#I probably needed this

[pekkhum]

This is partially an agreement, but also an extension, with my own story:

I managed to repress my nature for 37 years, partially because there were a few outlets for that energy. I hit my low when my marriage fell apart (not really a surprise, now that we each know what we were going through) and I nearly acted to stop there. Ultimately, I realized this would leave my daughter seeing that neither parent had chosen to stay with her and I wasn't having any of that, but in that decision, I never actually decided to live.

I went most of a decade in this state, basically trying to die without technically doing it, very Intentionally making choices that lead me into ever growing states of risk and legitimately daydreaming about ways to handle dangerous situations that would risk everything in a reasonable way, while making sure my kid had whatever she needed. It isn't like I never seemed to have fun, after all I wouldn't have been a good parent that way, I just made sure that I had good life insurance and correctly selected beneficiaries at all times, while slowly destroying my body.

Thanks to COVID, I wound up at home all of the time. My hair grew long and I got a thrill and the feeling of it brushing across my back, or the weight of it in the shower. My nails got longer and I decided to shape them, instead of trimming them. I had always enjoyed stopping to look at gorgeous or cute dresses, but I suddenly was struck by a sadness, knowing that the way I had treated my body, I'd never be able to wear the ones I loved... Not that I wanted to, or anything, you understand, I'm just starting to work out and eat better so that I could, okay?

It was around this stage of denial and discovery that r/egg_irl content started to hit the front page, because of a few particularly good memes, I loved them and interacted a bit, so the algorithm decided to keep sprinkling them into my feed. When they scrolled by, I would giggle and upvote and feel happy for a few moments.

Eventually, I subscribed and spent more and more time reading those, r/traaa, r/mtf, etc. and one day, I just couldn't resist responding to a comment that resonated with me. Before I knew it I was talking about my trans experience and joking and picking a name.

It was three days later that the understanding sunk from my surface thoughts and actually hit home. I had been reading on what it is to be transgender and everything kept hitting home, hard, but what finally broke down that wall was reading about internalized transphobia. Every line was familiar. Each effect was my experience. Finally, I broke down and cried wailing about how I didn't want to be trans (who wants to be hated and hunted), but once I was done, I finally felt better.

From that day forward, it has been like a future actually exists. There is a life that I actually want to live out there and I am heading toward it, in spite of the fear my society imposes on me. I actually want to live to see it!

In my case, the knowledge that transition exists did save my life and does so in a continuing manner. Not only am I finally truly alive, but I'm no longer carefully trying to accidentally die.

But, the habits aren't gone. I still barely live, much of the time, I still fear troubling others, I still fail to reach out. I still cut myself off and try to disappear into the background.

I literally discussed keeping in touch with a lovely freshly omnigendered person that I met because we got along so well and you know what: neither of us has reached out. I fear that xir likely also thinking of what a bother they must be and how she can't initiate, in case the other is just being nice. I know that's what I'm thinking.

I am getting a little better at accepting that I'm allowed to want things for myself and every now and then I convince myself that I can "waste" the money on me. It is usually clothes that manage this, unsurprisingly, but everything else tends to just fill my bookmarks.

But, I have yet to accept the idea that I deserve to exist. I'm something wrong, something unwelcome, something unlovable. It isn't that any of this is true, logically, it is that I believe it at such a deep level that my logic can't touch it. I struggle to accept an invitation to help or to shared time, because I'm clearly just a burden to the person who offered it. I wouldn't want to trouble them by taking their outstretched hand,,,

so many of the transfems i know spent their time pre-transition performing a kind of lifelong exercise in self-deprivation. the goal, for them, was to find out exactly how little a person needed to live. they starved themselves, dressed carelessly, shunned friends, and hollowed themselves out so as not to be burdens on anyone but themselves.

i see it now, too, in the girls around me. i'll ask if they want care – a home-cooked meal, relaxed company, sex without the expectation of reciprocation – and they say no, no, thank you, i don't need it; what would you like, what do you want, because in their head they're still doing that awful calculus, still training themselves to disappear in the eyes of the people around them.

