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xtruss · 8 months ago

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Here's This Year's List of the Most Endangered Historic Places in the U.S.

— May 1, 2024 | Neda Ulaby

Built in 1921, the New Salem Baptist Church served Black coal miners and their families in Tams, West Virginia. Cody Straley/WV SHPO/National Trust for Historic Preservation

There's a lonely old church in the mountains of West Virginia that holds a hidden history. Black coal miners in a segregated camp worshipped there starting in the 1920s. Now, the New Salem Baptist Church is listed as one of America's 11 most endangered historic sites.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has released a list highlighting such places every year since 1988. Carol Quillen is the organization's new president and CEO. Trained as a historian, she was the first female president of Davidson College in North Carolina.

"I studied the past largely through texts, not places," Quillen told NPR. "And the difference between imagining one's relationship to the past through experiencing a place and reading a book in a library is really profound. So I love the way these places, which themselves hold layers and layers of stories, and invite us in the present to connect our stories to the ones these places hold."

Quillen said the push to preserve the New Salem Baptist Church came from a white Catholic woman whose father was the town's milkman. She enlisted not just the descendants of the church's original parishioners but also local ATV riders who could see and admire the church from a mountain trail.

"I love stories like that where a preservation project can mobilize folks who normally wouldn't encounter one another to work together on something significant to all of them," Quillen said. "And in that work, transform what the place can mean."

Black residents of Eatonville, Fla., have been trying to preserve their hometown for decades. One of the first self-governing all-Black towns in the United States, Eatonville was immortalized in the classic 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The legendary Harlem Renaissance writer and anthropologist once described her hometown as "the city of five lakes, three croquet courts, 300 brown skins, 300 good swimmers, plenty guavas, two schools and no jailhouse."

Top: Hungerford Vocational School students in 1933 in Eatonville, Florida. Preserve the Eatonville Community Archives/National Trust for Historic Preservation

Bottom: Thomas House is the oldest structure in Eatonville and the original site of the St. Lawrence African Methodist Episcopal Church. Melissa Jest/National Trust for Historic Preservation

In a 2015 NPR story reported by Renata Sago, residents dreamed of an Eatonville reborn as a year-round heritage destination and remembered it as a refuge during the days of Jim Crow.

"We didn't lock our doors and kids could go out and play," recalled an elderly resident, Maye Saint Julian. "And everybody knew everybody. And all of these people that we honor so — James Brown, B.B. King, Lionel Hampton — these people came to Eatonville on a regular basis."

Ideally, Eatonville and many other sites on the list, such as the Cindy Walker House, could eventually become better-known cultural destinations. Located in Mexia, Texas, the ramshackle white frame structure was where a remarkable, unsung figure in country music lived for many years. Walker was one of the few female songwriters of her era. She wrote country standards and number one hits for Roy Orbison, Merle Haggard, Elvis Presley and more.

Top: Country singer Cindy Walker's home in Mexia, Texas. Cindy Walker Foundation/National Trust for Historic Preservation

Bottom: Tarps cover hurricane damage on the roof of the Estate Whim Great House. St. Croix Landmarks Society/National Trust for Historic Preservation

After she died in 2006, Walker's house was left abandoned. A handful of fans and heirs formed a foundation in her honor and purchased it in 2022.

"They found all kinds of things there," Quillen said. "They found her typewriter. They found her country music awards. They found songs that no one had ever heard before." One of those songs was a lost demo, called "Tennessee Rain," that can be heard in the audio version of this story.

This press photo of country singer Cindy Walker was among many never-before-seen photos recovered from the home. Cindy Walker Foundation/National Trust for Historic Preservation

Over the past three decades, the National Trust has seen some triumphs with its annual list of endangered places. Dozens of them have been saved, including the Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland, which narrowly missed becoming the site of a shopping mall, and Little Rock Central High School, where young Arkansas students helped overturn a legacy of legal segregation in 1957.

Now established by Congress as a National Historic Site, it's still a working public high school and a center for education about the country's civil rights.

"We don't want to spray these sites with ScotchgarEd, you know, and roll them off," Quillen said. "We really want to reinvigorate them so that they're active, exciting places for people to go so that they can continue to bring people together now and long into the future."

Here are the rest of the endangered historic places on the list this year:

Top: The Hudson-Athens Lighthouse is one of two "middle-of-the-river" lighthouses left standing on the Hudson River. David Oliver/National Trust for Historic Preservation

Bottom: 1st Street is the major thoroughfare in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo. Kristin Fukushima/National Trust for Historic Preservation

Estate Whim Museum, Frederiksted, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands: "Established during the colonization of St. Croix by Denmark, Estate Whim was a plantation producing cotton and sugar for export. The lives and legacies of those enslaved by plantation owners and those who continued to labor there for meager wages for a century after emancipation are inextricably tied to the site, which now hosts a museum, library and archives, and public programming. Repeated hurricanes have damaged many of Estate Whim Museum's historic buildings and structures."

Hudson-Athens Lighthouse, Athens, N.Y.: "Opened in 1874, the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse used to be one of several 'middle-of-the-river' lighthouses on the Hudson River. Now, it's one of only two left standing. However, due to erosion and other preservation challenges, engineering reports indicate the building is at risk of collapse within three years if no action is taken."

Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, Calif.: "Little Tokyo is one of only four remaining Japantowns in the United States and one of the oldest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, but its unique character is endangered by large-scale development and transit projects and displacement of legacy businesses and restaurants."

Top: Minute Men and British reenactors fire a musket salute off the North Bridge at Minute Man National Historical Park. Neil Lynch/National Trust for Historic Preservation

Bottom: Theodore Roosevelt High School in Gary, Ind., in 2015. Tiffany Tolbert/National Trust for Historic Preservation

Minute Man National Historical Park, Walden, and nearby landmarks, Massachusetts: "Minute Man National Historical Park and the nearby areas of Concord, Lexington, Lincoln, and Bedford are home to places of great significance in American history, including Walden Pond and Woods and the preserved homesteads of authors and environmentalists: Little Women's Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. A proposed major expansion of nearby Hanscom Field airport could significantly increase private jet traffic, leading to increased noise, vehicular traffic, and negative environmental and climate impacts."

Roosevelt High School, Gary, Ind.: "Theodore Roosevelt High School in Gary was built in 1930 specifically to serve the educational needs of Black Americans and has graduated notable alumni including professional athletes, well-known actors, and members of The Jackson 5. The school has been unoccupied and deteriorating since 2019."

A view of Sitka Indian Village from across Sitka Harbor, circa 1900-1930. Library of Congress/National Trust for Historic Preservation

The Sitka Tlingit Village in 2024. James Poulson/National Trust for Historic Preservation

Sitka Tlingit Clan Houses, Sitka, Alaska: "The Sitka Tlingit Clan Houses in southeast Alaska are critically important to both the history and the future of the Lingít (commonly spelled in English as "Tlingit"). For many years, the matrilineal clan structure of multigenerational extended families living together in clan houses was discouraged in favor of the Western practice of living with nuclear families. Today, only eight of the original 43 clan houses remain and even fewer still function as clan houses in the traditional way."

Tangier American Legation's main courtyard. Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies/National Trust for Historic Preservation

Tangier American Legation, Tangier, Morocco: "In 1821, the Tangier American Legation in Morocco was gifted to the United States by the Moroccan Sultan as a token of friendship, becoming the first American public property located abroad, and subsequently served as a U.S. diplomatic mission for a record 140 years. Now a cultural center, museum, and research library, the Legation is in urgent need of structural stabilization and repairs following the recent collapse of an adjacent building."

A cannon on the Wilderness National Military Park. Lori Coleman/American Battlefield Trust/National Trust for Historic Preservation

Wilderness Battlefield Area, Orange County, Virginia.: "The Battle of the Wilderness marked a pivotal turning point in the Civil War, but today, not all the historically significant landscape is protected. Proposed large new developments, including millions of square feet of industrial data centers and thousands of homes, may negatively impact important historic sites and landscapes and degrade the visitor experience."

#All-Black-Towns #Cindy Walker #Citka #The National Trust For Historic Preservation #Eatonville #Zora Neale Hurston #Historic Preservation #The Most Endangered Historic Places | U.S. 🇺🇸#NPR.ORG

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legoflowercrucifix · 9 months ago

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my religious rant while I wait for my painting to dry

honestly I'm not quite sure what I am intending to do here but I just needed to get a few things out my mind, its easter after all and what other time of the year could I possibly use to question religion and my place in it. to clarify i was raised a weird mix of Christian and roman catholic and mainly the Hispanic version of it all.

Growing up, I remember waking up and putting on my best dress and sandals to go sit in the pews and listen to some old man rant about the bible and its intentions. I was disconnected to it all, i don't think I ever submitted to it fully(much less now), more bothered by how itchy the dress was or how long i had to sit still and quiet.

Moving to the US, what little religious identity I had was put aside with new priorities, we tried new churches every once in a while but it has not truly stuck. We still say grace at meals and i pray whenever i remember to(which isn't very often if i think about it), but we aren't extremely dedicated. I like to say its a casual thing, more about the habit than true faith for me, unlike my parents who actually believe.

I am queer, and I cant say I have any super hidden amounts of religious guilt because of it, more like minor reminders every once in a while that there's a chance when I die Ill be denied the pearly gates because i stared a little too long in the scene in Aladdin where Jazmin is dancing for Jaffar, or I drew tigress from Kung Fu Panda a little too much, but nothing that truly keeps me up at night.

Part of me feels guilty simply for not believing as much as I want to, since now I understand that my queerness and religion can live side by side, and I want to believe in something but i don't fully put all my faith and trust in it like I should.

Most of the time I don't know who or what God is, sometimes God is this disconnected figure i pray to in the middle of my math test, sometimes god is the rosary hanging on my door, sometimes god is a distant parent who i keep forgetting to call, sometimes God is my mom as I hold her tight, sometimes god is a net pulsing inside the walls like mold, sometimes god is just an ideal i hold on to when life feels a little too cold and alone.

I don't know if having faith is a choice, is it a feeling? do people who have faith in whatever religion they follow just do so blindly and wholeheartedly? is that what faith is, to not have all the answers yet still believe you are right? to trust in something you cant see to hold you in its arms when you fall?

I mostly believe(or like to think i believe) that God set all the atoms and particles of the universe into place and stood back to watch things play out, like a child with an ant farm or someone's science fair experiment that got a little too into the growing bacteria aspect and caused a school wide flu outbreak. And after infecting the entire school, the kid(God) kinda just stood back and watched the mayhem breakout because what was he gonna do? stop the spread?

Maybe faith is just liking the idea that some entity beyond our comprehension and understanding that is infinitely more powerful than us loves and believes in us, even if we don't, that the mercy it provides is proof that there are better things out there waiting for us, that the reason they don't step in and stop the atrocities committed by humanity is because it needs us to learn, to stand on our own, like a parent watching a child lean back on a chair too much, knowing no matter what they say, nothing will stop them except the feeling of hitting the floor, and a sound "I told you so".

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I have a weirdly parental and complicated relationship with God, and just like with my actual father, maybe i should give him a call more often, just to know that they're still there. Religion brings me little comfort, more questions than answers, and maybe that's how it will always be for me, maybe I will never find the satisfaction of knowing what it is like to fully believe, but maybe I can sit in my little limbo and think of religion in terms of my family, a sacrifice I make for them, hanging up the rosary not because it itself is protecting me but because it was a gift from someone who cares and protects me, saying grace before eating because my mothers hands are truly blessed, praying that my father is safe because maybe God wont do it for me but they'll do it for him, maybe believing and faith is a group effort.

#personal #god #religion #tw religious themes #I am just as confused as I was when I started :D #I encourage people to discuss this and propose their own ideas and thoughts and stuff in reblogs or comments or wtv but pleaseee just be-#nice and respectful and not an asshole

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terubakudan · 3 years ago

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This may be an old article from 3 years ago, but these cultural aspects/observations still apply even today. And though this is strictly a Chinese perspective, a lot of these everyday life bits are observed in Overseas Chinese communities in countries such as The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. as well as countries heavily influenced by Chinese culture like Taiwan, Japan, and Korea.

I've always liked learning about other cultures and making comparisons between how things are done East vs West. Which probably stems from growing up with two cultures and Mom raising me on American movies xD

So the irony is if you asked me how many Chinese, Taiwanese, or Hong Kong actors I know, chances are I know as much as you do xD Like Jackie Chan, Andy Lau, and that's about it. But if you asked me about Western (specifically American and British) actors, then I have a useless brain dump of movie trivia and who was with who in what movie xD

Hmmm, both Taiwan and the Philippines are two distinct cultures but both look up to a certain country and are fascinated by that. In Taiwan's case, Japan and the US for the Philippines. In both cases, this is due to being under the rule of those countries in their history. Taiwan being under Japan for 50 years, and the Philippines being under Spain for 300+ years, followed by periods of American and Japanese rule. To put it simply though:

Taiwan is "mini-Japan with a very Chinese culture".

The Philippines is "former colony of Spain with lots of American influences".

