#growing up weird

[nightndaydreaming]

Fun fact about me:

In 7th grade, I carved HI in the back of my hand with a mechanical pencil. I’m 28 and it’s still there

[miss-assembled]

[larphis]

Sometimes I’m sad that I don’t have many friends because I am quite the demanding creature and then I remember that Socrates’ ass was so insufferable to those around him - because he kept coming up with paradoxons and pointless philosophical thought experiments - that even the artsy kids were fed up with him which ultimately led to a poet demanding his death due to supposed blasphemy and his only few friends fought tooth and nail to get him out of it only for him to be so petty that he’d rather chose death than to bail out “if they all rather wanted to see him dead anyways”.

And that’s the point where I usually end up realizing that my own extra neurodivergent ass should be grateful because I have those kind of friends who would definetly defend me when being sentenced to death.

However, I am also the kind of person who most definitely would choose death out of spite, so perhaps the size of my friend group is reasonable to my character <3

[wild-at-mind]

Was talking to my partner last night about that thing my mum used to very well meaningingly do...she knew I had a lot of trouble making friends so whenever she heard about another kid about my age who was having trouble making friends she would try and arrange for us to hang out. I feel like the problem with this strategy is that kids who have trouble making friends are usually very, very awkward, and do not possess to social skills to alleviate the awkwardness of someone else. So you end up with two kids who are both being awkward at the same time and neither is able to help the other feel less awkward. I joked to my partner that you would have to introduce the kid who was not good at making friends to kid who was really amazing at making friends, which obviously in real life is not very workable (the concept of ‘pity friends’ is a not great thing for anyone). My mum is very kind and caring, and I know it must be hard for any caring parent to see your child fail socially over and over and be horribly upset about it. She did what she could. But kids in this position are more likely to stay in any friendships they do make even if those friendships are actually very unhealthy and are harming them. That’s what happened to me, she introduced me to someone when I was 12 who turned out to be very controlling and cut off my ability to make friends with anyone else. I will never know if without this person I might have formed actual friendship connections in my teens. They did a lot of harm to me and it’s really difficult to talk about that because they were my peer and also had been through some horrible things. I just clung on tighter because I saw how the world shat on my friend from a great height, like it does all kids who have experienced traumatic family breakdown. And yet in the end, my presence probably only made things worse. It doesnt do any good to harm yourself to try and save someone else, no matter how much you care about them. I really did care about him and I wanted to help and I couldn’t because the problems were vast and societal. I broke contact with him finally when we were adults, I assume this affected my mental health very much but I don’t know because I have no context for what my adolescent development would have been without him in my life. He used to say that needing people was weak, and so I believed it. (He obviously needed me at more than a few times but that’s neither here nor there.) But in reality, we all need people. We need friends and social connections that give us reciprocity and love. I do have friends now but sometimes I feel like I form connections too strong with some people who aren’t reciprocating. I may have mentioned this on here before but we talk about unrequited romantic feelings but not about onesidedness in platonic feelings, and I wish we did. When I’m in low times there are certain friendships that I mourn (absolutely not the one described above fyi!!) even if it’s been years, or I’m still in them and the other person thinks it’s fine but I feel so lonely for more closeness with them. I’m sure someone would helpfully tell me this is all normal but when you talk to people about this stuff, you can tell they don’t feel anything even slightly similar and are bemused. I don’t know what the solution is except to go on about it in writing so that’s what I do. And I don’t know how to help kids make stronger friendships or help a kid with no self esteem choose between being friendless but sticking up for themselves, or being in a damaging and harmful friendship.

[someonelovesyou2007]

Does anyone get this feeling? The feeling that no matter how much you try, you will never find a true friend, and no one will fill that void of loneliness in your heart.

[sunnshineyelllo]

Completely unrealistic. I don't believe it, I'll need inscrutable proof.

me? being someone’s type? unrealistic

[dysregulated-emotions]

Part 3

"Hi, it's me - I'm the problem, it's me"

"I never leave well enough alone, and trouble's gonna follow where I go...

Sounds weird, but it was a mix of these two lyrics/songs that caught me.

I am - and have always been - my own worst enemy. I get in my own way. I make mountains out of mole hills, blow situations wildly out of proportion, and create mass chaos for myself and everyone around me. Because I grew up "weird" I never learned how to regulate my emotions. I never knew what to do with my Big Feelings.

My therapist is delighted. We're making progress, getting down to brass tacks. I'm singing "All Too Well" in the shower and thinking about the last time my dad was my dad, when he dropped me off at college, before the Munchausen's took over. I'm screaming "Look What You Made Me Do" at the version of my stepmom I remember from when I was 17. My new mantra slowly turns into "I keep my side of the street clean".

I develop shingles (at age 38 WTF) and I'm miserable for 2 straight weeks. My husband comes home one day, sees me bopping along (loudly) to Mean, and doesn't say a word. Later on he tells me, "Of course it's annoying to hear the same songs on repeat like you've been doing. But that was the happiest I've seen you in weeks and I wasn't about to stop it."

I think that's the moment when I decided to let myself have this.

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6]

[pipskippy]

characters i have drawn just soooo many times i love you forever thena!!!!!!

[aardvaark]

what you have to understand about sophie devereaux is that despite how she might first come across, she is deeply uncool. she is a theater kid and she’s also really, really bad at theater. she mentions her high school angst while beating the shit out of an assassin. she loves crime so so much. she thinks of life in terms of noir movie tropes. she struggles in all relationships that aren’t for grifting purposes. as a teenage girl she had a poster of a flight hijacker over her bed.

