#my mom invalidates me having adhd while also saying i do have it too so like im very confused there

[fr00tbats]

i have a midlife crisis approximately every 4-6 months ill never understand how people only have One Big One

[swimmingclassicrockpizzawombat]

I'm fucking SICK OF THIS I'M FUCKING SICK OF MY "FAMILY"

I FUCKING HATE THESE PEOPLE AND I AM SO FUCKING DONE WITH THEM.

And you know what?!?!?! That might make me sound like a monster but I don't care because THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT ME EITHER.

I can't wait to go back to college and not have to see them again for another 6 months.

At the same time I won't lie when I say they make me want to die sooooo bad

Like anything ti get as far away from them and all the manage they have done and continue to make. All their little insults and demeaning attitudes, their violence, their punches, everything.

I have a dietarty restriction due to allergies and IBS and we don't have a lot of food at home atm so I saved up some sushi SPECIFICALLY to have something to eat today. And my mom made my dad and brother a shit ton of their favorite foods (which I can't eat) to keep them from eating MY FOOD AS THAT'S ALL I CAN EAT.

AND MY FUCKING BROTHER STILL ATE MY SUSHI AND I WANT TO PUNCH HIM SO BAD.

I LITERALLY HAVE NOTHING TO EAT TODAY. I WOULD GO OUT TO A RESTAURANT BUT I HURT MY HIPS YESTERDAY.

AND THIS ISN'T THE ONLY TIME THEY HAVE EATEN MY FOOD.

I meal prep EVERY week and as a gym bro I have to make sure I'm eating healthily enough takomg enough protein/carbs.

And HAVE ASKED THEM NOT TO EAT MY FOOD BUT THEY STILL DO WHICH FUCKS UP MY ENTIRE WEEK SO I CONSTANTLY HAVE TO SCRAMBLE AND FIGURE OUT WHAT TO EAT LAST MINUTE.

Even when my mom makes food for them!!!! Specifically for them. Food that more often than not I can't even eat!!!!!

Like, even during Easter or Christmas when "Santa" or whatever used to give us candies MY BROTHER EAT ALL OF HIS AND MY CANDIES IN ONE DAY AND LEAVE ME NOTHING. Like, he would just fucking steal them.

But because they perceive me as a fucking woman they expect me to make food FOR THEM and SERVE THEM. Do household chores FOR THEM. Except that now that I'm trans and a wannabe man I'M ALSO EXPECTED TO DO "MANLY THINGS" SO I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING.

Like I want to fucking cry. This is not fair.

Like, when my brother has invited his gf and friends to a game night (which btw I always have to clean uo after that bc I'm their maid), and we have played those truth/confession games they are always surprised by how little we act like siblings and dislike each other. Since for example his gf is super close to her siblings and while they do fight they have each other's back and care for each other deeply.

Yet when it comes to me and my brother we don't even pretend. I know we would never have my back with anything. We want NOTHING to do woth each other and he will still find ways to fuck me up because he sees me as his little bitch and he doesn't even try to hide it (he has shoved me in the past and beat me up while I'm brushing my teeth because he wants to brush HIS teeth and has no time to wait for a "worthless bitch like me" so I have had to pause brushing my teeth ans resume until he is done".

He even convinced our mutual therapist I have BPD to have her INVALIDATE EVERYTHING I EVER TOLD HER.

"Hey my brother started beating me up and I have bruises"

T: you are lying you just have BPD and are being extra sensitive

"HE KEEPS CALLING ME A WORTHLESS BITCH AND SHOVING ME"

T: it's your BPD just ignore it and meditate

"I think I have ADHD I meet all the diagnostic criteria and over 7 fmaily members have it"

T: It's just your BPD, from what your brother tells me you can't have it. You also did too well in school to have ADHD.

[katbluecheese]

I have a dilemma.

I had my first therapy session yesterday with a new professional. Technically I think she's a social worker. But I don't know why I was assigned to a social worker because I specifically signed up for this service because I am already diagnosed bipolar and ADHD, and I'm seeking diagnosis for possible BPD and autism.

This is the second professional I have been assigned. I did not feel comfortable talking with the first one, just from setting up our appointment over the phone. This is a service that actually sends the professional to you. However, my home is not a place I feel comfortable speaking freely. With the first professional I couldn't even communicate to her that I needed to meet her somewhere like a park or something. She was more worried about having to pay a toll on a bridge to come see me, which wasn't even relevant because I don't live on the other side of that bridge.

Anyway, I contacted the service that set me up with the original therapist and requested someone else. It took them a second to find a new person for me. I had my first session with her yesterday. We met in a park, sat on a bench, and I cried my eyes out telling her how hopeless I've been feeling because of the narcissistic abuse I'm experiencing at home, at the hands of my mother. Because I'm also currently pregnant, I am unmedicated for my bipolar disorder, resulting in me being extremely depressed. I'm also concerned about subjecting my child to my mother's narcissistic abuse and potential physical abuse (because she did physically abuse me as a child) once he is born.

This professional responds by telling me to just block out what my mom is saying, to remember many people have it worse than I do, and to listen to music or go on walks (I have been having increasingly difficult mobility issues since becoming pregnant). She also wants me to make to-do lists in order to make my days more productive, to combat my bipolar depression. I explained that my ADHD doesn't executive function like that but I'd try.

This is where my dilemma lies. I don't feel like this was a productive therapy session at all. To tell me to invalidate my own feelings while being verbally and mentally abused, just doesn't sit right with me.