But unlike the author, I've never set foot in any Western country, so my understandings are strictly what I've observed in media, which while it can be accurate, doesn't compare to actually experiencing the culture.

Some further elaboration on most points:

#1 We quite literally use chopsticks for everything. We use it to pick rice, viands, vegetables, fruit, smaller desserts, almost all the food you can think of.

But where do you put your chopsticks when you're not using them? Just put them on top of your bowl or flat on your plate. But do not ever stick them vertically. It's taboo, since it looks like incense sticks, which we use to pray for those who have passed, like our ancestors or during funerary services.

#3 The majority of Asia is obsessed with fair/white skin. In my time at the Philippines, I grew up watching all these Dove Whitening commercials and my classmates often commented on how fair my skin was, how they envied it etc. In Taiwan, girls often say they don't want to 變黑 (biàn hēi) 'become dark'. Japan and Korea too are not innocent of this either (if their beauty/skin products weren't a dead giveaway).

People here at Taiwan often mistake me for being from Hong Kong or Japan (as long as I don't speak Mandarin with my heavy accent xD). A Taiwanese classmate of mine joked that she often gets mistaken for being from Southeast Asia due to having a darker complexion. And while I laughed it off with her at that time, looking back, I now realize she was lowkey being racist. xD

And believe me Filipinas have mentioned literally being told 'your skin is so dark' here in Taiwan, or being given backhanded compliments like 'you're pretty despite having dark skin' and...*facepalms*

My point is, beauty is not exclusive to skin color. People who still think that are assholes.

#5 Not to say we don't have salt and pepper, but yes soy sauce and vinegar are the classic condiments you see on the table, be it at home or at a restaurant.

And if I may add, Taiwanese love their pepper. xD If you ever get to eat at a night market or a smaller "Mom n' Pop-style" restaurant here, some dishes/soups tend to add quite an excessive amount of pepper. Not like anthills, but quite liberally and way more than average. Enough that you see traces of pepper at the bottom of the food paper bag or swirling in your soup. xD

#6 I know this all too well from personal experience. In my years of studying at Taiwan, I always had roommates. 3 in my first school (I graduated high school in the Philippines pre K-12 so I had to make up 2 years of Senior High), followed by 2 in college, with the exception of 1 in freshman year.

My college did offer single person dorms but at around 9000 NTD ($324) per month compared to around 6000 NTD ($216) per semester. Because I wanted to save, the choice was obvious for me xD. But ah, this doesn't mean I don't value personal space, in fact I love having the room to myself, and since both my roomies would go home to their families every weekend, weekends were bliss for me xD

And you don't have to be friends with your roommates (that's an added bonus however), you just have to get along with them. I was quite lucky to have really great roommates all throughout my schooling years.

#9 In the Philippines, we do. Owing mostly to American influences and maybe being predominantly Catholic? xD

#10 *sigh* Chinese parents and parents from similar Asian cultures tend to put too much emphasis on grades, so much that kids could get sent to cram school as early as elementary. This is because what school you get into could literally affect your future job opportunities, and while that's not exclusive to any particular country/culture, I feel it's especially pronounced here in Asia. I'm really lucky my own parents weren't that strict about it. However, if your parents don't point the mistakes out to you, chances are you'll do it yourself, if you're an Asian kid like me anyway. xD It just becomes a habit.

#11 My family is an exception to this. xD We do say 'I love you' directly, but complete with the 'ah eat well ok?', 'don't scrimp on food', 'sleep well' and similar indirect words/actions of affection. We were doing 'Conceal, Don't Feel' before it became popular. xD

#13 I'm kind of confused about this but this has sort have changed over the years in which eye-contact is now more encouraged. But don't stare, especially at elders and authority figures. Sometimes it's just shyness though. xD And I've observed this with my own Taiwanese friend, especially when I'm complaining or ranting to her about something. xD I'm a person who likes to express my opinions strongly, which tends to scare/alienate some of the locals here, as doing so is kind of frowned upon. Thankfully, she does listen and offers her take on things.

#14 Ah this. xD In the Philippines, this is a common greeting known as beso-beso, and I freaked out too when an auntie did that to me. xD Needless to say, Mom lectured me later on what that was. ^^"

#16 Along with #3 another crazy beauty standard. In my view, people always look better with a little meat on them and when they're not horribly thin. Asia still has a loonng way to go with accepting different types of bodies if you ask me. This combined with modern beauty standards has made the pressure for women especially to 'look beautiful' higher than ever.

I know many people love them but please, starving yourself or glorifying eating disorders is never OK just to get this kind of 'ideal' body. I'm not part of the Kpop fandom, but even I think when idols get bullied just for gaining the least bit of weight among other insensitive comments, that's really going too far.

#17 'If you want to make friends, go eat.' <- I couldn't agree more. In the Philippines we have a greeting: 'Kumain ka na ba?' (Have you eaten?) . Similarly in Taiwan, we have 吃飯了沒? (chī fàn le méi), both of these can mean that in the literal sense but are often used as greetings instead. By then which invitation to having lunch/dinner together may or may not follow. Food really is a way for us to socialize and to catch up with what's going on in each other's lives. Not to say we don't have regular outings like going out to the mall, going shopping, etc. but eating together is a huge part of our culture, be it with family or friends.

And while I'm at it, some memes that are way too accurate good to pass up xD

Parents, uncles, aunties alike will fight over the bill xD

Alternatively:

You just space out until your name is called xD

My parents are guilty of the last one. Logic how? xD

#18 True. xD I like giving compliments out to people but I have a hard time accepting them myself, though I've learnt how to accept them much more now than before. We're kind of raised to constantly downplay ourselves so we often say things like 'ah no no' or 'I'm really not that good'. The downside of this of course is that it can come off as somewhat fake. xD

Again from personal experience, that same classmate who made the lowkey racist remark, she was good, she was on the debate team, was a honor student, knew how to mingle with people, but she downplayed herself way too much, while praising me but I honestly thought that she never really meant it from how she treated me. She wanted to keep me around her yet make backhanded compliments at me and she didn't want me socializing with my other classmate who is now my friend. *sigh* It was only after discussing this with one of my roomies did I realize how this 'excessive downplaying' might come off to people like me who more or less grew up with a more 'Westernized' mindset. I'm not saying brag about your achievements but don't be overly humble about them either, which can also be a turn off.

#20 We do tend to be a lot more realistic on how we view things, neither entirely optimistic nor pessimistic. We try to think of things practically and often analyze things on pure logic. A downside of this however, is that Chinese people can be overly practical. Taiwanese for instance don't like to 'find inconveniences' and generally keep to themselves, meaning, they won't help you in your hour of need even when they do have the capabilities. Sounds really harsh I know, but in my 6 years of living in Taiwan, while this doesn't apply to all the people, a lot of them really do only find/talk to you when they need something.

So for some people saying Taiwanese are 'friendly', that's BS xD If you ask me, Filipinos are infinitely more friendly, and again while not all, generally make more of an effort to help you when you need it. I really felt more of a real sense of community during my years growing up in the Philippines compared to Taiwan.

#21 Children do tend to stay with their parents well into college and adulthood, since Chinese families are indeed very family-oriented, in a lot of cases, grandparents often live under the same roof as us as well! And it really does save a lot of money. I see there's a real stigma in the US when it comes to "living with your parents", but that's starting to change especially because of Covid and having more and more people move back in with their parents.

Housing unfortunately is pretty much hella expensive no matter where you go, and Taiwan is no exception. Steep housing prices and the very high cost of raising a child (schooling + buxiban fees, etc.) contribute to a very low birth rate and thus an aging population like Japan. It's not uncommon to see both parents working in Taiwan.

#23 I'm an overthinker myself, but I totally agree with the author that the best is to strike a good balance between these two. Which I guess is why I love drawing or any other related creative attempts, it helps me be more spontaneous or well, creative! I like to remain intellectually or artistically inspired.

#24 Is French high school really like that? xD My friend did watch SKAM France and more or less got a culture shock from what was depicted on the show. I can confirm however that most high schools both in the Philippines and Taiwan require students to wear a uniform, only in college is everybody free to wear casual/civilian clothes.

#26 Ah this is part of our Asian gift-giving etiquette xD We always open gifts later after the event/meeting and in private. Never open them in front of the person who gave it to you or in front of others. This is to prevent any 'shame/embarrassment' that may result both to yourself and to the gift giver. I know this may come off as something weird since some people may want a more honest response or immediate feedback when it comes to gift-giving, but that's just how it is in our culture. You're always free to ask us though (in private) if we liked the gift or not ^^"

#28 I want to say the same goes to drinking, partying, and drugs however xD Those are things which are still frowned upon in our culture. And to be honest, whenever I see those in movies, it does kind of turn me off xD It doesn't mean that we're "uncool" or "boring", we just think that there are much better or healthier ways of "having fun".

#31 Is this true in France?! Man I would kind of prefer that instead of people being on their phones all the time xD This kind of goes with #20 in that Chinese are overly practical or logical, and don't read fiction as much as nonfiction. My Taiwanese friend is an exception though, she's a bibliophile who loves the feel of paper books compared to e-books, and it's a trait of her that I like a lot. Both the Philippines and Taiwan however have a huge fanbase when it comes to manga and anime though.

I'm all for reading outside of "designated reading" at schools especially. Reading fiction improves your vocabulary too, and can be quite fun! It helps you imagine and really invest in a world/story, and if you ask me something that I feel Westerners are better at, they're more in touch with their emotions and creativity, and are thus much more able to write compelling or original stories. Believe me, I've seen a fair amount of Chinese movies that rip off Western movie plotlines xD

#33 Nothing much to add on here..except that since I'm a "weird" person, Mom often jokes that she got the wrong baby from the hospital. xD

#35 True. While I agree with the care and concern that your fellow community can give you, the downside of this is we tend to only hang out with our own people, e.g Chinese with Chinese, Taiwanese with Taiwanese, etc. I've seen too that it's especially hard to make friends in Japan and Korea as a foreigner. Not only is there the language barrier, but the differences in culture too. In a way, Asians can be pretty close-minded on getting to know other cultures or actually making friends with people from other countries. I know this all too well being half-Taiwanese/half-Filipino, being neither "Filipino" enough nor "Taiwanese" enough. xD It's more of people here being too used to what they're comfortable with.

#36 Oh this is something I feel that Chinese students and other students from similar cultures should really improve on. xD How will people respect you if you don't speak your mind?

I felt bad especially for my Spanish teacher in college, granted it was an introductory course (Spanish I and II) but the amount of times that our teacher had to prompt a student to recite/speak even with clear hints already made her (and me too) extremely frustrated. The thing is, these are college students, I personally feel they don't have any reason to be so shy of speaking and technically by not doing so they're slowing the pace of the class too much and a lot of time is wasted.

Unfortunately you can't always be very vocal with your thoughts and opinions in most Asian cultures. I would say strive for that, but at the same time, play your cards well, especially if you're in a workplace setting.

If you made it to the end, thank you for reading and here's a cookie! 🍪 I'm not perfect and there's bound to be something I missed so please let me know if you spotted anything wrong. Feedback/questions are very much welcome and please feel free to share about your country/culture's differences or similarities!

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inevitably-johnlocked · 4 years ago

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can we adress how toxic some of these self/harm and suicide fics are?? as someone who has struggled with these issues, treating them as just a way for the two characters to get together, or one character to be the savior who cures someone of their problems? I'm so frickin over it. continuing to put your partner in limbo by threatening this behavior when they don't give you enough attention is a symptom of something major. This is not something i like seeing romanticized. at all.

[CONTENT WARNING FOR ENTIRE POST: heavy discussions of trauma, suicide, self harm, depression, political issue mentions, and eating disorders. Please proceed with care. I am not cutting the post because I think the message is important, so scroll past until my icon disappears <3 Stay safe, My Lovelies.]

Hey Nonny

Okay, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here because you mention you DO have struggles with these issues, so I’m going to state right up front here and say I AM NOT DISREGARDING YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AT ALL. Your view of this topic is valid, and it’s not something I am ever going to say is wrong for you.

I would like to offer an olive branch, here, Nonny, and give you an alternative take on this, because I’m concerned that perhaps you are still coping with your own struggles and in return, you unwittingly and unintentionally are coming off as unsympathetic to other people’s coping mechanisms.

I KNOW how hard it is to see another view when yours is the only one that seems right, especially after a tragedy or after dealing with heavy things. But all I am asking is for you to temporarily extend some empathy as I discuss my thoughts in this post, and I apologize in advance if I come off as dickish, because, again, it’s hard to see past your own feelings, and I tend to give a “firm but understanding” approach to asks like this. It’s NOT meant to call you our personally. Just asking for an open mind.

I will tackle this ask in a similar fashion to this post here, which talks about shipping vs fetishization so CW for that, as well as like this post here, where we discuss pet peeves. My assumption here is that Nonny is unsure about what “romanticizing” actually entails, and how much this ask is basically Gatekeeping Fiction 101, a thing that’s been going on since the beginning of storytelling. The ask is perceived by me to be emotionally unaware of how unsympathetic it actually sounds, and in turn can unintentionally upset people who engage in these stories.

