#i'll never get used to how people in this day and age feel empowered by the purity movement and like.... | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

seewetter · 11 days ago

Text

I think what actually might be happening here is again this flood of negative content that portrays an industry preying on sex workers as something that has the sex workers' opinions in its grip. That brainwashes them.

I encountered this view a few years back, when training with an anti-human trafficking org. People who believe, based on vibes, not based on research or on working with people, that all sex-positivity is just a PR move by the porn industry.

It gets especially malicious when people who are victims of human trafficking relate stories about their abuse (where their abusers used sex-positivity to paint a rosy picture of the trafficked persons exploitation during the exploitation process and people who were seriously abused were telling themselves that they were being empowered women right now) conclude that all sex-positivity and sex worker-positivity must be a ploy by that industry.

People don't realize they are jumping to conclusions and making blanket statements. They view their conclusions as fair conclusions to draw based on how serious it is not to underestimate abusers and industries. They feel the blanket statements might affect positive change by pressuring the industry by blanket vilifying it.

Of course, as Stormy Daniels nicely described, what really keep people chained to the porn industry is not being able to get a job anywhere else because this work is looked down on, is viewed as contemptible. If porn or sex work is abuse, then it's all too easy for employers to think of people who did that work (or do that work) as people who fell in with the wrong crowd or might hurt the company image. So they never get other jobs, so they are forced to be in the industry.

I doubt OP (girlfishes) realizes what it sounds like to call adults who work jobs to child labourers, and how unpersuasive it is to compare the two unless you explain how you are comparing them and why.

To gather some context, I want to respond to the comments and replies that girlfishes received, because the anti-porn people seem to be in her (radfem, I’m aware) orbit and there’s no one making an effort to engage these arguments at length. I'll put them under the cut.

2 days ago, johanna-may-june writes:

“I don't follow because there is child labour advocacy e.g a limit on the amount of hours a child can work per week, age required to work, etc. Sex work being legally recognised and advocacy for the rights of sex workers does the opposite of enabling sex trafficking and exploitation - as these aspects are illegal.”

Johanna-may-june is making a pro-child labour, anti-sex work argument. I’ll try to assume it is being made in good faith, but there’s two problems I have with the argument.

Firstly, advocacy for the rights of sex workers, the kind we for example recently have seen in the Netherlands, does not seem to enable or lead to either sex trafficking or exploitation and actually leads to more protection from pimps and exploitative practices, just as the child labour advocacy described above.

And I think johanna-may-june is correctly identifying that these things are not equivalent: because child labour results from general demands of large businesses for low-paying jobs. To discuss the American context, there are lots of Republican politicians, like Newt Gingrich, who argue that child labour is beneficial because instead of hiring one janitor, a business could hire 30+ children and they would make their families a bit of money. This type of argument is made because the businesses want to get 30 times the work of a regular janitor for the same price. They need to gain more and more profits to look good to investors. Which means over time, businesses across many sectors can build tremendous political pressure by working together to re-introduce increasingly exploitative child labour practices. The 19th century saw businesses and heavy industry heavily exploit child labour and there were child labour advocates then who merely espoused mild reforms and who enabled child exploitation and child trafficking. I assume this is common knowledge, but with how bad the American education system appears to be, it helps to give people pointers for research they can do so they don’t end up handing child exploiters the keys to the castle.

In response, also 2 days ago, girlfishes (the OP) writes

“I do see your point, but where I’m from the minimum age to work is in the teenage years, so I was speaking about literal children who are prohibited from working, not just underaged people. And sex trafficking and exploitation is a real concern, however I’m of the view that most prostitution or video sex has the real potential to be dangerous, so much so that there is no place for it in society. Some lines of work, even if they are optimally safe, aren’t safe enough. And with the fact that labor under capitalism is inherently exploitative, I do not believe that consent can be provided if it is for sale and someone’s livelihood is on the line if they refuse.”

What’s important is that sex work, when discussed by people, is often an abstraction. Girlfishes seems to not mind the idea that sex work might take place between consenting adults, but rather is opposed to it in practice. Taking some money and having some sex with some person you know and trust without any third party involvement seems to be (implicitly) okay, but girlfishes is worried about industry abuse and worker safety. Her argument is one of degree: industry abuse is so serious and dangerous that this line of work just should be regulated out of existence. It’s too much of a risk for the people exposed to it.

The thing with sex work is that it’s not marriage, however. A phrase like “I do not believe that consent can be provided if it is for sale” makes it sound like what is being sold is a life-long or at least year-long commitment and not a hook-up or access to viewing porn. The risks for pornographers are the risks of online content creators more generally – stalking websites are a good example, because they seek to destroy the lives of people (pornographers included) and insert themselves into the porn-viewing audience (to participate, as clients) and yet if we use the risk they pose to pornographers as evidence that pornographic material must be outlawed, then the risk they pose to various other life choices they both support and seek to destroy would lead us to also try to ban that. If radical feminism becomes even more targeted than it currently is and the stalking websites make expressing radical feminist ideas a huge safety issue, should we ban radical feminism? If the main thing the online stalkers hate is that radical feminists make money from online audiences, then are those audiences putting the radical feminists they pay for in danger and must this be made illegal? Even if we remove the activist angle to make the comparison more direct, if stalking websites target a specific line of work and make it dangerous to publicly share material from that line of work, does this mean that line of work needs to be made illegal? The crux I’m trying to get at through drawing analogies is: when a work environment is unsafe, is the problem the dangers or is the problem that the line of work exists? This is why I consider all that online content that treats prostitution as “in essence evil” as manipulative. It doesn’t describe the danger carefully enough to do anything about it. Except to ban the whole line of work based on vibes and based on stories of danger…which one is describing as “essential” to the type of work, which we would never do in other life situations. As girlfishes writes “Some lines of work, even if they are optimally safe, aren’t safe enough”. Then make them safer. The implication girlfishes wants to go for is “aren’t safe enough to be allowed to exist”, I think. But that idea falls apart under the tiniest amount of scrutiny. Pick any analogous “too dangerous to exist” work environment (or describe examples from prostitution and porn) and I’ll show you that the problem isn’t inherent to having sex or to getting money from people for having sex, but that the problem lies elsewhere entirely. I certainly don’t think the sex industry is some saintly institution who needs to be protected from criticism. I’m just highly skeptical that sex for money is in any “fundamental”, eternal and unchangeable sense unsafe.

justanotherbloodywoman, a day ago, contributed with some examples:

“Uninformed are also the women who will sell pics and make solo videos, too, btw. I've seen testimonies of women who got out with all sort of psychological issues by dealing with johns. Even if you won't do certain things, john will keep pestering them to do more and more degrading sexual acts, besides commenting in these women's bodies like they are lego pieces.”

And also 1 day ago, the same Tumblr user writes:

“I will never forget when a woman accepted to put cat food on her pussy for her cat to lick....”

“And that's what floated to the surface.......”

So here, the examples are:

clients of sex workers encouraging (maybe pressuring) them into extreme actions

sex workers who end up with psychological troubles after interacting with harmful clients

clients of sex workers making objectifying comments about women’s bodies

actions undertaken by (likely desperate) sex workers that involve shock value (or fetish?) content, although the Tumblr user does not explain this example in enough detail to know certain crucial details about in what ways this is considered wrong

Sex workers online are basically doing “sex content creation”, they are, in the wider sense of the word, content creators. I hate that word, “content”, but it describes the whole “pestering them to do more and more degrading acts” thing quite well. Remember Logan Paul going into a Japanese forest and filming the corpse of a suicide victim on YouTube? Or Logan Paul walking into Japanese restaurants and hurling Pokeballs at strangers who are trying to eat their food? Or Mr. Beast creating a 1:1 recreation of dystopian game show Squid Game and actually starved unwilling contestants, now being sued for human rights violations? Or Amouranth, a woman who revealed to her audience that her husband forced her to become a streamer? She is not a sex worker, but she is a trafficking victim. Will we ban livestreaming next?