If I were to ask for a different professional, it would take weeks for a new person to be assigned to me. I have a tricky scheduled to work around because I have two jobs, and I'm responsible for getting my boyfriend to and from his full time job. He's epileptic and cannot drive. This lady was able to work around my schedule. She was even willing to meet me on Sundays. I don't know that anyone else would be able to do so.

Something just doesn't feel right with the whole, "other people have it worse," phrase being thrown around. On the other hand, maybe what she told me was sound advice and I'm just too lulu delulu to see it? Idk.

I need some help. I don't trust myself from a lifetime of being harassed for every decision that I make. Any and all advise would be helpful. I don't really have people in my life I can talk to about this sort of thing.

[delusion-of-negation]

1 Not sure if I can give that anon my experience as a fellow ND disabled, since they didn't add their Acc. So I hope this is ok. Intersectionality acknowledges that (in the West) a disabled indigenous gay person is in a spot where they'll be attacked from 3 different points, and have to deal with oppression from these traits. But that doesn't mean that a disabled white cishet person suddenly doesn't experience any oppression based on their disability, just because they're also white and cishet.

re

still somewhat of an oversimplification - as a white person, you actually will be affected by racist systems in a negative way, the building blocks of abusive legislation that negatively impacts an area of life seemingly unrelated often have connections to some racist policy of the past, you can be mistaken for non-white, or simply have your "whiteness" revoked (see: polish people in the united kingdom) and be victimised by racism, and so forth. but genuinely, that's just an aside I wanted to add, I don't expect the character limit and casual nature of this convo to result in total perfection explaining intersectionality. but to illustrate why this distinction matters "mentally disabled" and "physically disabled" lines randomly get drawn in the sand, and yet allegedly physical disabilities make my thinking foggy and distracted, make it hard consuming food or sleeping, and make my head worse, while an allegedly mental one damaged my organs, accelerated my now irreparable muscle atrophy, and is helping slowly kill me. there's actually no line between these two things. and yet, there are the ways being more "physically disabled" affects your experience, discrimination, etc, generally speaking - a depressed person will ultimately be able to leave the shopping center via the stairs in a dangerous fire, somebody who can't walk won't and will need to actually be carried, because nobody thinks to design lifts safe in disaster situations, if that's even possible. having a neuro issue causing physical symptoms, like epilepsy, gets sidelined in nd conversations because people think of it as just autism or adhd. similarly, racism and disability issues aren't these unique arrows that'll hit you if you meet a certain criteria - like I said, it's not all actually one, it's all an interconnected web of systems, not only rooted in white supremacy, but not disconnected from it either. personally, I take issue with the need to say "as someone who is unaffected by x" because I'm called racial slurs semi-regularly, because people mistake my race irl, and idek for sure my race, majority of my family doesn't talk to me, those that do aren't bio relatives, and my mom did cheat on my abusive father at least a couple times. what I do know is I'm half welsh, and the kinds of oppression the english did to the welsh (took our land, tried to destroy our language, etc) are literally their go-to racist policies, which isn't to say "welsh and black is the same", it's to say that oppressive institutions have patterns that manifest similarly to various groups they attack - welsh, black, gay, trans, disabled, I would submit that all this "the welsh shag sheep", "witches fuck satan", "arabs fuck goats", "gay people fuck kids", "trans people... actually also fuck kids we're out of ideas", they're all the pattern repeating itself, attacking people on the grounds of an alleged dangerous/harmful deviant sex to degrade and dehumanise the people. this stuff isn't "x is hurt on the basis of y and z, but I am only affected by z", it's complicated, but having your bugbear be simply z, and then saying all y is actually z, would also be wrong. overall otherwise 100% agree though, invalidating the pain that white disabled people experience doesn't help anti-racist stuff. which is why I said we need to work on our own issues together apart, apart together, side by side, with intersectional and kind awareness of how this isn't a movie with just one big bad villain.

[nerdshrimp19]

I just need to talk about this...

This is going to be something completely different from my usual content on my blog, but I need to talk about this because I am still livid.

This is most likely going to turn into a long-winded rant, so I will provide a TLDR.

TLDR: A psychiatric nurse practitioner said it would not be worth doing diagnostic testing for Autism and ADD/ADHD because I have good grades and a healthy long term romantic relationship.

For some background, I have been doing online college for two years and with the pandemic I have been by myself a lot more. This gave me more time for self-reflection, and I have always been interested in psychology. I decided to look into ADHD for a new topic to learn about, and when researching I related to the symptoms associated with it. I found myself diving deep into this topic like I do with everything I enjoy learning about and eventually found myself researching Autism because of the comorbidity of the conditions. I also related with some, if not most, of the symptoms associated with Autism, to some degree.

So, I slowly introduced the idea to my parents and boyfriend that I thought I might have both or one of the conditions. My parents were quite dismissive, but my boyfriend thought that my suspicions held some merit. But that was enough for me to go back to getting mental health services. My anxiety and depression were/are also worsening, so I wanted to get back into it anyway. I got a therapist and told her about my suspicions, and we talked about it. She also thought that it would be worth getting me tested for the conditions. So, she got me set up with a psychiatrist to possibly get me set for testing. (Quick side note: the last time I was tested for anything was when I was around the age of twelve and I almost twenty now.)

Surprisingly, I was looking forward to this appointment because of the prospect of getting testing planned, which my therapist assured me I could set up. If you have had a psychiatric appointment, you will know that they will take your medical information like weight, height, etc. That portion went without a hitch, but I was still masking like I usually do with strangers in public.

