#but as someone who is currently deeply struggling not to regress on years of hard work

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

On one of your reblogs a couple weeks ago, you said something about friend/relationships not being transactional and that we need each other and my brain has it on a rotisserie. I often see things as that way and try to keep things even…more in me never needing them, I’ll help anyone, anytime. Do you have any experience with shifting your mindset? This question might be misplaced and in that case, it fine to disregard.

Hello nonny dear.

I understand where you're coming from. There are a lot of reasons that one can keep track of who's done what for whom and making sure it stays "even."

I don't know what your reasons are, so I can only speak to my own experiences and what helped me. I hope that it's helpful to you.

I spent a lot of time having a terrible relationship with myself. Because of this, I was constantly doing whatever I could for the people around me. No favor was too large, no trouble too big, no mountain too high, no river too... you get the idea. But I never, ever asked for anything for myself. The idea of needing someone was abhorrent to me because in my mind I didn't deserve needing anyone's time, respect, or love.

One thing that helped me was to shift my perspective and consider how it would feel if it was a friend of mine who felt this way.

You say that you will help anyone, anytime, and it's no trouble to you. So, if you were someone else and saw yourself in need of help, it wouldn't be any trouble to assist, would it? If a friend of yours was hurting and you later found out that they didn't ask you for help, wouldn't you feel sad that you couldn't be there?

Once I started thinking of it not in terms of asking for myself, but giving my friends a chance to be the kind of friend to me they wanted to be, it got easier.

It also helps to realize that if you think that you're not worthy of being friends with someone, or needing them, then you're actually also placing an unfair judgment on them. You're saying what they should and shouldn't spend their time on, who they should and shouldn't hang out with. You're judging their choice in people. But you love these people, right? So why would you put that judgment on them? Let your friends decide for themselves who is worth their energy. And if they think that's you, then that's on them to decide. Not you to push away.

Don't take that choice from them.

Last year, I lost two friends whom I loved very deeply, shattering my trust in people. I'm still very much in the grieving process.

I say this not for sympathy, but to emphasize to you how much I understand the deep, deep pain that loved ones can bring to us. I do not stand before you as someone who loves or trusts easily (frankly I don't know that I'll ever trust again, but that's what my therapist is for).

Rather, I stand before you as someone who understands that as much as she wants to shut herself off from all others, she can't.

It is terrifying to need people. To need love and companionship. To need assistance. Especially the last few decades we have been taught (in the United States at least, not sure where you're from) independence above all else. To do it all, all on our own. Historically, that is not how we operate. Living alone and cooking all our own meals and doing all our own chores and working full-time is not how it's been for the majority of civilization.

You can't do it all. You just can't.

And needing people means that you might get hurt. It means your trust will be betrayed. It means you're going to screw up the courage to ask for something you need, be it a ride to the airport or respect, and you're going to be denied.

But put simply, you have no choice.

You are going to need to cry to someone, to laugh with someone. You are going to need someone to drive you to the damn airport. Because if you refuse those things, you will be miserable. This is in little ways, like paying out the nose for a taxi or cooking your own meal when you're sick, or in bigger, less tangible ways like depression born from deep, deep loneliness.

And you'll find what happens when you stop keeping score is that a weight is lifted off your shoulders. Because the secret is that it always ends up even. It really does. Because you're going to go through times in your life when you are in the shit and you need all the help you can get. And then you're going to be on top of the world and your friend will be the one in the shit needing all hands on deck to help them. You can't keep it even. You just can't. But if you let go of that, you'll find that really, over time... you're all needing each other equally. Because that's what humans are. That's what community is.

The fact is we're social creatures, nonny. We are made to love.

Look at the oldest signs of civilization. It's not grand palaces. It's not war spears. It's not inventions. It's art. It's people buried with love, and with mended bones, because they broke them and their loved ones made a splint and carried them from place to place and fed them. It's baskets for holding food and gardening supplies and cooking utensils because we learned to cook for each other, to feed each other.

Civilization is community.

A lack of trust, or a lack of self-worth, did not change my need for people. Refusing to eat doesn't mean your body stops needing food. So why starve yourself? And why act as though all food is poisoned or eating enough to satisfy yourself is gluttony?

You wouldn't poison the food. You wouldn't call your friends gluttons. So don't do that to yourself.

Your friends want to help you. The world often tries to prove me wrong but I swear by every speck of boiled blood in my body and every fleck of ash in my black shriveled heart, I know people are inherently good. They want to help. They want to love. They want to take care of you.

Let them. Nonny, please let them.

Remember:

keeping score will only exhaust you

that it's impossible to keep things 100% even, but that all things are fair in the end (in a healthy relationship) because we all have our ups and downs

that if you would help anyone, anytime, then you can't deny others the opportunity to do the same

not to deny your friends their agency and choice by refusing to even ask for things.

Remember that just because you refuse to eat doesn't mean you aren't hungry.

I hope this helped. It will take time to adjust. I recommend writing down some of these reminders and putting them up around your home like on the bathroom mirror and on the fridge. Change their position or put up different phrases every so often so they don't become invisible. The more you say these things, the more you'll believe them, and the easier it'll be to act on them.

I wish you all the best.

[jonthethinker]

Together Or Alone?

Since I finally have a few days off work, I want to get weird and really dig deep into why I personally enjoy the Mighty Nein and its particular breed of found family so much, and why the dynamics between its members are so satisfying for my heart in particular. Let’s get unnecessarily deep, shall we?

You may not completely understand why I think this would be weird, but you’ll understand fairly quickly as I get started.

I’ve been on a sort of spiritual journey, in a way, over the course of this most eventful year. A small part of me feels bad that while so much suffering is going on, and so much of the world feels like it’s falling apart, I’ve been making positive strides in determining my place in the grand scheme of things. But a larger part of me is just really grateful to finally find a bit of internal peace after years of not having it, of finally having some bit of quiet in a mind that’s never been able to still itself long enough for any such thing.

I haven’t exactly found religion, but I have given more shape to how I best want to imagine our universe and my humble place in it, and I’ve finally started asking the right questions.

One of those questions stands above the rest, and it’s the question I’ve decided the Universe Itself is asking; Together or Alone?

I started seeing attempted answers to this question everywhere. In the universe bursting outward, yet huge masses of it clinging together to form all we know and can perceive. I see it in wondrous solar systems forming and spinning in a rippled field of mutually affected gravity; and I see it in the black holes that can form, and tear and pull all that beauty into nothing. I see it in incredible ecosystems where the life and the land combine to form what feels like its own organism, larger than just the sum of its parts; and I see it in the environmental devastation caused by our own actions, killing that organism, and in turn doing irreparable damage to the very spirit of our world.

I see it in humanity’s natural inclination for cooperation and concern for others; and I see it also in our inclination to be blinded by power and in that blindness, inflicting unspeakable harm on each other in order to hold onto that power. I see it in our bodies, organs one by one relying on each other in a perfect act of faith to form something greater than a liver or heart or brain could ever be on their own; and I see it in cancer, single-minded in its pursuit of self-replication by all means, all memory of belonging to something greater stricken from its damaged DNA. I see it in basic elemental particles, most of them ready and able for their eventual combination with other particles to build wonderful compounds with entirely new properties, adding untold dimensions of complexity to how our world works; and I see it in those small rogue particles the neutrinos, that can shoot off from a star for eons without interacting with a single thing.