First thing’s first, Nonny, and I said it before, I GET IT. I understand what you’re going for here, why you feel it’s toxic, and why you think it shouldn’t exist. Here’s the thing, though: what you’re ACTUALLY calling for here is censorship and gatekeeping because YOU PERSONALLY take issue with something, want the fandom specially curated just for you, because it PERSONALLY OFFENDS YOU. And that, it itself, is what’s really toxic, here. Just because YOU are offended, does not mean that it’s not helpful to SOMEONE ELSE, and it’s selfish to make such a demand of people.

Let me explain.

As I mention in the link above re: shipping, many people read and write fics to cope with the reality of their own experiences. Nonny, your experience is NOT the same as someone else’s. Your pain is NOT universal, and you DON’T KNOW what that author has been through; for all you know, they spent 6 months in-hospital after attempting suicide, and they are now simply processing their trauma through storytelling.

Or, “continuing to put your partner in limbo by threatening this behavior when they don't give you enough attention” ? It’s a VERY REAL THING that ACTUALLY happens in real life, and perhaps it happened to that author, or they want to write an alternate ending to their pain.

Or, “one character to be the saviour who cures someone of their problems?” is something a suicide survivor WISHES someone did for them. Because they feel alone in the world and don’t want to be alone anymore.

These stories are simply escapism for people, either to learn about or share what these mental illnesses do to people, or are the “fantasies” of survivors, of their ideal outcome to their own tragedies. Coping with guilt over the loss of someone they feel they could have saved. The brutal truth about realty.

And sometimes, it is because some people need a good cry and a feel-good happy ending, because real life? Well, it rarely has those happy endings and so few opportunities to let us cry, and sometimes life is just easier when we view it through the eyes of fictional characters. Do you not want someone to save you sometimes Nonny? And I mean metaphorically here, too. Someone to just take all of your hellish burdens off those shoulders for one day. Someone who will come in to save you from yourself. I know I do.

And, well, sometimes, Nonny, it makes people feel less alone in this socially distanced world.

They’re not glorifying that issue Nonny. They’re telling their story.

Here are some thoughts:

Romanticization: Some trendy teen outlet selling a shirt with “mentally diseased” written across it.

NOT Romanticization: A character in a story coming to terms with a diagnosis of mental illness and learning ways to adapt. Their partner is involved 100% and they learn together.

Romanticization: Sherlock merchandise being sold with “I’m a high functioning sociopath” (not mention ableist as all heck)

NOT Romanticization: A character self-harms because of depression, and character B helps the character through their pain and together they get proper therapy and treatment.

Romanticization: Calling yourself “OMG I’m so bipolar!” because it’s trendy.

NOT Romanticization: A clinically depressed author, who survived a suicide attempt, wanting to tell their story through characters the world is already familiar with, and one that a touchy subject can be expressed and understood by other people, because they’re not ready to write the “real” book. Fandom is a safety net for them.

See what I mean Nonny? We don’t KNOW what kind of pain these authors have PERSONALLY been through, and to censor them from having their voices heard and their stories told is just not on for me.

And let me be clear: YES OF COURSE romanticization happens EVERYWHERE. I am not denying that. But your ask is coming off like EVERY STORY EVER WRITTEN is glorification of something. By your logic:

Disabled people shouldn’t write about their disabilities because they’re romanticising themselves.

The authors with medical degrees shouldn’t write realistic med-fics because some where in the world, ONE person MAY HAVE had a similar experience as Character A and B.

Someone broke their foot in ballet so they shouldn’t write a story about a ballet dancer who broke their hip because it may offend ONE ballerina SOMEWHERE in space and time who got sideline at the prime of their career?

Stories about LGBT+ people shouldn’t be written because homophobes think it’s icky.

We shouldn’t write about wizards because it offends high school catholic pastors (an actual thing that happened)?

How about cancer stories because kids die of cancer all the time?

Non-fiction autobiographies about holocaust survivors is not okay.

Science books offend flat earthers, so we shouldn’t write those.

Books about the Big Bang and a 4.5 billion-year-old earth offends creationists, so burn those.

A now-adult child rape victim writing their survival stories to help get their often-in-power abusers behind bars are taboo.

True crime stories from detectives on those cases shouldn’t be told because they weren’t the victim.

Non-fiction in general because someone somewhere may have had that one singular thing happen to them.

How about coping with grief over a parent’s sudden death because I personally might find offense in that since that was a horridly traumatic experience in my life?

Do you see how progressively out of touch this argument is? (the answer to all of these: authors should be allowed to write them, because stories make us human). Your argument leads down the very dangerous path to censorship of books, the internet, and history... to have people only read and learn what someone else dictates, leading to... well.

I’m not trying to be a dick here, Nonny, I’m really not. But I think you’re really missing the entire point of fiction and story telling. I feel you’re failing in the empathy game here, and failing to understand what romanticizing really actually is.

Whenever I get asks like this, I always feel like the Nonnies don’t really know much about pre-Ao3. I come from “early internet” fandom age, and I’m talking before tags existed. Back when I had to go buy a book at Coles and guess what was in it based on a cover description. No “amazon reviews”. No “harmful content warning” stickers. You just picked up that book, and sometimes you get a sweet story about a friends exploring an alien landscape, and other times WHOOOPS ACCIDENTAL ALIEN SEX I DIDN’T SIGN UP FOR. And sometimes, it ended with a dark story about death, and the reality of coping with it.

Twenty years ago, books on the shelves at bookstores and libraries were the only place you could do your reading and they certainly do NOT have tags on them... Modern tagging of stories are a REALLY recent thing introduced probably no less than 15 years ago and was perfected by Ao3 (which was started in 2009).

These days, there is no excuse if you only consume fanfiction on Ao3. Fics are tagged with proper possible-trigger tags 90% of the time. They have a VERY METICULOUS filtering system. You aren’t being forced to read the fics, you don’t have to read the fics, so use those tag filters, they exist for a reason.

So, with that in mind, I genuinely DON’T GET this attitude about people wanting everything sugar coated and saccharine by default. Especially when you can LITERALLY CURATE YOUR OWN CONTENT. Life isn’t sugar coated. And fiction shouldn’t have to be either. People tag fics with triggers for a reason.

As they used to say back in my early internet days: Don’t like it? Don’t read it. Don’t comment, skip, next story.

And to put this ALL into perspective, so that you don’t think I’m talking out of my ass, I’m going to reveal something here: Do you know what fics I can’t read, Nonny, because they trigger me? Eating disorders. That’s self harm, Nonny, in a very different way. But you know what? I know that those fics DO help other ED people so I’m not going to sit her and tell people NOT to rec or write them. And some of those authors who write those stories are processing their own ED through those stories, healing in their own way. And you know what I do when I see one of those fics? I don’t read them, move on, next story.

I’m sorry if you perceive this as me being harsh with you here, Nonny, and you DON’T have to agree with me and you can block me and never talk to me again, and I’ll understand. As I stated at the beginning, I’m offering an alternative perspective, and helping you to see that some people take comfort in these types of stories.

I think what this all boils down to Nonny, after all of this, and rereading your question a final time to see if I missed covering anything, is that (and feel free to shit on me if I am wrong here) I’m getting the impression – as an unprofessional outsider looking in – that you’re still struggling with your inner demons, whether you realize it or not. The tone and brashness of your ask has me believing this... It feels like it was written after a trigger-moment and you needed to vent AT someone because you are alone, and that hurts my heart so much. I truly hope you find peace in your mind, soon, and I hope you have someone to talk to professionally, or at least a friend. (tw under link, suicidal ideation discussion and links to phone numbers that can help you). I only wish the best for you, my Nonny.

Anyway. I welcome other people to chime in here, respectfully, and let me know if I have the wrong take here. Because I genuinely don’t think I do, but I am not a professional, so my entire thing that took me 3 hours to write here is probably moot. I’m especially interested (on anon in my asks if you’re not comfy with revealing yourselves) on thoughts from other people who have survived the original topics here, as well as any therapists and authors as well.

Take care of yourself Nonny. And please curate your own content for your mental health. Ao3 has an “exclusionary tag system” as well, please use it. *hugs*

#steph replies #suicide cw #censorship #self harm cw #chatting with nonnies #Anonymous #eating disorders tw #depression cw #romanticization #my thoughts #i am not a professional #long post

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purplesurveys · 4 years ago

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1131

survey by lilprincess

Approx. Time you began this survey: 6:46 on a Wednesday evening.

Describe your mood right now: Erm, a bit exhausted because I just ended a work shift; but content for the same reason. Right now I’m simply looking forward to dinner and crashing on the couch or my bed, wherever I feel like sleeping tonight.

Spell your first name without vowels: Rbn. Let’s just also remove y for this one.

Age you will be on your next birthday: 23.

Zodiac Sign: Taurus.

Do you believe what your horoscope says about your sign? I do not believe in astrology whatsoever.

What state/region do you live in? Somewhere in the Philippines somewhere close to Metro Manila.

Height: Like 5′1″ ish. I had a massive growth spurt in 4th grade that also ended in 4th grade, which will always be a funny story to tell people lmao. I went from being placed at the back of the class line to the front really quickly.

Do you smoke? Super occasionally. My last cigarette was like...all the way back in February last year. It was easier to hide the smell around my family before, but because my parents and siblings have mostly been staying at home in the last year it would be so easy to weed out the smell. I never feel like smoking anyway since I vape, so there’s been no reason to seek it out.

Do you drink? Yeah, sometimes socially and sometimes on my own if I wanna unwind and feel a lil buzz come through.

What's your ethnic background? Southeast Asian, specifically Filipino.

What's your religious background? Technically my ~background~ would be Catholic since I was born and baptized in that faith, but I’ve long let go of this. Excluding one very brief period in high school, religion was something I never held much belief and faith in, even if I've been taken to literally every Sunday mass for the last 23 years and even if I was enrolled in Catholic school from preschool to high school.

What's your natural hair color? Black.

What;s your natural eye color? Dark brown, almost black.

Do you have any bad habits you want to break? I do overtime work a lot but used to seldom file it on our company shift log sheet because I get shy that they must think I’m doing it just to be paid more, lol. I’m starting to file them every time I do OT though because fuck it, pay me.

Name a few of your positive habits. I like that I always find a way to meet deadlines. I like that I’m selfless, even though some would see it as a flaw. I’d rather do too much than say I never did anything at all.

Have you ever lived in a foreign country? No, the most I’ve done was travel to one for a week.

Did you vote in the Nov. 6 2012 presidential election? No because I am not American -___- The last election that took place before I was eligible was in 2010, and had I been able to vote then, I would’ve given mine to Gibo Teodoro, who I believe was the most qualified at the time.

Are you even eligible to vote? Yeah, I’ve been for the last 5 years. I’ve voted twice - once for the presidential elections back in 2016, and the next was for the senatorial elections in 2019.

Are you right handed or left handed? Right-handed.

When you write, is your penmanship usually neat or do you tend to scribble? It starts off neat for the most part, but it gradually gets messy and becomes more like a scribble if we’re talking about writing several essays in one sitting, which was usually the case in my exams in college.

Have you ever experienced an accident? (of any type): Sure, I’ve been in car accidents before. I’ve also been shocked once.

Do you have/want children? They would be nice to have, yeah.

Are you environmentally conscious? For the most part, yeah. But there are some things that can’t be helped, like me driving. Unless the government does something about the shitty public transport system that we have and have had for decades, I refuse to take it.

What's your favorite mode of transportation? Like I said, my own car. If I’m traveling, by plane.

Do you prefer 80's - 90's music compared to today's music? Eh, not at all. I prefer music produced these days.

Are you more of an introvert (quiet/shy), or extrovert (social butterfly)? I’ve been more of an extrovert in the last few years but I will always be shy at first upon meeting new people, like that will never change. I warm up a lot quickly now, though.

What's your favorite emoticon? :)

Do you miss the good old days of hand-written letters? I caught the super super super last part of this era, so I didn’t even get to experience it. I know snail mail was still kind of a thing when I was a kid, but at the same time that was happening my mom was also already using email to keep in touch with my dad, so.

Nowadays, though, when I do write letters to loved ones, I will still prefer to make handwritten ones, especially for a significant other or best friend. I don’t think I’ve ever sent out a computerized long letter.

Do you enjoy receiving or giving more? Giving, but it’s nice to be treated too sometimes.

Are you good at keeping secrets? Sure.

Do you take or give advice more often? I don’t usually get into situations wherein I’d have to do either, but I think I’ve been asking for advice more, especially over the last few months.

Do you have your driver's license? “I got my driver’s license last week, just like we always talked about...” Haha this question made me sing a bit. Anyway, yeah, I got it shortly after I turned 18 since I needed to quickly learn before college started.

Would you rather be poor & happy or rich but miserable? Rich but miserable. Soz but I’d solve 4854983594857 of my problems if I never had to worry about money.

Have you ever had a pregnancy scare? Never.

Have you ever blocked someone on Facebook? Probably not blocked, but I’ve unfollowed some current Facebook friends and unfriended others entirely.