When I was called back, I was initially encouraged by the fact he was younger than any of my previous psychiatrists hoping that he would be more open minded. I decided that I was not going to mask when I was in the room, so hopefully he can get a more accurate visual assessment. Then when my mother and I got to the room and sat down he introduced himself as a “mental health nurse practitioner.” But I was under the impression that he was a doctor, I brushed this off as a misunderstanding on my part because it is something I often do. Since it was a first visit, we went over the basics like medical history, mental health history, medications, etc. But, when I brought up the possibility of me having something else besides/alongside my current diagnoses, I was dismissed. Then I finally brought up getting testing done for ADD/ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder, and he asked me how I am doing in school. And I had good grades last semester. Next, he asked about my relationships, and of course I told him that I have a boyfriend who I have been with for almost four years. He decided that those two things alone were enough to say that he did not see a need for testing. Because according to him “it is not affecting me enough for it to be worth getting a diagnosis.” This man had the nerve to tell me that with me rocking back and forth, playing with a fidget toy to keep me calm and present, me making very little eye contact, both or one of my legs bouncing, and even after I told him that my father has diagnosed ADD and my brother has diagnosed ASD. Maybe if he looked anywhere besides my chest for a few seconds, he might have seen some of what I was doing. He attributed everything he was seeing and what I was telling him to my anxiety. Yes, I was quite anxious because I am horrible with crowds and strangers, which I told him. I also have lots of anxiety regarding medical settings because of chronic illnesses and mental issues. But of course, my people pleasing self just accepted this and did not press any further.

As soon as I was out of the building, I began telling my mom that it was not fair at all that he would not even consider letting me get testing. I also explained to her that he was going based of the typical, male associated symptoms of both conditions. “Does he not know that both ADHD and Autism present differently in women,” was what I asked my mom while trying not to cry out of anger in the car. Because I thought that I could finally get an explanation and label for why I am so different, and it was just taken from me. Even though this happened only a few days ago, I feel so much more isolated and invalidated than I did before the appointment. Having the opportunity to make sense of my life and myself being ripped away from me has effected much more than I thought it would.

I knew that it was harder for females to get a diagnosis for these things, but I was at least hoping that it would not be the case for me. It sounds naïve now, but my therapist validating me gave me hope that it would be different. My mom and I are looking into other people who might give me a chance to get tested and hopefully it will go better than that did. Although, I should not be surprised about any of this happening, mental health services in my state are a joke anyway.

Anyway, if you made it this far congrats you made it too the end of this way too long post. Thanks for reading what I had to say. This is not really adding anything to the discussion, but I just needed to tell someone, so again thank you for reading.

[twopoppies]

i just had a full blown argument with my mom about why being trans is not a mental illness and why aromantic people exist. it genuinely makes me so upset to hear her say these things about trans people when some of my close friends are transgender. i’m asexual, i’ve told her this, and she’s constantly telling me that i’m too young to know. i’ve been this way my entire life, i thought i would grow out of it. before i found out i was ace, i used to think there was something wrong with me. then i found out was asexuality was and it fit me perfectly. so after a few days of doing research on it, i decided to tell her. she was okay with it. but now whenever i bring it up, she always says i’m too young to know. all while people my age are having full on sex. to hear her say that is so invalidating. everytime we get on the topic of trans people, it always turns into a full blown argument. im also considering if i’m on the spectrum of aromantic or not and hearing her say that it’s not a real thing is so frustrating. this argument happened in the car and i just got home. then she said my sister and i were ganging up on her because we both got so mad about what she was saying about ace, aro, and trans people. it just makes me so mad. if i ever have kids, i would never ever treat them like this. we asked her what she would do if one of us were trans and she said she would cry. she said she wouldn’t let us take blockers or do anything until we were 18. so then i tried to tell her about how fucking damaging that could be to the tran’s person’s mental health. to see their body turn into something they hate. god i don’t even wanna imagine the amount of pain some transgender people have to go through because of their families.

update: she just came into my room to say goodnight, so i re-explained what i was telling her and she days she understands now. so hopefully she’s not just saying that.

sorry for putting this all on you, i just needed to tell someone and you’re like a tumblr mother to me 💙

Hi sweetheart. I'm so sorry you had that experience, but I'm really glad to hear your mom listened to your re-explanation. I don't know your whole situation, but if it's possible to stay calm while you're sharing information with her, she's less likely to be defensive. Maybe share TikToks with her that you think explain things well in a brief way (my daughter and I do this with ADHD information) so she can process it in her own time. I'm glad you feel empowered enough to tell her how you feel and who you are. Hopefully she'll start to understand and be more supportive.

Get some rest. It sounds like it was a tough evening. 💚

[yuusaris]

I never quite know what to say when I see a bunch of posts about ADHD and commentary about it's symptoms. Like, on the one hand I'm like 'heck yeah, get your knowledges and meds, you go', but at the same time, there's always this - 'That's a symptom of ADHD', bro I do that too and I have bipolar disorder, but, like, I don't wanna gatekeep or segment neurodivergence, y'know?

I was misdiagnosed with ADHD as a kid, and my mom to this day professes the guy who diagnosed me was a specialist in it. Like, top of his field specialist in ADHD who 'found it hard to diagnose' mew because, good god, I 'paid attention very well when she was interested in something', and I'm like really?