The question and its many answers, and the dialectical relationships those answers have, are what I feel can really undergird all of our interactions with each other, all progress and all regress, all friendships and all rivalries. It’s there in all our stories and all art we create; Together or Alone? What’s your answer?

For me, the answer that felt like it escaped the singing lips of an angel, was, “Of course, together. Always together.”

It shapes my politics heavily. I’m a lefty, but its not just because I believe we’re all equal as individuals; it’s because I believe we are all a part of the same thing. We are all a part of that same great organism, that same great body. The Universe. God. Whatever you want to call it, though it needs no name. We are in this together because we are one thing from many different things, whether we like it or not.

But I’m not just blindly optimistic about this. I don’t think it works like this all on its own. It takes work and time. It took billions of years for solar systems to form. For single-cell organisms to band together into colonies and then evolve into multi-cell organisms. It took a while longer for creatures to stick together as families, for the mutual dependencies of ecosystems to form, and even longer for the first tribes and societies to form. It took time, and an incredible amount of energy and effort, and so much failure. We’ve hurt each other so much, that’s true. But it’s only by coming together that we’ve ever been able create anything new, anything Good.

The universe has a bias towards entropy; things tend to fall away and apart. So there’s a beauty in the struggle for togetherness. I’d argue that it’s the only source of beauty in the first place; the unity of forces interacting. The quest for togetherness gives my life meaning, drive, and purpose. And for someone who’s struggled with depression for so long, I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to have purpose, especially for something bigger than me.

And by this point, you’re probably wondering when I’m going to stop sermonizing and actually talk about Critical Role. so here we go.

The individual members of the Mighty Nein are some deeply flawed and deeply troubled people, at least when we first met them. Some of them have done awful things, sometimes against their will. They’ve all been the victims of powers much greater than themselves, and as a result, have been left feeling frayed at the edges. They’ve all had hurts and been shaped by those hurts; whether it was loneliness, unfair expectations, or just being unfortunate enough to be different in all the wrong ways. Damaged is a word that carries unfortunate implications, as does broken; but it’s undeniable that you’ve got seven people who have all felt like Sisyphus when the boulder rolls back down the hill.

Some have taken this fate better than others, but it’s undeniable that these people have suffered, and in that suffering, gained nothing.

But then they met each other.

It wasn’t all roses from the get-go. You throw these people with underdeveloped social skills and an untold amounts of personal baggage, and you’ve got yourself some friction to say the least. But when they all met each other, they had nothing but their bodies and their hurts. They were total equals. Even when the Mighty Drei met Caduceus, they had just felt like they lost everything, and they were meeting someone who had no one. They all started together at their foundations, and over time, built something I think is truly beautiful.

This process hasn’t been perfect. Beau, for instance, can still be totally rude and abrasive to strangers and outsiders (and I love that about her), and still has a hard time swallowing her pride long enough to ask for help. Caleb is very much struggling with his trauma, and that path is never a straight line of progress for anyone. Jester for the longest time still didn’t really want to feel any negative emotions around the others, and her own pride has gotten in the way of owning up to how new she is to all this. Yasha bears a great deal of guilt for a great many things, and while she’s making strides, it’s still left its mark on her. Veth has come so far, but doesn’t know how to reconcile the contradictions between the two lives she wants as both a mother and an adventurer. Fjord has a deep desire for answers, answers that may open up a lot of wounds that have started to heal in the Mighty Nein’s care. And Caduceus refuses to share his troubles, his doubts about how much his time with Nein has fundamentally changed him from the boy his family knew all those years ago.

That’s a lot of hurt, and some of it will never go away completely. But it’s like how our bodies have all of these vestigial functions that no longer serve any purpose to it, and make our daily lives in office chairs or standing in one place all day harmful to our health. Or like ancient seas whose waters are long since gone, but have left their undeniable mark in the shapes of canyons and mesas, in the colorful layers of sedimentary rock they leave behind. The past is an unavoidable factor in how everything in the universe gets to take shape, but the present finds a way to adapt. And we people get to choose how to adapt. And the Mighty Nein chose caring about each other as their method of adaptation.

And the thing of it is, I don’t think its just having people finally caring about them that has allowed them to come as far as they have. I think it’s also the act of caring, the act of serving others, considering how the path you wish to take will affect someone else, that has really pushed them to this great place we currently find them in. I truly think there something inside of us that wants to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, and that in the moments we feel emptiest it isn’t because of what we lack on the inside but the connections we lack on the outside, and it’s the systems we inhabit that make us think otherwise. I see this so clearly in the Mighty Nein. If left all on their own, in the cruel worlds we first found them in and have learned they came from, I see seven people going on seven unique paths of self-destruction; but together, they can build something greater than themselves, that thing being the Mighty Nein.

I really do think the Mighty Nein is like its own entity. They are something totally different when they are together, like seven different elements that came together to form a compound with entirely different characteristics. It’s why the work so smoothly together in combat. Why, when the pressure is on, they tend to work as a relatively well-oiled machine. Why they hurt so much less when they are with each other. It’s like up-scaling from an atom to a cell, a cell to an animal, an animal to an ecosystem.

This togetherness is why I love the Nein so damn much. It’s reaffirming at a deep level for me. The story that they are telling, and the one forming without their active intention even being involved, is a wonderful thing. Stories about togetherness are my bread and butter; it’s why I’m a sucker for a good romance or found-family narrative, because I love it when people come together to make something more than them, making one plus one equal three. There’s nothing quite like it. And Critical Role has it in spades.

And it’s not all about the depth of answering some spiritual question. I enjoy the potty humor and the eight people just trying to fuck with each other and make each other laugh. I enjoy the silliness and joy and endless pop culture references. But also the act of eight friends coming together to make a show where they create a beautiful, silly, heartfelt story together has its own sort of spiritual resonance with me.

I also want to establish that I understand that this is a company selling an entertainment experience to me. They aren’t just doing this in the spirit of togetherness, they are doing this to strengthen their careers and incomes. I get that. But in the end, it’s all a part of the dialectic. It’s all motivation for me to continue working towards building a world where people can make wonderful art like this without worrying about building a career out of it or paying the bills. It reminds me of how much work there is to be done, but also of all the work that’s already been done.

Critical Role has its flaws, but it is a wonderful thing and I’m happier everyday I’m reminded it exists. The Mighty Nein are probably my favorite found family ever, and lately, a very powerful affirmation for my own journey. I do wonder if anyone else has had similar experiences, with this artwork or others like it. If so, I’d love for you to share them with me.

[fantroll-purgatory]

I think I might have submitted this troll a really long time ago, so this is a re-do I suppose.

Alternia or Beforus or some type of AU?

Alternia

Name (preferably include how you came up with it and why): Hemati Aurata or Hemati Grotei

‘Hemati’ comes from hematite, the reddish-blackish main ore of iron that’s known for having a rusty red streak. This is in reference to both his blood color (rust) as well as his interesting in blacksmithing and sculpting out of iron.

‘Aurata’ is the species name of a moth of the genus Pyrausta. ‘Grotei’ is another species, I wasn’t sure which one would fit better. Slightly based off how moths are famously attracted to flames. Hemati’s lusus is a Pyrausta, which is a Greek mythical dragon that is basically a small winged insect with the head of a dragon. They die if they are taken away from fire and tie in with Hemati’s associated element of fire.

