#Not debilitatingly so for the most part. But enough that I just felt bad all the time.

[sophieswundergarten]

Hello I’d like to ask about “SQ thing” “immune” and “whistle” if it’s not too much trouble. These all sound good, and I’m very excited to read them!

Hi!! Thank you for always being so nice and supportive :D

"SQ Thing" was honestly a gut reaction to this lovely thing by @cptnwynnie, and is about SQ and The Sister :>

"Immune" is actually an ironic title now that I think about it, and kind of a dumb concept. It's another SQ fic! But it's about him having an isolated/weak immune system from living on the island and so he just gets sick a lot.

(All of my inspiration for SQ stuff comes from the exquisite @sqenthusiast so please go read their fics!!!!)

"Whistle" is a Milligan fic that I'm actually kind of excited about! It's supposed to be like a series of vignettes or one of those "5 + 1" kind of fics, but it's giving me a real hard time at the moment, especially since I'm still not confident in writing the adults

[smnthwrd]

Venting big time so warning: talk of eating disorders, fatphobia, and self-harm. I'm putting this here because I've never been able to tell anyone about this because it would require me to reveal things about myself that i simply don't want my irls knowing.

This is the story of me and my best friend from middle school to about 10th grade, I'll call her Alice, and how i realized our relationship was one big toxic shit show, and how i came to terms with it. There is literally no point, no advice, no moral lesson to this story. I'm writing this down and putting it out there so it can exist outside of my mind.

Brief context: Alice used to be chubby, and she suffered from anorexia and bulimia from a really young age and as a result lost a lot of weight and became very skinny. I wasn't skinny. I wasn't necessarily fat, but i was chubby. And though i love myself and my body now, throughout my teens i was debilitatingly insecure and absolutely did not love myself.

When we became friends, i had no other friends. I was homeschooled, sheltered, timid, insecure and a bit of a goody two shoes. i didn't talk to anyone. She was outgoing, fun, edgy, and what some adults would call "troubled." She befriended me and drew me out of my shell and taught me how to break rules. I was the angel to her devil, she was the yin to my yang. Her parents loved me because they thought i was a good influence on her, and my parents hated her because they knew it was the other way around. She had this intoxicating effect on me, like as long as I had her attention, i was enough, and i didn't need anyone else. She had about a billion friends, and i only had her.

She was the first person i had ever met who self-harmed. She glorified it a whole lot. She talked about it like it was an accomplishment, showing me her cuts and scars like trophies and bragging about the lies she would come up with when people asked her what happened to her arms. I'm not going to say she was the reason i began self-harming, because i would have found my way around to it eventually, but she definitely was the reason i started so young.

She would pull me into her friend group, but i had never been apart of a group before, and I didn't know how to be. i didn't know how to be funny or charismatic or grab attention from the 10 other people who were all talking at once, and honestly i was so socially anxious that the thought of trying made me nauseated, so i just stayed quiet. No one talked to me or went out of their way to make room for me on the sidewalk. When it was just me and alice, we were like platonic soulmates. But when she was around them, it was like i disappeared. It felt like she pulled me into the ocean without a life jacket, and then just swam away, leaving me to fight the waves by myself.

The main reason i mention her friend group is this: Her and her friends had this running joke, where they would refer to Alice pre-weight loss (and pre-ed) as "Fat Alice," and they had one specific picture that they would refer to when telling people about this joke. It was a picture from when she was probably no older than 10, taken at a "bad" angle, making her arms look big and she had a bit of a double chin. The worst part is that she wasn't even fat. She was just barely chubby.

And most importantly: she was a child.

But still, they were all stick-thin and they would talk about Fat Alice and crack up making jokes about her. I pretended to laugh along, but honestly it killed me. Why?

Because that picture looked like me.

I was chubby. My arms looked just like hers in the picture when they were pressed down at my sides, and i had that little double chin that they would make jokes about. i had never thought to be insecure about that before. (As i said, i was homeschooled and very sheltered and also not allowed to watch many movies/tv shows, therefore wasn't exposed to a lot of fatphobia yet) It was impossible to feel comfortable around her friends because of this. And although i told myself that she didn't think that way about my body, and it was just her criticizing herself, it was still excruciating.

At this point some might say "well, it wasn't about you; thin people aren't responsible for fat people's insecurities."

And that may be true. And i know and understand that eating disorders and body dysmorphia can make you think those things about yourself, even if you wouldn't think that about someone else. But please, just get your head out of your ass and think about it for two seconds, and realize that even if someone isn't talking about you, it's almost impossible not to be negatively impacted when someone is saying revolting things about a body that looks just like yours. I didnt and still don't blame her for being insecure about her body or for having those thoughts. But that doesn't mean it didn't hurt my image of myself.

At this point I was 12, and my body type was the #1 enemy of my best and only friend.

As time went on, we got older, we grew closer, and she got thinner.

Like any teenager, i tried to develop confidence in my body and myself, but it definitely didn't work. I hate that i let her make me feel insecure, but the truth is, i felt like shit next to her. She was thin and pretty and cool and every guy was chasing her down, meanwhile i was still just a shy, anxious, average-weight girl who never had any guys interested in her, just tagging along on her best friends wild adventures. I thought best friends were supposed to make you feel better about yourself, but i only felt worse. i tried to tell her how I felt, but her answer was always something like "you're so hot! Guys like thick girls" Or "you just have to put yourself out there." And then she would move on.

We would talk about her problems for hours; we talked about mine for minutes.

She would say how she felt disgusting because she had eaten two pieces of bread that day, meanwhile i had three full meals. I didn't know anything about eating disorders or how to support someone with one. I thought i was helping when i told her how skinny she was, or that i was getting worried because of how much weight she had lost. I didn't know that i was unintentionally encouraging her.