And I got medicated for that, I was on, like, two different brands of methylphenidate, for about eight years - like, not at once, but still. And yeah, it sedated my mania a bit and I was able to focus real good in class, but was it worth whatever shit it might've done to me? Did it do anything to me? Taylor and I looked up the side effects and I mean it probably did stuff to me, but it's stuff I've been doing and living with for so long and some can easily be conflated with bipolar that the extent of it is just shruggie somewhere between ten and a hundred, I guess.

And, like - there's gotta be something to say in all that, right? There's gotta be a way to say that I'm so frickin happy that ADHD is being treated like a disorder for the haver and not as a nuisance for those around them,

(Because that's what happened to me - that's how I got diagnosed, because everyone kept telling my mom not to bring me back to dance class, day care, someones house, because I was a bunch of things I couldn't control and didn't understand why I was bad)

while also wanting to say it's okay if you learn that diagnosis changes or was wrong or even if you come to think something else is more accurate none of it invalidates the disorder you have or the struggles with the same symptoms,

(Because the shock to my systems to hear I never had ADHD, nothing about my childhood checked out for ADHD, as least not as strongly as Bipolar)

while also wanting to say that disorders overlap and severity is different from person to person so you can absolutely have more than one disorder at once,

(Because it's so common for ADHD and Bipolar to exist at the same time that sometimes one gets lost over the other like mine did)

while also saying that... that...

I dunno. Lots of things. But there's gotta be a way to say it short and sweet and legible, right?

Have this long post for now, I guess.

[one-abuse-survivor]

before i start, thank you so much for doing what you do;this blog has given me good advice countless times and i really have to thank you for that.

my issues with my parents are that they don't take me seriously. i can literally go up to them and say: "mom/dad, i think i might be autistic or have ADHD (both would be quite likely) can i get that checked out" and list a bunch of examples why i think that and they'll just be "nah, that can't be, you don't seem like that at all" as of i didn't break my mind over it researching it and talking to people who have it to see if we've had similar experiences just to get some kind of reference as to why i feel the way i feel and why i struggle so much with things that so many other people find so easy.

but then, in the following weeks and months (after talking w them) they just randomly point out things about me that kinda annoy them, like me talking out of turn a LOT or me not looking at people or me having trouble focusing if there isn't also music and a movie going at the same time or mom saying that i seem hyperactive to her because i'm always moving my legs or pacing around or rubbing my hands or drumming on the table with pens. things like that (plus a lot more) were the exact things i was telling them about and they just put it off like it's nothing but as soon as it affects and annoys them it's suddenly very real. at this point i'm struggling to talk to my parents about anything even remotely more serious than generic smalltalk and i'm having a hard time believing myself that my struggles are in fact real and i'm not just making them up.

and also on a less related note; the thing i hate most about my parents: if i'm wearing headphones and couldn't understand what a parent was yelling from somewhere else in the house then it's my fault. but if it's the exact same situation but i'm the one calling and they couldn't hear me, then it's obviously my fault too (i kinda get the first one but srsly how could i not wear headphones when they're constantly arguing with my brother in the room next to mine) (either way if one of the scenarios is clearly my fault, then the other shld be clearly their fault bc that's how logic works)

hhhh, this got quite long. i would love to hear your thoughts about this

a continuation from the other ask about my parents not taking me seriously even when i ask them for help with my hardest problems. that ask didn't really go in the direction i had planned but there is so much going on between my parents and me that i really need to talk to someone about

background: i'm around 15-16 rn and have a brother who's 18. primary school was academically very easy for me (lots and lots of great and even perfect grades) but my brother didn't have it as easy (lots and lots of mediocre and meh grades) so my parents really just kinda let me do my thing while they were constantly busy with my brother. so i got really independant and did all of my stuff on my own bc a) i always had done it that way and b) my parents were already busy and stressed. but after my brother got his first computer and got into video games his grades dropped and my parents started constantly arguing with him and taking away his computer and stuff like that so there was always a lot of tension (and i got to a point where i can't handle people yelling; that's what i was referring to with the headphone thingy at the end of the last ask) i don't know if i can go that far and say that my parents kinda neglected me and my emotional needs in favour of saving my brother grades but that's pretty much the way it feels.

i'm now a sophomore (school works a bit different here but i'm the equivalent of a highschool sophomore afaik, here it's just 10th grade) and starting from about mid 8th grade (end of 2018) i've been struggling a lot with self care and upkeep of my already minimal social circle and academic stuff (i'm at the academically highest level of school you could be at my age without skipping any years) and also mental health.

i got quite depressive and started isolating myself and casting away friends and my grades went down a lot, which really disappointed me because my great grades were kind of my trademark thing. but i didn't feel safe talking to my parents because of the huge distance that we built by me "never" needing their help with stuff.

in that time (almost a year ago, our anniversary is in twenty days or so) i got a girlfriend and i'm hella glad that i can talk to her about everything but i feel like i can't just go dump trauma and parent issues on her forever

about last november or so i was at a pretty low point and was suicidal and that's kind of when i snapped and went to my parents to talk so being cast away and having my issues invalidated really really hurt then and made me spiral even deeper and my gf was the only thing keeping me afloat.

i'm kind of a bit better now but i have rebuilt my view of my parents from "idk we never really interact" to "trying to interact or talk is not worth the energy" and needless to say i don't like them that much

oh and i forgot about all the times i got panic attacks and sensory overloads @ school because there are so many people there (1700 students + 200 teachers) and it's loud everywhere and of course asking my parents for what to do if suddenly everything is too bright and too loud and you can't move or talk because of it didn't get me anywhere (and since i didn't know what it was called or how to describe it properly, i didn't really find any Information online either

and just typing this makes me think of so many more things that they did that aren't okay things to do (a lot of gender identity stuff for example because i'm also neck-deep in that) . but writing this has also helped a lot right now. thank you for being there and listening.