This is a really clever and suiting name! I prefer Aurata, I think, for the wing coloration of the Aurata Moth. Hemati Aurata.

Age: 8 sweeps (~17 years old)

I’m unsure exactly how old a troll is before they’re taken off-planet, but I’m assuming it’s close to human adult age (18 years). I wanted him to be slightly younger than mature age but older than the canon trolls.

We don’t know for sure, but I definitely subscribe to the headcanon that it’s around 18 or more.

Strife Specibus: pickaxekind or hammerkind

He can probably have both, since there’s a functional reason for them!

Fetch Modus: Minecraft modus? I’m unsure what sort of name to give it but it would be funny for him to have his modus match the Minecraft inventory. Maybe he could be able to “craft” things like you can in Minecraft’s inventory, bypassing the need for alchemy at the price of a limited grid to work with as well as a lot of wasted items, as the craft grid isn’t very efficient.\

Maybe Furnace Modus? Leaving items in allows them to ‘smelt’ into a more refined or better form, but doesn’t allow Direct alchemization within the menu. But you have to keep the items in until they’re finished being refined, which can take a really long time depending on the item.

Blood color: Burgundy/Rust

Symbol and meaning: Argo, the Zenith

Self explanatory. Hemati lives in a mountain/inactive volcano and his emotion often have to reach a peak before they explode out of control.

Trolltag: fabrileEbullition

This is kind of a joke about how he does his art. He is a skilled craftsman but gets angry easily and goes through fits of rage and frustration that aggravates his pyrokinesis. This often results in his metal sculptures melting through the sudden spurts of flame. Although he would personally consider the “ebullition” part to be ‘bursts of emotion’ that inspire his art, it’s more suited to his ill-temper. The name also abbreviates to FE, which is the symbol for the chemical element of iron.

Do you mean ferbrile? Or was fabrile a portmanteau of fabrication and ferbrile? Either way I like it a lot! 

Quirk: He usually speaks in a grumble in Order tO suppress His Feelings, but uses prOper punctuatiOn in Order tO remain pOlite but prOperly capitalizes tHe names Of OtHers. He capitalizes tHe f in ‘Fe’, all O’s and all H’s as tHey are used in tHe cHemical cOmpOund Of rust, wHicH empHasizes His blOOd cOlOr. !!TYPES IN ALL CAPS AND IGNoRES PUNCTUATIoN WhEN EMoTIoNAL To RANT!! !!DRoPS ThE PoLITE BULLShIT!! !!No LoNGER fEARS RUDENESS AND TRIES To DoWNPLAY hIS SPoT oN ThE hEMoSPECTRUM!!

Normal speaking = all lowercase except Fe, O, H and names capitalized, proper punctuation

Emotional speaking = !! at start and end of sentences, all caps, no other punctuation, lowercases Fe, O and H

Good, clever, and effective.

Special Abilities (if any): Aside from general telekinetics (which he isn’t great at), Hemati possesses strong pyrokinetic powers. He is not totally in touch with his powers and they tend to flare out of control depending on his emotional state. He is NOT immune to fire but can manipulate fire to avoid coming into contact with him, having something akin to a closeknit barrier separating his skin from the flames. This is done instinctively, so it allows him to not be as careful when he’s smithing, although he still wears gloves as he can’t protect himself from the heat of objects he touches.

I like that a lot. A Literal Hothead.

Lusus: A tiny Pyrausta who is constantly on fire (as described above). He is quite fond of his lusus although he is unable actually touch it. It feeds off metal so Hemati reserves some scraps for it to munch on although it sometimes indulges in his art. Hemati can hardly stay mad at the little bugger so it gets away with it. It acts kind of like a cat and spends its time napping or being a cute annoyance. It 'helps’ Hemati out by breathing fire every now and then, which is why half the things in his hive are scorched. It also can serve as a lantern when he goes mining or a portable furnace for smelting, if it doesn’t eat the metal first.

Cute… It’s especially great because of the fact that there’s a moth genus named after the Pyrausta. Does it have moth eyes, too? I love the idea of this creature… cute and helpful but mildly inconvenient.

Personality: Hot-headed but tries his best. Hemati is quick to anger but honestly is quick to get lost in any emotion and can get carried away. He’s an intense fellow and might be hard for most people to handle. His greatest passion is art and fashion, and takes great pleasure in making all sorts of gear, clothing and accessories, as well as his strange sculptures. His art isn’t exactly pretty and look like someone threw some metal bits together and then went a little crazy with a blowtorch. Despite this, he is immensely proud of his creations and doesn’t take criticism well. Maybe YOU don’t get it. His enthusiasm can be very infectious and he gets others excited easily. He might railroad them during a conversation, but is quick to talk up someone who is being overly modest. He’s also quick to point out flaws or call out bullshit, although he often has to keep this to himself to avoid being culled. 

He is a lowblood and such luxuries are not permitted for him, he often gives what he makes to his friends and keeps his hive relatively sparse, surrounding himself with the unfinished scrap. He dresses pretty modestly. His giving nature is ultimately selfish because he can’t indulge in his own creations and wants someone to appreciate them. Despite his interests, he tries to adhere to the hemospectrum the best he can. He knows that what he loves is wrong and that he will eventually be forced into a life of servitude, so he is often burdened by pessimism, frustration and self deprecation. He tries to keep his hive neat but due to his outbursts it frequently flip flops between extremely organized and terribly messy.

He was extremely close with his former moirail, a very patient but stressed out oliveblood, but he began developing flushed feelings for them which were not reciprocated. He fell HARD for them, so although their moirallegiance was highly beneficial to them both, he would rather have them be matesprits. So he broke things off with them. His tantrums were more manageable in the past with their help but he has gotten more out of control now that they split, although they do sometimes regress into pale flirting with one another. He tends to be clingy in his relationships and doesn’t really get the idea of “personal space” but cares very deeply for who he falls for. Hemati is just very selfish but also very devoted, but can easily become jealous. He is especially not fond of his ex-moirail’s red crush, a quiet ceruleanblood. He forcibly pulled them into the ashen quadrant, with his ex-moirail moderating, to keep them from staying flushed. He’s a jerk like that.

Honestly I love this level of character development. He has a lot of neat traits, and has lots of interesting character flaws that make him a very fascinating character. Someone who is liable to explode and who does not consider others as much as he should… I love his creativity and his uniqueness, too. I don’t really have anything to add here! 

Interests: Smithing, mining, smelting, salvaging, sculpting, art, fashion

His hive is located within a mountain (an inactive volcano), so he often goes mining for ore veins to fuel his craft or might dig around the suburbs for scrap metal for his artistic endeavors. He provides jewelry and outfits for his black crush, a pushy violetblood, but also made himself and his ex-moirail matching bracelets. He still wears his bracelet although his moirail stopped wearing theirs.

Ooh. So is he actually interested in fashion or is he interested in jewelry-making, because you mention that he dresses pretty simply… Is it that he’d LIKE to dress fancy but doesn’t have access to the resources he needs? Or is it that he’s interested in the creation of accessories but doesn’t care much for wearing them himself?