I say this to hopefully get you to think about examples from the online world a little longer. I don’t just want you to dwell on my 4 examples, here, because that is the literal tip of the iceberg.

So when people talk about clients pressuring (or “encouraging”) more extreme content, yes, that’s how internet content creation works. That’s why so many people who work those jobs are burnt out and quit. “The algorithm”, the constant advertising reads, and people, like YouTuber Blaire White, who admitted to her audience that she makes more extreme anti-transgender and anti-feminist videos than what she actually believes because that’s what the algorithm rewards. And her audience does not care, encourages it! They are the clients and they don’t want honesty, they want extreme stuff. Just because she isn’t naked and its not sex work, doesn’t mean this isn’t exploitation. The online audiences that go to bat for extreme YouTube (and other) content are ridiculously unsafe, but the answer isn’t that online videos can’t exist or that you can’t do a game show or a political commentary video as long as the dangerous algorithm exists and puts real people in unspeakable danger and at risk of degrading material.

You think internet content creators aren’t in psychological trouble? Or the people that have to scrub the internet clean of too extreme content, working out of some cyberfarm in the Philippines or Kenya because they can’t get other work? Doesn’t that sound familiar? People who can’t get other work? Doing psychologically harmful and degrading things to themselves? Being asked to do unspeakable things?

And on a side note “commenting on women’s bodies like they are lego pieces” is not going to harm or kill those women and I think you should do some introspection to tell apart situations when those comments are harmful to those women and situations where that kind of comment might be fun to get – because being able to be vulnerable is something that human minds often do quite well through symbols of actual vulnerability and danger. And there’s a big difference between a comment (which can be a symbol) and abuse (which is less than symbolic).

Believe it or not, I’m actually answering all these replies by people in chronological order and I have not read them before, so I don’t know what the next comment is going to be:

17 hours ago, OP saltyfem responds to prev moniquill

“You're being a real pedantic asshole considering what you're advocating for is men's ability to legally coerse impoverished women into sex”

Aside from the tone, this is a decent response, because it (A) clearly states a problem that saltyfem wants to fix (“men’s ability to legally coerse [sic] impoverished women into sex”) and (B) it contextualizes what saltyfem thinks moniquill’s position is.

Saltyfem thinks that when sex work exists, men are automatically given the power to coerce women in poverty and that people who oppose efforts against sex work want men to have that power.

Furthermore, saltyfem felt that moniquill lost sight of this problem while gotcha-ing girlfishes for infantilizing adult women.

I want to state for the record that the problem with people opposing sex work is that they (A) give corrupt politicians loads of power (B) never actually fix the problem (sex work is simply driven underground as it is now part of criminality and even if only the johns or pimps are criminalized, they now are already committing a crime, so what’s to stop them from even more crime?) and (C) tend to be doing all of this without distinguishing between hands-on ways we can regulate and restrict harmful acts against women and other sex workers on the one hand and concerns about lust as an abusive or degrading thought and sex as an undignified activity, which is an assumption made either based on early Christian and Jewish writers (who in most cases (i.e. Tertullian and representatives of rabbinical Judaism) wrote a lot of heretical or at least suspicious stuff and who have not left us with a good account of why lust should be considered one of the deadly sins…many records explaining the religious judgments simply haven’t survived and from a current point of view these ideas have no firm foundation in ethics) or it’s based on people’s discomfort with other people enjoying what they enjoy, which gets us into a whole can of worms I’m unwilling to open unless people want to have that discussion.

Saltyfem also writes “#You know what she ment”. I don’t think moniquill knows what girlfishes meant, no. While moniquill certainly wrote a “gotcha” style response, girlfishes was absolutely saying that it’s obvious sex work needs to be illegal since children’s work is already illegal. Children, moniquill likely presumed, are a bad point of comparison for adults selling nude pictures or vidoes online, since children working in the mines or getting crushed by factory equipment are never going to work such dangerous jobs safely – you can absolutely report revenge porn online and have it taken offline, but you absolutely can’t uncrush a small child that got squished inside a large industrial machine. The two things are not necessarily equivalent. A client can degrade his customer, but if she has strong legal rights and protections, she can leave. A child working at Starbucks can get boiled by hot coffee and be scarred for life…and children probably make those kinds of mistakes, right? Do we expect a 5-year old to be able to use machines without making a few, really dangerous, mistakes? I absolutely expect adults to be able to take down revenge porn by submitting the offending material to a watchdog group. So no, moniquill did have a reason to be skeptical that this is a great comparison. Children can get into accidents even in seemingly harmless jobs as janitors (those floor waxing machines are far more dangerous than people imagine if not handled properly). Like there’s a reason we want children to not do certain things without adults’ supervision. Young children are not even able to safely handle leisure time activities like rollercoasters without parents, how would we expect them to be doing jobs?

17 hours ago, eldritchcougarwitch responds to the OP (girlfishes)

“Abuse is okay if someone likes it?”

The word “someone” is doing some heavy lifting here. Because if a person likes to abuse others, that doesn’t mean they aren’t harming their victims. By this logic, all abuse would be okay. Abuse wouldn’t even be abuse anymore, it would just be “things people do, that they like and others don’t like but that are okay because we only care about letting people do things, not about consequences of their actions”. I’ve seen that position before, there’s an alt-righter (JFG, the guy who keeps marrying and then taking advantage of developmentally disabled women) who holds that position. But it’s a monstrous position to hold and there’s no reason to accuse people of that position given how uncommon it is and how unlikely it is that people hold it. I’ve never seen anyone defend (or attack) sex work using that position.

So if “someone” refers to the person exposed to the abuse and the person likes the abuse, then we have to ask whether the abuse is harming their vital interests, basic rights or freedoms. Because, to be clear, it can. A person like their abuse because abuse is not a thing that always feels evil to people. But we know it is abuse because it is both liked and disliked, or because a person cannot meaningfully decide whether they like or dislike it because the action impairs their ability to consent. And I like how the anti-sex-work, anti-porn crowd responds to the word consent sometimes. Because I could have written that sentence as “because a person cannot meaningfully decide whether they like or dislike it because the action imparts their judgment” and the response would likely be “well sex workers judgment is sufficiently impaired” but once we bring in consent people realize that sex workers are in fact making business decisions. They are in fact adults who sign contracts and make other agreements. And suddenly that fear is in the room, that those legal contracts are made by the industry, the industry that pressures people, not the actual adult signing the contract. The poverty argument walks in the door, shaking the hand of all the people in the room and saying “these people are poor, they are like orphans who agreed to follow the rich man to his house because they were starving, they are impaired in their ability to make judgments and consent”.

I want to concede this point a little bit by using the show Squid Game (which I’ve never seen) as an analogy. Reportedly, the second episode of Squid Game shows how the participants all vote to leave and return to their (impoverished) lives. The episode is called “Hell” and it apparently shows that the participants of this game show just live in such abjectly awful conditions that no matter how awful the Squid Game is, it is better than their impoverished misery.

I think that’s how people think about sex work. Like it’s Squid Game but with degrading sex acts instead of murder. And there’s a lot of weirdness to that analogy. For one thing, not all sex workers live in poverty – which should affect how anti-sex workers talk about people who just pursue these jobs for fun and who have money to blow and actually can leave or sue someone at any time. But as important as it is that anti-sex-work people ignore them, for the purposes of understanding whether sex work is worth defending, we need to understand the dynamics for poor sex workers, not just for wealthy exceptions. So to understand that, we need to acknowledge the obvious fact that people in poverty are sometimes picking the sex industry or freelance sex work as the lesser of two evils.