and just in case i'm ever gonna pop back in to say something i'm gonna drop a name for easier identifying

sincerely - 🌌 milky way anon

Hi, nonnie! Thanks for the kind words, I'm really glad my blog has been of help ❤️

I'm sorry your parents are making it hard to believe your struggles are real :( you deserve to be taken seriously and to get access to all the help you might need. Just the fact your symptoms are there and you're noticing them and they're interfering with your daily life is enough to get them checked, regardless of if you need a diagnosis/meds/anything else. No one deserves to live wondering if their struggles are worth discussing with a doctor or professional.

And you're right: if one of those things was your fault, then the other should be theirs, logically. But I don't even think it's "your fault" you didn't hear them because you were wearing headphones, to be honest. I think it's just something that happens from time to time and that doesn't warrant getting mad over; I think it's the kind of thing that simply needs to be talked about so everyone in the household knows how to communicate with everyone else without getting frustrated. It's as easy as saying "hey, whenever I put on headphones I'll just text the family group chat to let you guys know I won't hear you. If you need anything in those moments, just text me instead". I do this with my girlfriend sometimes—if we're wearing headphones and we're in the same room, we simply pat each other when we need something and wait until the other takes off their headphones to talk. It really doesn't have to be an issue where anyone is to blame. You're allowed to take steps to feel safe and comfortable in your house without getting punished for it.

But, of course, this doesn't work if the people around you choose to prioritise "being right" and proving you're wrong over a peaceful and healthy cohabitation, which is what most toxic and abusive people do.

As for your second ask, I would say if it feels like your parents neglected you and your needs because they were always focusing on your brother, then it's okay to say that they did. The fact alone that those feelings are there makes you deserving of talking about it and wanting to heal from it; the cause of those feelings doesn't have to be something major, or sound deeply traumatising when you say it out loud, in order to "count". And people whose emotional needs were consistently met don't feel like they weren't.

I've already shared this video before, but if you want some resources on identifying and healing from emotional neglect, I really recommend watching it. Please bear in mind, though, that the video says it's important to not blame parents for emotionally neglecting you, but I don't think that's the message a lot of people need to hear and I think you should allow yourself to feel angry at your parents for not meeting your needs and causing you trauma. That's pretty much the only thing I'd criticise about the video.

I'm sorry to hear you've been struggling with your grades and mental health lately, nonnie. I had a quite similar experience when I was in high school—I used to always get great grades, but my mental health and trauma put a lot of strain on them (as well as on my social life; I lost a lot of friends in those years) and it was really distressing to see the only thing that made me "worthy" crumble between my fingers like that. I'm still trying to unlearn this idea that your grades define your worth, and it's been really hard.

I'm so sorry your parents weren't there for you when you hit that low 😔 I'm glad your girlfriend could help you stay afloat in that moment, but they absolutely should've been there for you all those times you reached out to them for help with your struggles, and the fact that they didn't is emotionally neglectful of them.

I'm glad you're in a better place now ❤️ I really hope you can find out all the information you need on gender identity and sensory overload and any other issues that might be affecting you. Know that you deserve for your parents to be there for you. You shouldn't have to face any of this on your own, or even with only the support of other people your age. You deserve for them to care. You deserve to have your symptoms checked out. You deserve adult guidance to find resources to help you better understand and manage your struggles.

Sending all my virtual support your way ❤️ and happy belated anniversary to you and your girlfriend!

[bqstqnbruin]

Three times he said it as a friend and once as something more

Hello, hello. I’m still working on the Nick Robertson request but wow I don’t want you to hate me for it because it is actual trash right now and I’m sorry. But I’m also working on B&W part 3, so there’s that!

This was requested from that fluffs prompt list, which I think I’m done with now because honestly, it’s so far deep at this point, and I’m so lazy.

I hope you like it!

46. Why should we date?

47. Because we’re attracted to each other

48. I’m attracted to pie, but I do not feel the need to date pie.

__________________________

one

“Next time I see you, I really do expect you to be a professional athlete,” you tell Charlie, the two of you laying on a blanket in his backyard, enjoying the last few hours of sunlight on his last night in town. The next morning, he would be leaving to go to BU to play hockey. It wasn’t even that far, but him not living at home, and you going to school in Vermont meant him no longer driving you to school each morning, you no longer going over with dinner your mom made when she knew he and his parents were running around because of his games, no more walking next door whenever you needed to talk to instead of calling him. The memories would last forever, but those moments were now just part of the past.

“Are you not gonna come see me play at BU at all? What about when we play UVM?” he says, turning his head to look you.

Turning to him, you roll your eyes, “Ok, fine. Then I expect you to be a professional athlete in the next three years.” 

“Whatever,” he says, laughing. 

You sit there in silence, taking in what is probably one of the last moments for a while that you two will be able to spend a lot of time together. 

“Remember how we became friends?” he asks, sitting up. 

You follow suit, laughing at the memory that he just triggered. You were neighbors since your family moved to Weymouth, but you weren’t automatically friends because of it. “Well, duh. We sat across from each other in Family Consumer Science. We, of course, always finished the work early because we’re great, and we played pencil hockey for like thirty minutes before Mrs. Grace yelled at us for distracting the other two at our table.”