Title: Prince (?) of Space

I’ve struggled to figure out exactly what class Hemati fits the most, but I definitely want him to be a Space player. I considered Knight as he quite literally protects himself with space, like through his psychic barrier against fire. He also forges weapons and armor that can be used for self defense. Page was also a possibility as he has growing potential to utilize his psychic powers effectively and is currently unskilled with them. Prince is also a possibility as he creates through his destructive outbursts and has the Princely struggles of self loathing and self absorption.

Firstly, I think Space is a beautiful assignment for him because of how well it contrasts his character and how much it can teach him. Space is a lot of patience- we see this with Jade’s need to be patient on the meteor and all the waiting she’s forced to do, and Kanaya’s need for patience with the breeding of the frog, and Calliope’s need for patience in executing her plan. So it would be an aspect that would require him to work on himself and learn to appreciate the journey and not the goal, and would teach him to simmer down and pick his fights, and would require him to learn to rebuild beautiful things instead of making a mess of them out of stubbornness… 

If I were to pick a title, I might actually… pick Maid of Space? If you don’t mind breaking a canon rule. Because of his need to actively create this space for himself, to encourage this kind of movement of growth, as well as the literal creation of space he makes for himself… The inverse is Bard of Time, which would require the passive destruction of time and through time, implying his destructive nature that he needs to keep in check. 

You could probably also do Heir of Space? To imply a need for him to be capable of flexibility and change and to passively create a change in this for everyone. Inverse is Mage of Time, so he’d have to understand his own future and desire to fight… 

Land: Land of Scrap and Frogs (LoSaF)

Hemati likes to reinvent by taking discarded bits of metal (scrap) and turning it into something new. I imagine that it would be a planet covered in heaps of scrap metal, piled as high as the eye can see. It would likely be hard to traverse due to all the sharp and pointy bits. Stoking the Forge would melt the metal so that it can be reshaped into a more usable form.

Maybe Land of Debris and Frogs (LoDaF). It could still be scrapcovered, but I think putting scrap Right in the name might be a little too obvious. It could also imply some kind of destruction, like as though the planet’s endured ruin before and needs to be rebuilt, playing into his space theme. He could need to utilize the scrapped metal to build a Frog Pen where he can raise healthy baby frogs.

Dream Planet: Prospit

Dreamers are a little hard for me to understand. Hemati tries to stay true to the status quo but harbors desires that don’t exactly fit the mold. However, he doesn’t really fight for what he believes in and mostly tries to enjoy himself while he can. He tends to trust people at face value and although he tries to suppress his own feelings, he isn’t very good at it. Nor is he good at hiding his intentions.

I think this is VERY fitting for prospit, almost a picture-perfect prospit dreamer, really. Good pick!

I wish I had either art skills or spriting skills to make Hemati but I trust you guys to do him justice. I hope I was able to flesh out what kind of person he is!

You fleshed him out wonderfully! And I will try to do him justice. Here we go!:

Horns: I made them reflect his symbol. I also put the friendship bracelet on there. I know that we don’t see rusts wear anything on their horns and that horn accessories are exceedingly common, but I figure it’s such an important element to his character that it should be featured somewhere prominent and that will always be on screen. I also feel like it wouldn’t wear it on his hands- there’s too much of a risk for it to get melted or distorted by the furnace. So horn it is. 

Hair: I made it look like a really messy fire! Fun times. 

Eyes: Angry spikey eyebrows and some grumpy eyes, loosely based off Karkat’s. 

Mouth: Very frowny, with nubby rustblood teeth. 

Outfit: Really simple dark apron with his symbol on it and some steel-toed boots. The boot base was taken from fan-troll. 

Thank you for sharing him!

-CD

[hillarykylie]

I’m honestly goddamn tired from people trying to generate presumptuous statements and incorrect/fallacious opinions about me especially with regards to my situation and what I’m going through at the moment.

I’m pretty sure it’s not that hard to just listen for a sec. Even illiterates do a better job at actively listening to someone than some seemingly educated people I know, who seem to spew nonsense at every opportunity they get. This is probably the most predominant reason why I’ve stopped confiding at length into people around me, because it’s absolutely pointless in doing so and it would only do me more harm than good.

Obviously I’m not expecting people to become professional clinical Psychologists, but surely listening and understanding is an ubiquitous element of our everyday life? I’m not asking you to “HEAL” me, all I’m asking for is an empathetic response and a listening ear.

If you’re somewhat close to me, you’d know my Eating Disorder has spiralled out of control recently, especially after returning back from Singapore. I had to deal with my January exams and coursework on top of everything else so I was functioning on high levels of stress and anxiety.

Unlike the bulk of people I know who devour all kinds of food when they’re stressed, mine’s quite the contrary. Negative emotions only propel me to starve (although my starving really isn’t deliberate) - My appetite dissipates and eating becomes almost a chore to me.

This doesn’t mean that I DONT eat at all, because I’d literally die. I’ve been trying my best to feed myself regardless - despite forgetting to eat all the time/feeling dreadful when I have to eat. But for the most part, eating just stirs a whirl of unhappy emotions within me. Not only does it makes me feel physically bloated, full and just disgusting, it makes me feel as though I’ve lost all my sense of control.

Not eating has become a method of assertion of reigning control of my life. I’ve always felt that my life has been incredibly chaotic and tumultuous, especially with College/Uni, and since a lot of extenuating circumstances are out of my realm of control, eating has become the only aspect of life that I can actually have some sense of power or control over, and regain a level of stability.

The buzz I derive from not eating feels unusually good *my ED people will relate to this* and that feeling of autonomy and control simply reinforces and perpetuates this destructive cycle.

Not eating also makes me feel calm and composed, and helps allievate my intensifying emotions. It just alludes a sense of mental peace for me, and numbs my feelings so I wouldn’t have to constantly *feel* so much because it’s exhausting.

A huge part of my relapse is predicated on my deplorable current mental state and my whole transition to Uni, which’s been something I haven’t been able to completely process and heal from.

I don’t feel as though people understand, or even have the capacity to understand how my whole Uni situation has contributed significantly to my spiral, and the monumental and carthatic impact it has on my mental health.

As my psych has emphasised, I’ve left some emotions under-addressed for far too long that it’s starting to rear it’s ugly head and manifest into an ED.

I haven’t truly been able to get over or recover from the fact that I was robbed of my dreams and my life not unfolding the way it was supposed to be.

I never wanted to come to Bristol. Don’t get me wrong though - it’s an equally elite and prestigious University and I’m blessed to be studying something I’m truly passionate about and have a flair for, but it wasn’t where I intended to be.

I’d cast my sights on the US even before I’d turned 13, and have always aspired to get my degree done in the States. Having already spent 3 years in the UK doing my GCSEs and A Levels, I decided I’d pursue my long-time ambition of getting my degree done in the US. (Most of my friends and peers were also planning on leaving the UK for Uni)

I had the grades, achieved A*A*AA and topped my cohort, and got into several prestigious Universities but due to unfavourable familial circumstances, I had to come back to the UK in the end, which annihilated and shattered me for months.

I felt as though I was a living failure and there was no point in living. But perhaps the most aggravating part was knowing that I had the grades and met all my criteria, but it was my family holding me back. I felt like I had no control over my future and my educational trajectory, which meant so much to me. I’ve always been a perfectionist and being able to reach my dreams was crucial and fundamental to my happiness.

I tried to move on from it, but I realised what I’d been doing was simply sweeping my emotions under a rug. I attempted to convey my feelings to people, but empathetic responses were far and few and I felt even more maligned and misunderstood than I was understood.