What makes the idea fall apart is that what makes Squid Game bad is murder, is horrific violence. What makes the stories of poor orphans who follow the shady rich guy so unambiguous are similarly evil schemes that kill children. If we cherry-pick stories, the orphans might end up as slaves. Sexual slavery exists, it is a real problem. It is not the same thing as a paid job that is difficult to escape. Sexual trafficking is real and also can involve contracts, but we should be smart enough to understand that sexual trafficking involves contractual provisions that the person signing does not understand. Heck, consensual sex work in the sex industry can lead to extreme escalation, similar to what I described in an earlier part of my response (for justanotherbloodywoman, you should read that before you continue reading)

But crucially, that escalation exists not because sex work is sex work. That escalation exists because of a lack of sex workers’ rights. People can say “but it’s innate to capitalism that this pressure exists, how can we be okay with workers having to sign and resign exploitative contracts when they have so few other choices and the escalation is likely due to how extreme the demands of business are?”. That’s a decent objection, but as the historic track record show just leads people to criminalizing sex work and making it more unsafe. Making it more extreme. Capitalism also acts on criminal businesses, you know? Drug traffickers are also following the rules of free market competition. The crucial problem is also that the historic record shows how police interface with both prostitution and organized sex work crime. Trust me, it doesn’t improve matters. Like please use your brain and do some digging into the history. Assuming you, in good faith, care about the wellbeing of human trafficking victims, don’t sign away all the control we have by monitoring industries that officially exist by driving those industries into an illegal area where “working with them” to stop egregious abuse is no longer possible.

17 hours ago girlfishes (the OP) responds to moniquill (prev)

“No. I explicitly stated that what these two cases have in common is moral and ethical considerations that the free market is incapable of protecting.

And I never said anything specifically about women in the post either. The only one making the women=children connection is you.”

I think I’ve given anyone who reads this entire post plenty to think about.

1 day ago, medusa-strikes-back writes in answer to antiporn-activist

“#there used to be a graphic about consent called the “FRIES” model#the E stood for Enthusiasm#i interpret enthusiasm as genuine happiness to be doing something#aka if offered an alternative that they could accept with no negative consequences they would not make a different choice#and if we believe (i do believe) the stat that 95% of women in prostitution want out but cant because of money#you cannot in good faith believe that prostitution is consensual on the part of the prostitute#you cannot interpret this data in any way besides “prostitution is commercial rape” that makes a speck of sense”

The phrase “if we believe (I do believe)” gives me personally cold shivers.

Like, I want to be fair here. We all, on paper, seem to care about the wellbeing of other people. So, taking that at face value, shouldn’t we want to be grounded not in wishful thinking but in research?

When you need to fix your bicycle, you do research, you don’t follow some feeling or belief or vibe. If people are in danger, you should do the same. Understand the danger. Research so you don’t make it worse!

And as mentioned, if prostitution is non-consensual, this does not change the fact that anti-prostitution implements a worse, even more horrid status quo with even less consent and even less safety for the prostitutes.

1 day ago, antiporn-activist responds to girlfishes

“Ask them what happens if a child got trafficked into prostitution at age 15 and then eventually turned 18 but hasn't gotten another "job" yet.”

That’s the whole thing Stormy Daniels warned about: that the women who really get broken by the porn industry are the ones who can’t get jobs because the companies don’t want to hire someone who might make the company look bad. The sooner people stop blaming prostitutes and thinking of them as people with failed lives or embarrassing and unprofessional, the sooner a lot of people can safely leave working conditions in that industry that are coercive and unwanted.

2 days ago, dramaticbucket reblogs forwomenbiwomen

“The biggest issue I've seen people having with this child-labour / sexual exploitation argument is that they've been told children cannot consent, adults can. They do not care to think about why children cannot consent and why consent isn't the end-all be-all of everything.

The liberal obsession with consent, as if consent given has absolutely no basis in the type of life a person has led is dangerous and stupid. A person living in absolutely terrible conditions will consent to living in bad conditions, but that doesn't mean they WANT to live there. Some of them don't even know there's better things out there. Consent is great, but it's a start. Informed and non-coerced consent is what is important, not just someone saying "yeah okay as long as I don't die I guess". Most women (and men) going into this exploitative industry are doing so because of financial, social or other forms of coercion. Their consent is NOT free, it is very often uninformed. "Sex work" is NOT work.”

Again, I think the case being made here is fine. The problem isn’t that anti-sex-work advocates see a lack of meaningful consent despite contracts signed. The problem is that their efforts to criminalize the industry drive it underground and cause the abuse to skyrocket.

2 days ago forwomenbiwomen reblogs unoriginalthinkings

“And then it's like they said "uhm actually it's child work. I had a friend who worked as a child and she turned out fine!" And you're like good I'm glad she was ok but... you still shouldn't be doing that, you know that right? And advocating for it is insane. “

I could imagine some people who want to respond to my post by doubling down on the presumed equivalence of child work and sex work.

So in other words: we should picture advocates against the criminalization of child work saying “criminalizing child work will just drive it underground”. Obviously, that’s not a good reason to not care about children crushed to death in machines! And there’s a lot of less obvious harms to children (like the less obvious, less provable harms of prostitution and porn) that can make that presumed equivalence a bit more plausible, right? Not every human trafficking victim and not every child labourer goes through absolute hell, but probably there’s some invisible abuse occurring too, right? Absolutely.

But there are some crucial differences that make the comparison more than a little strained.

Child work is easy to criminalize because it is easy to identify. It is easy to prove. It is easily prevented through legislated efforts. You notice when the person working the dangerous coffee machine at Starbucks is a 5-year-old. A factory inspector can shut down a business after a single child is injured…it’s not a business model that works without the public agreeing to it. There might be some forms of child labour (like what Roblox is currently getting away with) that are a bit harder to spot…but even there, Roblox can pretty easily be held to account or dismantled.

Now try any of that with prostitution or porn. In porn, who are the people behind the camera? They don’t have to show their face, do they? Porn is fundamentally distributive, easily shared by thousands of websites – we can take down a lot of it (revenge porn watchdogs show that) but it is likely that even if all internet had a content ID, there’s just such a deluge of content that we never catch enough offenders to put an end to the phenomenon. It’s not like kids all working in a factory that you can encircle and raid. Child labour is like a beast, sex worker exploitation and abuse is like a virus. You can’t fight a virus through a law making it illegal. Not to mention that this virus isn’t really sex work specific anyway…it’s online content specific. The people starving in a Mr. Beast game show are as much coerced into it as the prostitutes and “pornstars” are. They are promised big things and then degraded instead. This is a virus the answer to which (like with anything that is dispersed in the ether rather than being physically fightable) simply isn’t laws or police actions. Like with any virus, you have to think before you charge forward. It is a dispersed problem, it requires quarantine measures. Right now, the best quarantine method we have is to regulate a legal industry. I would suggest taking that course of action seriously and not casually dismissing it.

“Sex work is work and should be protected” makes as much sense to me as saying “child labor is labor and should be protected”.

Many can clearly understand in the latter case why there are other moral considerations that remove child labor from labor advocacy. Or any other forms of labor exploitation for that matter. Why do they not extend the same evaluation to sex work?

Never mind, we all know why.

340 notes · View notes

jt-artsandfics · 3 years ago

Note

I'm a 21 years old American woman (I'll be 22 on the 20th!) Who is 5ft 10in if you round up. I have rusty brownish hair and eyes that shift from grey to green to blue depending on my mood and energy. I'm athletic, but now it's more so for mental health health reasons now days. I love to embroider, read, and write (even though I'm Dyslexic). I use sarcasm as a second language. I don't love attention on me, preferring to be in the background. I just want to equip and empower other people to reach their full potential.