“The fact that you ever finished your work fast in that class is still amazing. You get distracted by everything and can’t focus on anything.”

“Yeah, well,” you shrug it off. You sit there thinking of all the other good memories you had with him; sitting across from each other in US history and joking about all the mistakes you made while texting, the nights when you would walk around Boston Common once your parents trusted you out on your own, the last minute Bruins tickets he would get and force you to go along with him to the games.

“Did you ever think about what our lives would have been like if we dated?”

“What?” you ask, shocked. There was no way the two of you would ever date. He was destined to be a professional hockey player, traveling the US and Canada with whatever NHL team wanted him. You could never date someone that wasn’t going to be there when you needed them. And you couldn’t ask him to give up your dream for you. Yes, you were overthinking this, but best case scenario is that you had dated throughout high school and ended things tonight.

“Most people thought we were dating, anyway. What if we actually had?”

“Then we probably would have broken up tonight because long distance relationships from high school never work. Look at Andrea and Eric from last year, she went to Holy Cross and he only went to UConn and they could never make it work so they broke up. Or Josh and Maggie two years ago; he went to Ohio and ended up transferring to UMass so he could be with her and he loved Ohio State.”

“Too bad we never even gave it a chance.”

You look at him, shocked. “Did you want to?”

His only response was shrugging, a smile on his face as he lays back down on the blanket. You stay sitting up, thinking about what he just said. Did he want to date you all this time and never said anything until now? And why the hell would he do something like that anyway? You weren’t going to see him until at least Thanksgiving, which means that now you have to hyper fixate on this one memory until you see him again. 

“Hey,” he says, snapping you out of it.

“Yeah?”

  “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” 

two

Your phone lights up, causing you to tear your eyes away from the essay you had been writing that’s due in a few hours. Due to your great talent for procrastinating, you were, of course, finishing the paper at the last minute. The picture of you two in the Coyle’s front yard on your first day of school in six grade shows up on your screen, meaning Charlie was calling you. It had been forever since the two of you last talked; with you being in school and him trying to make it as a hockey player in Minnesota, your schedules never gave you a free moment to talk for more than a passing moment. 

“Hey, stranger,” you say, not hiding the smile on your face even though you were out in public. You hated showing any sort of emotion that would provoke someone to come up to you and start talking to you, but seeing Charlie’s name come up on your phone with something other than a text automatically made you smile. 

“Stranger? You know who I am.” You could tell by his voice that he was jokingly acting offended. 

“Yeah, you’re Zach Parise, right?” you tease.

You hear the laugh you miss so much on the other end, “How have you been?”

“Uh, stressed, lately, so nothing new.”

“Why?”

“Homework, papers, and exams.”

“Oh, my.” You both start laughing at the accidental joke he made, “Why so much stuff?”

“It’s midterms, babe.” 

“So I assume that you’re working right now?”

“Yep, it’s eight pm, the paper is due at midnight and I still have four more pages to write.”

` “I’m so glad that your work ethic hasn’t changed since high school.”

“Ok, rude! I have good work ethic, I just also have strong procrastination skills.”

“You probably have ADHD,” he says.

“Well, yes, but that’s a different story.”

“What’s your weekend look like? I want to catch up when you don’t have a lot of work to do.”

“Uh, I should be good.”

“Alright, get back to the paper.”

“I will. Love ya.”

“Love you, too.” 

three

“Oh, come on! We practically live together. You can’t deny that something is going on between us!” Charlie argues, pacing around the kitchen as you make dinner. This conversation between the two of you was becoming a weekly one, slowly getting on your nerves to the point where you would consider moving just to get away from it. 

“Because what happens if we break up? We’ve been friends since we were in middle school. Do you really want to throw all that away?” you say, turning to him, putting your hand on your hip. 

“I just think we should go out as more than friends just once.”

“And how would that be different than all the other times that we go out together?”

“Because then I could do things like hold your hand and flirt with you?”

“I’m like ninety percent sure you already flirt with me.” 

“Y/N.”

“Why should we date, Charlie?”

“Because we’re attracted to each other?”

“And I’m attracted to pie, but I do not feel the need to date pie,” you roll your eyes, turning your attention back to the stove. 

“You’re seriously equating me to pie right now? I have never seen you eat pie, therefore, that argument is invalid.”

“Since when do you say things like therefore, and invalid?” 

“Seriously, Y/N. You know I have wanted to date you since we were in middle school, but something always came up. You know I love you. You know I always have.”

You turn back to him, trying to make eye contact, but something in you just can’t. Your timing was never right. Once you were old enough to date, the two of you were never single at the same time. Actually, that isn’t true. You were both single for a brief period of time while he was playing with the Sea Dogs and you were still at UVM. This was the first time that both of you were single and in the same town. 

“Charlie, you know that I love you, too. But this can not happen. We can’t risk breaking up and ruining what we have.” 

He exhales, obviously disappointed. You were, too, but you couldn’t let that show. You wanted nothing more than to be with him, but you couldn’t let all those years of friendship go away if things didn’t work out between the two of you. “Fine.”

once

“Remember when you wouldn’t date me?” he asks over the sound of everyone around you.

“Remember when you were less annoying?” you roll your eyes. You look around to see so many other couples and families filling in the tables around you. Everyone looked so happy, just like you were. 