Do you think recreational marijuana should be nationally legalized? Idk much about the topic since it’s taboo enough where I live, but sure, I guess?I haven’t heard one bad word about the effects of marijuana.

Describe your perfect first date. I’ve never really had a first date, but I imagine an ideal one would be pretty lowkey, just a stroll around a nice city and maybe have fancyish dinner somewhere.

Have you ever been high? Nope.

Have you ever watched a NC-17 rated film? Sure. A good handful of Kubrick films pass for NC-17, right? I’d be surprised if they weren’t, lol. I’ve been scarred by some of them for sure.

If you ever become reincarnated as an animal, what would you want it to be? A dog.

Do you remember where you were/what you were doing on September 11, 2001? No; I was 2 years old. I did ask my parents where they were in those moments, and my mom understandably missed most of it since the entire thing unfolded in the late evening in the Philippines. The only thing she can recall was being insanely worried for my dad, who had just started to work in the US back then.

Do you ever wish you were of a different nationality/religion? Yeah, to a certain extent, just because the political and socioeconomic situation here is very messy and it doesn’t really give us the nicest reputation in front of the world. I’m proud of my Filipino culture and heritage though.

Are you more of a junk food addict or health nut? Health nut is the last thing anyone should be calling me. But I’m not so much a junk food addict either? I do like spoiling myself with food, but I still monitor my intake.

Do you believe Antarctica should be considered the 7th world continent? Isn’t it already though?? We’ve always been taught there were 7 continents and Antarctica is one of them lol.

Describe your own sense of humor in 1 word: Gen-Z, if that counts as one word.

Have you ever quoted the Bible (or any other Holy Book)? If I ever did it was probably meant to be sarcasm.

Have you ever completed a Sudoku puzzle? No. Never figured out how to play it either.

Would you rather be a nuclear physicist or marine biologist? Marine biologist. That’s one step closer to one of my loves, biology. Plus I was never any good with physics, so.

Do you have a deep, dark secret you're hiding from every one? I guess.

Would you rather be able to soar like an eagle or swim like a dolphin? I’d make my childhood self happy and go with flight.

If you wanted to learn a foreign language, what would it be? Korean so I can finally stop reading subs, hahah.

Are you bi-curious? No.

Did you watch the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon more as a kid? The Nickelodeon cartoons were far more interesting to me. I think I only got into Disney when I got a little bit older, once I was able to appreciate the more mature content in shows like The Suite Life, That’s So Raven, etc. But for the most part our TV was always tuned into Nick Jr., Spongebob, Jimmy Neutron and the other Nick shows.

Name 5 films that were made the year you were born: American History X (great watch), The Truman Show, Mulan, La Vita e Bella if I’m not mistaken (one of my faves, no matter how gut-wrenching it is), and Shakespeare in Love.

Did you have a lot of friends in high school? Yes, eventually I did.

Do you rely more on the newspaper, Internet or TV as your news source? Social media these days since I find that online writers are far more discerning in their reporting than TV anchors, who stay neutral at best.

True or false: Bigger is better. Very vaguely put, but not always, I guess.

Do you think religion is the primary cause of war? No? There’ve been plenty other reasons for war.

What's your favorite pizza topping? ...Cheese.

Think of your wardrobe. What color do you wear the most? It’s still black, I think.

Have you ever been to a planetarium? Just once, on a middle school field trip. I’d love to come back, though.

Do you feel like you connect more with animals or other people? I don’t get to be with animals a lot other than my dogs, so I’ll go with people.

Do you feel like sometimes you have to lie in order to protect yourself? Wow so dramatically put haha but yeah, I suppose it does feel that way sometimes.

How often do you exercise? Literally never. I’ve stopped working out this year since I didn’t see the point, and I’ve stopped feeling like I had to ‘get back’ at my ex just by getting a more toned figure. I’m totally at peace with how my body looks, plus I never want to give up on my favorite foods and snacks lol so there’s that.

Can you swear in a different language? Putangina mong bobo kang gago ka. That’s three for ya.

Do you think teachers/doctors deserve to get paid more than pro athletes? Everyone deserves to be paid fairly to the point that no comparison should be necessary, period.

From a scale of 1- 5, you would rate this survey: Erm, a 4.5. I had to delete some questions I didn’t feel comfortable answering or that I found a little meh, but the rest I fairly enjoyed.

Do you think most of these questions were more original or more ordinary? It’s a bit in between.

Approx. time you completed this survey: Hahahahah 10:38 PM. I took a million breaks.

#survey #surveys

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hobbitsetal · 5 years ago

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Hobbs’ Dating Advice, Compiled

i’ve been married a whole year, so obviously i know everything.

...okay, definitely not, BUT I have had the benefit of wise advice from wise people and the benefits of seeing various friends and family members go through this whole dating thing, so let’s lay it out!

Before you date someone:

1. Figure out what you want from a relationship. I personally have always wanted to get married. I went into dating relationships with the knowledge that either we would marry or break up, and I went into relationships with the mindset of figuring out which outcome I wanted. You can communicate and set goals more effectively when you know what you’re working toward.

2. Figure out what you want in general. Where do you want to be in 5 years? in 10 years? What would you want to share with somebody? Do you want a family or do you want to be a free spirit? Feelings will fade, but goals can remain and unite. I personally want the whole white-picket-fence-and-kids deal, and I wanted a man who shared that goal. I want to take dance lessons and travel, and I want someone who will do that with me. My sister doesn’t want to marry. If she ever goes out with a guy, it’ll probably be just for fun and without an eye to anything serious.

3. Figure out what is non-negotiable. What are your deal-breakers? Figure those out now because you should have a set of standards to hold your relationships to, not a relationship to form your standards. I want kids. I want to be a stay-at-home mom. I want someone who is welcomed into and becomes part of my family. I married a man who fits these values. Religion and faith fits into this category. How important is spirituality to you and what would you want it to look like? I was very specific--Reformed or bust--but many people are comfortable marrying someone of different background--Catholics marry Protestants, Buddhists marry Christians. It depends on how seriously you take your beliefs. I have thoughts on this, but let’s pretend I have chill. This should be a mixture of common sense and personal. Don’t date someone who has anger issues. Don’t date someone who lies to you. Don’t date someone who wants something completely different from you. For me, it’s common sense to marry a fellow Christian. But it’s entirely personal to marry someone who shares my specific vision for how to serve in my local church. Less is more. These are your deal-breakers.

4. Build a circle of people whom you trust and who value you. Friends or family, you should have someone who has your back and knows you well. Relationships tend to be a tangle of emotions and giddiness and hormones. Friends and family aren’t the ones daydreaming about your lover’s eyes; they’re the ones asking if your lover respects you. You need people who can evaluate your lover objectively.

When you’re dating someone:

1. Evaluate them. I think it’s easy to discourage yourself from being “too intense,” or “throwing them out too soon,” but remember that list of non-negotiables? That comes into play here. I’m not saying ask them to lay out their five-year plan or say how many kids they want on the first date, but I would strongly recommend figuring out their goals as soon as possible. First date, figure out if you like them. I’m a huge fan of dating someone who’s already a friend, but that’s not always possible. My husband and I met while he was going to school in Kentucky, while I live in Louisiana. Our first conversations were over text message and Skype, and we talked about theology (a shared passion, as well as evaluating each other’s beliefs and compatibility with our own beliefs), books, movies, fictional characters, and tv shows. We got into the “so, how many kids do you want?” discussions after we entered into a formal dating relationship. But we also worked through our checklists of important things as early as possible. If he hadn’t wanted kids, no matter how charming and fun he was, I would have ended the relationship. If he hadn’t fit any of my non-negotiable items, I would have ended it. They’re deal-breakers for a reason, and that reason is that I decided long ago that I would not want to build a life without those values and goals.

2. Spend time around other people. This goes back to your circle of trusted people. They know you and they can see better than you how you and your lover interact with each other. When I dated my second boyfriend, I was much less interested in him than I thought I was, and my poor mother attempted to point that out to me. When he came over and played video games with my brother, I’d hang out with my mother in another room. I was so caught up in the pleasant feeling of being liked that I truly did not see how little I was actually interested in the person who liked me. Outsiders saw it. Outside viewpoints are crucial. The flip side is what do other people think of your lover? What do they think of you? A major factor in my relationship with my husband was how highly his friends spoke of him. They could tell me his flaws, if asked, but in between teasing him and flirting with me (thanks, David), they went out of their way to tell me what a great guy he is and how lucky I was to be dating him. He had no reason to impress them. He had every reason to impress me. Their opinions mattered a LOT. And related to the flaws, other people may see stuff you need to work on. Maybe you’re not communicating well. Maybe one of you speaks meanly to the other. If an outsider can comment on the flaw, the two of you have a chance to work on the flaw together. This will help you determine how well this relationship stands up to adversity.

3. Learn to communicate. There’s a reason this piece of advice seems to pop up whenever dating is mentioned, and that reason is that if you (or they!) cannot make your preferences and desires known effectively, your relationship will be doomed to frustration. Whether one of you is afraid of upsetting the other, one of you is adverse to conflict, or one of you has been trained to prioritize others to the point of personal detriment, if you cannot overcome blocks in communication, you cannot learn to function as a team. One of the hardest and most rewarding aspects of dating my husband was learning to call him out on his flaws. It hurt, it sucked, and it was miserable for both of us, but I learned I can trust him and he learned he can trust me. I can trust him to work on the things that hurt me and to prioritize my emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. He learned he can trust me to be truthful with him at personal cost to me, and that he can trust me to be true to our shared values even when, in the short-term, compromise would be easier. And speaking of compromise, good communication should make that possible. Whether it’s where to spend holidays or where to put the couch or what movie to watch, good communication and good compromise takes your partner’s needs and desires into account and balances them with your own.

4. Figure out how you treat money. I’m putting this one early because this needs to be a consideration. Which of you spends, which of you saves? What are your money habits? Can you trust each other to respect financial boundaries? My husband spends; I make Scrooge look philanthropic. But since we communicate well, we can talk about when to spend money and on what. Sometimes I really do not want to buy that thing he swears he needs and cannot accept his reasons. More often, it’s truly important to him and we agree to buy it. But it’s a team effort and we both enter the discussion fully aware of the other person’s spending habits.

When you’re getting serious:

1. Ask yourself if you can live with this person’s flaws. If they never learn to stop name-calling, if they never overcome that road rage, if they’re always emotional over silly stuff, can you live with that? Everybody has flaws. Nobody is perfect. You will never find somebody who lives up to all of your ideals. So can you live with this person’s flaws?

2. Have you had a chance to see each other at your worst and at your best? I spent part of our early relationship chiding my husband for sulking over stuff. He had the opportunity to call me out on some bare-faced hypocrisy when I chose to throw a fit over something. I’ve seen him road-rage; he’s seen me weasel out of commitments and pretend desperately I am completely unaware of this Very Important Deadline I’ve been procrastinating on. And I’ve seen him apologize for certain behaviors, prioritize something he’s not interested in for the sake of loved ones, learn to bite his tongue to promote peace in familial relationships, and accept challenges and hardships for the sake of crucial goals. His best makes the flaws easy to accept. His best tells me he is worthy of my trust and my admiration. His best makes me want to live with him and share my life and soul with him and help him overcome his flaws so he’s the best all the time. His best makes me want to write essays on why women should envy me. His best has to outweigh his flaws.

3. Does your trusted circle agree that this is a good person for you? My family loves Alex. Their concerns and caveats were heard and discussed. Sometimes we worked on issues; sometimes we determined that their viewpoint wasn’t completely accurate. But my family as a whole agrees that he and I are well-suited to each other, with common interests, common goals, and complementary personalities.

Remember every relationship is different because every personality is different. It’s okay to date multiple people (me). It’s okay to date one and be done (my husband). Your life is always going to be somewhat different from other people’s lives.

#relationships #dating advice #we're just going full mom today

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depressedoverdrawings · 5 years ago

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Can you hear the tumult of our youth?

KazeKi is the first romance I’ve ever enjoyed, or rather, that I emotionally connected with, as “enjoy” is a funny word choice for a work that made me feel so miserable. Personally, I’ve never enjoyed media that focuses on relationships and love, were they movies, TV, or literature.

But after I discovered KazeKi, I found myself drawn to it, almost involuntarily so. It was as if a spell had been cast. I suppose what superficially drew me in, at first, was the art. It had the charm of retro manga (I absolutely love retro manga/anime looks, IMO they have so much more character than most modern anime and manga), the nostalgic elegance of the idealized upper-class XIX century, and the unrelenting beauty and cuteness of all the boys.

It was mildly surreal and highly entertaining to witness the seed of so many shounen-ai visual tropes: The flower motifs, the flowery poetry, the impossibly pretty boys in dramatic embraces and breathy kisses, the aggressive frenchness of it all. Even it was shocking to me how these elements, instead of striking me as the tired, sappy tropes I saw them as, were now all genuine and beautiful, somehow. Even those silly sparkles around pretty boys seemed fitting. I realized these weren’t tropes back then, but elements of a sincere artistc vision. However, while the art was mesmerizing to me, I came to realize that what drew me in deeper, and kept me anchored to KazeKi, were the themes explored, and the character-based drama, the very stuff I had always avoided.