I work with kids with special needs while I study to become a social worker and I fall into leadership roles, even when I don't intend to. I'm stubborn and independent, but deep (and I mean deep) down inside I'm a romantic at heart who wants to be able to depend on another person. I feel a bit like a walking contradiction sometimes, but in a good way. Like I watch MMA while embroidering or will swear like a sailor in Church. I'm the middle of two boys (now the older sister of two sisters because of my mom's remarriage!) and as one brother who literally is Wrecker (Machine Gunner in the military. Loud. Just wants to blow things up), I've learned how to not intimidated by large and scary looking people and will mom anybody who needs it. I'm extremely intuitive and can read body language really well due to my auditory form of Dyslexia.

Hey I'm guessing you want a bad batch match up. And since you put your age I might make it a little smutty too. Ps. Im drinking while writing this so there is bound to be speelimg mistakes. And guys I'm also dyslexic too so yay. But I hope you enjoy!

MDI +18 (HINTED SMUT ) NOTHING HAPPENS BUT STILL

The Bad Batch

I match you with... Hunter

Hunter's first time meeting you was quite the tale, a mission gone messing resulting in most of the batch being injured. Watching them walk off their ship and you had made a beline for the Sargent.

Hunter has never heard that many curses come out a civilians mouth and damn he's kinda turned on over you telling him off but he'd be damned if he told anyone that.

It was an honest mistake you ripped him a new one once seeing his team believing this was your brothers team back from mission.

Once you realised this wasn't your brothers team you are a flushed mess trying to apologise to the sergeant when leads to the team taking a shine to too after watching you chew Hunter out. Watching someone of your height and stature taking on Hunter without even a thought.

That's how toy got invited for drinks with the dysfunctional group of clone soldiers

From then on the boys would come to you when they needed down time. And considering they haven't really had anyone check up on them mentally it's nice for then to be able to talk opening with someone. Hunter takes a while to break but once he does you see him nearly every time the batch is on leave.

It took him a while to get comftable but once he felt he could trust you.most days he shows up he flops down on your couch and rest his head in your lap and let's you play with his hair while he talks.

He loves pulling you into his lap and falling asleep while watching holos with you, to day it's a guilty pleasure would be true.

Please make him little embroidery peices like he will find some way to wear them or display them. He doesn't know why he does it but he loves showing off the things you make.

To say this man fell for you is an understatement full on crashed is how I would put it. And now he can't get enough of you.

Once the jedi order falls he purposely seeks you out to makesure your alright and that nothing has happened to you before he ask you to come with him.

Watching him and omega is quite something this man is so protective of her and you that when your In public people always assume that you three are family.

Hunter's eyes never leave your figure as you shop with Omega. He watches as you point out things to her before walking over to look at them. "Hunter!, Hunter. Come look at this" the young girl calls out which makes the sergeant smile as he makes his way over to the two of you. "What have you two found this time" he ask while looking down at different things that Omega found interesting.

Ord Mantell was filled with markets and you could always find something of your desire here. In the end Omega had talked Hunter into letting her buy a small science kit on the promise she asked Tech to help her with it.

"May I offer you something that may interest you and your husband" a voice quietly asked from behind you which makes you turn. Your eyes widen a little. "Oh um Hunter and I aren't married haha" you reply blushing only for the woman to smile lightly. Hunter calls out that he and Omega are heading back. "I'll catch up with you!" You call out before turning back to the lady who laughs lightly as she watches Hunter and Omega walk off.

"You two are rather close if your not married and not to mention having a kid too I'd say it would almost count" she replied before pulling out a small vile. "But if you are telling the truth and aren't together I can sure tell you want that man and by the way his eyes linger on you I'm willing to bet that he wants you just as badly" she says smugly.

Your face is a bright shade of red. "And what exactly are you selling me?" You ask wearily as she place the small vile in your hand. "Try this if he still doesn't take interest after this then it's free of charge. But if it works come back and then pay me 20 credits" she replys. "I'm not going to drug Hunter!" You almost shout which makes her laugh. "Hun you use it on yourself it's a natural phenomenon enhancer. All you have to really do is get him interested and the spray will work wonders on your body. Tho I recommend doing a test run by yourself first to see how you react. It will in turn make you very horny" she states while leaning down on her hand and giving you a little motion to run along.

Hunter had been sitting in Sid's parlor for most of the night since coming back from shopping. But something had him on edge an almost sickly sweet floral smell mixed with your natural scent that lingered in the air. He didn't know how to describe it but for the past half an hour it's all he could smell, it's faint but by the stars does he want to follow it.

He hadn't seen you since you had come back from shopping and so after finishing his drink Hunter gives the rest of the batch a wave before heading thought the corridors to look for you. As Hunter gets closer to your room it's like the smell is more intense it smells like you but more, he knows what you smell like and this it was doing things to him. He almost growls as he reaches your door. He could finally pinpoint what it was, he could smell your arousal and it had him action almost like a feral animal.

He has to stop himself from almost ripping the door off you smelt insanely divine, he knew your smell to well and this felt like it was enhanced, if he had had describe it the best he could say was it felt as if you were in heat. And by the stars it made him want to fuck you. He steadies his shaking hands before knocking. "(Y/N) It's Hunter, I'm coming in" he tries to sound as civil as he can as he opens the door.

As he walks in your smell hits him like a freighter and he has to hold himself up against the wall as he closes the door behind him and locks it. Hunter can see you withering on the bed whimpering and moaning. Your whole body covered in sweat.

Hunter removes his armor before throwing his shirt on the floor as quickly as he can before making his way over to you almost like a predator stalking his prey. Once he comes into your eye sight you almost whimper more legs clamped together trying to keep some friction before you feel his cold hands run up your legs which makes you gasp and moan at the contrast of his skin and yours.

"I could smell you from down in the parlor" he growls while crawling to cover your body with his. "Hunter" you whine out as your hands shoot out to grip his shoulders and pull him closer. "Tell me what you want" he says. It takes so much self control not to just take you with how you smell.

"Need you"

#star wars #star wars clone wars #star wars clones #the bad batch #tbb imagines #tbb x reader #bad batch hunter #dad hunter #hunter imagine #hunter #hunter x reader #sergeant hunter #sergeant hunter x reader

19 notes · View notes

gotham-ruaidh · 3 years ago

Text

Little Bit Better Than I Used To Be

This story takes place during the summer of 1987. It’s the time of the Cold War, and heavy metal, and Just Say No.

Ten chapters, each with a specific song as its soundtrack.

I’m so excited to finally share it with you.

Catch up: Chapter 1 (Starry Eyes) || Chapter 2 (Save Our Souls) || Also posted at AO3

—-

Chapter 3: Dancing On Glass

I've been through hell // And I'm never goin' back // To dancing on glass // Going way too fast...

Need one more rush // Then I know, I know I'll stop // One extra push // Last trip to the top...

Soundtrack: “Dancing On Glass,” Mötley Crüe, 1987 [click here to listen]

Three P.M.

Group.

Claire’s hands wrapped around the hard sides of the plastic chair, holding herself upright, watching about two dozen fellow patients? inmates? addicts? shuffle into the room.

Two people stood at the door – greeting others as they entered, handing out small packets of tissues and bottles of Coke.

Today’s facilitator – a middle-aged, bearded man – stood to one side, chatting with a few people.

“Hey!”

Claire startled – and turned to her right to see Jamie slide into the chair beside her.

“How’s it going today? Day two, right?”

She nodded. “Met with my therapist this morning.”

“That’s great! Who’ve you got?”

“Gillian.”