You and Charlie had been together now for a year, him finally wearing you down and convincing you to let him take you on a date. He promised you that even if you stopped dating, your friendship would never end because, at this point, you were in too deep anyway. He told you he had this whole evening planned for your anniversary, complete with a walk around the Boston Common like you used to do when you were kids, dinner at Terramia, your favorite restaurant, and for dessert, he was taking you to Mike’s Pastries for the cannoli you loved so much. 

“No, never,” he smirks, reaching out across the table to take your hand.

You had to admit, all the things he had said trying to convince you to date him were right; nothing was really that different between the two of you besides the intimacy that wasn’t there before. “You’re never letting me live that down, are you?”

“No.” 

You roll your eyes at him. You didn’t want to inflate the ego of the man who didn’t even know how to use the oven by telling him he was right that you two dating was fine. 

“Hey,” he says, like that last night before he went off to college.

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

You smile, thinking back to all those times you told each other those three words, them meaning something completely platonic. “I love you, too.” 

[thoughtsfromthevoid]

Things my parents have said and done that terrify me (I have anxiety and depression, ADHD and currently have tics ((Or a Tourettes diagnosis they don't believe in)) from being so anxious all the time)-

-That if I keep coming home late (normally like 5-10ish minutes because traffic) I won't be allowed to go out at all. (I'm not even the one driving, and my friend(s) aren't doing anything to keep me out past that time.)

-"You're only the 357 thousandth teenager to pull the 'I'm down' all the time, its not going to change anything. Drama is drama." (Said because I've been severely depressed lately and not reacting to things like normal.)

-"There was a miscommunication between us (mom and dad) on what you're allowed to do at night." (Had to have me stop for a bit until I got on tic meds, it was very bad. Doctor told us to. I had been doing after school things and been on the meds for 2 weeks at that point)

- "Don't manipulate me into saying yes to things." (Accidentally said friends and I were going through the drive through at wrong restaurant which they wouldn't have said yes to)

-"Don't wake me up if the house is on fire." (Said not to me, but to other parent, out of frustration of being startled awake because they don't sleep well)

-Some more things I won't say on the internet

-Disagreed with my tourettes diagnosis so strongly because they didn't see the tics I referred to happening in the past and since they notice everything, it makes this invalid.

-Also said I don't have tics like others with tourettes and that they don't say random things and is more repeated and that I don't do that when I definitely do, said a wrong definition as well, even after research

-This morning I wasn't apparently allowed to talk when coming into the living room bc it didn't need to be said to them while cooking, not allowed to go in the kitchen at ALL during this time either

-Said every child who doesn't have to do the same amount of chores as me was a spoiled brat or had a ton of siblings when I was struggling with chores and schoolwork for a bit

-Constantly talks negatively about me behind my back to other parent thinking I can't hear when 90% of the time, I can, instead of having a conversation with me about it, its always me being in trouble. Also never sees my improvements and only the failures, it doesn't matter if im working to fix something until it's fixed

-Their autism being used as an excuse constantly as 'it just is this way' and whatever they saying always having to be the truth, even when it isn't. Its not the autism thats the problem, its the constant excuses because of it and toxic mindset and unwillingness to listen. They aren't the only neurodivergant one, I have ADHD. I struggle too. This doesn't seem to matter

-Getting upset when I talk too much and wanting me to be quiet, not wanting to know any of the details when im excited, even when its harmless, the overall frustration of it and wanting me to stop talking so often

-This is normally in effect especially when they are watching stupid (and passable) mindless tv, that I'm constantly triggered by. I constantly have to close my room door to not hear it while doing things like homework, is still always too loud, this is every day after school in the living room, or every weekend. I cant be in that room anymore basically because of it. They get frustrated when asked to pause it quite often, or when I ask for space when doing chores out there, because I hate them looming over me all the time, the TV also makes an unbearable noise for me recently as it is going to die soon of overuse, every time it is on, which stops me from watching basically anything out there or being in the room too long

-Not feeling comfortable enough to practice when parents are home because of looming, coming in while practicing when its not necessary, getting mad when i play things wrong and yelling across the house about it

-my room is my only space, one parent claims entire basement and sometimes I'm not allowed down there at all, even sometimes when I had to sleep down there to feel safe (unrelated issue but still) other parent has living room

-"I dont understand the want/need to go over there." Me asking to go to a friends house after school, everything needed to be done was done, after a really hard day and me feeling trapped in the house. Apparently I need a reason to go and hang out with friends. I do not feel safe going for walks or anything for other known reasons.

-Getting frustrated with my chair placement every concert in orchestra, never proud of me for anything like that either. (Or at least expressed to me) Makes me feel worse and worthless, to the point where I am considering quitting even though I love the instrument, the anxiety and depression now caused by these issues and pressures being put on me over the years is becoming unbearable. Pressure and anxiety lead to me quitting and hating piano after 8 years as well.

I'm really sick of being in trouble for things I can't control, or something I didn't do intentionally. If it was on purpose? Yeah, I get it. If it was something bad? Sure. I never do anything I think is bad, or know I'll get in trouble for. I don't want to be in trouble. I hate it. It makes me feel very afraid. I wish they would trust me more. I know my mental health is bad, but I'm not actively trying to do things wrong, and I do actively try to fix my mistakes. I wish they would really listen when I tell them these things, even be a little more lenient. I wish I was good enough, I really do try. I love my parents so much, they can be so very much amazing, but they can be toxic to me too. Even if the intent isn't there, it still is harmful. It makes me feel mentally unsafe in this household. I don't know whats going to be taken away at any moment. At least I feel that way. I want to move out. I really do.