Without getting far too personal about it, Kaze to Ki no Uta was the first romance that struck something within me, somewhere personal. Now, I certainly have never faced trauma and pain anywhere near to what poor Gilbert and Serge face in their absurdly depressing story, but I definitely wouldn’t call myself emotionally and sexually resolved and healthy, and once upon a time I was a closeted boy in a catholic school, so I guess there’s space for a little bit of self-identification. My coping mechanism to my personal woes had always been to just bottle them up and distract myself with entertainment and art. And that was exactly what I was doing, browsing music on YouTube, when I stumbled upon the KazeKi OVA’s soundtrack.

I found myself listening to this gorgeous arrangement of a Chopin piece, and thought to myself, staring at the angelic figure looking back at me, across the screen: “Gee whilikers, that’s sure is a pretty drawing of a pretty girl”. Then, after reading the comments, I found out that was a boy. As much as the “draw a girl, call it a boy” school of drawing pretty boys makes me groan, I could still feel it, that first hook of interest, stabbing me. As the slideshow enticed me with pictures of Keiko Takemiya’s gorgeous art, I found myself enamoured by it. It was a particular drawing that made KazeKi finally snatch me: that same boy, lounging angelically on some sort of abstract architectural design; in the background, a neoclassical vase flanked by two neoclassical girls, and, above and below, this stunningly beautiful vegetation. So much care, skill, and good taste, concentrated in just one image! I’d have it as a poster, if I could. So, I googled “Kaze to Ki no Uta”, unwittingly throwing myself in a rabbit hole I could not have prepared myself for. Trying to read it was in itself a journey, but, to sum it up: I managed to read it about as well as one can, if they don’t speak japanese and have no access to the spanish and italian translations.

It had been years since I had started feeling emotionally numb. My most extreme displays of emotion came in the form of quiet, teary eyes, reserved for those rare, impactful pieces of art, and those rarer moments of despair-inducing introspection that I couldn’t manage to suppress, but even those lasted little, as I fought to recover my composure. By the end of Kaze to Ki no Uta, I was a sobbing wreck, doing my best (and failing) to contain my ugly crying. Ugly crying, for god’s sake. I was ugly crying, actually sobbing like a kid, because of an yaoi manga. Crying in the shower, even! What kind of weeb had I degenerated into? It hurt. It deeply hurt, in a way I hadn’t been made to hurt in a long, long while. KazeKi had impacted me to the point that I wasn’t just sad, I was scared too, as the waterfall of emotion opened the path for that deeper, personal darkness to come out. And it did.

Now, I admit I’d been a little bit more emotionally fragile than usual right before I read it, due to the effects of the quarantine and the previous consumption of a highly depressing piece of media: Les Amitiés Particulières, which is probably even more depressing than KazeKi as it deals with a much more grounded homophobia-induced tragedy based in real life. Somehow, it didn’t impact me as much as KazeKi, however. Also, it was definitely what influenced my personal YouTube algorithm to recommend me the KazeKi soundtrack, so I wouldn’t know of KazeKi if it weren’t for Amitiés. But even then, it felt unnatural to, well, feel so much. I hadn’t felt this invested in and attached to fictional characters ever since I was a little kid, too young to realize those people in the TV weren’t real. In the following couple of weeks, I was crying over these boys, spending whole days feeling like trash, feeling mild anxiety spikes whenever I remembered about KazeKi, having (even more) difficulty falling asleep, and utterly failing to avoid thinking about my deep-seated intimate issues, all because of these dumb, pretty anime boys. Not even my trusty prayer of “they’re not real people, stop being stupid” worked. In an attempt to stop wallowing in this shounen-ai hell, I decided to consume a whole lot of escapist media while I deliberately avoided any activity related to KazeKi, be it reading the manga, listening to the OVA’s soundtrack, looking at fanart, or even just thinking about it. It “worked” for a month or so, but now I’m back here, wallowing in KazeKi’s painful beauty again, stalking the other seven people in the western world that seem to care about KazeKi, and distilling my thoughts in this bizarre textwall, in an attempt to work it out. If you’re one of those seven people, please don’t refrain from talking to me, if you feel like it! I’ve had just one opportunity to have a conversation about KazeKi, and it was in YouTube comments, for heaven’s sake. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m this afflicted by KazeKi due to its unrelenting, merciless, cruel beauty. Everything about it is presented in this assembly of pure beauty and lost perfection, this painful nostalgia that is present in its aesthetics of an idealized Europe which lives only in its surviving art, that is present in the story which ultimately tells us of the loss of love, and is present in the fact that the whole story is a broken man’s reverie about the past. Tragedy might make me sad, but tragedy with beauty will destroy me. Bittersweetness is just so more cruel than bitterness. And it was this masterpiece of sadistic bittersweetness that permanently broke something in how I deal with my emotions. Kaze to Ki no Uta touched me deeply, to the point of leaving a permanent impression, I’m afraid. I can count in one hand the pieces of art that have punched my soul in the face like KazeKi did. I am honestly flabbergasted over the effect it had over me. At first I felt embarrassed over being emotionally obliterated by a freaking shounen-ai, but I’ve since come to the conclusion that KazeKi is a work of art, a genuine, sincere work of art, deserving of the title. Now I just hope I’m not alone in being emotionally obliterated by this freaking shounen-ai. After everything they went through, the personal fights, the shaky development of their relationship, the undeserved ostracism at Lacombrade, Auguste’s demonic persecution, the escape; how could it be that Gilbert’s life would end in such a horrible way, and that Serge would be left alone to face the full, unbearable weight of his grief! Why?! Keiko Takemiya, you’re a vile sadist. You’re a genius, too, of course. But you’re a vile sadist.

I knew that a happy ending wasn’t going to happen. The horrible ending was a pretty early spoiler, really. Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t stop myself from reading on anyway, and I couldn’t stop myself from having an inkling of illogical hope. Even if my logical self knew a happy ending wasn’t gonna happen, it couldn’t prepare me for just how tragically their love would end, and how awful it all would feel, once I knew their full story.

It’s all the more bitter because of how close Serge came to saving him, too. Having escaped together to a place where they could’ve built the nearest thing to a normal life a gay couple could have, back then. But in the end, not even Serge’s love could mend Gilbert’s mutilated soul. Those boys deserved so much better, especially Serge. Serge, you sweet angel! You were created to suffer.

KazeKi really is a masterpiece in how it explores its extremely heavy themes and the minds of its characters, and how it flawlessly meshes that with perfect art. There are many moments in KazeKi that haunt me: Serge letting that bird go, Serge’s vision of Gilbert at the Lacombrade grounds, Gilbert running into the carriage, angel wings behind him; Serge laying alone on the bed in Room 17. I cannot look at those pages without tearing up and feeling this horrible feeling in my heart, and this feeling is literal: My heart actually feels heavy and constricted when I think about it, it can’t be healthy. Up until now, I thought “cri evrytiem” was just a meme. KazeKi has woken me up to the fact that bottling up one’s own personal issues will inevitably end with them exploding out, leading to something much, much worse. I am scared by the prospect of facing my personal issues. To me, they are horribly strong, and seem incredibly hard to solve, if they’re even solvable at all. I’m horrified by the prospect of facing them, working to solve them. I’m so scared, that simply thinking about it, right now, gives me this awful weight in my chest, and makes me want to cry, again. But I know now that I have no choice in this matter, as the only alternative is that abyss I dare not speak of, and one cannot return from. Melodramatic? Yes. But I did just read Kaze to Ki no Uta.

Thank you for getting this far, whoever you are.

I’m forever haunted by Serge’s words to his long-gone Gilbert, right at the beginning:

“Gilbert Cocteau, you were the greatest flower to ever bloom in my life. In the faraway dreams of youth, you were a bright red flame, blazing so fiercely… You were the wind that stirred my branches. Can you hear the poem of the wind and trees? Can you hear the tumult of our youth? Oh, there must be others who so remember their own days of youth…”

#kaze to ki no uta #the poem of the wind and trees #rant #shounen ai

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faintingcouchguy · 4 years ago

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personal/sad

We had my grandma’s zoom memorial tonight, depressing tech glitches and all. My siblings put together three slideshows of photos of her synced to songs. The first one was Sinead O’Connor’s version “The Parting Glass,” a traditional Irish song I sang in front of my grandma when we were on a folk music pub crawl in Dublin in 2018. (Her overall review of Irish folk music was that there would be much less of it if Catholics were allowed to get divorced.)

Because of this and other memories, that song really affects me. My mom actually asked if I could sing it at the deathbed, and I broke down; if you know it or look it up you’ll get why I couldn’t handle the idea. By the second line I knew I couldn’t make it through: “and all the harm I’ve ever done, alas, it was to none but me.”

Since I’ve been here—this is the longest I’ve stayed at my parents’ house since I moved out, very nearly a decade ago—I’ve been helping sort out and organize and de-clutter-ize etc my childhood bedroom. A lot of that job involved winnowing huge stacks of old school assignments down to a few binders of representative, personality-displaying work for my parents to keep; it involved going through my diaries to see what was worth salvaging for personal historical record and what needed to be thrown down the memory hole. It was, essentially, a year-by-year tour of my entire life, though I did it all out of order.

And that was a lot! I was a severely unwell kid through most of high school, and alas, I *did* do harm. There was stuff I knew would be awful to find, about people I broke my own heart on and about friendships I blew up when I was sickest, and that was all just as bad as I thought. There was also so much I didn’t expect, things that changed my perspective on many of those most intense memories, and just...so much evidence of who I was, who I went on to become, the person I came to accept and then enjoy being.

The most amazing discovery is just that I was *such a writer,* all that time. I’ve always had the itch (“writing is an illness or compulsion,” I wrote on my sixth grade career day worksheet), and I’ve always tried and tried to work it out. My writing for school had a range of encouraging and/or exasperating reactions scrawled on. The journals are full of intense personal reflections, fiction drabbles, even poetry. I barely remembered or recognized any of that, but it was there and it was mine.

It turns out I was also this incredibly ardent bi mess who fell really hard for people and spent a lot of energy Wooing, without really uh insisting on being treated ardently back. I put up with a lot of inconsistent, ambiguous expressions of affection/attraction from my girl- and boyfriends; without this whole exercise, I might never have gotten such a clear perspective on that pattern and what messes I made over it. I’ve often thought back on the sick and harm-causing version of myself and felt like maybe it’s unfair that I get to have love and peace and stability now. Like, who the fuck am I? And this has given me some possible answers. Like maybe it’s not such a wild imbalance of the universe that I’m now so blessed with partners who love my whole deal. Maybe I’m just not idealizing imbalanced dynamics so much anymore.

I’m only here one more day. I miss my partners a lot and have been looking forward to going home since I left. But I’m incredibly lucky that I got to be with my family during our bereavement, when that’s been denied to so many this year. And I’m lucky I got to take this long look at my life and see what I can accept and forgive and move on from.

I threw most of the journals away. But I’m glad I read through everything first. All the harm I’ve ever done to me. Now I get to drain the glass, get up from the table, and go.

#big long post whoops #personal tag #I should make better tag names #good night and joy be with you all

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scullymakesmefeelautopsyturvy · 5 years ago

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Several Times Scully Got Locked Out Of Her Motel Room In Her Scanties (First Time Smut Ensues) Chapter One

Space (Season One)

They sat on the city steps in the midday sunshine awaiting another of Mulder’s mysterious informants. She, eating a sad little excuse for a sandwich: cucumber-dampened white bread encompassing roast chicken lovingly Saran-wrapped and pressed into her hand after Sunday lunch at her parents’ house. An awkward lunch, during which her father had accomplished the stellar feat of not asking her about her work once. I should have cheered everyone up by asking if anyone had heard from Charles lately, Melissa had joked, darkly, over the phone afterwards.

The sandwich stuck in her throat a little as she swallowed, and out of nowhere, everything felt so… insufficient.

Was this really her life now? Crackpots and conservative suits and no sex since Jack? Reading journals alone on Friday nights and eating her mother’s leftovers?

She was still stashing a fastidiously initialed brown bag in the Bureau staff kitchen fridge each morning, as she had been in the habit of doing at Quantico.

Dana Katherine Scully, you’re hardly a schoolgirl anymore, she told herself.

Perhaps it was time to graduate to lunch in the cafeteria, like one of the big kids.

Mulder nibbled on his inescapable sunflower seeds. Rental car cup holders. The top drawer of the basement desk. The bottom drawer, and the middle. Even loose, once, inexplicably, in her suitcase when she arrived home from a three-night case in Iowa. They were everywhere, pervading her entire life with their woody scent and their easy charm just like the man who unceasingly consumed them.

He was close, now, his knees spread wide and swinging with casual rich-kid confidence as he began to lose patience with his anonymous NASA tipster. Scully kept her stockinged legs primly pressed together, her well-lined heavy linen skirt draping over her kneecaps, preserving her modesty. His fingertips brushed her own as he handed her the informant’s note, and she was glad of the excuse to break his gaze, to look down and away from his face; the inevitable thrill she was coming to know so well shooting through her body from tip to toes.