Jamie cracked open a bottle. “Oh, she’s great. Been here a long time. She’s married to the director – did you know that?”

Claire’s eyebrows raised. “No, but that’s really interesting.”

Jamie gulped about half the bottle in one shot. “Yeah. We owe everything to them.”

“Yeah, well. I got assigned to dinner set-up duty.”

He beamed. “Great! I’ve been on that rotation for the last few weeks. I’ll show you all the ropes.”

“Few weeks? How long have you been here, if you don’t mind me asking?”

He set down his Coke. “I don’t. And I’ve been here eight weeks. The best eight weeks of my fucked-up life.”

“Don’t say that,” she chided. “Surely everything can’t be so terrible.”

He stared at her for a long moment.

“It can be, if you were the reason why a sold-out European tour couldn’t happen, and it cost your backers and buddies tens of millions of dollars, and it pissed off countless thousands of fans.”

Now the greeters took their seats within the circle.

“Couldn’t, or didn’t?” Claire hoped her words were gentle, but when her head split with pain like this she could never tell. “And what do you mean by ‘tour’?”

His eyes narrowed. “Couldn’t. My manager said I’d come back from Europe in a body bag. He’s a bloodsucker but he had enough sense to not kill the golden goose.” He finished his Coke in one long gulp – flexing the tattoos swirling on his forearm and elbow. “And I’m a professional musician – in case you couldn’t guess from the way I look.”

“I see.”

He grinned. “How about that – someone who doesn’t recognize me.”

She folded her hands in her lap, closing her eyes against the pain, so desperately wanting to disappear. “I guess between medical school, and being a surgeon, and my ex-husband…and the pills…there are a lot of things I haven’t paid attention to.”

“Hey.” Softly he reached out to touch her knee – and she looked up at him.

“I’m not making fun of you, Claire. It’s just…I don’t know. Refreshing.”

She smiled tightly.

The facilitator clapped his hands. “Everyone – are we ready?”

People around the circle nodded, and the man sat down in the last empty chair.

“Great. Well, hi everyone. For those of you who don’t know me – I’m Murtagh. Been clean for just about eleven years now. Before that I spent a small fortune that I didn’t have – ”

“ – on enough blow to kill an elephant,” Jamie and several others chorused.

Murtagh smiled. “Wiseasses. Now – today’s topic is: clarity.”

“Can you be more specific?” A heavyset, bearded man across the circle piped up.

“You mean – provide more clarity?” Geneva snickered from somewhere near Jamie.

“Easy,” Murtagh interjected. “And yes, Rupert, of course. What I mean is: something I hear a lot from people here is that being away from substances gives them clarity for the first time in years. Clarity of thoughts – meaning, you’re logical and rational. Clarity of judgment – meaning, you feel like you are empowered to make good decisions. And overall, clarity to step away from all the bullshit that the substances made you do, or made it easier for you to do, and say – damn, what the hell was I doing?”

Across the circle, Rupert nodded. “OK. Oh – hi everyone, I’m Rupert, and I’m an alcoholic. Yeah – I can definitely relate. I wanted to not have clarity, so that I didn’t have to think about how much I was screwing up my job, and my marriage.”

“Good,” Murtagh praised. “And now that you can’t avoid it – how do you feel?”

Rupert stroked his thick beard. “Like shit. I love Scarlet so much, and I fucked it all up. I understand that now.”

“I feel the same way,” Jamie added. “Hi, I'm Jamie, and I'm an alcoholic, too. I drank because I’ve always felt so responsible for everything going on in my band – because I’m the guy that brought us together, and I’m the guy who writes the songs, and I’m the guy who’s across the table from the record company executives, advocating on our behalf.” He bounced a long, thin, jean-clad leg rapidly up and down. “I felt like I was being used, and that I was the only one who cared. I felt that really clearly. So I drank to…to avoid that clarity.”

Claire carefully watched the others around the circle. What Jamie was sharing could make any one of them a quick buck – all it would take was one phone call to a tabloid. But everyone was listening raptly – clearly thinking about parallels in their own lives – and it began to dawn on her that Jamie had one thing she didn’t have much of for herself: respect.

“And then when I drank, I’d just get really mean,” he continued. “I’d say things to rile up my drummer. I had a fling with my manager’s girlfriend, just to fuck with him. And yeah, I’d destroy hotel rooms.”

“Your reaction was to want to hurt people,” Murtagh said gently. “You had had clarity – clarity that you were shouldering too much, for too many people – and you reacted by wanting to push them away.”

“Yeah.” Claire spoke without thinking. “Um – hi everyone, I’m Claire, and I’m addicted to pills. Halcions, mostly.”

“Oh, those are the best,” a woman to Claire’s left remarked.

“Hey – no positive talk,” Murtagh interjected. “You know better than that, Letitia.”

Letitia huffed.

Murtagh turned back to face Claire. “Tell us more, Claire, if you’re comfortable?”

Now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop. “I was – am – a trauma surgeon for an emergency room. I love it – I love the adrenaline of it, and of course being able to help people on the worst day of their lives. I love being able to heal people. But…but it’s pretty heavy stuff. People die, no matter how hard you try to save them. People wake up and they’re not happy that they don’t have a leg anymore – and I say, would you rather be dead?”

“And you wanted to get away from that?” Jamie asked gently.

She closed her eyes. “I had to have clarity to do my job properly – it’s hard to describe, but it’s like having a laser focus on what’s in front of you. Getting in the zone. Shutting out everything else. And then when it’s all done – I would crash. The whole world would come rushing back, and I’d be covered in someone else’s blood and barely able to sit down before I had to work on the next person. That was so, so hard to deal with.”

“I understand.” Claire opened her eyes – it was an older man speaking right next to Jamie. “Hi everyone – I’m Ned, I’m a lawyer and crack addict, and there are a lot of jokes I’m sure you could make based on that.”

Claire managed a small smile.

“I’m a defense attorney – I’m that guy you see on TV arguing in a courtroom and presenting to a jury. I totally get what Claire said, because I needed to have that kind of really focused clarity, too. It was kind of like acting – I had to remember my argument, and I had to present it to the jury, and I had to pick up on cues from them to see how well I was doing. And then afterward I’d just crash. But I still had to have energy to prep for the next day, and that’s where Miss Crack came in.”

“So what I’m hearing is that clarity is something you already had – and then you turn to substances to get away from it.” Murtagh folded his arms. “Because it’s hard to flip that ‘off’ switch. And then eventually, the substances change from being something to take a vacation from that clarity, to completely blocking out that clarity altogether.”

“Exactly.” It was easier for Claire to focus on Murtagh than the sea of faces surrounding her. “And it’s a deliberate choice. I’m sure, Ned and Rupert and Jamie, that you deliberately sought out something to prevent that clarity. I know I did – I wrote the prescriptions for the pills that I consumed.”

Rupert nodded. “The bottle didn’t pick itself up and pour the liquor down my throat. And you’re right, Claire – at first, at least, it was a conscious decision. Until it became something I had to depend on.”

“I think that there are ways for this to happen more positively.” A woman seated beside Rupert quietly spoke. “Oh – hi, everyone, I’m Marsali, and I’m an alcoholic. What I mean is, there are ways to flip that ‘off’ switch that aren’t so…destructive. You can go for a run. Listen to music. Cook a meal. Watch a movie. Make love to your significant other.”

Murtagh nodded. “Marsali brings up a good point here. I’ll repeat something that I’ve already told many of you before, because it bears repeating. Substance addiction is addiction, first and foremost. All of us are here because our brains are hard-wired for addiction. We can’t change that. But we can change what it is that we’re addicted to.”

“Like what?” Letitia had calmed down a bit, but clearly she was skeptical.