I'm not going to go into every detail of our friendship because i don't have the time or energy for that right now, but to say the least, we were bad for eachother. And not just her, but me as well. At the time i only blamed her for the downfall of our relationship, but looking back now, i know that there were times when i was just as toxic as she was. I'm not proud of that, but i admit it fully. So if it sounds like I'm trying to put all the responsibility on her, I'm not. Im just talking about the way that our friendship affected me, because it's the only story i can tell with 100% certainty and I can't speak for her or how it affected her.

So anyways, obviously we're not friends anymore. There wasn't a big falling out, we just kind of grew apart. We still follow each other on Instagram, but we don't talk. I knew we were toxic long before we stopped talking, and i knew there was something off about the way she treated me.

But here's the thing, and the reason I'm making this vent. I don't have an eating disorder but i do have an unhealthy relationship with food and when my mental health got in a really bad place, i started looking at ed tumblr just to feel something idk (don't look at me like that i know its bad but i was unwell leave me alone) and the craziest thing happened as i learned more about eating disorders and how they affect people on a personal level.

After reading all these posts from people with eating disorders, i started to realize something.

I wasn't crazy. I wasn't being self centered or sensitive or dumb when i let her get in my head and affect the way i felt about myself.

As I looked back on that friendship that happened so many years ago, i started realizing a bunch of shit that i hadn't before.

There were so many little instances throughout our whole friendship where she would find ways to subtly mention the fact that i was bigger than her, that her clothes didn't fit me because they were too small, that i ate more than her. The more i thought about it, the more tiny moments i remembered, and they all kept piling up and flooding my memory; moment after moment of small comments about my weight, and they were often hidden inside underhanded compliments.

Little moments that, at the time, i thought i was fucking crazy for overthinking. I thought i was being selfish, finding a way to make everything about myself.

I didn't realize that my best friend in the entire world was using me as fatspo.

I had always had a small inkling of a feeling that she liked having me around because i made her feel better about myself, but i would tell myself i was overthinking. I wasn't. The way she talked to me, about me, around me. It was all to make herself look better.

I was heartbroken.

And then, i was angry. Though i made this realization years after our friendship had ended, this anger was ignited in me and it mixed with all my old feelings of resentment that came rushing back stronger than ever.

My best friend. My sister. My future maid of honor. The woman i was going to grow old with.

The love of my life and the person who kept me alive, was also purposely keeping me around to feel better about herself.

The revelations kept going.

My dependence on her wasn't an accident. That's why she never helped me make other friends; because she didn't want me to have other friends. I would cry to her and tell her I felt lonely because she had so many friends, and i only had her, and when she was busy hanging out with them i had no one to be with. She told me i didn't need other friends. She told me that her other friends didn't mean as much to her as i did, that i was her best friend. She told me i was lucky that i didn't have a bunch of people fighting for my attention. She made me feel stupid for feeling alone. She wanted to be the only thing i had.

I was so angry i could have burst. How was i so stupid??? So naive???

I was angry, I was sad, then i was angry again. I was hurt, i was neutral, then i was angry again.

Another revelation hit me: we stopped being friends right around the same time that i started to gain real confidence in myself. The less time we spent together, the more comfortable i got with myself, and it wasn't a coincidence. Because she wasn't there, getting in my head, saying things about my weight, my body, my personality, my voice. she wasn't there, finding subtle ways to make me smaller so she could feel bigger. i was free. I was free to love myself, the way that i was always capable of but couldn't, because she needed me to be insecure in order to feed her ego. I believed that she was prettier than me, and she knew that, and she wanted to keep it that way. When she would compliment me, she was careful to never build me up too high, so i wouldn't be higher than her. So i always felt just a little less pretty than her.

And the more i began to really, truly love myself, the less she wanted to be around me. I stopped letting her get to me. I stopped minimizing my feelings to make room for hers. I stopped giving more than i was getting. I stopped feeling sorry for myself, and i started reflecting her energy right back at her.

And because of that, she didn't have a use for me anymore. I was no longer a small, shy girl who needed her to guide me in the world, her designated Sheltered Friend that she had appointed herself to corrupt. She didn't have a use for me anymore, so she didn't want me. And that was okay with me.

Because i realized that it wasn't a good thing that her love intoxicated me. She and her amazing whirlwind friendship consumed every inch of me and who i was, so much that in the thick of it, i felt my only purpose was to be her other half.

So when she decided she didn't want me anymore, i was okay. Because without her, i was finally a whole, all on my own.

After all this realization, i was lightheaded and angry and sad and happy and grateful and resentful all at once, and for a brief moment, i wished we had never met. But i immediately took it back.

My final realization, dear reader, was that, despite how awful it was at times, i wouldn't undo our friendship for anything. Because yes, it was toxic, but it wasn't always toxic. It also kept me alive. There were times when it was amazing. There were moments when she didn't talk about my weight, when i didn't feel like shit sitting next to her. There were times when i felt loved, and beautiful, and changed, and happy. Really, truly happy. There were times when it showed me i was capable of loving someone deeply, of sharing the secrets i thought i could never tell, of being loved in spite of all my flaws. At its core, our friendship showed me that i could be loved, even though I now know that it wasn't a healthy love. But i can be loved. And in the future, i will be loved the right way. And i will always be grateful to my friend Alice for showing me what love is, and what it isnt.

I hope she's doing well.

[headspace-hotel]

Okay i've been thinking about this for a while and I haven't fixed this entirely. I'm not better, far from it, but I know more. And here's what I've learned.

Fear is not an intruder. Fear is not an enemy. Fear is not a monster invading your mind from without. Fear is a necessary and fundamental part of YOU, the purest manifestation of self love. This doesn't mean that it's not monstrous. I like the metaphor of a werewolf. The monster is part of you, and it wants to keep you safe.