I tried to convince myself that coming to Bristol wasn’t exactly a bad thing, and although it truly and objectively isn’t, a part of me still harbours immense frustration and resentment from the fact that I was coerced into coming here. The more I tried to mask my anger and unhappiness, the more it came back to haunt and destroy me, and the more these feelings accumulated.

Not working hard enough to achieve your dreams is one thing, but working hard enough and getting a successful outcome yet not being able to achieve your dreams is a whole other matter altogether.

Most importantly, I haven’t been having a great time in Uni either. My academics are undoubtedly going well but I feel deeply disconnected here. It’s my first time dealing with such an uncomfortable situation considering I’ve been studying abroad since 15 and have never had any problem nor the slightest bit of difficulty in finding a community or building genuine friendships.

All along I’ve been able to make great friends, especially during my time in boarding school. I’m also inherently extroverted and gregarious, so me asserting that I feel a disconnect from everyone around me should be taken more seriously and not with a pinch of salt.

It’s easy to build superficial friendships in Uni here, but it’s a whole other ballgame when it comes to forging something substantial and genuine. Fortunately - I’m not the only one who feels this way, and it’s reassuring to know that others resonate with how I feel, instead of shrugging it off and invalidating my thoughts like others who *shall not be named*. There’s no sense of real solidarity here and it’s something I’ve never had to deal with throughout my school years.

I’m by no means shy or quiet (unless I’m in a disturbing situation ofc). Ask anyone who knows me for more than 4 years and they’d tell you how *raw* social interactions is what I need and thrive on. I hate how people have been projecting the blame on me as though I’m a hermit who hasn’t made any effort, instead of actually listening to what I ought to say. YES I’ve got friends - but really, they’re just “FRIENDS”, not people whom I fw on an emotional, intellectual or mental basis or have non-shallow conversations with.

And if you look a little closer of my life history, you’d know it’s unlike of me to feel alienated. I’m always with a group of people, a tight-knit clique.

It’s just not where I want to be and no matter how much I tried to suppress how I felt, I was still as devastated and inconsolable.

I’m not a particularly huge fan of Uni culture in the UK and I instinctively knew that coming here wouldn’t be a great idea. I’d even expressed my concerns to my family and what not that my mental health would regress if I were to return to the UK - but these concerns were neither heard nor addressed. Everyone’d turned a deaf ear upon me and now that everything I’ve forewarned months ago is occurring to me, I feel tenfold angrier and frustrated.

At the end of the day, I know myself intrinsically well enough to know where I’d thrive in and where I’d struggle.

[ethanalter]

‘Crashing’ Pete Holmes Interview HBO

Pete Holmes as a struggling comic in ‘Crashing’ (Credit: HBO)

Honesty may be a lonely word, but it’s also an essential ingredient of Pete Holmes’s brand of comedy. The 37-year-old comic has a history of using his stand-up sets, as well as his popular podcast, You Made It Weird, to tackle deeply personal subjects. Now he’s bringing that honesty to HBO in the form of Crashing, a semi-autobiographical series created and starring Holmes and produced by Judd Apatow. While set in the present day, the show is predicated on a story from the creator’s past when his marriage fell apart at the same time he was struggling to launch his comedy career.

Kicked out of his house, Holmes’s TV counterpart (also called Pete Holmes) couch-surfs in the living rooms of such established comics as Artie Lange and Sarah Silverman, who also play themselves. Holmes tells Yahoo TV that liberties have definitely been taken in translating his real life into fiction, but revisiting that part of his history has offered a fair amount of catharsis. “Re-living the heartbreak was difficult; you’d be shooting it and thinking, ‘This is really heavy.’ But then editing it, you make it funny, too. So it’s fun in that regard, and also healing.” Holmes also revealed what it was like to purposely bomb in front of a live audience and why he hopes that his short-lived late-night talk show, The Pete Holmes Show, attains Ben Stiller Show-like cult status.

When I spoke with Judd Apatow about Crashing, he suggested this is a very personal story for you. How did you go about transforming it into the events we watch on the show? The story is really, really personal. It’s been fictionalized, certainly, and changed. If you just tell things exactly how they happened, first of all, legally, that’s a nightmare. Second of all, it’s not as interesting as you might think it is. You need a master like Judd to elegantly, efficiently, and hilariously bring it out. Judd very naturally thinks in stories. One of the first things he did was to tell me, “Just write 10 pages on everything you remember about that time.” So I e-mailed him a document that was filled with truly embarrassing admissions and sad things. I have no problem delving into the tragic to find really, really funny things, and he and I have that in common. My parents still have no idea how this is a comedy! [Laughs.]

You have to tell them, “No, this is funny — trust me.” Yeah, I know. I think when it’s not your son [it’s funnier]. My dad thought the show was going to be like The Odd Couple, with crazy hijinks happening and a different roommate each week. I suppose he’s not entirely wrong. There are hijinks and it is certainly very funny. The pilot kind of does the heavy lifting in terms of getting most, though not all, of the tragedy [out of the way] and then it gets rolling and gets really funny.

Did you always intend to play a version of yourself on the show? The initial conceit of the show was to have everybody playing themselves. That was very important to me. I wanted to create this world where the only person that regressed was me. I’m playing the 2007 version of myself, but everybody else is the 2016 version of themselves. Which is funny because someone like T.J. Miller, who appears in the second and third episodes, is a real person and a real friend. When I actually got divorced in real life, we went to Pittsburgh and spent a week there, just cheering me up and having fun. The difference between T.J. in real life and T.J. in the show is that when I was with him in 2007, he wasn’t famous yet. But on Crashing, he’s playing the post-Deadpool T.J. whereas I’m [pre-fame] Pete. So it’s a little confusing, but once people get into the show, I don’t think they’re going to be saying, “I don’t get it — where’s his podcast?”

Was it strange to put yourself back in the place of being a comedian who isn’t established as you are now? Oh, yeah. I was joking with Judd that the scenes [in the pilot] where I had to perform at an open-mic and bomb was the most painful part. [Laughs.] There’s 300 people there, and they’re extras. Your body still kind of goes into that fight or flight response, and you get that back sweat. And even though you know it’s the story that you’re not supposed to be good yet, it still bothers you a little bit. Still, I think the whole process was a little bit therapeutic. I wish everybody could have an opportunity — maybe they could on a smaller scale — to recreate some of the trauma from their lives like the pain of starting out in stand-up and going to a club where they don’t know you and don’t even want you. [Reliving that moment] I was like, “I don’t know how I did it.” If I was 37 and starting as an open mic-er it would be a real challenge.

I’m curious — how did you ensure that you’d bomb onstage? Did you deliberately write bad material? Or was the audience of extras instructed not to laugh? One, stand-up is so hard. Even if you are trying, you probably won’t do that great. We treated our background actors well, but there’s still a cattle call element. There’s 300 of them, so some production assistant with a headset is going to, at some point, bark at them to stay in line or be quiet or whatever. It kind of feels like a schoolroom in that way, so it’s not a great [environment]. Also, the alchemy of stand-up is so specific. The darkness and coldness [of the club], and also the alcohol can help. That’s when people want to unwind. But if you’re performing at 2 p.m. in a hot room and there’s a group of actors there who aren’t your friends and aren’t on dates, they just want to make a fast buck and they saw this ad on Craigslist, it’s hard to turn that into a good show. I didn’t have to work very hard to bomb! [Laughs.]

