#im on mobile i am NOT bothered to fix the tags and play around with this goddamn i think ordering by alphabet tags feature. i will cry

[cannibalovers]

i was obsessed with the handmaiden (still am, at the back of my head), i should not he surprised that i ended up obsessed with hannibal

[katekanekatekane]

I feel raw. 

(I also feel kinda sick, so I either am Having Emotions because im getting sick, or I’m Having So Many Emotions that i feel sick so that’s uhhh... annoying)

But old ass stuff has been coming for me lately and it’s a pain in the ass??

Like I read a twitter thread about stalking the other day and jesus christ it shot me right back. I hadn’t really thought about that being stalked had felt like in a long time and it’s so fucking gross. I remember being powerless and terrified and I felt for the woman talking about her experiences, I really fucking did. 

But that’s some old ass shit!!! I haven’t been fully bothered by my old stalker in like 4 years, those experiences are things that I’ve processed and aren’t part of my life anymore. Like... I don’t... need to worry about this..??? WHy must I have emotions about it?? Now??? 

And like... christ

Last night i was tag ranting because I always post on mobile and this site is a joke and i cant do stuff beneath a cut like this on mobile. And I... I worked through it all a little by ranting that way but I NEED to express why last night was so upsetting, but even verbalizing it is super draining and the idea of talking to someone else feels like a burden and I don’t want to put that on the people that I want to talk to... And ugh. Okay, let’s do this.

Last night.

I signed up for a risograph printing class. 

I was excited. 

I waited and splurged on it and I really want to learn riso.

Classes like that are socially scary for me, because new place, new people, new things,  but I wanted to do it, so I went out on the limb. This is also something that a younger, less healthy, me would have AGONIZED about before hand, but the me of today didn’t waste time worrying about ahead of time, because that’s not productive or useful. 

So, I go to the class.

The teacher seems nice.

My classmates seem okay. 3 out of the 5 of us already knew each other, so that makes stuff a little awkward for the other two of us, but whatever.  

I’m making small talk. Again, this is something that a younger me never would have dreamed of. Being brave enough to make small talk with strangers and to start conversations myself is leaps and bounds past the stuff I would have been able to do even a few years ago.

So, the teacher goes over the basics. I’m excited. Nervous, because my work hasn’t been super inclined to sitting down and shooting from the hip lately, but fine.

I start working.

I get excited about my project. 

It’s different than what everyone else is doing, but I think I can make it work, and it seems like a fun thing to make. I’d rather try and fail to do something I find interesting and care about than just bullshit around and make art I don’t give a shit about because it’s easy.

Cool, okay.

So, I’m drawing and prepping longer than my classmates. My classmates were all getting up and starting to print while i was still drawing. That’s okay. I have two hours of class left, I can make this work. 

I prep my different colored masters.

I go up to the riso for the teacher to help guide me through my first print. I’m the last to start.

(also note all 5 of us are sharing one riso, so we’re all taking turns, and other people are inclined to wait around up close by the machine for their turns-- something that is socially kind of a nightmare for me because uhhh I don’t want to be rude and people waiting like that makes me inclined to rush and make hurried choices.)

I grab a stack of paper to print on. I notice, once the teacher has already loaded it in, that the paper is cut and stacked a little crooked, which seems like it could be bad. It’s kinda too late, printing is already happening. I figure, “okay, whatever. It’ll be okay. I don’t mind the colors being misaligned.”

Also, note, I thought I was playing it cool that I was a little nervous and anxious. I was apologetic and stuff, but not anything that out of the ordinary for a new student. But that teacher, bless her heart, was astute as FUCK and in the worst possible way. She kept comfortingly being like “it’s okay” but in a way that showed me that she clearly saw me as shaky and uneasy, even when I was keeping it together pretty well. Or I thought I was keeping it together. So that’s not a Great sign. I don’t love my weakness being visible when I wasn’t trying to be vulnerable. 

I finish printing color #1.

I go back to work on the next level color master. I’m hurrying a little now, the end of class is getting nearer.

Eventually I go up to print this level and the teacher rejects it. It’s the alignment is off. Shit. I wasted all that time and have to start over.

I go back and make another, the end of class is getting TOO close. We have like 30 min. The professor is both hovering a little and avoiding me, clearly worried that I won’t finish. I am RUSHING. I decide to ditch doing a third color. This next level is going to be mediocre and weird, but it’ll be okay. I’m stressing about the time wasted on the ditched layer.

I’m waiting to use the riso with the others. She gets me in between people because I’m so far behind. Which, while nice, puts me on the spot again and doesn’t feel great because I’m clearly the artistic runt of this liter. Which would be fine if it wasn’t being broadcast to everyone else and I wasn’t getting special pity treatment.