When the Space Program whistleblower did arrive, it was a she; a development Scully could well have done without. Especially one as… developed as this.

Long and lean, blonde, finessed; Michelle Generoo looked exactly like the full-sized version of the girls Scully imagined Mulder growing up with on Martha’s Vineyard, summering in Rhode Island, picnicking on lush lawns by sparkling waters while she herself played hopscotch with scavenged pebbles on Navy base blacktop, or avoided cracks in uneven paving slabs as she skipped along in hand-me-down pleated skirts and fraying hand-knitted sweaters. This was probably exactly the WASP-y horsewoman type Mulder’s parents had always envisaged him marrying, with her tweed jacket and her long silky locks and her mirror-lensed aviators.

Not a squat, pale, Irish Catholic Navy brat with full cheeks, wiry russet hair and stubborn freckles that were probably popping exponentially with every second spent sitting in this sunshine. Who still brought homemade sandwiches to work.

Michelle Generoo: Mission Control Communications Commander for the Space Program in Houston. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me now, for I must have sinned, and am being punished with the early-afternoon arrival of Fox Mulder’s ideal woman, sent from heaven to enact my own personal hell.

Scully hated this feeling: this creeping sense of little sister inferiority. It was the mid-semester first day at a new school all over again, having been transplanted with her father’s latest deployment; Bill laughing and joking with the jocks or the prettiest clique of girls he could find, she hiding with a book in the library. It was enviously watching Melissa tame her curls into elaborate braids when all she could manage was a stubby ponytail with lumps at her crown, aged seven, twelve, twenty-nine.

What was it about prepubescent inadequacies that made them so infuriatingly unassailable? Successfully reinterpreting Einstein and near-perfect pistol qualification scores had only ever compensated for so much.

At the mention of a fiancé - a Shuttle Commanding astronaut fiancé, no less - Scully relaxed somewhat. For once, she was glad that Mulder’s particular obsession with certain matters of the universe was a little less than impressive to the casual observer.

Mulder disappeared off into the city on some unspecified errand, and sent her back to the Hoover Building to arrange flights and accommodation, agreeing to meet her at the airport.

On the plane, he seemed disappointed when she didn’t want to read his brand new copy of NASA: A History of American Space Travel, and peppered her with trivia instead.

“Did you know, all twelve men who walked on the moon agree, the surface smells like spent gunpowder?”

“Oh really,” Scully said. “And what did the women say?”

Mulder looked a little uncomfortable. Having made her point about why she might, perhaps, feel a little excluded from his spaceboy enthusiasm, Scully pondered this fact.

“They can’t remove their helmet on the moon; there’s no atmosphere.” She countered. “How do they know what it smells like?”

“From the dust left over on their spacesuits,” Mulder was clearly happy to be able to inform her.

Scully frowned at him.

“You think they’re so cool, don’t you Mulder?”

He looked personally injured. “Scully, how can you be the one person in the universe - a physicist, no less - who doesn’t think space travel is cool?”

She turned her torso in her narrow seat to face him.

“Mulder, when I was five years old, for Apollo 11, I was just as excited as you are now. My older brother and sister and I followed the news of the mission; we watched the moon landing just like everybody else. Bill and Melissa dressed up as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin for Halloween that year; they made me be the Stars and Stripes so we could all pose for photos together. I had to stick my arm out and wobble the flag. We were just as space crazed as anyone. And over the years, as the missions continued, I read everything, I mean everything-” Mulder nodded, he could surely believe that of Scully at any age - “and I found out some trivia of my own.”

Mulder titled his head, curious.

“You know, a spacesuit is a sealed environment. It has to be airtight, right?”

Mulder nodded.

“And spacewalks last between five and eight hours on average.”

Mulder was listening intently.

“Well, there’s… nowhere to… go. When you have to go,” she gestured euphemistically. “And in a zero-gravity environment - or any environment, in fact - you don’t want to just relieve yourself inside the suit.”

Mulder frowned.

“So they wear these… things. It’s called a MAG: A Maximum Absorbency Garment,” she enunciated carefully. “You just… let it go, and it… absorbs it.”

Mulder looked perturbed.

“So basically, underneath that cool, space-exploring exterior,” Scully continued, “you’ve got a bunch of highly trained, hero-worshipped men - and now, women - floating around wearing adult diapers.”

Mulder swallowed hard.

“You know, I have a little brother. Charles. When he was still wearing Pampers I would watch my mom changing him, and I’d smell those foul odors and witness the frankly terrifying contents in some detail, and I just - I could never look at astronauts in the same way again after I found out about the MAG. I don’t know, it just ruined it for me.”

Her partner sat back quietly in his chair, more than a little disturbed.

Scully smiled at him weakly, and decided to take a nap.

On the tarmac in Houston, the cabin lights, dimmed for landing, switched back to full brightness as the seatbelt indicator dinged off. Mulder sprang out of his seat, already reaching up for the overhead bins to retrieve their luggage.

Scully sat calmly with her forest-green briefcase on her lap, not willing to pointlessly stand for ten minutes while the passengers in rows A-R filed interminably slowly up the aisle, huffing and checking her watch as though that would change the physics of the aircraft and hurry anything along.

No, patience had always been her friend; she would await her turn peacefully, could wait for anything forever, so long as she knew for certain it was coming to her.

Alighted, they bypassed the checked baggage carousels, Mulder carrying the suitcases and Scully toting only her leather satchel. The pair walked to the Lariat desk, where Scully hung back, and Mulder flirted with the smiling clerk working the night shift.

In the car, Mulder questioned her again about the arrangements.

“Intercontinental, Scully? It’s probably the furthest possible airport from the Space Center.”

“...and all requisitions would let me book at such late notice. The flights into Hobby were almost double the cost. It would be a waste of taxpayers’ money.” She signalled right, checking both directions.

“Are we heading further North, Scully?” Mulder asked, checking the constellations through the windshield.

She tsked and gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “It’s late. If you want to make all future travel bookings, be my guest, Mulder. But as it stands we’ll stay up here tonight, drive down for our eight-thirty a.m., and stay down there from tomorrow.”

At the mention of the morning meeting with Lt. Belt, Mulder brightened, and stuck his head back in his book for the remainder of the journey to their motel.

When they arrived at the Spring Creek Mercury Motorlodge, she threw him a look. A warning shot.

Don’t say a word, Mulder.

The motel took shabby to a whole new level: the paintwork was more chips than oil-based matte; the blown bulbs outnumbered the working ones, the woodwork of the bare-bones portico looked like it should have been condemned alongside the Rosenbergs.

The sign on the office door declared, ‘Desk open 7 a.m. - 10 p.m. ONLY ring bell outside of opening hours for ABSOLUTE EMERGENCIES.’

Scully checked her watch. It was approaching midnight. A handwritten Post-It stuck at an angle underneath read, ‘Scully booking, rooms # 8 & 12. Doors open. Keycards inside.’

“Always nice to experience that famous Southern hospitality,” Mulder deadpanned, peeling the note from the glass. They moved along the walkway, counting up as they went.

The door to number eight was propped barely ajar with a rotting two-by-four. Scully could see the square of exposed woodwork where an old lock mechanism had been removed: replaced by a newfangled electronic keycard system. She ran her eyes over the crumbling porch roof and thought, Really? This is where they chose to invest their refurb budget?

Mulder pushed the door open for Scully and held her gaze as she stared at him momentarily. He looked like he was about to follow her into the room.

“Thanks,” she gulped, taking her suitcase from his hand.

But he stayed put outside, grabbing the handle to pull the door shut, double checking their plans for the morning. “See you at seven-fifteen then? All checks complete and ready to strap ourselves into the command module?” He grinned.

Scully dropped her case onto the bed and sighed. He was going to be insufferable tomorrow.

***

After showering, hanging up her burgundy pantsuit for the next day, then losing a fight with the room’s overactive heater, Scully unravelled the tightly rolled pink satin pajamas from her suitcase. You get fewer wrinkles if you roll rather than fold, her mother had taught her.

Stepping into them, she could already feel herself perspiring lightly, and wondered if it would be better to do without the pajamas or the comforter. Her mind flashed to the various possible emergencies that might see her fleeing her room in the middle of the night: a fire, a tornado, an intruder.

Keep the pajamas, lose the comforter, she decided.

But she suspected she’d need more to keep herself cool. She remembered passing an ice machine a few doors down, and grabbed a metal bucket left on the dresser for just such purposes, tucking her keycard into the breast pocket of her nightwear as she went.

She was so warm and the ice machine was so close, she didn’t even bother with shoes as she tiptoed the few feet along the walkway. The machine hummed and clanked as she lifted the front and noisily plunged the bucket into the crisp, dry cubes.

Ice.

The Arctic Ice Core Project. Alaska. A sparsely appointed supply closet. Mulder crouching down to her level and hissing his balmy, furious breath directly into her face.

I don’t trust them. I WANT to trust you.

He’d been angry and sweaty and ripe, and it had been the two of them against the others. They’d made what felt like a binding pact, whispering conspiratorially; sealing it with their laying on of hands.

If she’d been asked prior to that about the most intimate part of a person’s body, she might have given the same answers as anyone else. Reproductive organs her studies had given her medical names for. Mammary glands meant for feeding young but warped by western culture into symbols of sex and shame. Perhaps the cushiony swell of the gluteus maximus, so favored by jocks, and creeps in bars.

But she’d finished that case on the Icy Cape with the discovery of more than a new species of worm; she’d learned for the first time about the deep, heady, overwhelming intimacy of touching another person at the back of the neck.

Jesus, she’d already been so wet when he’d grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her back to inspect her spine. She feared her unguarded gasp had given her away. And when he’d brushed aside her hair and lain his whole palm against the nape of her neck, awaiting the telltale wriggle of the homicide-inducing parasite, it was she who had squirmed beneath the hot, unrelenting pressure.

Oh god, what he’d be able to do to her with those big, strong, capable hands.

Alaska at that latitude had average winter temperatures of less than zero degrees Fahrenheit. November on the North Slope saw little more than three hours of sunshine a day. They regularly experienced impenetrable blizzards that could freeze a person to death in under an hour.

But when Dana Scully thought of the Icy Cape, all she could feel was searing, blazing, pulsing heat.

She filled the ice bucket, slammed the machine shut, and carried her personal cooling system back to her room, balancing it on her hip like an infant as she swiped the keycard for entry.

She got a red light.

Furrowing her brow, she swiped again.

Red.

Again.

Red.

Sighing her frustration, she ran the card through the slot several more times, resting the bucket on the floor and jiggling the handle as she tried over and over for green, listening for the buzz of the latch electronically pulling back.

Nothing.

She threw her hands up in the air and tried twice more to no avail.

She looked about her for assistance, finding none. No one was about. She started off towards the office and slowed as she reached the door. She re-read the sign.

ABSOLUTE EMERGENCIES.

Well, she couldn’t get into her room. Surely that was an emergency. She pressed the bell and waited, but no one came. She pressed again, and again, nothing. This was ridiculous. She tried once more with the bell, and after two minutes, sighing furiously, strode back along the walkway, her bare toes starting to go numb. She’d successfully cooled off, at least.

She continued past room eight, doubling back to try the lock three more times then kicking the door with great vexation before jogging up towards number twelve, wrapping her arms around her breasts to warm herself. The ice bucket stood sentry, dripping condensation.

She lifted her knuckle to knock on Mulder’s door, then hesitated slightly. She stole a glance down at her pajamas. They were not thick, and clung to her curves, puckering at her bare nipples. Mulder had seen her wearing far less - had checked her for mosquito bites clad only in what her maternal Grandmother would have called her smalls on their very first case - and remained professional, but that had been a rare exception, borne of her neophyte panic. She worked so hard to be taken seriously, to be seen as a colleague and an expert and a peer, and not as a sexual object. It was hard to project an air of authority in pastel pink satin with your breasts announcing themselves to anyone within five hundred yards. But Jesus, it was freezing out, and she had to be up and dressed in less than seven hours. She wasn’t about to spend a frostbitten night out in the cold and give herself hypothermia for the sake of avoiding a little embarrassment. She was a fully grown woman; Mulder, a fully grown man. They were both adults here. They could be mature about this.

She knocked, hugging her chest again afterwards.

Mulder opened the door still in his shirt and tie, although his jacket was hung over the desk chair in the corner. The NASA book lay face down, open on the bed. He chewed on one of his infernal seeds.

“You okay, Scully?” he asked, frowning. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Couldn’t get back into my room,” Scully explained, huffing. “I went out for ice and my… the keycard doesn’t work.”

“You should ring the bell for the owners,” Mulder suggested, unhelpfully.

“I did,” Scully said, pointedly. “No answer.” She looked up at him and pressed her lips together apologetically. “Can I come in?”

“Of course, of course,” Mulder said, standing back to let her enter. He stood with his back to the door after it was closed. “You can sleep in here; it’s no bother. I’ll crash on the floor.”

“Thank you,” Scully said, perching on the desk. Mulder sat himself on the end of the bed and gazed over at her.

