#i've been having a Bad Time™️ until like. yesterday

[flamingplay]

I need to really talk about it somewhere, and if someone relates you can let me know

I want to undo absolutely everything that happened in my life from November onwards.

I was very focused on what to do in life and so determined about getting myself out of shit and so busy on trying to fix past traumas so that I feel that I missed out on my present and on something I should and deserve to have in my age. I'm totally living through the fraction(s) of my life that I wasn't allowed to live through and it's about particular ages of life: ~16, ~6 and ~22 years old. And I'm already mf 31, very soon already 32. I often heard from my therapist a phrase "you did it for her, a [insert age] years old you". But for god's sake I lived until THIS much years old to end up feeling like 3 stages of my life at once and trying to navigate that through and having according to these ages emotions, vulnerabilities, failures and fears? Oh god what the fuck. I lived through real shit™️ in my life which was traumatising and forming and etc for a very young age to end up like this? Yes, I absolutely don't feel like my age, mentally and by appearance and behaviour I'm indeed around 22-24 but for god's sake when will I have my own age's experience? At like 50? And people do perceive me as 22 everywhere: business summits/weeks/whatever ("oh are you a second year student?"), students from this college, professors (god bless, I need to blend with the rest), anyone. Once I heard "omg, you're THIS old? God that's a lotta experience". Yeah, a bad traumatic experience of a 50 y.o. person and inexperienced 16 y.o. person's experience, how about such a twist?

I'm totally inexperienced about being among people. I don't really understand people and don't know how to interact with them. I don't understand their intentions, I don't recognise these types of social cues I see here. And to be very fair it's also another culture and a different mindset. On top of that, I'm a not properly socialised person and these are the consequences of it. And overall I had pretty bad experiences with people of their age and younger, I was a total definition of an outcast (with an according treatment by the classmates) both at school and Uni tbh as well even though it was all much more better and respectful there. The good thing was I was always very collected, very poker face no matter what was happening at home or in the according environment. Up until now. Now I'm not, in the best case scenario everything is pretty much on my face, and in the worst case scenario I have situations like yesterday when something happens just a second before I entered the room and I'm all shaking and with tears falling down mumbling that I should go elsewhere and apologising instead of maybe having a nervous breakdown for the person that caused it idk or running away not bothering anyone? Yeah and here we go to another point: I don't know what an emotionally mature person of my age would actually do. And since November I have been at the peak of vulnerability and openness to feelings and experiences. I do still believe that vulnerability is a true power but openness is an easy target. Especially in such a big village like this university, especially when you're bad at recognising other people's intentions, especially when you get lied to and betrayed even several times in a row. Especially when there are people who love "the latest tea" (yes, I had such at school but people knew a bare minimum about me and assumed much more but now...) aka have no life. Especially when one of the people told you "omg I've always thought you're a very closed down person and extremely picky with whom to talk". Man I wish I had it back but it's too late by now. A "smart person we don't know anything about, a Ukrainian refugee with a high GPA" easily fell together with that part of the brain that was responsible for it and that is now not ready for the Thursday exam. Amazing, now a new vulnerable crying mess imagery who talked about some personal shit which is actually not the worst shit that has happened to her for sure in general and atm. Anyway, what the fuck, guys. And I understand why to a certain extent I opened up to several people but the truth is I don't really know them and don't know what will happen because of it. I know that it's because I don't have a close person in my real life that I can trust to.

[sniffanimal]

🥱

Under a cut bc it's weird and might get long but anyways since I've been posting a lot of my Working On Me™️ type posts lately I thought I'd process some emotions I'm experiencing out loud to like, model the process maybe for someone who needs it? I dunno, if this isn't your jam then the back button is there 🤷‍♂️

So, it's a 3 day weekend. My initial plan for the weekend was to have 3 days of getting everything in order and set me up for success in the next week.

I spent yesterday productively! And I had a good evening, and woke up early and-

lost any steam I had. I've been glaring at my to-do list, doing random sidequest type activities like drawing, brushing my cats or organizing my pins on Pinterest. Basically anything except doing anything I was needing to do. And now at 3pm, I've decided fuck It today will be a reset and recharge day to take it easy

But the problem is now I'm mad I wasted all morning frustrated out of my gourd. If I had recognized I was frustrated sooner, I might have had more time to relax and also saved myself the anger!

I find things that are 100% within my control but go awry to be particularly frustrating because my biggest coping skill is understanding when things are out of my control. But I was the one who set my intentions for the day, and I'm the one I let down.

I think the feeling I'm experiencing is similar to emotional exhaustion (?) in the sense that in the moment the emotions felt useful, properly placed, and cathartic (if not good), but after the fact you just feel silly and embarrassed and exhausted. It's a bit of shame, I should have would have could have.