i don't think i'd have died without transition – not in the conventional sense, at least – but to take that leap, i had to stop thinking of myself as a human experiment in fuel-efficient living and start nurturing the anemic, atrophied flame of desire in my heart. i had to learn to eat well, to exercise, to style myself beautiful, but harder than that, i had to learn to ask the people around me to work on my behalf in order to enrich my life and give me the things i wanted.

and i did it; i learned. and it was agony, but courage is a muscle you can train, and every day i get better at accepting gifts with the hungry gratitude i never learned in my years and years as a sad, scared, lonely boy.

so be patient with the trans girls in your life. better than that: be proactive, attentive, generous; be forceful, if you have to, and learn to distinguish real discomfort from the terrified reflex of self-deprivation that so many of us learned to rely on.

and if you are so lucky as to love a trans girl, you must insist upon her. you must insist upon her happiness, her comfort, her pleasure, and her rest, because she may still not yet know how to make those demands for herself. if you can devote any amount of energy to becoming an engine that nurtures the flame of even a single tgirl then there is a place for you in trans heaven, which as far as i'm concerned is the only one worth going to

[liquidstar]

i always think abt my cousin in greece who's like obsessed with american culture, bc ill say that im going to a barbecue and she'll be like "wow.... a real life american barbecue... will there be red cups?" you bet your ass there'll be red cups. take my hand. have a hot dog. all your dreams can come true here at the real life american barbecue

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[bananonbinary]

also worth noting that "abusive" doesn't actually mean "irredeemable" either.

there's a lot of people that have done things in the past that were bad, because they weren't taught any better, or they were in an overall toxic situation where EVERYONE was shitty (like a cult), or they were just at an especially low point and hurt others for it.

you don't have to forgive them. you don't have to ever speak to them again. you can be angry with them until you die if you want.

but society cannot function if we don't allow them to move on. to change their behavior and fuck off somewhere else and build meaningful relationships without bothering you again. we need a path for people to change, or nothing ever will.

[jacqcrisis]

Put salt in your baked goods. Put salt in your desserts. Just do it. Please. Salt isn't just for savory, it's literally a flavor enhancer so even a pinch can take a meh recipe to one people can't stop eating. Listen to me. Your cookies and cheesecake bars are bland and uninteresting. I'm taking your hand. I'm guiding you with a gentle touch to the back. We can do this together. Trust me.

[bytedykes]

ok fine maybe i DID come back wrong. what are you going to do about it. kill me? put me back in the ground? after all this effort? all this pain and suffering only to find out bringing me back wasn't worth it after all? you worked so hard. are you going to waste all of that just because im not what you wanted? just because i belong only to myself? are you going to let me pick out my own coffin

[hinamie]

post-graduation trip airport looks

[theoptia]

Simone de Beauvoir, from Diary of a Philosophy Student: Volume 1, 1926-27

Text ID: I observe how much I have matured since last year despite my belief that I was losing myself, how something strong was born from the painful experiences survived and from the numerous minutes that I believed were wasted.

[jakeperalta]

I'm curious. what job would you do if money was no object (you just automatically had an income you could live comfortably on)? including work like volunteering, studying etc. please share in the tags :)

[chloesimaginationthings]

10/10 parenting from the Aftons in FNAF

[hotdogmchiggin]

Company Mandated Fancy Fits on the Tulpar 😏

Also had to include the REAL star of the show (and a bonus)

Based off of this and this. Thank you very much joetastic for being inspirational 👍

The REAL reason this is late

[izzenithal]

Percy “Has Been Waiting to Use This Meme as an Excuse” Jackson, and Annabeth “Never Seen a Meme” Chase

[nouverx]

*proceeds to drink the whole bottle*

Yeah Alastor you're gonna be loved and appreciated wether you want it or not :)

[jonkisbonk]

[greykolla-art]

Charlie: “I’m so glad my most villain-coded friend is at full power again! 🥰💕”

*throws this to you angst goblins like raw steak* ❤️

(No I will not do a part 2!❤️)

[hinamie]

oversaturate