Holmes crashing on comic Artie Lange’s couch in ‘Crashing’ (Credit: HBO)

Judd also taught me something he learned while making Funny People, which is that if you want the audience to stop laughing, just keep telling the same joke over and over without warning them. That way, you’ll get the comedian acting believably, but the audience will make certain sounds and groan and it’s not fake because they’re actually feeling it. What was more remarkable was that Artie Lange and T.J. had great sets [in the same setting]! I was in the easier position where I was supposed to do badly, so the pressure was off. It still sucked, though. I wanted a stiff drink afterwards.

Related: Judd Apatow Talks Final Season of ‘Girls,’ His Next HBO Series, ‘Crashing,’ and the Return of ‘Love’

You mentioned your podcast earlier, and that medium has been one way that contemporary comedians are connecting with their fans. We seem to go through cycles where stand-up comedy becomes intensely interesting to people. Is podcasting the key to the current fascination with stand-up? In the past, “comedian” was a very convenient job for the lead in a sitcom to have, because it explained very quickly why he was funny, and why he probably had an OK amount of money. You didn’t wonder why he was able to go on vacation or eat in a nice restaurant. When Jerry took that girl up to Vermont on Seinfeld, nobody thought, “Why does this guy have all this time off?” Our show is a little bit different in that we want to talk about what it’s like to start out as a stand-up, to see the comedian’s origin story. Judd and I were really excited by that.

More to your question, I think, if you look at someone who I admire very much like Louis C.K., being a comedian is the perfect excuse to be very honest. And that’s been encouraged by the rise of podcasts. We now know what it’s like to upload a comedian into your brain through hundreds of podcasts. I barely know Marc Maron, but I feel like I know him so well from listening to WTF. With the advent of podcasts, we’ve gotten a taste for blood — you know what I mean? The premium is higher than it’s ever been for humor that’s authentic and transparent. And with our show, we’re bleeding on the page in some ways. We’re telling secrets. It’s comedy soaked in something relatable and true, and I would argue even a little bit mythic.

Prior to landing at HBO, you hosted The Pete Holmes Show in the post-Conan spot on TBS. Looking back on that series now, how do you feel about your experience in late-night TV? I’m actually wearing Pete Holmes Show pajamas right now! [Laughs.] I wish I had taken more pairs of them — these are getting kind of dingy. I’m the type of comedian that will blame the audience. I’m not saying I blame the audience of The Pete Holmes Show, but I’m very quick to say it was an algorithm — it was a ratings thing and it was the structure of TBS at the time. I know TBS has changed since then, and I’ve had a couple of people [casually] tell me that our show would have done better in the climate they’ve created now.

But I wouldn’t have changed a thing; I’m so proud of it, and I think we did something special given the parameters and the budget and everything. We were shooting nine episodes a week, often months in advance. I’d come out and say, “Hey, it’s Christmastime,” and it was August! I’ve said before that we did exactly the number of episodes we could’ve done before we would’ve started eating ourselves. I really want Netflix or somebody to put it out — we had to take it off YouTube for some legal reason. I’m holding out for the Ben Stiller Show later-appreciation thing. We’ll see if it happens!

Crashing premieres Feb. 19 at 10:30 p.m. on HBO.

Read More:‘This is Us’ Recap: What Would Jack Do?‘Doubt’ EPs Preview New Drama Starring Katherine Heigl and Laverne Cox‘Sun Records’ Exclusive: Chad Michael Murray on Playing ‘Big Personality’ Sam Phillips

[ashesofus]

How to Change Your Mindset

This is all very good and well, but how exactly do you go about changing your mindset? How do you take back control, reclaim your happiness and start living a fulfilling and inspiring life again? The thing to do is to diagnose the problem. What exactly is wrong with your mind to begin with? And how can you fix those issues? Well, not to alarm you, but there’s probably a lot wrong with your mind.

Don’t worry though: it’s fairly common and it’s very much a sign of the times. I can guess that you aren’t completely happy with where you are right now. Maybe you don’t like who you are right now. I know this because you’re reading this article. If what you’re doing right now is working for you then great! But if it’s not, or if it could be working better, then something needs to change.

Here are some starting points that can help you see precisely what you might need to change.

1-Responsibility

The first problem that many of us have is that we don’t take responsibility for our actions and we don’t want to take responsibility for our actions. Now we all know people who don’t like taking responsibility – they will blame others and they will make excuses for what they’ve done. These are the people with the external locusts of control that we have already discussed.

But while this might seem like an irritating problem for people around them, the reality is that this is a much deeper issue that affects them more than it does anyone else. Because a completely refusal to accept responsibility means that you also reject your own autonomy and your control. If you believe that nothing is your fault, then you also really can’t take credit for anything that goes well.

Moreover, it means that you don’t have any power over your life and it means that you can’t choose to change things.

It’s not up to you, it’s up to chance!

It gets worse too. If you are too used to avoiding responsibility, then chances are that you will avoid taking responsibility for other things in your life too. That means you’ll avoid making commitments to people, which might make you feel ‘free’ but ultimately means you get left behind as those around you settle down into relationships and find fulfilling careers.

It means you’ll put yourself forward for fewer tasks in the work place – at least those tasks that have any major consequences. And if you aren’t responsible for large amounts of money, then you can’t expect to get paid large amounts of money either.

Being afraid of responsibility will even make you less impressive, decisive and confident in a day-to-day scenario. When someone asks you to make a decision, you won’t want to because you won’t want to be responsible for what happens if you get it wrong.

And unfortunately, life has made it all too easy for us to learn this lack of responsibility. We are sheltered by so much technology and for the most part, life has become much easier. Our childhoods have also become extended to a massive degree and especially in the current generation of youths.

These days many of us will stay at school until we are 18 and will then attend college for 3, 4 of 6 years after that depending on the amount of qualifications we obtain. Throw in a gap year and some time ‘finding our feet’ and many of us don’t begin our careers until we’re in our mid-to-late-twenties.

This was exacerbated by the economic crash of the last decade. Many people leaving college struggled to find work, which left them without workplace responsibilities and very often still living with their parents. Generations previous were likely married homeowners with children at this point.

And it’s hard to ditch this mentality. It’s hard to stop being a perpetual child. And while there are positive sides to this (it’s good for creativity, for dreaming and for enjoyment in the moment), ultimately life will catch up and we won’t be prepared. We are too soft mentally to cope with the challenges that will come our way. We’ve lost the ability to be decisive, strong, action-takers.

What can you do to fix it? We’ll explore this in more depth in some of the other reports but the key to acknowledge is that you must learn to accept the possibility of a less-than-perfect outcome. Accept that there will be times when things go wrong and it’s your fault.  And when that does happen, be willing to put your hand up and admit it. That’s what it means to be an adult. And that’s what will give you the strength to start taking more chances and making more bold decisions.

2- We Care Too Much What Others Think

Ultimately, number one comes down to doing away with fear. This is another topic we’re going to address more over the coming reports but for now let’s hone in on one very specific example of fear, one very specific cause. That is that we care too much what others think.

This is something that occupies a lot of our thoughts for many of us and something that can actually be quite tiring. Many of us will simply not do something if we think it is going to make us look unusual. If we think it will elicit stares.