I think the way I need to see this is reflect on what were my early signs that I was not going to have a productive day, and how I can remember those for next time so I can act sooner. Turn this into reflection and learning. Sometimes you don't know your limits until you're at them.

I noticed I was struggling to start my tasks when I skipped part of my morning routine. I didn't eat breakfast right away. Then, I started looking for excuses to not do things on my list. It's expensive to do laundry, it's raining, I'm hungry/tired/under stimulated, the cats need playtime, etc.

I think if I have a day when I can't jump right into what I'm supposed to do right away, I should have a set routine I try to reset myself and failing that I will have a relaxation day.

That routine could look like taking a shower, or a nap, or going for a walk. Do something active (i.e., not watch tv or scroll or something passive) that isn't on my list and if The momentum helps realign me, then good!

I don't think that would have worked today though. I do have some physical fatigue that I'm struggling to cut through.

I'm going to now turn my phone off and nap for a couple hours, and maybe I'll be set up for being able to cook dinner when I get up.

I feel better about what happened today after walking through it like this. too bad I'm not in therapy anymore, this would get me an A+ for sure

[princesscolumbia]

Okay, I unironically love this, but it's been nagging at me since yesterday; where the hell did Gideon get a cradle beast in Canaan House? My "could write a short story but nooooo, gotta do 4.5k words of worldbuilding" mind has been whirring away at this to somehow make it canon compliant and I've come up with this:

So John "I never met a molehill I couldn't make into a mountain" Gaius is chilling with Alecto on the corpse of her previous self as the whole damn planet kinda just sits there dead, not even able to properly process all the corpses 'cause even the fucking bacteria are dead ('cause Jod is a greedy motherfucker) and they come across this dead cat. And Alecto has the knowledge of what this is from a, "I spawned this life" perspective what a cat is, but has no real concept of what a cat means to humans, and Jod, well-intentioned-road-worker-busy-working-on-that-highway-to-hell that he is, tries to explain what cats mean to human and realizes that this is a good chance to try experimenting with bringing something back to life and boom, one resurrected cat.

And naturally, he never bothers to name the cat, jawing on at his captive and only audience of one (1) anthropomorphized planet about how the person who owns the cat must choose a name that matches the personality and the cat is Alecto's now and fuck if she has the first foggy clue what to do with a cat, so the cat goes un-named.

Alecto, angry barbie doll that she is, doesn't realize that John screwed up monumentally when the cat doesn't eat, doesn't use anything resembling a litter box, and doesn't die because it's John's first real attempt it's an overpowered little shit and just kinda starts shadowing the only two living people left.

John promptly forgets about keeping an eye on the cat, and Alecto just lets the cat wander around, doing nothing to give it any attention and not even thinking of giving it any other aspect of "things living creatures need" because she's Earth and she just makes and consumes life, she doesn't manage it.

So 10,000 years later this cat is still kicking around, and along comes The Ninth for the new Lyctor trials and Griddle decides to absolutely fucking NOT be anywhere near Harrow if she can help it and winds up inadvertently stealing the cat's favorite napping spot for the last millennium and the cat, now being the Platonic Ideal of Cat, promptly does a "fuck you" and just lays on Gideon while she's asleep, and Gideon, Goth Jock Lesbian Himbo that she is, falls in love with this little night creature with disturbingly(affectionate) familiar behavior patterns.

The cat, experiencing actual human affection for the first time in 10k years, practically glues herself to Gideon's side. Harrow is, at first, absolutely, 100% against this little creature, but just like every cat-hating-dad on the Internet "secretly" falls in love and would kill everyone in the Empire and herself if anything bad happened to ickle Marrow and her beans.

Jod never sees Marrow 'cause she knows when to hide from Johny Abomination And The Lyctor 7 6 5 4 3, having learned to avoid being spotted during the first Lyctor Trials and having 10,000 years to perfect the craft, then when the Edenites airlift the non-Lyctor survivors out of there, they have acquired one (1) cradle beast that refuses to leave Gideon's body.

We don't actually see the cat again until Nona the Ninth. By this time little Marrow has bonded with Camilla/Palemedese (somehow knowing who's in charge of Cam's body at any given time and behaving differently for each) and the necromancer/cavalier don't really seem to notice that the cat doesn't need nearly as much Life™️ things as an animal normally would because they don't have the consistency of presence to notice. Nona somehow just knows that Marrow is a cat, but since she's got an innate understanding of cradle beasts she doesn't cotton to Marrow being at all unusual until after The Angel discovers Nona's drawing of a different cradle beast, and of course by then it's basically a running firefight/stealth-op/violent-revolution, and it isn't until Paul...instantiates and their memory merges that they finally start putting two and two together to get 48.

Marrow's just happy to finally be able to sit in Gideon/Kyriona's lap again, even if it's, at best, room temperature.

okie so griddlehark prompt: them adopting a little black cat?🥺 i love your art btw !!

sillies 🥺