“Whatever works for you,” Murtagh shrugged. “Jiu Jitsu. Flower Arranging. Reading. Playing the drums. Writing. Riding motorcycles. Not all addictions are bad – we just need to find the addictions that help us, and don’t hurt us or the people around us.”

Everyone’s heads nodded in agreement, quietly reflecting.

“So – that’s my homework assignment for all of you.” Murtagh pulled a small spiral notebook from his pocket, flipped to a fresh page, and began scribbling in it. “To think about the thing that you can become positively addicted to. Something you already enjoy, or something you’ve never done before. But I hope that even just thinking about it will give you focus. Improve your clarity.”

“Got it,” Ned said quietly.

Murtagh flipped back to an earlier page in his notebook. “Now – I have here my notes from the last time I facilitated Group. OK if I start going around and asking people for follow-up thoughts to those? Rupert?”

Rupert nodded, and began to speak.

“Facilitators take turns hosting Group every fourth day.” Claire started a bit, but held steady as Jamie leaned in close, spoke quietly into her ear. “We talk about things, and we’re assigned homework, and then the next time the facilitator is back we talk about it.”

“Thanks,” Claire murmured.

Jamie didn’t pull away. “If you ever just want to talk…”

She swallowed. “Thanks. I do. I just – it’s a lot to process.”

“It is. But you’ll get there. Talk more at our dinner prep.”

With that he pulled back, and a low buzz settled somewhere between Claire’s ears as the people around her chimed in to the conversation.

#outlander #outlander fanfic #little bit better than i used to be

126 notes · View notes

resinatingbeauty · 4 years ago

Text

Witchcraft & Expectations

What do you really expect from the Craft?

I had considered writing this for a while before actually doing it just because I didn't want anyone to feel like they were being attacked or singled out. Offending you isn't the purpose of this post, so please do not be discouraged by anything you read here. There is no wrong way of practicing your Craft and to each their own. I was just curious about perspectives when it comes to your expectations regarding Witchcraft, magick, and spirituality as I have dealt with many different people following many different paths since focusing more on my Craft and art through my shop which began on Mercari and grew enough to become more established on Etsy.

I do sell many spiritual / witchy items from personalized spell kits to witchy mystery boxes compiled with Intuitively chosen and my own handmade, one of a kind items. Among the most popular spiritual offerings are my 'buy one get one miniature spell jars,' which allow my customers to select two general purposes or a personalized request from which I assemble and enchant a miniature glass spell jar containing herbs, crystals, essential oils, and other objects based on their needs and requests. I wanted to make these little portable vessel talismans more available to everyone price and purpose wise, compared to others that have been charged with a more specific intent or devoted to a specific deity.

I have a long history of using spell jars myself for various purposes whenever I feel compelled to create one or a special occasion arises. I'm picky about larger jars and bottles, however, so they are usually created in small corked jars or in larger jars that I will sometimes embellish or try new things to integrate that allow the spell jar to also be an appealing or intriguing piece of handmade everyday decor while serving its spiritual purpose, such as the one in the photo above.

For the most part, I have found a surprisingly amount of success with my spell jars. Not just myself, but others as well have reported events that they thought were directly related to their spell jar. I had created one for my neighbor a couple weeks ago who had been searching for a better job than the one she had at a preschool. The day after I gave her the jar, she received a text from an old coworker who notified her that a position at a bank she had applied at months ago that had nothing available at that time had just opened up.

This actually exceeded my expectations. In my experience, magick takes time. Others who have commented on the success of their spell jars or magick in general would contact me a few weeks or so after using their spell kit or receiving their spell jar. I created a spell jar back in January to help jumpstart my small business selling my crafts and Craft and didn't really start to see a huge change until mid-March-April where I was more successful than even I anticipated.

This was about on par with what I expected in terms of time, as most spells I've ever done have taken days, weeks, or even months to start manifesting results that couldn't be passed off or ignored. To be sure, I include a scroll with each of my kits and jars explaining how they are best utilized, to have patience, how to set a purpose and intentions, the power of thinking positively, and that magick rewards those who are willing to work and make sacrifices for what they desire. To me, all of these things are virtues that this path teaches us and are part of what makes the Craft so empowering overall. Whether it was the spell or your hard work, you are the catalyst for change. You made things happen. I mean, what is more empowering than that?

This is part of the reason why I personally chose to over spell kits and magickal tools rather than offering to cast spells or perform rituals on one's behalf. It was my desire to make YOU feel empowered and you are the one ultimately responsible for your own success or failure, whether spiritually or otherwise. I'll gladly steer you down the road of success and provide you with my knowledge, experience, and guidance, but I am always clear about what to expect.

Unfortunately, we live in a time where instant gratification is anticipated and expected, which I never considered in terms of Witchcraft. I knew that no matter how many times I write 'set realistic expectations, focus on your purpose, be patient, and keep doing what your doing' that some people would just blow through all that hoping that they just bought a quick fix for all their problems for $6.99 + a buy one get one deal.

Two weeks or so ago, I had received an order for said jars from a young man who simply said he wanted a personalized spell jar for lucid dreaming and dream work and selected his second 'free' one for self empowerment. I reached out to clarify and answered some of his questions. My immediate impression from him was one of discord. He expressed a lot of turmoil in his life over the past few months and claimed to have taken on a lot of responsibility. He seemed young and eager, with a ton of questions regarding magick in general. I answered his questions the best I could, but reiterated the same values I expressed in the previous paragraph when asked why such and such spell wasn't working, 'should I not have done this,' etc. Magick takes time to manifest, especially when it comes to financial purposes like he explained which are inherently unlikely to resolve themselves overnight.

He seemed happy enough with his purchase and said as much when he received his package. A couple days later, I received a notification about a review he had left which was negative, saying one of his spell jars didn't work with a message delivered in tandem asking what purpose I had set for his spell jar.

Let me say this: I am not upset with him or complaining about his review. He is entitled to his own opinion, although I was annoyed with how quickly he had come to the conclusion when in the instructions I provided him I specifically said that these things take time to work. Anyone who receives results instantly or within the next day or so are exceeding my own expectations. Which is great! Hooray!

But this is definitely not the standard I've come to expect in all the years I've been practicing the Craft.

I continued chatting with and answering this young man's questions and ultimately uncovered that he was upset about a variety of things that had been going on in his life. In his mind, he felt entitled to have these things work for him sooner rather than later and was frustrated and angry that nothing he tried had been working out the way he expected.

In the time that I have opened my little shop, I have (thankfully) only run into one other person like this- where their understanding of Witchcraft seems to have been compiled from television and movies. After the first, I learned to tread lightly around these individuals because, whether it's their fault or not, they have been mislead.

Television shows like old school Charmed and the newer Salem and Witches of East End are really entertaining. I enjoyed watching them, but they are the absolute enemy of those who practice magick / witchcraft as a form of religion or spirituality. Sure, some of these shows actually do their research. Even Buffy the Vampire Slayer was ahead of its time introducing Wiccans, Technopagans, and New Age practices to pop culture and in many ways helped to show people an obscured version of the truth during the 'Satanic Panic' period when even witches hated being called witches and the pentagram / pentacle difference became an actual difference that wasn't just a choice of words.

Newer generations growing up with Harry Potter, which is hardly a great introduction into magickal traditions, were at least more open minded than the previous generation to the actuality of witchcraft and magick as a spiritual practice.

I mean, who doesn't want to snap their fingers and make the house tidy in one fell swoop?

I sure do. But even when I first started practicing at 11 I understood that that just isn't how it is.