Not only that, but caring too much what others think is what makes it so hard for us to take responsibility for things: we don’t want to seem to be weak or to lose the trust or respect of other people. You know what the biggest irony of this is? It is the refusal to take action and take responsibility that actually makes people lose respect. This is what makes us appear weaker.

Many of us also struggle to go after the things that we want in life because we are too busy worrying about pleasing others. We’re so busy saying yes to invitations that we don’t really want to go to and spending money on things that we think we should own, that we don’t have the resources left to spend on things that really matter to us. And this of course greatly limits what we are capable of and the quality of our lives.

Now I’m not telling you to forget other people entirely and to become an ass. That’s certainly not going to improve your life!

But learn the subtle difference:

Care if other people are happy

Don’t care what other people think of you

This is the most heroic mindset because it means you’ll do kind things for people without even telling anyone and even be willing to make yourself look foolish. But at the same time, you’ll be much happier because you won’t be living up to the expectations that you believe other people to have.

You’ll be able to take more responsibility for yourself and you’ll have one less huge thing causing you stress. So how do you make the switch? It is easier said than done of course but the key to getting started is to stop holding yourself to the standards of others and to start holding yourself only to your own standards. Judge yourself on your own terms and by your own code of conduct.

3-We Are Impulsive and Reactive

Perhaps the biggest symptom of modern life is just how badly impulsive and reactive we have become. And this really is something that has been exacerbated by modern technologies and convenience. Did you know that our attention span has measurably deteriorated over recent decades?

The reigning view is that this is caused by time spent on the internet. When we read a blog post we can skip across the headlines and the bullet points and then stop reading. Often we’ll get our information from YouTube or Twitter – which is limited to only 140 characters! When we find the piece of information we want, we can close the tab and search for the next thing.

It will be there in seconds! We’ve become very good at quickly skimming and assimilating information but we’ve trained ourselves out of sustaining our attention and concentrating. And this is then made a lot worse by all the other things vying for our attention and all the other immediate gratification we get. We have all the food, all the entertainment, all the gratification we could possibly need right at our fingertips.

Much of it is free. And much of it can be served up in seconds depending on your internet speed. Adverts are designed with bright colors and attractive faces to grab our attention. There is noise everywhere. And thus we have become incredibly reactive. Every one of these distractions that leads to reward will trigger a dopaminergic response. Eating a sweet, loading up PornHub, playing a computer game, watching a YouTube video.

This reinforces the same pathways in the brain that are present in addicts. And it completely undermines our ability to control our attention and to decide what we want to look at. How we want to behave. So, when we sit down to work towards a massive deadline, it should come as no surprise that the first thing we do is check Facebook. And make tea. And grab a snack.

How do you get out of this rut? There are a few ways and again, we’re going to delve deeply into all of this. But one of the simplest fixes is to try meditation. Meditation teaches us to take conscious control of our mind, to be more in the moment and to avoid distractions. This can help us to become incredibly more disciplined and focused and can certainly do away with a lot of procrastination and impulsivity.

4-We Are Lazy and Tired

The other big problem that prevents us from achieving what we want and that causes a whole lot of unhappiness is laziness. Most of us know what we should be doing but we lack the effort to do it. When given a choice, we will take the easier route. In the short-term this is great. It means you get to spend the evening on the couch with a bag of chips watching your favorite trashy TV.

But in the long term it means you lack the stimulus for growth. And guess what? Growth is perhaps the most important thing we need to be happy. Because you are never still and stable. If you are not going forward, you are going backward. If you are not growing, you are regressing. If you don’t exercise then your muscles atrophy. But likewise, if you don’t use your brain and if you don’t challenge your mind, then your brain physically shrinks.

Worse, you unlearn how to apply effort.But part of this is not laziness. Part of this is stress and tiredness. Because the problem is that we typically lead such busy, stressful and fast paced lives that we simply have no energy left at the end of the day to do anything about it.Is it any surprise? Most of us commute into work for 30-90 minutes on a train or bus or sitting in traffic in the car.

We then fight our way through a busy street into the office where we sit in a cramped, stuffy room and get shouted at by clients and unhappy customers. We work to urgent deadlines and end up staying late, then we make the precise same commute back home. You can add malnutrition on top of this for many of us. Halogen lights too. Loud noises. Air pollution.

All these things upset the body and cause physiological stress. These put us further into the fight or flight state and the body simply can’t tell the difference. This exhausts us. And that’s what makes us choose the fast food in the cupboard and it’s what makes us skip the workout. It’s also what causes us to argue with our partners and not have time for our kids. And it’s not even time that’s the issue here so much as energy.

Your psychological energy is a finite resource. So, the first thing you need to do is to start buying yourself more energy. That might mean looking into easier ways into work, or it might mean swapping to an easier job. It means finding space in your life so that you can stop reacting and being in fight or flight. They you can start to become proactive and make your way onto your inspire path.

source http://www.forcesalign.com/how-to-change-your-mindset/

[abbindkataskea]

  2017 is being an intense year for the Western world, marked by the rise of nationalist movements. Anyone with a basic understanding of fascism, xenophobia and white supremacy would have probably seen this coming in the last few years. When politicians across the spectrum use migrants as a basketball ball to score points, when challenging racism becomes a bore-some activity for so called progressive/liberals, when dealing with inequality and xenophobia is seen as a matter of “overrated identity politics, when people pretend only white people are working class and suffering since the financial crisis of 2008, when the media is still unable to check their biased language, and when all of the sudden everyone wants to pretend we are all equal as if a few decades of brown and black people seen as human (debatable) erases the effects of centuries of genocide, slavery and colonisation, well…. You get this. A region in which racial supremacy and discrimination are okayed again (to be honest, were they ever not okayed?) in the name of freedom of speech.

At the same time, everyone willing to challenge this bigotry is called a “regressive leftist” by people who genuinely believe they are progressive leftists, while being moderate centrists, if anything. Neo-Nazis and conservatives might refer to them as “easily triggered snowflakes”, which is ironic since they turn purple and angry whenever you call their statements ‘racist’. “Clueless social justice warriors” is another label used often by people who still don’t know their right to freedom of speech can only be violated by governments and their agencies/bodies, not by fellow citizens counterarguing what they say. And lastly, my personal favourite one: “entitled millennials”, a tone-deaf term used by adults who believe young people under 30 years old are all middle-class babies who had everything handed to them (working/lower class young people don’t exist anymore), were rewarded for mediocrity (seriously, where are all these awards? I didn’t get mine) and can’t live outside safe spaces (apparently young people live in protective bubbles away from the cruel real world, I can’t believe I didn’t get one!).

I’m not going to go any deeper into the political situation in the West, I’m still on an indefinite break from writing about social issues at a non-personal level. I just wanted to give a brief look at the context in which this personal article is set. The ongoing discussions about nationalism, patriotism, culture and ethnicity have made me think deeply about my own identity. How I identify and how I am identified. I struggle to determine to where I belong and to which countries/regions I should be loyal too. My national, ethnic and cultural identities are complicated to the point in which I’m uncertain I have any of these.