The first several years after my disorder had come into full bloom, I personified fear as a monster, a Thing that had invaded me and taken away a "normal" way of perceiving and thinking. I was having horrible panic attacks and at times near-constant physiological symptoms. In my mind, I directed aggression and hate and vitriol at the werewolf; it was a demon, a parasite, an invader.

I resented my body for trying to keep me safe. And I didn't look closely enough at what it was trying to keep me safe from.

We still believe that ignoring fear is always morally superior to listening to it. That's "courage." There is a lot of shame in fear, especially directed at something no one else seems to mind. But this isn't right. Fear in itself is morally neutral and necessary. Anxiety still isn't a character flaw even when you are debilitatingly paralyzed and can't do anything about it. It's so hard to be a kid and feel a crushing sense of responsibility to "get over" something that feels like the worst thing you can imagine

There's no such thing as "irrational" fear. Fear is pre-rational. Don't get stuck in the channel of "this fear is irrational, I just have to ignore it hard enough..."

Fear doesn't always derive from "distorted" or unrealistic thought processes. This is a huge one and it's a major reason why Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was terrible for me. Sometimes you are literally just terrified of something that others might not be afraid of, and there's no "glitch" happening in your perception.

The reason is sometimes trauma, even if you don't have anything that the DSM considers a "traumatic" event. Even a small event where you felt unsafe and helpless can turn into something that alters your psyche if it's reinforced by later negative experiences, if you get invalidated about its effects over and over, or if you get it cemented in your mind that what happened was "normal" and that YOUR response was wrong.

being autistic or otherwise neurodivergent can mean you have responses to events that seem REALLY mismatched to the events themselves. This is because 1) your perception is fundamentally different from others, 2) your needs are fundamentally different and often are chronically unmet by the world; 3) the world REFUSES to acknowledge #1 and #2 which adds another layer of isolation and invalidation

Here's what happened to me: I found out I had severe anxiety after I started having panic attacks when I was 10. I and everyone around me assumed that the anxiety was some kind of screwup in my brain that I needed to suppress. I did the cognitive behavioral therapy, the medications, the breathing exercises.

When I was around 20, I realized a few things:

I didn't know what stress and anxiety felt like anymore. I was having weird physical symptoms in response to anxiety but I couldn't pinpoint it as an emotion.

I had taught myself not to have panic attacks so well that I couldn't "discharge" the anxiety when I needed to. I would spend days at a time just feeling AWFUL in a way that I couldn't describe.

It was incredibly hard for me to monitor my thoughts and perceive what I was thinking about, because I had gotten so good at redirecting "bad" thoughts. I could obsess about something all day and not consciously realize it because I was putting the "bad" thoughts out of my mind without even realizing it. I had trained myself to avoid the Bad Stuff but it wasn't going away.

I also realized that there was a common thread to most of my anxiety. It wasn't random. It was ROOTED in something.

I don't think it was good that my guiding assumption, for 10 years, was that I was having a "wrong" response that I needed to correct. I assumed that my fear was fundamentally wrong and useless, and held no clues toward how to help me. It wasn't "attacking" me. It was COMMUNICATING with me. It was saying, I need to keep you safe. I'm trying so hard. I need you to be safe.

And sometimes...it's not on you

Because when that black hole is opening beneath you, there are almost always things that others can do to make you feel listened to, instead of making it your responsibility to stare into the abyss alone. And it's a grave mistake to get so caught up in the idea of "irrational" fear that you never learn self-advocacy.

It never helped me to "focus on what I can control." I was a kid. I couldn't control anything. And that lack of agency had a really deep connection to why I was so afraid.

And what therapy and books and all that never, ever taught me is that there are many, many situations in life where the people around you do have a responsibility to help make you feel safe and ease your suffering, and you can and should advocate for yourself, set your own limits and boundaries, and ultimately be able to say, "Nope! Not today!" and have others respect that.

As an example: If you're terrified of haircuts to the point of nightmares and panic attacks, it's so easy to blame it on something "wrong" with you and stubbornly learn to ignore it.

But if you listen to your fear for a while without judging it, you might notice a relatively "small" event that led to it.

And if you look closer, you might realize that there are other people in this picture. It's not just you, a child, reacting "wrongly" to something distressing. For instance, what kind of asshole just laughs at it when a kid is obviously terrified and crying, even if they're just a lady giving the kid a haircut???

You know now that's it's not just about you. Someone could have chosen to be kind to you, and they didn't. And you still have the right to want people to be kind to you.

Don't ignore, scorn, and berate the monster. You have to listen to it to learn what you need. If you ignore it, your body will find freaky new ways of communicating with you. Symptom management has its place, but your coping skills library has to include stuff that works to actually help you to feel safe, instead of just...crushing down any thought or feeling that you've labeled Bad.

All of this is specific to my situation. Yours might be different. But these are the most useful insights I've gotten throughout my life.

Hahaha you know that feeling when you're growing up with really bad anxiety and adults keep telling you "if you face your fears things will get better!" and so you endure your sick stomach and your shaky sweating hands and force yourself through the scary thing but the next time it feels just as bad, if not worse?? And you start to feel the weight grinding down on you of a future where you have to summon the strength to endure over and over again and you get scared because you don't know how people do it?????? And when you look ahead at your life it's like you see a giant neon sign that says "YOU WILL SUFFER UNIMAGINABLY"????????? And you're an 8 year old????? You know that feeling haha? Anyone??????

[ataraxetta]

What is your opinion of Gladio during chapter ten? I can't ship gladnoct after playing it.

All right, let’s talk about chapter ten.