This young man who was saying he lead a coven sounded more like he was LARPing than legitimately asking for spiritual guidance. I realized real quick that I couldn't do anything for him. What he wanted and expected, no matter how many times I referenced the instructions I provided (he evidently hadn't acknowledged) and relayed to him my own experience and expectations, he was looking for that 'quick fix' and someone or something to blame for when it didn't work the way he thought it would. The main reason for his complaint? The night after he received his spell jar, he said he just dreamnt about the moon.

My understanding of lucid dreaming was having direct control over ones dreams. The more I talked to this person the more it became clear that this wasn't his understanding of lucid dreaming. I tried to ask what he had tried to gain that control, as many of you know that I suffered from sleep paralysis for years and taught myself how to realize and 'break out' of it over time. He referenced making offerings to a goddess. I had to stop.

I'm sure that another business minded witch would have sold him something else or offered an exchange. I (stupidly) tried to make him understand that he has the power to manifest his desires. All I did was provide him with a tool to help things along.

This was the same for the woman I had dealt with months ago who said that she had been told by this coven owned business that she was a vampire reincarnated to be with her lover. That was the ultimate end of our conversation because she didn't seem very open to anything I suggested. Whether the things she bought were 'effective' for her or not we will never know. When she started messaging me to the point of harassment I deleted her messages and flagged them as spam. All this time and effort spent consoling someone who really isn't in the right frame of mind for magick or witchcraft.

The main point in writing this ranty post is to get the perspective of the community. What are your expectations for your own spells? What do you tell others when they ask? If you are also a 'witch shop' owner or own your own spiritual practice how do you deal with clients that have set unrealistic expectations for you and your Craft?

14 notes · View notes

newenglandswiftie · 5 years ago

Text

Dear Taylor,

Where do I begin? How do you address the woman who has gotten you through some of the worst heartbreaks and been the soundtrack to some of your best memories? How do I even begin to express my gratitude, respect and love? I guess I'll start at the beginning...

In 2006 I was a senior in high school and on MySpace (Yes, kids. We had a form of social media called MySpace that you had to access from your desktop computer.. the HORROR) and I remember going to a friends page and their profile song was A Place in this World. From the second I heard the first verse, I instantly related to the lyrics and had to investigate this artist Taylor Swift. I went to your artist page and immediately began to binge your songs. The words of Tim McGraw brought me to tears and I blasted Picture to Burn in my car cursing all of the boys who did me wrong. I remember buying a shirt from Target that said Stay Beautiful just because of you. I remember falling in love for the first time and telling him how I felt and being crushed when he didn't feel the same. I cried myself to sleep listening to A Perfectly Good Heart for a month.

In 2010 I was in a really awful relationship. I was verbally abused and I didn't even realize it. I was treated like absolute garbage and I just assumed that's the best I could do and I was lucky that someone even liked me. I finally ended it and Breathe on repeat got me through. That song put everything I couldn't find say into words. I remember driving around aimlessly with my best friend blasting Fearless. We used to scream the words to Forever & Always so loud that we would lose our voices. I remember my mom surprising me with tickets to the Speak Now tour. I had never seen you live and I was ecstatic. This was the beginning of the tradition of my mom, sister and I going to every tour together. I remember seeing you perform Dear John with such emotion and passion. The fireworks. The hair flips! We had such an amazing time and knew we could never miss a Taylor Swift tour again!

In 2014 I had to walk away from a relationship. I loved him with all of my heart and I truly thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with him. But as I got older, I realized we just weren't on the same page anymore. He had other things in his life that were more important than working on our relationship. I had to move out of our apartment and back in with my parents. I remember begging and pleading with him to change. Playing The Last Time on repeat trying to find the confidence to walk away and I finally did. Blasting WANEGBT when he begged for me back and feeling so empowered.

In 2016 I found myself in a relationship that was just... fine? There was nothing particularly wrong, it was just too easy. I remember listening to The Way I Loved You and realizing I didn't want a mediocre boring love. I wanted more. I ending up falling head over heels in love with someone else. He was everything I ever wanted and hoped for. I thought this was it. He promised me the world and told me he was picking out a ring. It went down hill very quickly and whenever we would fight, his answer was to leave. He broke up with me probably 4 different times and I took him back every single time. I was constantly on edge wondering if he was going to break up with me again. Out of the Woods was word for word how I felt and got me through every day. It was the most exhausting and draining experience of my life. I was numb. It finally ended (he kicked me out of our home at 2am) and I was in disbelief. I was completely broken and could barely get out of bed. I couldn't put into words exactly how I felt but Dear John hit the nail on the head. Coincidentally, his name was also John so it was extremely fitting. In the depths of my despair, I remember thinking, What Would Taylor Swift Do? She would turn this situation into art. In this moment, I started my own blog about my relationship and dating experiences, the good and the bad. So many people wrote to me telling me how much it helped them. I even got contacted by my ex all pissed off about the blog. I thought to myself, this must be exactly how Taylor feels on a daily basis haha

Flash forward to now. I am in the healthiest, best, most amazing relationship I have ever experienced. He loves me fiercely and deeply. He's my best friend. CIWYW and Delicate perfectly describe my feelings for him. He even got me an initial necklace like the one you wear.

The bottom line is, no amount of words could ever explain how grateful I am for you. I have been bawling my eyes out on the bathroom floor, blindly in love and felt betrayed all to the soundtrack of your music. Being the same age, I feel as though we went through very similar situations and life experiences at the same time. Whenever you release new music, it matches up perfectly with my life and what I'm going through. I can honestly say you've helped shape me into the person I am today. I would have been lost without your music and in times when I felt I had no one to turn to, I took comfort in your lyrics. You probably will never read this, but I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for always being Taylor Swift, remaining Fearless, Speaking now, expressing raw Red emotions, being born in 1989, defending your Reputation and turning into a mature, beautiful Lover.

I hope to meet you one day and tell you all of this in person. I've looked up to you so much and I can't wait to see what you do next.

Here's to 30, Tay.

Love,

Melanie

@taylorswift @taylornation

190 notes · View notes

notexactlyrocketscience · 5 years ago

Text

~ on social media and blogging ~

Basically the only thing I've done in my last 24 posts (yes, I counted) is vent about my first semester at UTSA. Often repetitively.

A little backstory: You wouldn't know it from looking at me, my room, or my closet (especially not my closet) but I like to put things into boxes, arrange them in the most efficient way possible. Even when my room or notes are messy, I know exactly where my red scarf is (at the bottom of my closet where it fell from the hanger the other day while I was hurrying for school), where my flier for tomorrow's event is (somewhere in the middle of the pile of papers on my desk where I put it last week) and which emails I need to re-check tonight (the weekly newsletter, the extra-credit intructions, and the mid-semester meeting notice).

I despise any and all class-notes that aren't done exactly the way I like them—which is using as little repetition and words as possible. Whenever I write, I Google, copy and paste em dashes and make sure there are no spaces on either side. For a 600 word limit, my work will more often than not have exactly 600 words because I don't want to waste any. I use Google Calender to stay on schedule. Planners intimidate me because there's no limit to what can be done with them, and although I want to start a bullet journal, I'm not going to until I find a uniform format that feels right to me.

I don't get to doing it everyday, but at least around once a week or two I get my room, closet and school stuff together again (my person is a lost cause). Delaying this process is something that stresses me out quite a bit ... and is something I do regularly. Especially since the year before last, I feel like I'm in a constant state of burnout (which doesn't make any sense because I'm completely responsibility-free right now compared to other kids my age) and I procrastinate towards everything. EVERYTHING.

So yes, I've technically been spiralling slow-mo (and have been bewildered at myself) for the last couple (going on three) years now ... But back to my point.

I used to write a lot of journal entries. Extremely detailed ones. I spent hours on them every day. I have entire years of my life documented minute-to-minute—I am not even kidding. Once I fell out of that habit (cough the last two years happened) I was never able to pick it back up again (trust me, I tried).