“You cold?” he asked.

Actually, Mulder’s room was as toasty as hers had been, and her toes were already thawing out.

“Warming up,” she said, thankfully.

“Just that you’re… hugging yourself,” he explained, gesturing at her arms, still clamped across her unsecured bosom.

“Oh,” she said, self-consciously, but let her arms drop slowly to her sides, gripping the edge of the desk with both hands for security. “I’m not… wearing very much, is all.”

“Oh,” he echoed softly, his eyes scanning the length of her nightwear all the way to the floor and back up again. Yes, she was certainly feeling some heat once again.

“What you are wearing is… very nice though.” His eyes settled on her own for a few seconds, then flicked down to her breasts, and she inhaled sharply, silently, she hoped in retrospect. When he looked back at her face, her mouth was hanging slightly open, and she caught herself, licking her lips for discipline, her chest heaving. He looked down again.

She felt her cheeks burning, and averted her eyes to the book on the bed, a change of focus for her mind, which was racing with thoughts of candlelight and shower-wet hair, of thermal shirts and platonic supply closet fumblings: Mulder and his fingertips the common denominator in these scenarios.

She forced herself to look back at him. He was comfortably staring now, his face giving nothing away, but she knew he was quite aware she’d seen him appreciating her exposed form. He was leaving this up to her.

She wrestled with her conscience.

She shouldn’t do this. They were partners. It was against Bureau policy. It was unprofessional. It could ruin her career if it ended badly. Worse, it could come between her and Mulder, drive a wedge between them and prise apart their newly cemented friendship.

But…

She thought of Oregon and hands and Alaska and ice, and she knew what she wanted.

You’re hardly a schoolgirl anymore...

She stood up slowly, wordlessly taking a few steps towards Mulder on the bed. Yes, they were both fully grown, and she had some very adult ideas about what they could do together.

She paused one or two paces from his knees, and held his gaze for a moment. She let her lips fall open once more, her breathing labored, and she saw his breath was keeping pace with her own.

She thought of Michelle Generoo, and of her own jealousies and insecurities, and second guessed herself momentarily. She’d always suspected she wasn’t Mulder’s type. Yes, he had moments ago brazenly taken in the sight of her nipples brushing against the silky confines of her pajama top, but he was a red-blooded straight male, and they had been right there, still standing at attention from her time out in the cold. And yes, he was looking at her intently now as she crossed the room, the propulsion of months and months of unverbalized, unresolved sexual tension at her back, but his expression was blank, and he might be nervously wondering how the hell he was going to abort this mission.

There was one way to be sure. He had done his fair share of looking; it was her turn to be brazen.

She dropped her gaze to his lap, seeking a different kind of green light.

In the dim glow coming from the slightly open bathroom door, she found exactly what she was seeking. The bulge that tented Mulder’s pants cast a promising shadow. She was go for launch.

She took another step, and found his eyeline once more.

His pupils were dilated, his lips pillow-soft and pouting, the ridge growing noticeably larger even in her peripheral vision.

She reached down for his left hand and brought it to her breast, pressing it against herself over the pajamas.

“Make me see stars, Mulder,” she whispered, breaking into a lazy smile.

His momentary expression of disbelief gave way to a grin, and he looked up at her with reverence. She let go of his fingers, dropping her arm to her side once again, and his palm moved with feathery softness over her breast, centering her nipple in the smoothest spot, where you’d clutch a baby’s fist, or a prized possession. The heat of his hand radiated through the satin, the friction of skin on fabric even more erotic than direct contact. Their gazes were locked. His mouth fell open a fraction, mirroring hers, and he raised his other hand to work both breasts, his fingers held up and away from her body as he traced circles with her hardened peaks against his deep volar arches. She closed her eyes and moaned, low and soft, letting her head fall backwards. Her knees went limp, and Mulder steadied her with one hand, docking her at the hip.

His grip sent shockwaves to her core, her pulse now strongest between her legs. She knew she was already leaving a damp mark on her pajama bottoms.

She lifted her head back up and looked down at Mulder, still seated on the edge of the comforter. They panted together in the quiet, each awestruck by the other, and Scully reached up to her top button, deftly pushing it through the opening with her delicately manicured fingertips. She did not avert her eyes from Mulder’s as she worked her way down to her waist, finally letting the shirt hang open at the front.

She took his left hand once more and tucked it inside the front panel, his massive palm easily encompassing the entire fleshy mound there. He squeezed her hip gently, cupping her and pulling her towards him at once, guiding her between his knees. Checking her eyes for continued consent, he brushed the center of her shirt to one side and revealed half of her chest to his vision for the first time.

“Oh, Scully,” he said in a hushed voice, and - permission silently granted by Scully’s hungry gaze - lifted his mouth to her nipple and latched on, sucking, circling his tongue around her hot, pink bud. She moaned again and grabbed the back of his head, twisting her fingers into his hair, her nails scratching at his scalp.

His mouth broke contact with her delicately pale skin, and he pushed the satin from her shoulders, letting it whoosh to the floor.

He was gazing up at her again, and she leaned down to kiss him now, finally allowing herself to experience in the flesh that which she had longed for, imagined, fantasized about for some time. Their lips met; wet, fervent, ravenous. Their shared craving drew them together, suctioning them to one another at the mouth as though they could consume one another entirely, and meant to. His salted breath mingled with her own, and their tongues tangled and danced. He ran his hand up her naked back, and her breasts pressed against his collarbone.

He pulled away, and she held the side of his face tightly to her bare chest, breathless, eyes closed.

“Scully,” he ventured, “are you sure about this?” He looked up at her with his soft, beautiful, hazel eyes. She didn’t know what had possessed her for so long, being able to resist those eyes all these months.

She straightened up, and took his hand once again, reaching behind herself to slide it down the back of her waistband, over her rounded ass, and into the molten cleft of her body. She spread her thighs as his fingers found her desire, parting and probing her on their voyage of discovery. He dipped a single digit inside her body, and she exhaled on a low moan.

“I’m sure, Mulder,” she murmured, smiling again. “Take me to the moon and back.”

He relaxed a little, his shoulders dropping, “Oh is that the game?” he teased, “Space puns?”

She shrugged playfully.

He smiled wide at her, or she thought he did; it was hard to see with her eyelashes fluttering closed. Her head dropped back once more as he pumped into her, his thumb resting fortuitously against the base of her perineum, that dark, forbidden, blissful spot. She felt alive, animal, raw. She let her breath come out ragged, allowed her rasps and moans to escape unbridled. Mulder paused his efforts for a second or two, leaving two fingers curled inside her, using his free hand to yank down her pajama pants. She helped, kicking them loose from her ankles as he grabbed a handful of her ass with his spare hand and pulled her toward the bed, reclining face up on the mattress and encouraging her to crawl on her knees up to his shoulders and sit back. Only then did he remove his fingers from inside of her, and her body sucked at them as he did, protesting their departure.

Scully was giddy with want, and Mulder looked up at her just then with such veneration that her heart burst with renewed affection for him. She’d never been made to feel more worthy in her life. This was so Mulder. She had not specifically realized it before, but this was how he often made her feel, in his best moments.

At the insistence of his hand pressing gently on her lower back, his fingers sticky with her own yearning, she lowered her sex to his mouth.

As soon as his velvet tongue met her clit, she cried out, almost lifting herself up on her knees at the shock of it. He held her steady, lapping at her hardened bundle of nerves with the flat of his tongue, softly at first, then applying more and more pressure as she sunk further down onto him, his chin pressing up into her heat, her slick juices gliding her inner walls against his light stubble. Oh Jesus, it was divine, and she called out his last name as she rode his face, her breath hitching in her throat as her trajectory was set to climax.

Scully chanced a glance downwards and saw that he was watching her in her ecstasy.

She was wanted. She was valued. She was enough.

She smiled down at him, not halting her movements, and reached up to pinch her own nipples with her dainty, expert hands. Mulder groaned his pleasure into her body, sucking and licking and holding her down so she could not get away.

“Fuck,” she gasped, and was lost; her face lifted to the heavens, her body and mind spinning and soaring in concupiscent formation, her voice clamorously invoking two thirds of the Trinity with various, stertorous monikers as she rocketed into her own private orbit.

Mulder massaged her hips and kept his chin tilted up into her as she twitched and panted and called out for God, and she felt her inner muscles contracting around his way-past-five-o-clock shadow. The humid air of his heavy breath rushed from his nose, tickling her pubic mound as his lips remained clamped over the hood of her clitoris. She exhaled the last of her shudders and sat back on her haunches, resting on his solid pectorals, running her tongue over her lips, wetting them with exhausted delight. Mulder’s chin glistened in the dim room, drenched, and she laughed, reaching down to wipe him off.

He let her, but then caught her by the wrist and held her soaked palm against his mouth, kissing it, hard, and smearing the residue of her arousal all over his lips once again. He licked them clean, unblinking.

She buried her face in her other hand and laughed shyly.

Mulder chuckled along with her, resting his hands on her still-spread thighs, his thumbs dipping close to her parted labia. She bit her lower lip and looked him in the eye once again, unable to hide her happiness.

“Luckily, out here, no one can hear you scream,” he joked, a question in his eyes suggesting he was worried he might not get away with this, and she pushed him away teasingly but giggled as she climbed off the bed. She picked up her pajama pants from the floor.

“And where do you think you’re going?” Mulder asked her as she stood up.

“I’ll be right back,” Scully responded, flinging the bottoms over her shoulder and sauntering off to the bathroom, looking back at him to make sure he was getting a good look at her receding form. “Don’t move.”

She glanced down at the enormous bulge in his pants once again, and knew she needn’t worry. He wouldn’t be going anywhere with that thing.

She returned a few minutes later, now wearing the satin pants, and sporting a dark gleam in her eye as she crept across the carpet towards him. When she reached the bed, he leaned up on his elbows and reached for her to pull her onto the bed, but she shook her head. Instead, she reached for his belt buckle and deliberately undid it, sliding the leather through the metal loop before reaching for his fly. As she unzipped his pants, Mulder lifted his hips, and his erection bounced up, pushing the flaps of the zipper to either side, straining against his boxer briefs. This was one shuttle she wouldn’t mind watching blast off, and she was ready to fire up the booster rockets.

She helped him remove his pants, then tugged at the waistband of his underwear. He removed it and lay himself back down on the bed, looking almost anxious.

“Mulder,” she reassured him. “Relax; I want this. I want you.” She whispered the last part, lowering herself to kneel at the foot of the bed.

His manhood loomed large, worryingly large for such a petite person, but Scully had never met a challenge she didn’t want to face. And face it she did; this hard, quivering invitation to wantonness inches from her mouth. He smelled like the Mulder she had come to know, only stronger here; that musky, spicy pheromone blend that brought her to her knees - now, finally, literally - and she breathed him in with abandon.

She gripped him in her hand, taking his tip into her mouth, sweeping her tongue around the head of his cock as he exhaled forcefully. She slid her closed palm up and down the base of his shaft, letting her saliva drip down to lubricate her ministrations, then working him further into her jaws so that the top of his penis rubbed just against her soft palate. She bobbed her head against him. He filled her mouth easily, and she thought of all the times she’d surreptitiously stolen a glance at his lap. Her curiosity had been satisfied, and then some. He was every bit as big as she’d always suspected, and her small oral cavity made for a snug fit as she worked him into a frenzy on the bed.

He clutched at the covers and murmured her name, encouraging her efforts all the while. He slowed her at one point, just managing to explain through his moans that he wanted to enjoy it a little longer, but his thighs were soon flexing again and she accelerated her pumping with her fist, sucking a little harder, working the tip of her tongue against his popping veins.

Mulder reached out and grabbed at her shoulder, clumsily pushing her back. “T-minus... T-minus five seconds and… and counting…” he sputtered, and she risked another tongue swirl, another deep thrust towards her throat.

“Scully!” Mulder choked out, and she pulled her mouth away. She kept her hand in place and he wrapped his own around it, working his erection skillfully as he delivered his impressive payload over their ten conjoined fingers and down onto his stomach. A coy smirk plastered itself across Scully’s face as he collapsed back onto the bed.

She raised herself from the floor, rolling her neck from side to side, and grabbed the box of tissues that was sitting on the nightstand. She held them out and sat on the mattress, one foot tucked under the opposite thigh, her breasts sitting proudly on her chest with the pert insouciance of youth.

Mulder cleaned himself up and aimed the balled up tissues at the wastebasket, missing. He sighed, but didn’t get up, so Scully laughingly dragged herself over and retrieved the errant missiles, dropping them into their intended target. She returned to the bed and lay herself down in the crook of Mulder’s arm.

He kissed her temple, a peck, brushing a strand of hair from her forehead, then lifted her chin with one finger so that he could plant a full kiss on her mouth. She breathed in the scent of herself on his lips, their musky scents intermingling on both their tongues.

“Wow Scully,” he smiled. “That was fun.”

She nodded, grinning herself.

“Although, it was a bit of a close encounter, if you know what I mean,” he said, and she buried her face in his shoulder and laughed, any residual worries she’d had about this changing the fundamental nature of their relationship flying away on her huffing breath and disappearing into the vacuum of the mattress.