To answer your question, I think Gladio was a dick during this chapter, but I think his world was falling apart around him and lashing out in some dickishness is a totally understandable and pretty standard human reaction to that level of upset. He was angry and grieving and feeling powerless and helpless in an intensely high-stress situation and he was handling it badly, in direct contention with Noctis, who was also handling it badly but in an opposing direction. 

I think that chapter 9 was an abrupt and brutal awakening for all four of the bros. Up until Altissia, I don’t think any of them had really been hit with the reality stick yet, not the full extent, because they didn’t have absolute confirmation of anything but that Insomnia had been taken, which is too broad to narrow down to personal grief. They knew a lot of people died there, but nothing more concrete than that, and they knew that they couldn’t trust what the papers were reporting which was enough to spark hope that maybe, somehow, their loved ones had survived. Maybe, somehow, things weren’t as bad as they sounded. If the reports of Noctis and Luna’s deaths were false, then maybe the others were too. Maybe, once they got to Altissia, it would be to find that King Regis and Clarus and Ignis and Prompto’s families had survived. Once they got to Altissia, everything would be solved.

So for awhile, in the safe space of the road trip and hunts and meeting people and helping people and exploring a new world they kind of got lost in the storybook romance of it all, all four of them. Fated lovers the Chosen Prince and the Oracle journeying toward one another after so long, making pacts with the Gods in order to take back their home from Empire and save the world from evil with their friends by their side. That would be heady as hell, being at the center of that. And then Altissia happened, city destroyed, Luna murdered, Ignis horrifically injured, complete devastation, lives ruined, and it suddenly wasn’t romantic at all anymore.  

I don’t think any of them really had accepted the full reality until they personally witnessed the fallout. Clearly none of them had actually stopped and even considered that Ardyn Izunia was actually a bad person. He couldn’t have been more obvious if he had TRIED that he was Sekritly All Kinds of Evol BadGuy, and they even talked about how creepy and untrustworthy and probably bad news bears he was! Repeatedly! And still none of them actually believed that it was a possibility that that sort of evil actually existed. Altissia made everything real. Regis, Clarus and countless others really were dead. Their home really had been destroyed. People who helped them really were being slaughtered because of the association. Those losses were real, the danger to the entire world was real, the responsibility to fix it was real, and the destiny Noctis had been dreading his whole life was the only option they had left. Chapter 10 is the guys dealing with not only what happened in Altissia but also drowning under the grief they hadn’t let themselves feel yet of everything that had happened before.

Enter chapter 10 Gladio and Noctis - character foils with personality types at different ends of the spectrum who were raised under similar circumstances and came out with very different world views and personal strengths that tend to highlight each other’s flaws - and the clashing of coping mechanisms.

Gladio’s instinct is to fall back on the precepts and moral code he was raised with (loyalty, strength, honor, pride in his calling, along with the kind of mental conditioning that would come with having been military trained from a young age) and hold his head up and carry on, no matter what. He has a goal and a duty to the world/himself/his family to do what needs to be done for the greater good despite the fact that he’s coming apart at the seams. He’ll do whatever it takes to keep moving forward. He has a job to do. They all have a job to do, and nothing can stand in the way of it.

Noctis withdraws. imo, Noctis has been suffering a staggering case of PTSD for most of his life that has never really been acknowledged or dealt with. In the prologue script thing Ignis confirms that Noctis had a drastic personality change after he was injured by the daemon that almost killed him, which happened after he lost his mother at a young age and years spent wanting nothing more than to spend time with his dad and rarely being able to, and before he witnessed the massacre at Tenebrae, and was followed by a long recovery and growing up watching his father slowly die from the power and responsibility that Noctis was going to inherit, as well as having the title Chosen One and all the expectation therein like a boulder on his shoulders since he was 8.  

I think this is why he’s grown up so isolated even surrounded by his friends, because he’s cultivated this distance as a means to protect himself, it’s the only way he knows how to keep functioning. He bottles everything he feels because he doesn’t know how to express it and he deals with disappointment by acting passive and/or aloof, and he deals with trauma by disassociating and retreating into himself. 

To Gladio’s point, I maintain that being the friend on the other side of those particular coping mechanisms would be difficult/frustrating for anyone, especially someone like Gladio who has always been blunt and expressive and brazenly and unapologetically himself and just can’t fathom the way Noctis’s mind works.

There are several weeks that we don’t get to see between chapter 9 and chapter 10, but it’s pretty heavily implied that Noctis has kept his distance from the rest of them, including Ignis, which is what seems to have been the main motivation for Gladio’s blow up on the train. To him it looks like Noctis doesn’t care, and worse that he’s so tangled up in his own head that he hasn’t even noticed that one of his best friends is suffering. What Gladio sees is Ignis, who has been through just as much as Noctis has since they left Insomnia and who has now also been permanently and debilitatingly injured in the line of his duty (both personal and professional) to Noctis, and who has despite all that powered through the pain and anguish and uncertainty and stepped up without hesitation and is trying, while Noctis has spent the last few weeks wallowing without even acknowledging the sacrifices that have been made in his name, just sulking around with the power of the Lucii in his pocket instead of on his finger like a blatant refusal to take up the mantle and be king and do his damn job.

Of course we have much more Noctis canon than Gladio canon to work with. We know that Noctis has been thinking of nothing else, and has kept his distance from Ignis because he blames himself, and because every part of his history is proof precedent that those close to him will die protecting him, and he’s so afraid of losing them. Just carrying the ring and all its creepy otherworldly whispering around in his pocket is physically painful and he knows the moment he puts it on he becomes a dying man. He feels guilty for wanting to avoid his duty, and the constant fear and insecurity that’s always plagued him has been proven valid and he doesn’t know how to come back from that: he’s failed everyone, including Luna, the one person in the world he swore to protect and the only promise he’s ever allowed himself to make.