We do a test proof. It’s bad. The alignement is awful. But everyone is standing around me and clearly wants to get more of their own prints in and I”m behind and being a pain and clearly getting special pity treatment, I don’t want more special pity treatment or to take more time from my classmates, so even though it’s AWFUL I say to just go ahead and print.

The teacher asks if I’m sure. Her face is full of sympathy and pity and she’s watching me like I’m a wounded animal. She sees the  fragility that I’m trying to hide and I hate it. I know that part of anxiety is always over reading what other people are thinking and feeling but I could SEE it on her and that’s what really fucked me up about last night. It wasn’t just my brain, so I couldn’t just write it off as my brain. This woman was seeing things that I didn’t want her to see, and instead of politely ignoring them for my pride, she was treating me like a fragile thing. 

I say yes to printing because if this moment lasts any longer i”m going to have an anxiety attack.

I go ahead and print and the prints start coming out and look unsurprisingly awful. She knows this. I know this. The others looking on, sympathetically, know this.

She gives me a pity compliment. “Oh, it looks kind of cool like this. This is one of the cool things about printing--” 

All artists have done this. We’ve all tried to be gentle with someone who’s work is a mess and is falling apart and looks terrible but we don’t want to be mean or hurt them so we dig for pity compliments. Pity compliments, while well intentioned are the devil. That makes me feel a thousand times worse than if she’d said “Well, it’s off, but this is your first time. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

I’d rather admit defeat and learn from it than someone pretend something awful is good to protect my ego.

And to make all this worse, the printer starts messing up. It’s grabbing more pages than it should, and misprinting already misaligned pages. She gets me to feed them back through. It does it again. She has me do it again. This is awful. What was already embarrassing and terrible is being prolonged, and each time I get more panicked, which only makes this worse. 

One or two of my classmates join in on the pity compliments. I want to die. I thank them, grab my prints, and bolt.

The teacher stops me, “Are you sure you don’t want to do a third color?”

It’s 10 till the end of class and other people who are WAY ahead of me and clearly want to do their own prints. I say no. 

I don’t want to take more time from other people. The piece is already ruined. She gives me a pitying look. She’s sympathetic. 

Others start printing. Good. Good. 

I went and hid in the bathroom for a minute to take a breath and cut down on social stimulation. I’m trying not to cry. I promise myself I will make it to my car before I cry. I wash my hands and fix my hair and pretend I’m okay.

I made it to my car.

But, okay. I know that, in the scheme of things, that this night was nothing. It was a little mess up that shouldn’t matter. But it hit a nerve.

What is the nerve?

Treating me like a weak, fragile thing. 

I’ve been that weak, fragile person that she saw. But I thought that I wasn’t that anymore. I thought that I knew that I’m not. 

I have come so. far.

But that didn’t matter. How much better I am now didn’t matter at all. 

Me as I am now, to her, was the same as the weaker, more fragile person that I once was. She didn’t see the trembling, or the stuttering, or the sweating that I would have been doing 4, 6, or 10 years ago. She didn’t notice that I tried to make small talk with her to alleviate the awkwardness of last night, and didn’t see how much better that was than the lip biting silence and shuffling that I would have been doing a few years ago.

My strong was her weak.

And she fucking saw me.

That’s the worst part of all this.

If she hadn’t noticed, that would have been totally fine and perfect. Or if I had been reading too much onto her, I could have gone home and been like “nah, that was on me.”

No.

She saw my anxiety and fear and reacted the WORST possible way that someone could react to me and it made me want to disappear.

I would have taken her pretending not to notice. I would have taken her actually not noticing. Hell, I would have taken her being rude or openly hostile and cruel. But pity. JESUS CHRIST, pity. Pity means that she doesn’t think I’m strong enough to handle being treated normally, and that makes me want to vomit. She saw me, and she saw weakness, she saw fragility.

I can scream all I want about how strong and solid I am now, but that doesn’t matter a fucking inch because what she saw is so telling.

Regardless of what I think I am, what other people see when they looks at me shows what the world sees. What those not measuring by growth see. 

And I... I know I have weak moments. I know that I have moments of fragility or open anxiousness or being obviously sensitive.

But this moment was barely on that scale. I was doing pretty well for me. I thought that I was doing okay.

But she clearly didn’t think so.

So that’s uhhhh awful.

And seriously, she was super nice. I’m not upset with her. I’m just upset, and upset with myself.

Nothing has changed, I’ll keep trying new things and pushing and trying to be brave. But this hurt. This hurt a lot.  

I was really knocked down a peg. Didn’t realize that I needed to be knocked down but uuuh apparently I did. 

So

I’m okay. 

I’m just sore. 

But I’m okay.

(Or I will be.)