I was born in the Basque Country, an autonomous region in Spain. I lived there till 2012, the year I moved to England, where I currently reside. My nationality is Spanish and despite living in Britain for over four years, I still have a strong (Northern) Spanish accent. At the same time, I have adopted various British customs, such as saying “sorry” non-stop without an actual reason, eating roast on Sundays, being passive aggressive and drinking a lot of tea throughout the day (just joking!). Despite all this, I was born (and I live) in a different place to where my parents and grandparents were born. Hence, my nationality and place of residence say little to nothing about my ethnicity and heritage.

My mother was born in Equatorial Guinea, located in Central/Middle Africa. Her mother (my grandmother) is from there too, while her father (my grandfather) was originally from a West African country, either Cape Verde or São Tomé and Príncipe (I can’t confirm which one it is since I have been told different things). As you can see, simply in my mother’s side there is already a mixture of ethnicities, which would be even bigger if specific ethnic groups/tribes would be considered (which I won’t do because I don’t want to overcomplicate this article).  Although it might seem confusing, describing my maternal heritage is easy compared to my paternal heritage: my biological father  (from whom I inherited my genetic traits) differs from my legal father (who legally recognises me as his daughter). I have never met my biological father and I know little about him. Meanwhile, I was raised by my legal father and he is the only person I consider a “father” in my life. I was told that my biological father is Senegalese and Bissau-Guinean (both West African countries). My legal father is from DR Congo and his parents (my grandparents) migrated there from Angola. Both countries are in Central/Middle Africa.

I learnt most of this information about my family during the last couple of years. Growing up, I was never curious about my ethnicity and heritage. I never even tried to define them. The only things I was sure about were my race (black) and my nationality (Spanish). While I grew up immersed in Spanish culture, I never felt part of it: it wasn’t something I could claim as my heritage. While Spain is a “colourblind” country in many aspects (when I lived there, race and ethnicity were not officially recorded as in UK), racism and xenophobia are common. People always give you subtle and not-so-subtle reminders about you not being “originally” from Spain.

It was also hard for me to feel attached to my African background because I didn’t grow up with my family (except my siblings). Now and then, I did have access to my parents’ cultures, mainly during family celebrations and spiritual rituals, but these were limited. I can name some basic Congolese food dishes, some basic Equatorial Guinean food dishes. I can understand some words of Lingala (Congolese language) and Pichinglish (Creole language in Equatorial Guinea). I’m aware of some rituals and customs. But my position regarding these cultures is the one of an outsider, rather than someone actively involved in them. In addition, till no long ago, I silently rejected my African background because of the gender roles that were being forced on me in the name of it.

Moving to England and becoming a young adult triggered in me an interest to know more about my roots to define my ethnicity better. In England I saw how most black people, even if British, embraced their ethnicity a lot, not just as “African”, but as Nigerian, Ghanaian, Jamaican… Or even specific subgroups, such as Yoruba. I felt a lot of envy about this, I wished that was me. Meanwhile I realised that I would never be considered Spanish and I wondered if I wanted to live in this continent forever. In addition, when deciding what to study at university, I remember how my dad pushed me to go for something that could help people “back at home”, meaning DR Congo for him.

All this inspired me to learn more about my roots. I asked questions to my family, and I did an Ancestry DNA test to proof-check their answers. While Ancestry DNA isn’t 100% accurate, it is an indicator, and I’m hoping to do a 23andMe check soon, since it is considered more reliable. Here are my Ancestry DNA results:

(*Trace regions are regions/countries which are only possibilities and might appear in the results by chance.)

My reaction to this data was a mixture of confirmation and surprise. I suspected most of my ethnicity would be African. I knew I had some European ancestry because my maternal grandfather was creole/mulatto. I thought I would get a small percentage for Native American (defined by Ancestry as indigenous groups from North to South America) because I was told my maternal great-grandmother has an Indigenous Cuban ancestor (the ancestor might be too distant to appear). I definitely have Afro-Cuban ancestry, something common in my mother’s home country, yet it isn’t reflected on the test since Afro-Cubans, as other Afro-Latinos, are direct descendants of black African slaves sent to the Americas.

I was surprised by the percentage for the Middle East, and although it is just a chance, it might be true due to extensive presence of Middle-Easterns in Africa, particularly in countries that make up my ethnicity. Regardless of this, I’m happy with being just black African, that’s how I have always identified. (Black) Afro-Hispanic is a label that wouldn’t bother me either, since linguistically speaking, I’m indeed Hispanic, which is not the same as Latino by the way (though I do have Latino [and Caribbean] heritage since I have Cuban ancestry and I grew up quite influenced by it).

When comes to individual countries, I already knew I had Senegalese roots, though I didn’t think it would be my biggest percentage. Conversely, I knew I had Bantu background, since my maternal grandmother’s ethnic group is Bubi, a Bantu subgroup, but I didn’t think the percentage would be so small. I was dazed by the rest of African countries and for the lack of mention of Equatorial Guinea, Cape Verde or/and São Tomé and Príncipe, in the list. However, a small look at African history helped me to make sense of this. Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe were supposedly uninhabited islands when the Portuguese arrived to colonise them. They were populated mainly through European settlers and slaves from continental Africa. That’s probably why countries like Congo and Benin appear in my Ancestry DNA: many slaves were taken from there. A similar logic can apply to Equatorial Guinea: that country was inhabited prior to Portuguese and Spanish colonisation (by ethnic groups like the Bubis), but there was a lot of migration from neighbouring areas afterwards.

Except for two, all the African countries/regions in my results are in West & Central Africa. Considering how European-made national borders in Africa don’t respect ethnic groups and tribes, the variety in my ethnicity makes more sense: the ethnic groups I belong to could be found in various countries in the area. Nationality might not be the greatest indicator for ethnicity in Africa. It is also important to keep in mind I don’t have full access to knowledge about my biological father’s family background. And, as I mentioned earlier, Ancestry DNA isn’t 100% accurate, although my results look more right than wrong.

As you can see, my ethnicity and heritage are heterogeneous. My mother, my legal father and my biological father are all from separate places, even different to their own parents. It is important to mention that while I didn’t inherit genetic traits from my legal father, his heritage and ethnicity still influence my cultural identity. Now, add my nationality (Spanish) and my place of residence (England). To which country in the world am I supposed to be loyal? To which country in the world am I supposed to show patriotism? I identify as black African normally, but I’m aware I’m legally Spanish and I’m a citizen of England.

Having a transnational, multicultural and mixed background is supposed to make me richer in knowledge and experiences, which is not untrue. Yet, it doesn’t make you richer in company. It can be very isolating. You belong to so many places that you end up belonging to nowhere. And more nowadays, when nationalism and ethno-supremacy are such a trend worldwide. It is easy to force nationalism upon people when you haven’t been rejected by your country of birth, when the country where you live doesn’t hate you and when you don’t have a transnational family.

My nationality is culturally and ethnically meaningless. Living in England matters to me, but the current war on immigrants and Brexit make things harder. While I’m trying to learn more about the countries that compose my African background, I still don’t feel attached to them. That’s the main reason why I can’t get behind any person or idea that doesn’t consider that who I am comes from more than one country or region, and tries to shame me for not being nationalistic. I simply have a borderless identity not confined to a single culture or place. And I wish people understood this, just as I respect their right to be patriotic. Hopefully one day, people like me will be considered during political discussions about culture, ethnicity and nationalism. Hopefully.

NEW POST=> Journal Entry: Nationality, Ethnicity, Heritage and Me (About my complex identity) 2017 is being an intense year for the Western world, marked by the rise of nationalist movements.