But Noctis is incapable of expressing any of this, communication has never been his strong suit (see Prompto never really being able to trust that Noctis cares for him as much as we know Noctis does), and Gladio can’t be blamed for jumping to wrong conclusions when Noctis doesn’t share any of the right ones. There’s no evidence of splintering that’s happening inside. On the outside Noctis is going through the motions but has completely secluded himself and from what it looks like to me, barely spoken to any of them for weeks while he gazes moodily into the distance. That would be hard to swallow.

I’m sorry, this got long and probably mostly incoherent I’m terrible at explaining things. Basically my feelings are that I can and will defend both Gladio and Noctis on all points for their behavior after chapter 9 because I think they both fucked up and handled things badly and that it’s very realistic for them to be human and flawed (for all of them to be human and flawed, which they magnificently are I love these characters so much). 

I’m only upset because this really could have been such an interesting plot point and character development and so good if it had just been done well, but narratively the ball was dropped to the point where it just felt unfinished. Noctis and Gladio’s relationship was so strained throughout chapter ten and they were so harsh with each other that we as the audience needed to see them actually reconcile and apologize to each other and at least start working toward trusting each other again. We deserved to see this one loose end tied up for the impact it would have later on, y’know? I feel like their relationship was done a disservice by lazy writing.

[plutofit]

"I'm So (Not) Hood Inferiority Complexes" by David Pailin Jr.

I’ll never forget sitting next to my first girlfriend during vacation Bible school and a boy clearly from the inner city dared to put his foot on her chair... and kept it there.

Her eyes glanced at me with the words “... you're going to do something right?” written all over them.

Indeed I was. It was an obvious micro-aggression, as he had been staring at her ever since we sat down. I noticed and being petty, decided to share as much PDA possible, within the super sanctified setting we were in. Keeping that same energy, I moved her and her chair, so that his legs would no longer reach it. He countered this by moving his chair up and began tapping his foot on her chair to raise the stakes.

“He must think I’m scared of him because he's hood,” I thought to myself.

At 15 years old, I hadn't encountered a time or place to punch someone, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t prepared to... or afraid to. As we eyed each other while everyone was supposed to be praying, he said something that caught me off guard.

“You’re not better than me.”

Fast forward to college. I’m seriously bougie and everyone knows it. My friends and I were known for going to the ratchetest clubs in the most ratchet parts of town, flashing our refund checks around local girls who knew our tuition was way out of their ex-boyfriend's budget. If my actions didn’t say it, I had no problem letting the words "this is what net-worth looks like" flow from my mouth. I sold the dream of status and most importantly a future quite freely, and any girl who didn't want that was simply too dumb to appreciate it.

The only thing was, some very gorgeous and very smart women were very much unimpressed with suburban stability and access. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for some of the most astute and most attractive women in our class to be seen getting cozy with some of the most notorious in the city. Am I saying that women are the reason why so many men are trying so hard to develop mob ties? I wouldn’t go that far, but their presence often exposes moments where men feel the need to define their masculinity and unfortunately showcase their immaturity.

From a very young age, my father made it a point to let me know there was no point in pretending to be where he was from because he left there for a reason. However, I didn’t realize until much later that I subtly thought I was better than those who came from modest means. It wasn't long before I was hit with a sobering reality. There were colleagues from debilitatingly discouraging backgrounds that were in the very same classes, the very same organizations, but got better grades, better jobs, and eventually higher incomes than me. I had every leg up a suburban black kid could have, yet I personally knew some with dramatically less thriving on a whole other level than I was.

Was I soft? Had my two parents, two-story house, and goodie-goodie two-shoes education coddled me all my life? If I was born in the projects in a single-parent home in a low-performing school would I be strong enough to get where they got or even where I am today?

I don't know... I hope so.

These are hard questions to grapple with as a man when a large part of your self-confidence is rooted in your abilities, accomplishments, and positioning compared to other men. Though I never wanted to "be hood" I listened to Thug Motivation 101 almost religiously, relating it to my world, where the bad cops were still the bad cops (trying to kill me) but instead of cooking coca-ina, to get by I was “hustling” in class or finessing at part-time jobs. On everything I love, I knew and still know every word to Trap Star, but a new sense of lameness and fraudulence surfaced when I found myself parroting the lyrics around people who’ve actually lived through similar tales. It was then and there where I felt what some wypipo people experience when their obliviousness is revealed for the first time. I was embarrassed, but I honestly didn't know who to say I'm sorry to. Even worse, I didn't know what the alternative was.

As a black man, the vast majority of rich black men that I saw in the media were either from the hood, pretended like they were from the hood, or continually associate themselves with prominent hood leaders. Even if I looked at my dad, he had street smarts that I would never get, and my mom definitely chose him over the suburban boys she grew up with. Nothing says success like getting it from the mud, but when you get it from the curb or the silver spoon that success just hits differently, especially in successful hood company. That's why so many do the ut-most to come off a little... gully.

I would love to say it's not a competition, but for men, few things in life aren't, so I will say be congratulator (not a hater) instead. That's all you can do. When you're focused on that and doing the best with what you've been given, you won't feel uncomfortable around someone more or less street than you. I know plenty who've been dealt with better and worse, but there's no sense in being insecure about it either way. Some go to the other extreme with elaborate campaigns apologizing for the advantages they have when they really could use that effort to help others. Many times all that bowing and scraping only adds insult to injury because it's actually patronizing.

I still cringe when I think back at the way I acted, but I'm happy that I've been allowed to build bridges since then. I can only hope that younger generations recognize the stupidity in allowing social status to create rifts between us when our experiences and talents can impact so much more together.

[themoguls]

"I'm So (Not) Hood Inferiority Complexes" by David Pailin Jr.