Remember how I like to put things into boxes? The same goes for my feelings. The worst I could ever feel isn't angry or sad or desperate. No, the worst I could ever feel is not knowing what I feel. That's the only feeling that really scares me, dries out my soul. Everything is a mess and can't be put into their places anymore: I'm distracted, unsettled. Behind my eyes is a rainstorm gone wrong, a broken window, a gale whistling in and whipping every piece of paper in my workshop out of place, no end in sight.

When Instagram came into the picture a few years ago, that was in many ways my first step from hiding to bravery. For the first time, I had this space to express myself that was totally under my control, and it was empty. Devoid of prior expectations. For the first time, I was stepping forward and being myself in public, and in that way finding myself too. I'd be lying if I said that I'd be the very same person that I am right now if this hadn't been part of my life.

It gives me peace to be able to neatly document moments of my life here. It's not as time-consuming and as big a commitment as journaling, and somehow the pictures I take randomly gives me motivation to write something they make me feel, which is huge, since at this point this is the only form of creative expression I still indulge in, and one of the only things that make me feel like I have control anymore.

Gasp. I know it's social media, so this might sound superficial and naive to some. Believe me, I constantly battle the same feelings, internalized. Do I do it for attention? For the mini serotonin rush every time those little heart notifications appear? For human connection that I'm missing? Maybe. It's hard to know.

What I do know is that it's empowering to be able to write all this and let it loose for the public to see, ignore, read, dismiss, judge, and then to still be able to hold onto my paranoid sanity. I'm still not as brave as I'd like to be. Sometimes a wave of instinct to delete half my posts will engulf me to near-suffocation. But every single one of my silly, weird, random too-much-information, and borderline innapropriate posts are still out there. Because every time I feel that way, I clench my jaw and tell myself it's temporary and I'll regret it if I act on it. And it's true. Every day I succeed is another day that I choose not to run and hide like I've done too many times in the past. It's one step forward into caring less and understanding other people care less, and just breathing freely without worrying. It's a step towards freedom, confidence.

... I'm this bad behind a screen just talking about everyday things that don't even matter, that only a handful of people will read (s/o if you do. Thank you—means a lot!)—imagine what I'm like in actual social contexts, at the centre of attention in a crowded room.

Well ... I'll let you guys know when I finally stop running and find out for myself. Till then, I guess y'all are just stuck with me, as I am, right now.

[end]

⠀

5 notes · View notes

avellanas-nutty-empire · 4 years ago

Text

whAT

I feel... empowered by this news. We are here and we are valid.

Anyways, story time!

So I was diagnosed at age 4 and quickly got put on both morning and night meds for it. My brother also has ADHD, but never took meds because he didn't struggle with school as much as I did. I was very unaware growing up. I struggled to learn social queues when everyone else did and got seen as 'That weird girl who needs extra help' and I was never aware people saw me like that until fucking senior year of high school when I realized the class was laughing AT me instead of WITH me the entire time.

They were baffled every time something intellectual came out of my mouth, and I still feel as though I'm being treated like that (irl mostly). My coworkers like to explain to me things as though I'm unable to come up with or fully comprehend my own opinion. I've heard 3 coworkers vastly different opinions on the same situation revolving around ANOTHER coworker and it baffled me at first that they were so different, but soon I realized they had only explained it because they thought myself incapable of comming to my own realization about the situation (which wasn't even all that important in the grand scheme of things). And every time I open my mouth to speak my well minded piece about something, they gawk at my ability to do so.

Like yes, I get most of the time I appear either very child like or very unaware of the situations around me, and I do indeed sometimes play into the child like behaviours, but that's just an APPEARANCE. It baffles me how difficult it is for others to just flow with my on and off personalities of childlike unawareness and mature adult that can be angry and frustrated about 'adult' things that I do in fact understand. One example being my frustration with how fucking long it takes a med staff member to come open the front door and check my temp for me (because that's required now before I start working, along with asking me several questions) and as I was complaining about the doorbell never working, the machine being out of hand sanitizer for weeks now, them never answering the phone we are supposed to call to tell them to come let us in, and their slowness at just getting to the door after being made aware I am there. A few days after a coworker observed me complaining to her (Which I only started because she prompted it and those things should indeed not even be happening), I heard her telling another coworker about how scary I was. That was not me being scary or even trying to be. That was low-key for me. I could have done worse. Other times I'll just start up a conversation about X thing and they will interrupt because "you know what x thing is?" And completely change the conversation I was trying to start.

Ya know the only time I've ever actually had someone acknowledge my ADHD because they want to genuinely help me in areas I might struggle in because of it, was my driving instructor from a driving school run only by retired/off duty cops. He pulled me over one day in his office and closed the door and talked quietly so no one could hear as to be considerate if I didn't want others knowing about my ADHD (which at the time i didnt fully understand why he was taking it so seriously. I didnt understand why he acted as though it were something he expected me to be ashamed about). He asked if there was something like shortening the lessons he could do to help me learn better. And I know it's strange, but I actually can't do things for short incrimates of time. Its hard for me. I either do something for a half hour or more, or I don't do it at all. He was just glad I was learning just as fine as everyone else - although he did mention to my mom that, when ever he me and another student went on a hands on learning driving lesson, I would be going last so I could observe and absorb from what the first student did. He explained it all so well and I swear to god it's the second most validated moment I've ever felt - despite how baffled I was at his behaviour about how serious he was talking it (and honestly that's the kind of teacher I want to be)

I was lucky enough to have already adapted ish at that point to learning well enough I didn't need extra help, but a lot of other people out there (both kids and adults) do need continued help to be on equal footing as 'normal' people without ADHD. A lot of people don't even know they have ADHD and don't understand why things are harder for them. I remember a year or so ago when a good friend of mine discovered they had ADHD the whole time and that's why they struggled in some areas.

Every mental disability has it's own advantages. Don't believe me? Read The Dyslexic Advantage and come back to argue. That book is a blessing not only because it explains the ins and outs of dyslexic advantages AND disadvantages and real people's stories, it also sheds a drop of light that all mental disabilities have their own advantages. That book is the only thing I've seen to talk about mental disability advantages and that topic REALLY should be talked more about. The book mentioned that, in summarized short, because of the way the brain is wired dyslexic people are typically bad at 'finding Waldo' while autistic people are typically good at it because of the natural advantages and disadvantages of the way the brains are wired with that particular mental illness

So not only do we need to recognize that ADHD people are valid, but we also need to recognize that they have advantages in their own right that need to be explored and talked about more. (And yes ofc all of those things do not apply to EVERYONE. It is an umbrella term and the exact wiring differes for each person) for example: one time in 2nd grade on Valentine's day, we had finished eating our candy and started math. But I was the only one to get the problem right because I'm used to all the hyperactivness that other people don't typically get without sugar. I've never had a sugar high, and I like to explain it to people that it's almost as if I spend my entire life on a sugar high. Its quite painful honestly, and not because of the normal physical effects of a sugar high that normal people get. Sometimes I feel as though my mind is not my own to control - along with ALREADY having a difficult time understanding things.

Coffee also I've been told, does not make many ADHD people jittery or unable to sleep but instead calms them down. And again, no one thing applies to EVERYONE with ADHD but it is a good sort of outline guide thing that can help others figure out their own unique wiring.

So today I am going to ask you to educate yourself on ADHD not for yourself, or those you meet, but for the idea that one day ADHD (and hopefully along with a lot more other mental illnesses) is as common a thing as the varying favorite colors everyone in the world has

Oh dip it’s ADHD Awareness Month? Why did nobody tell me?

#avellanareblog #adhd #october #meme #adhd awareness #adult adhd #adhd life

9 notes · View notes