[sunnshineyelllo]

Heh heh heh, whooo, that's a doozy. Growing up the weird annoying kid really sticks with you for life.

i knew from a young age i was weird and off putting and unlovable

[nightndaydreaming]

Growing up I wasn’t allowed to cut my hair. I wasn’t allowed to wear pants until middle school and even then my mom would pick my clothes out. I have visceral memories of putting clothes in my backpack and changing in the bathroom when I got to school.

As a parent, my kids beg me to pick out their clothes because “I know what looks good”.

Maybe my mom just had shitty fashion taste 😎

[taffywabbit]

I finally watched breaking bad (all within the past week or so while I worked, finished it and watched el camino last night) and I'm confident this isn't a new thought I'm expressing or anything but genuinely how DID an entire generation of dudes convince themselves Walter White was cool and admirable and intended to be sympathetic. I know ppl just lack media literacy sometimes but I'm still so confused

I don't think I've EVER watched a piece of media that so blatantly depicts a guy making the worst possible decisions at every turn and having his life ruined for it and not being redeemed or made sympathetic in any significant or lasting way. the kinds of justifications villains USUALLY give that make people consider them "morally grey" or "tragic" or whatever (everything I did was for my loved ones, I did what I had to to survive, once I was in this I couldn't get out, I just needed you to trust me so I could keep you safe, etc etc) is ALWAYS framed as complete self-serving bullshit when Walt says it, and one of the only shreds of personal growth he ever exhibits in the whole series is when he finally fucking admits that. every time he does something even remotely cool or drops a quotable one-liner, something terrible immediately happens that makes everything worse and makes him look like an unreasonable idiot asshole again. by the end of the series the ONLY characters they can still contrast as being morally "worse" than him are literally a bunch of bloodthirsty neonazis who kept a guy in a cage for several months. this show is practically SCREAMING at you the entire time not to admire Walt. why did every dude I knew in highschool have his face on tshirts and Facebook pfps.

I just don't get it. at least with The Dark Knight's Joker it was like, a feature-length movie and that's it. you spend a lot less time with the Joker and it has a lot less time to delve into his motivations, so there's way more room for flanderization and misinterpretation as people extrapolate the few cool/interesting/sad things they saw into a whole nuanced misunderstood guy in their heads and online. Walter White has 5 seasons' worth of 45min episodes to convince you beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is a miserable fucking loser who ruins everything he touches because of greed and selfishness. if you weren't watching it for that, what WERE you getting out of this. what DID you think this show was about. am I just missing some key piece of context from 2012 or whatever that would help me understand this

[miss-takemeseriously]

Pouring one out for the creativity lost in "Don't start, now."

For the freedom lost in "Don't embarrass me"

For the peace lost in piercing looks of "Just wait until we get home"

The childlike wonder killed in action by mean-spirited giggles and disapproving looks

Something in the world told me it was embarrassing for me, as a child, to be a child, to be the child I was and I grieve.

Before I was embarrassed of myself it was drilled into my head that I was embarrassing the people burdened with being responsible for me at a given time- I did not understand why- Part of my wonders if I was really that bad to be around, as a friend, as a daughter- I can't have been that bad- They can't all have been wrong

Who was she going to become? Is it better that I'm always either utterly embarrassed or afraid of making a fool of myself, rather than insufferable? Would she have friends anyway? Would she have to learn to be embarrassed anyway, one way or another? Who exactly am I grieving? Is there a "true" version of myself that never got to develop, is she still there, at the age of three or four, begging to grow like a plant stuck in a vase too small, roots curling into themselves year after year, painfully, suffocatingly, still apologizing for the root that managed to slip out of the hole in the bottom, mother, let me BE

[lexarturo]

The push, the final push for my mother to put me in public school instead of at the private school where she taught was my first grade teacher, who was also the assistant principal, informing her that I was clearly delayed. In addition to constantly refusing the books offered to me from the "appropriate" section of our teeny school library I would refuse to complete work, played games of my own design with little input from my peers, and on one notable occasion insulted some member of school administration and had had to have soap put in my mouth.

I fucking loved reading, I loved math, I loved creative play-- I was just spectrum-y and ADHD enough that I stimmed instead of repeating the same boring work over and over. According to my mother, she also fed me measured amounts of Mountain Dew at this age on recommendation from a peer to manage my "antsiness."

Needless to say, within weeks of being placed in my public school district into a magnet program, I was assessed and placed in a gifted program that consisted of one day a week of mostly self-guided research and learning with some of my most... Unusual sounds rude, but we weren't all the same, and we all definitely stood out... Suddenly I was a model student in my main classes, participated in reading groups and math competitions and while I still struggled to connect to my peers, I had a small selection of friends.

[boimgfrog]

People are so scared of polyamory but it's normal as hell. Like it should not be this complex of a topic 4 people. Literally ur just dating more than one person. Or more than two people are dating each other. It's not some crazy concept like oh my god it's just a different way of dating

[coconutcoconutcoconut]

i'm doing a bunch of drawings of the main 4 (sometimes also alluka) camping in lukso province like slightly post-canon.... these are the ones that didn't really require much emotional sincerity to make lol (the other ones are hopefully gonna get finished later)