I’ll never forget sitting next to my first girlfriend during vacation Bible school and a boy clearly from the inner city dared to put his foot on her chair... and kept it there.

Her eyes glanced at me with the words “... you're going to do something right?” written all over them.

Indeed I was. It was an obvious micro-aggression, as he had been staring at her ever since we sat down. I noticed and being petty, decided to share as much PDA possible, within the super sanctified setting we were in. Keeping that same energy, I moved her and her chair, so that his legs would no longer reach it. He countered this by moving his chair up and began tapping his foot on her chair to raise the stakes.

“He must think I’m scared of him because he's hood,” I thought to myself.

At 15 years old, I hadn't encountered a time or place to punch someone, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t prepared to... or afraid to. As we eyed each other while everyone was supposed to be praying, he said something that caught me off guard.

“You’re not better than me.”

Fast forward to college. I’m seriously bougie and everyone knows it. My friends and I were known for going to the ratchetest clubs in the most ratchet parts of town, flashing our refund checks around local girls who knew our tuition was way out of their ex-boyfriend's budget. If my actions didn’t say it, I had no problem letting the words "this is what net-worth looks like" flow from my mouth. I sold the dream of status and most importantly a future quite freely, and any girl who didn't want that was simply too dumb to appreciate it.

The only thing was, some very gorgeous and very smart women were very much unimpressed with suburban stability and access. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for some of the most astute and most attractive women in our class to be seen getting cozy with some of the most notorious in the city. Am I saying that women are the reason why so many men are trying so hard to develop mob ties? I wouldn’t go that far, but their presence often exposes moments where men feel the need to define their masculinity and unfortunately showcase their immaturity.

From a very young age, my father made it a point to let me know there was no point in pretending to be where he was from because he left there for a reason. However, I didn’t realize until much later that I subtly thought I was better than those who came from modest means. It wasn't long before I was hit with a sobering reality. There were colleagues from debilitatingly discouraging backgrounds that were in the very same classes, the very same organizations, but got better grades, better jobs, and eventually higher incomes than me. I had every leg up a suburban black kid could have, yet I personally knew some with dramatically less thriving on a whole other level than I was.

Was I soft? Had my two parents, two-story house, and goodie-goodie two-shoes education coddled me all my life? If I was born in the projects in a single-parent home in a low-performing school would I be strong enough to get where they got or even where I am today?

I don't know... I hope so.

These are hard questions to grapple with as a man when a large part of your self-confidence is rooted in your abilities, accomplishments, and positioning compared to other men. Though I never wanted to "be hood" I listened to Thug Motivation 101 almost religiously, relating it to my world, where the bad cops were still the bad cops (trying to kill me) but instead of cooking coca-ina, to get by I was “hustling” in class or finessing at part-time jobs. On everything I love, I knew and still know every word to Trap Star, but a new sense of lameness and fraudulence surfaced when I found myself parroting the lyrics around people who’ve actually lived through similar tales. It was then and there where I felt what some wypipo people experience when their obliviousness is revealed for the first time. I was embarrassed, but I honestly didn't know who to say I'm sorry to. Even worse, I didn't know what the alternative was.

As a black man, the vast majority of rich black men that I saw in the media were either from the hood, pretended like they were from the hood, or continually associate themselves with prominent hood leaders. Even if I looked at my dad, he had street smarts that I would never get, and my mom definitely chose him over the suburban boys she grew up with. Nothing says success like getting it from the mud, but when you get it from the curb or the silver spoon that success just hits differently, especially in successful hood company. That's why so many do the ut-most to come off a little... gully.

I would love to say it's not a competition, but for men, few things in life aren't, so I will say be congratulator (not a hater) instead. That's all you can do. When you're focused on that and doing the best with what you've been given, you won't feel uncomfortable around someone more or less street than you. I know plenty who've been dealt with better and worse, but there's no sense in being insecure about it either way. Some go to the other extreme with elaborate campaigns apologizing for the advantages they have when they really could use that effort to help others. Many times all that bowing and scraping only adds insult to injury because it's actually patronizing.

I still cringe when I think back at the way I acted, but I'm happy that I've been allowed to build bridges since then. I can only hope that younger generations recognize the stupidity in allowing social status to create rifts between us when our experiences and talents can impact so much more together.

[youngxanointed]

"I'm So (Not) Hood Inferiority Complexes" by David Pailin Jr.

I’ll never forget sitting next to my first girlfriend during vacation Bible school and a boy clearly from the inner city dared to put his foot on her chair... and kept it there.

Her eyes glanced at me with the words “... you're going to do something right?” written all over them.

Indeed I was. It was an obvious micro-aggression, as he had been staring at her ever since we sat down. I noticed and being petty, decided to share as much PDA possible, within the super sanctified setting we were in. Keeping that same energy, I moved her and her chair, so that his legs would no longer reach it. He countered this by moving his chair up and began tapping his foot on her chair to raise the stakes.

“He must think I’m scared of him because he's hood,” I thought to myself.

At 15 years old, I hadn't encountered a time or place to punch someone, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t prepared to... or afraid to. As we eyed each other while everyone was supposed to be praying, he said something that caught me off guard.

“You’re not better than me.”

Fast forward to college. I’m seriously bougie and everyone knows it. My friends and I were known for going to the ratchetest clubs in the most ratchet parts of town, flashing our refund checks around local girls who knew our tuition was way out of their ex-boyfriend's budget. If my actions didn’t say it, I had no problem letting the words "this is what net-worth looks like" flow from my mouth. I sold the dream of status and most importantly a future quite freely, and any girl who didn't want that was simply too dumb to appreciate it.

