]

Sabrina: tabby or torbie?

@whatcoloristhatcat

[darlingarmadillo]

One thing about the Euros is that the English still haven’t quite adjusted to the Queen dying so during the national anthem they keep singing “God Save The Quing” like there’s a non-binary monarch on the throne.

[darlingarmadillo]

some of my best friends i met at the devil’s sacrament

[darlingarmadillo]

[darlingarmadillo]

Honestly I can tell you finding out art was made by AI really does immediately, legitimately sour it for me, like people will trot this out as a Gotcha for anti-AI people but it's just making it clear they don't consider art to be the conversation that it is lol. It's similar to the way Harry Potter immediately soured for me because engaging with it while knowing the kind of heart Rowling is writing from changes the way the work feels; there isn't any moralizing or whatever that I have to do, it's easy to drop it because it's rotted in my hands.

"Oh but you LIKED this song before, nothing changed!" The conversational partner did. A very large portion of what is interesting to me about art is thinking of why the creator chose that instrumentation, or what made them want to make the thing in the first place. Finding out I've been talking to a wall completely removes an entire third of the force that art is to me, and I can't argue that anything about art or its consumption is Objectively Correct but I can argue it's fucking boring lmao

[darlingarmadillo]

One thing I have loved seeing in the whole TikTok situation is young American and Chinese folks on Red Note joking and memeing together, asking each other questions, and finding commonalities, thanks to the assistance of the internet, phones that come standard with quality video capabilities, and translation software. THIS was the kind of future we hoped technology would facilitate back when it was new. A larger society than one bounded by geography, where we could all be connected to one another, as people.

And it is highlighting a message I delivered with my whole heart when I was in Peace Child choir in high school: People are not their governments. People are not country-sized monoliths. We are all messily, imperfectly human and we all have the same needs, loves, and fears. We have more in common than we have differences.

I feel like this is a message that is SO IMPORTANT in these days of tribalism, in painting groups of people with the same black and white villainizing brush. (Mind you, I say "these days" - tribalism and prejudice has always been a part of societies, but we don't even pay lip service to the idea of compassion and shared humanity now.) It breaks my heart that a tool that could connect everyone gets perverted to divide them. It has gotten so bad that even a sermon asking for this connection, this compassion, is seen as divisive, because of the power that would be threatened if we ever jettisoned the stereotypes that make "We are good and they are bad" so easy to say.

We are not our governments and we do not have to be. We are not our political parties and we do not have to be. We are humans. We evolved to support one another, to share the load of existence among ourselves so that we could all individually thrive. Any society that discourages this approach weakens itself to the point of its own downfall and the downfall of other societies. We have a responsibility to each other in the world, regardless of what our governments say.

[darlingarmadillo]

And while I'm at it, another thought on the whole ADHD thing:

You would be a complete and utter garbage pail of a human if you expected someone missing, say, a leg, to do things exactly the same way two-legged people could.

Sure, they can get a prosthetic. But those are never as effective, reactive, or flexible as a flesh leg. They're heavy, dead weight, and require a different way of moving. After a while your stump will get sore and you will need to take it off. Some days you may not be able to wear it. No matter what kind of aid you use, it's gonna wear on you, and it will take you longer to do things. You're gonna have to plan ahead for how tired you might become, for how long you can reasonably expect to run or walk, for what you're going to do if there are no accessible doors. You have to put way more thought, expense, and effort into just existing because of the way society forgets about people with disabilities, and you still need to live in society.

And no matter how much all of the above sucks, your leg ain't growing back, and you need to accept that.

If you have dopamine receptor problems, that keep your brain from cooperating with you, that throw roadblocks up to you doing even simple things that most people seem to establish routines for doing with little or no effort, you can take meds to help, but it will not be the same as having everything functioning as society would have it function, and eventually, they're going to wear off. You have to plan ahead for the timing of taking them, to somehow get enough to have your meds on hand if you are travelling, to have options or safeguards for if you lose your keys, your charger, if you forget an appointment. You have to put way more thought, expense, and effort into existing than a neurotypical person, because society says you're broken the way that you naturally function, and you still need to live in society.

And no matter how much that sucks, you can't permanently change the way your brain functions, and you need to accept that.

The problem is, you can't point at a visibly missing leg when people judge you and look down on you for the compensations you need. There's no way to prove this is the way you are, even when you know this with your whole being. From the outside, you're "taking up an accessible parking space when someone else REALLY needs it."

Doesn't it make sense that it would seem easier and less painful to believe you COULD fix yourself if you just tried a little harder? That you could grow back that leg if you just applied yourself?

So you strap on the metaphorical prosthetic and use it past the point of pain, till you're raw and bleeding, in order to be taken seriously. You rely on last-minute, down-to-the-wire deadlines, pushing yourself to exhaustion, and beat yourself up mercilessly for any little mistake, because you believe others will be even harsher than you if they see you fail, if they knew who you REALLY were. It's unsustainable, and it will lead to self-hatred, depression, and anxiety, where every tiny mistake is a crisis and every triumph is a squeaked-by fluke, a miracle that you managed to pull off. The belief that you are the laziest person who ever lived, so surely you don't deserve anything good, will lead to going along with any abuser that shows an interest in you, because it's probably the best you're going to get.

To stop hurting yourself, you need to accept you are who you are, and start caring for yourself by doing the real work. The work that allows you to get by in life. The work that accepts the way your brain works and incorporates it rather than denying it. The work your inner critic will rail against because it's dangerous, risky. People will see who you are! They'll judge you!

But I'm tired of fighting. They can judge me if they want to. I'll be upset about it, but at least I won't be at war with myself any more. And at least, rather than viewing my strengths as flukes or exceptions, I can embrace them wholeheartedly as intrinsic and central to who I am.

[darlingarmadillo]

i feel like i see a post like this once a day now and obviously it's good to have boundaries but i think it's funny that there's a loneliness epidemic while people online are always encouraging each other to cut off their friends and family rather than have difficult conversations

[darlingarmadillo]

Not For Puppies

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