Mulder lifted his head. “Oh god, it’s past two,” he announced. He must have been checking the display on the alarm clock. “You should get some sleep Scully; you gotta drive us down to the Space Center in the morning.”

“Hey, it’s your turn,” she whined, sitting up and pulling the covers back to climb beneath. Her pajama shirt lay forgotten on the floor. Tornadoes and fires be damned, she’d already had her ABSOLUTE EMERGENCY for the night. It was too hot for more clothes, especially with Mulder’s intense body heat so close. And she did intend to hold him close tonight. And other nights, if he wanted her.

“Talk about a waste of taxpayer’s money, Scully,” Mulder droned, sitting up and shaking himself alert. “The two of us sharing a motel room while another sits empty.”

“Oh,” Scully replied sleepily. “Believe me, I’m demanding a refund on my room.”

“Demanding a refund, Scully?” Mulder queried, now folding his pants and setting them on the chair by his suit jacket. “You weren’t happy with the level of service you just received?”

She squinted one eye open to look at him. “Mmm, you? You did good, Mulder. I’ll be sure to leave a generous tip for you at check out.” She patted the mattress next to her.

“I’ll be right there,” he assured her, disappearing off into the bathroom.

She was asleep before he even turned out the light.

***

Scully had witnessed Mulder ejaculating for the first time at the Spring Creek Mercury Motorlodge, but she genuinely worried she might see an impromptu repeat performance when they arrived at the Space Center the following morning. Walking to their meeting, they bantered for the benefit of their NASA escort, Mulder practically bouncing off the walls and once again bombarding her with facts and figures.

“You remember all that stuff?” she asked, wearily, suppressing a yawn.

“You never wanted to be an astronaut when you were a kid, Scully?”

“Guess I missed that phase,” she sighed, mouthing ‘adult diapers’ at him behind their guide’s back.

She couldn’t help but make fun of him for his adulation of Lt. Belt, either. “Didn’t you want to get his autograph?” she teased as they left the Space Shuttle Program Director’s office, and when Mulder caught up with her he tapped her lightly on the ass in retaliation.

At some point in the afternoon, Mulder slunk off and made some phone calls, and when they drove to their accommodation after the successful launch that evening, it wasn’t the motel Scully had booked but a ritzy hotel with bellhops and room service. They finally made it back there in the middle of the night, following the complications with the mission and Lt. Belt’s questionable press conference.

At the reception desk, Mulder retrieved two keys, but when he held one out to Scully and she grasped her forefinger and thumb around it, he didn’t let go. She looked up to meet his smoldering gaze.

“What’s the matter Houston; do we… have a problem?” She managed to keep a straight face, just about.

“What do you say we waste some more taxpayer’s money tonight, Scully?” he grinned, his voice hushed, seductive. “Maybe we can cross... the final frontier?”

She halfheartedly rolled her eyes at his pun, but her insides were already aflame. She drew her mouth into a tight, shy smile, and nodded her agreement.

nb. I want everyone to know that I watched the Falcon 9 launch and I managed to refrain myself from using the phrase ‘good orbital insertion’ in this fic. And that was a struggle.

AO3 link here.

#xfsmut2020 #mulder and scully #mulder #scully #the x files #x files #x files fanfic

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saprophetic · 4 years ago

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Why did you convert to Judaism?

tl;dr: it called to me for five years and felt like home, even before i knew i was allowed to be jewish. the community aspect, the sense that i was who i was supposed to be. that i was where i was supposed to be.

the long version is... very complex, and i'll try to answer it as honestly and extensively as i can without adding stuff i'm uncomfortable sharing because a lot of it is personal backstory. (i indented the part that skips over the tragic backstory if you want to skip that, i’m only adding it because i feel like it’s integral to my journey) i'm putting it under a cut because it's very very long and may be triggering. i also… don’t know if this was necessarily what you were asking, but i hope i answered your question sufficiently. the stuff about jewish belief (as interpreted by me) is the last few paragraphs.

tw for xtianity (specifically catholicism, as well as missionaries), child abuse, brief mention of religious homophobia and sexual assault (in paragraph 4), and mentions of antisemitism at the end

i grew up with a very catholic grandmother, and was very much the Good Catholic Girl - i was at mass every sunday, i was a youth group leader (both of my parish specifically and on a regional level) and personally helped put together a lot of youth events, i was an altar server, i was a eucharistic minister, i helped teach sunday school. i talked all the time about how much i loved being catholic, and how much i trusted god, and any time anything bad happened, i would publicly say that it was in his hands and that whatever was meant to happen would happen. no matter how bad it was, i told everyone how much i loved and trusted god.

and i was completely and utterly empty. nothing felt right. i got yelled at once for asking a question (i don't remember the question, but i do remember the embarrassment and resolve to stop questioning things). i didn't understand confession, and was too embarrassed to ask. i have obsessive-compulsive disorder, and was absolutely obsessed with being the poster girl for what a good catholic girl should look like because it was what i was supposed to be, but i just... didn't feel it. i didn't understand why some things were sins, and i didn't ever really do anything that i considered bad... so i lied in confession. i made up stuff i didn't do just so people wouldn't see that i was as lacking as i felt. and boy was i good at it.

i was very good at faking loving god, when i actually hated him. he didn’t stop my mother from being neglectful, he didn’t stop her boyfriends from being abusive, he didn’t stop us from being taken away and made to live with our grandmother. my grandmother was in the council of catholic women, she was on the board of directors at the church, she taught sunday school, she was close personal friends with both the priest and the deacon, and was beloved by everyone. and she is and always has been viciously abusive.

when i was a junior in high school, my boyfriend was a missionary kid whose parents were at a local church. he frequently bragged about how many people in papua new guinea he and his family personally converted to xtianity, and about how the bible he carried around helped him in lots of arguments at school. one instance was when he used it to argue against same-sex marriage in his US history class. even though i was catholic and he was not, he had me go to church with him sometimes. his family was Righteous and Godly and Ideal. he was a missionary kid and i was a Good Catholic Girl, and that didn't stop him from sexually assaulting me. and then he just went right back to converting people, went right back to talking about how godly and morally correct he was.

god didn’t stop that from happening, either. god didn’t stop any of that from happening, and i hated him for it.

when i was a senior in high school, i finally called cps on my grandmother for her abuse, and they did nothing. my grandmother, the poor old woman who took in her grandchildren and suffered through how absolutely terrible and horrible they were but was still so godly, and the family was just so beautiful at mass every week… she tossed me out. she told me to pack and to leave the house. so i did.

when i moved in with a friend, sleeping on an air mattress on her floor, i had a lot of time to think about my sexuality and gender. and it scared me, because of a sermon our priest had given once and because i didn’t know how my very catholic boyfriend would react. (he was fine with it, but we did end up breaking up after a bit for unrelated stuff.) i did attend mass a few times while i lived with her, desperately hoping to feel… something, anything. but i didn’t. i didn’t get a sign or anything even remotely comforting.

eventually, i came to terms with the fact that i wasn’t cishet, and when i went to college (well… went is a strong word. i was on campus) i had the opportunity to start to find myself, and i thought… catholicism didn’t fit me. it never fit me, it always made me feel empty.

one of my friends was a rabbi’s son, and as a jew, he was ALWAYS more than willing to talk about judaism. there was more than one occasion that our friend group would hang out in an empty classroom with a whiteboard, and we would just listen to him talking about the torah or about jewish ethics or just… whatever he felt like talking about.

and i desperately wanted to know more, i wanted to always feel the way i did listening to him talk about the relationship jews have with god. i wanted to be part of something that not only allowed but ENCOURAGED a fraught relationship with god. that not only allowed but ENCOURAGED questioning your beliefs. the kind of community i felt listening to him talk about judaism was something i had never felt in all my years of being a Good Catholic Girl. i wanted to be part of it so desperately… but i had been catholic, which in my mind meant i wasn’t allowed. so i pushed my desire down.

i ended up dropping out of college for mental health reasons, and by that point had ended my friendship with the friend i’d stayed with before, which meant i had to move back in with my grandmother. it was… bad. i tried to come out to her and it didn’t go well. i ended up moving out again, and was trying to get as far away from catholicism as humanly possible.

i was pagan for a few years, and i don’t regret it. i made a lot of friends and i learned a lot about what i wanted out of a relationship with god, but ultimately it just wasn’t for me. it just didn’t feel like home. during that time, i became friends with a lot of jews, and hung on to everything they said about judaism. (like, it’s seriously weird how the older i got the more jewish friends i had. it felt like judaism was literally calling me. but it scared me so i refused to think about it too hard.)

and then crazy circumstances happened (that have nothing to do with my conversion) and i moved in with my current roommates lol. one of my roommates was already jewish but didn’t really have the kind of connection to it that they wanted (for reasons that aren’t mine to share). the first time i saw them light the menorah for chanukah i… felt something. it was a kind of yearning that i just… couldn’t ignore. i felt like i was being called to something bigger and older and deeper than i had ever felt before. i wanted to be jewish more than anything and it felt like i was supposed to be jewish.

and i still waited… a while to bring it up. i thought about it constantly, but i never said a damn word to anyone, until finally i couldn’t keep it in anymore and blurted it out and i was so nervous that i was going to be told i couldn’t. but i wasn’t. we decided that we wanted to go to one of the local temples at some point.

the first time i rolled into the temple i almost cried. the feeling i had was one of overwhelming familiarity, of a desperate need to belong there. the people were so nice and welcoming but it didn’t feel like it did at my old catholic church. it felt like i already knew them, even though i was to shy to talk to many people. and then the service started, and i cried through… almost the entire thing. every time i heard hebrew, it resonated with me in a way i had never experienced.

it felt like what i was looking for in catholicism.

as a side note, at one point someone was like vaguely rude about my wheelchair in the typical abled nonsense way, and at the oneg afterwards rabbi was talking to me and was like “i saw that, and it was just absolutely unacceptable. i’m so sorry that happened.” and i was SHOCKED.

me and my roommates ended up going to shabbat services for a few months and every single time i went into the building it just. felt like home. it felt like it was where i was supposed to be. eventually i worked up the guts to actually ask about converting, because i just… i know i keep saying it, but i just so desperately wanted to be jewish. i wanted to be a part of it more than i had ever wanted anything.

and during the conversion classes, i found… myself? i guess? i became more solidly myself, i think. i’ve never really… i’m not good with the academic part of being jewish because of my brain damage, and that’s something i worried about with my rabbi, but he told me that it was okay, that i didn’t have to know everything, because there’s things even he doesn’t know. the important thing was the spiritual part, and that was… something i actually found fulfilling.

i still have a very fraught relationship with god, but it doesn’t feel like one-sided hatred with an all knowing deity that knew i was suffering and didn’t care. it’s a struggle, a conversation, it’s me yelling at god at three in the morning and being allowed to do that. it’s me realizing that god doesn’t control everything in the universe because we’ve got free will, and there’s some things we have to do for ourselves. my suffering wasn’t preordained and there isn’t “a reason for everything”, it was other people doing it because they were exercising their free will to hurt others.

my rabbi is… older gen x cishet white man, so he’s got some pretty centrist politics, but he always stresses that he accepts us for who we are and that the most important thing is that we are taking care of ourselves. (seriously, the number of exchanges i’ve had with him that are along the lines of “i can’t make it to class because my body is doing a chronic illness” “that’s okay, make sure you take care of yourself” is… more than i can count) he’s flawed at it, of course, but… who isn’t?

the more i learn about the tanakh (as opposed to the old testament - because they’re actually very different) the more secure i feel in my decision. the stories aren’t meant to be absolutely true in every sense of the word, we have literal hundreds of pages of rabbis arguing with each other across hundreds of years about what a passage might mean.

the stories aren’t showing how we need to be subservient to god, they’re showing that even god makes mistakes, so of course people are going to make mistakes, because we’re made in their image. they’re to remind us of who we are, of what it means to be jewish. am yisrael, the people of israel (NOT the country). we literally named ourselves after the time our great great great great grandpa wrestled with god AND WON.

jewish belief in god doesn’t necessarily mean “i think god exists”, because of course they do. god is whatever you need them to be. jewish belief is trust, it’s like saying “i believe in you” to a friend you know can do whatever it is they need to do.

despite what antisemites would have you believe, jews being god’s chosen people doesn’t mean we think we’re better than everyone else. being chosen is a burden. jews have historically suffered and suffered and suffered, and we’re still here. we still keep going, because we have to. jews grapple with the concept of being chosen much like we grapple with god. it’s a heavy and weighty thing that means something different to everyone. being chosen isn’t always a good thing. it’s responsibility, it’s heartbreak, it’s pain, it’s a happiness i can’t put into words, it’s community and belonging and facing adversity from people who want you dead. and continuing on, because jews will always endure.

but hey, i’m just one guy. if you ask another jew i can guarantee they’ve got another perspective and another story.

#mine #i hope this was adequate? if you have other specific questions i'd be glad to answer them #this was just a very broad question FJDSKAL;#Anonymous

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