The only thing was, some very gorgeous and very smart women were very much unimpressed with suburban stability and access. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for some of the most astute and most attractive women in our class to be seen getting cozy with some of the most notorious in the city. Am I saying that women are the reason why so many men are trying so hard to develop mob ties? I wouldn’t go that far, but their presence often exposes moments where men feel the need to define their masculinity and unfortunately showcase their immaturity.

From a very young age, my father made it a point to let me know there was no point in pretending to be where he was from because he left there for a reason. However, I didn’t realize until much later that I subtly thought I was better than those who came from modest means. It wasn't long before I was hit with a sobering reality. There were colleagues from debilitatingly discouraging backgrounds that were in the very same classes, the very same organizations, but got better grades, better jobs, and eventually higher incomes than me. I had every leg up a suburban black kid could have, yet I personally knew some with dramatically less thriving on a whole other level than I was.

Was I soft? Had my two parents, two-story house, and goodie-goodie two-shoes education coddled me all my life? If I was born in the projects in a single-parent home in a low-performing school would I be strong enough to get where they got or even where I am today?

I don't know... I hope so.

These are hard questions to grapple with as a man when a large part of your self-confidence is rooted in your abilities, accomplishments, and positioning compared to other men. Though I never wanted to "be hood" I listened to Thug Motivation 101 almost religiously, relating it to my world, where the bad cops were still the bad cops (trying to kill me) but instead of cooking coca-ina, to get by I was “hustling” in class or finessing at part-time jobs. On everything I love, I knew and still know every word to Trap Star, but a new sense of lameness and fraudulence surfaced when I found myself parroting the lyrics around people who’ve actually lived through similar tales. It was then and there where I felt what some wypipo people experience when their obliviousness is revealed for the first time. I was embarrassed, but I honestly didn't know who to say I'm sorry to. Even worse, I didn't know what the alternative was.

As a black man, the vast majority of rich black men that I saw in the media were either from the hood, pretended like they were from the hood, or continually associate themselves with prominent hood leaders. Even if I looked at my dad, he had street smarts that I would never get, and my mom definitely chose him over the suburban boys she grew up with. Nothing says success like getting it from the mud, but when you get it from the curb or the silver spoon that success just hits differently, especially in successful hood company. That's why so many do the ut-most to come off a little... gully.

I would love to say it's not a competition, but for men, few things in life aren't, so I will say be congratulator (not a hater) instead. That's all you can do. When you're focused on that and doing the best with what you've been given, you won't feel uncomfortable around someone more or less street than you. I know plenty who've been dealt with better and worse, but there's no sense in being insecure about it either way. Some go to the other extreme with elaborate campaigns apologizing for the advantages they have when they really could use that effort to help others. Many times all that bowing and scraping only adds insult to injury because it's actually patronizing.

I still cringe when I think back at the way I acted, but I'm happy that I've been allowed to build bridges since then. I can only hope that younger generations recognize the stupidity in allowing social status to create rifts between us when our experiences and talents can impact so much more together.

[artistsxcreatives]

"I'm So (Not) Hood Inferiority Complexes" by David Pailin Jr.

I’ll never forget sitting next to my first girlfriend during vacation Bible school and a boy clearly from the inner city dared to put his foot on her chair... and kept it there.

Her eyes glanced at me with the words “... you're going to do something right?” written all over them.

Indeed I was. It was an obvious micro-aggression, as he had been staring at her ever since we sat down. I noticed and being petty, decided to share as much PDA possible, within the super sanctified setting we were in. Keeping that same energy, I moved her and her chair, so that his legs would no longer reach it. He countered this by moving his chair up and began tapping his foot on her chair to raise the stakes.

“He must think I’m scared of him because he's hood,” I thought to myself.

At 15 years old, I hadn't encountered a time or place to punch someone, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t prepared to... or afraid to. As we eyed each other while everyone was supposed to be praying, he said something that caught me off guard.

“You’re not better than me.”

Fast forward to college. I’m seriously bougie and everyone knows it. My friends and I were known for going to the ratchetest clubs in the most ratchet parts of town, flashing our refund checks around local girls who knew our tuition was way out of their ex-boyfriend's budget. If my actions didn’t say it, I had no problem letting the words "this is what net-worth looks like" flow from my mouth. I sold the dream of status and most importantly a future quite freely, and any girl who didn't want that was simply too dumb to appreciate it.

The only thing was, some very gorgeous and very smart women were very much unimpressed with suburban stability and access. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for some of the most astute and most attractive women in our class to be seen getting cozy with some of the most notorious in the city. Am I saying that women are the reason why so many men are trying so hard to develop mob ties? I wouldn’t go that far, but their presence often exposes moments where men feel the need to define their masculinity and unfortunately showcase their immaturity.

From a very young age, my father made it a point to let me know there was no point in pretending to be where he was from because he left there for a reason. However, I didn’t realize until much later that I subtly thought I was better than those who came from modest means. It wasn't long before I was hit with a sobering reality. There were colleagues from debilitatingly discouraging backgrounds that were in the very same classes, the very same organizations, but got better grades, better jobs, and eventually higher incomes than me. I had every leg up a suburban black kid could have, yet I personally knew some with dramatically less thriving on a whole other level than I was.

Was I soft? Had my two parents, two-story house, and goodie-goodie two-shoes education coddled me all my life? If I was born in the projects in a single-parent home in a low-performing school would I be strong enough to get where they got or even where I am today?

I don't know... I hope so.

These are hard questions to grapple with as a man when a large part of your self-confidence is rooted in your abilities, accomplishments, and positioning compared to other men. Though I never wanted to "be hood" I listened to Thug Motivation 101 almost religiously, relating it to my world, where the bad cops were still the bad cops (trying to kill me) but instead of cooking coca-ina, to get by I was “hustling” in class or finessing at part-time jobs. On everything I love, I knew and still know every word to Trap Star, but a new sense of lameness and fraudulence surfaced when I found myself parroting the lyrics around people who’ve actually lived through similar tales. It was then and there where I felt what some wypipo people experience when their obliviousness is revealed for the first time. I was embarrassed, but I honestly didn't know who to say I'm sorry to. Even worse, I didn't know what the alternative was.

As a black man, the vast majority of rich black men that I saw in the media were either from the hood, pretended like they were from the hood, or continually associate themselves with prominent hood leaders. Even if I looked at my dad, he had street smarts that I would never get, and my mom definitely chose him over the suburban boys she grew up with. Nothing says success like getting it from the mud, but when you get it from the curb or the silver spoon that success just hits differently, especially in successful hood company. That's why so many do the ut-most to come off a little... gully.

I would love to say it's not a competition, but for men, few things in life aren't, so I will say be congratulator (not a hater) instead. That's all you can do. When you're focused on that and doing the best with what you've been given, you won't feel uncomfortable around someone more or less street than you. I know plenty who've been dealt with better and worse, but there's no sense in being insecure about it either way. Some go to the other extreme with elaborate campaigns apologizing for the advantages they have when they really could use that effort to help others. Many times all that bowing and scraping only adds insult to injury because it's actually patronizing.

I still cringe when I think back at the way I acted, but I'm happy that I've been allowed to build bridges since then. I can only hope that younger generations recognize the stupidity in allowing social status to create rifts between us when our experiences and talents can impact so much more together.

[thegrammylab]

"I'm So (Not) Hood Inferiority Complexes" by David Pailin Jr.

I’ll never forget sitting next to my first girlfriend during vacation Bible school and a boy clearly from the inner city dared to put his foot on her chair... and kept it there.

Her eyes glanced at me with the words “... you're going to do something right?” written all over them.

Indeed I was. It was an obvious micro-aggression, as he had been staring at her ever since we sat down. I noticed and being petty, decided to share as much PDA possible, within the super sanctified setting we were in. Keeping that same energy, I moved her and her chair, so that his legs would no longer reach it. He countered this by moving his chair up and began tapping his foot on her chair to raise the stakes.

“He must think I’m scared of him because he's hood,” I thought to myself.

At 15 years old, I hadn't encountered a time or place to punch someone, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t prepared to... or afraid to. As we eyed each other while everyone was supposed to be praying, he said something that caught me off guard.

“You’re not better than me.”

Fast forward to college. I’m seriously bougie and everyone knows it. My friends and I were known for going to the ratchetest clubs in the most ratchet parts of town, flashing our refund checks around local girls who knew our tuition was way out of their ex-boyfriend's budget. If my actions didn’t say it, I had no problem letting the words "this is what net-worth looks like" flow from my mouth. I sold the dream of status and most importantly a future quite freely, and any girl who didn't want that was simply too dumb to appreciate it.

The only thing was, some very gorgeous and very smart women were very much unimpressed with suburban stability and access. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for some of the most astute and most attractive women in our class to be seen getting cozy with some of the most notorious in the city. Am I saying that women are the reason why so many men are trying so hard to develop mob ties? I wouldn’t go that far, but their presence often exposes moments where men feel the need to define their masculinity and unfortunately showcase their immaturity.

From a very young age, my father made it a point to let me know there was no point in pretending to be where he was from because he left there for a reason. However, I didn’t realize until much later that I subtly thought I was better than those who came from modest means. It wasn't long before I was hit with a sobering reality. There were colleagues from debilitatingly discouraging backgrounds that were in the very same classes, the very same organizations, but got better grades, better jobs, and eventually higher incomes than me. I had every leg up a suburban black kid could have, yet I personally knew some with dramatically less thriving on a whole other level than I was.

Was I soft? Had my two parents, two-story house, and goodie-goodie two-shoes education coddled me all my life? If I was born in the projects in a single-parent home in a low-performing school would I be strong enough to get where they got or even where I am today?

I don't know... I hope so.

These are hard questions to grapple with as a man when a large part of your self-confidence is rooted in your abilities, accomplishments, and positioning compared to other men. Though I never wanted to "be hood" I listened to Thug Motivation 101 almost religiously, relating it to my world, where the bad cops were still the bad cops (trying to kill me) but instead of cooking coca-ina, to get by I was “hustling” in class or finessing at part-time jobs. On everything I love, I knew and still know every word to Trap Star, but a new sense of lameness and fraudulence surfaced when I found myself parroting the lyrics around people who’ve actually lived through similar tales. It was then and there where I felt what some wypipo people experience when their obliviousness is revealed for the first time. I was embarrassed, but I honestly didn't know who to say I'm sorry to. Even worse, I didn't know what the alternative was.

As a black man, the vast majority of rich black men that I saw in the media were either from the hood, pretended like they were from the hood, or continually associate themselves with prominent hood leaders. Even if I looked at my dad, he had street smarts that I would never get, and my mom definitely chose him over the suburban boys she grew up with. Nothing says success like getting it from the mud, but when you get it from the curb or the silver spoon that success just hits differently, especially in successful hood company. That's why so many do the ut-most to come off a little... gully.

I would love to say it's not a competition, but for men, few things in life aren't, so I will say be congratulator (not a hater) instead. That's all you can do. When you're focused on that and doing the best with what you've been given, you won't feel uncomfortable around someone more or less street than you. I know plenty who've been dealt with better and worse, but there's no sense in being insecure about it either way. Some go to the other extreme with elaborate campaigns apologizing for the advantages they have when they really could use that effort to help others. Many times all that bowing and scraping only adds insult to injury because it's actually patronizing.

I still cringe when I think back at the way I acted, but I'm happy that I've been allowed to build bridges since then. I can only hope that younger generations recognize the stupidity in allowing social status to create rifts between us when our experiences and talents can impact so much more together.