[sunsetcurbed]

Hey. I just wanted to say thank you. I've known for years that I have anxiety (I'm also pretty sure I have adhd as well, but that's a different story), but unfortunately one of the things that gives me anxiety is the thought of talking to my parents about it. My mom is very much a 'get some rest and you'll feel better in the morning' type of person, and I don't want to be invalidated by something I know is true. And while I may not be fully ready yet, you'll story is helping me slowly get there. So again, thank you.

(The amount of anxiety I have about sending this is highly ironic)

Ily!

hi!! ahh, i’m so sorry you’re struggling with this. that’s such a hard situation to be in but i’m so glad that you’re aware of your anxiety (and possible adhd). i really hope you get to a point where you’re able to get treatment for it sooner rather than later. in the mean time, i’m no therapist or psychiatrist, but my inbox is always open and i’m always here to listen. but please just know you ARE valid-- so, so valid and that it won’t be like this forever, that you’ll eventually be able to get the help you’re looking for. i know that doesn’t do much for you now, but just. you’re valid. keep going. i’m here for you. 

(ironic anxiety is the best anxiety because at least you can laugh about it!!) 

ily too!! 

[kyunsies]

Bilingual 🌻 anon here

I hope you're feeling better 💕

I think I tend to think too much in the future about a lot of things lol

Especially when it comes to having kids (ideally I'd want 3-5 but however many I have I want to love them very much and hope that they can confide in me with anything)

But I'm afraid of a lot of things especially bc of some traumas I've gone through (I won't go into detail I'll just leave it at that). I'm afraid of projecting that trauma on to them unintentionally (and I know what that's like) or belittling/diminishing their feelings by saying I've gone through worse (instead of listening to their kids and trying to understand them) and those things hurt a lot.

Especially when all you want from your parents is for them to understand you, you know?

I feel like those things are so scary, and then if it comes down to getting married and everything, I don't want a man that will belittle or diminish my feelings bc for sure I'll leave him in two seconds flat.

I feel like maybe that's why I feel like I'm emotionally stunted in that sense (of course therapy can help but it's a lot of money smh)

Sometimes, I feel like a black sheep bc the way I feel that the way I process things is different compared to the normal person (considering I have ADHD lol).............. it's so crazy how life experiences can really impact you immensely

I hope that wasn't too much ranting 😬

Sending you hugs 🤗❤

hi bubbie !! i hope u are having a nice day so far <3 if u don't mind, i'm not going to put my answer under a "read more" since i think this is actually really important to talk about (as a woman in her young 20s lol) so i'm going to roll up my sleeves and answer as much as i can <3

i think women think a lot about the future !! obviously everyone does no matter what stage they are in their life lol but i feel that u are someone like me in that i am running out of time for a lot of things .... do u feel this way too? i think about it all the time :( i have seen quite a few ppl say they don't want children and honestly i don't blame them !!! having children is a HUGE responsibility and it's daunting to think about !! some ppl want to adopt and i think that's a wonderful idea as well <3 some ppl just don't want children and would rather create a wholesome life for themselves, and i think that's perfectly fine too :) i will give u a little background: i have 3 aunts along with my mom, 2 of them have 3 children and the other aunt has 2 ... i basically raised 5 of them while the other 3 acted like my older siblings <3 i have been around children enough where i absolutely would love to have children of my own, to call my own ;____; and that's a choice !! i think anyone who wishes to take on a parent role will have these thoughts, and i think that's okay :') i often ask my mom "where u scared when u found out u were pregnant" and she said she was more happy than scared ..... but i honestly think that happiness only comes after the initial shock u know? she was so excited to see how her tummy grew each day and wondered how well i would be developing as her pregnancy went on ; i also think it's normal to feel like we will never be good enough as parents bc we will only want what's best for our bubs....... and although maybe u don't want to invalidate them, you will be able to steer them in the best direction possible bc of everything you have conquered right? this is just my thinking LOL ... we all have our traumas, some worse than others and we would never want that for our children so i think naturally you will steer ur children in the right direction <3

now in terms of getting married there are a lot of different opinions out there, each valid for their own reason !!! i agree with u that i would like to be married too <3 i am always wondering when i will start dating and i know that sounds so embarrassing ......... like i'm still in high school or something stupid like that ....... i've never dated i've never kissed anyone i'm pretty sure no one has even looked in my direction lol but i think it's bc i don't put myself out there much :( honestly i'm afraid but i want to be loved, i want to love someone more than myself, i think sharing that with someone is really lovely . idk if it's bc i don't have any confidence in myself to make the first move and initiate anything; i don't go out and party/drink; i'm not a confident gal so i often wonder "i'm wasting time, i'll never be married or meet anyone, i'll never have children of my own if i don't do something soon" ....... will i end up taking fate into my own hands and meet someone ? idk !

what i'm trying to say is that u are definitely not alone in these thoughts angel <3 for me, i think u think a lot about these things bc u care and that will make u even more caring as a parental figure if u decide u want children in your future <3 and i think it's a life journey to reflect and work out our past traumas, no matter how terribly they may haunt us, right? we owe that to ourselves, don't u think? :) these are really big decisions we face in the future, but i think, i'm hoping that we will all do what feels right for anything we face <3

i hope this was able to bring you some comfort love !!! i think about this stuff all the time about being a good parent, being a good partner, if i ever will find love in this life, will my past experiences affect how i love in the future; i want u to know i am here and i understand <3

[acrobaticcatfeline]

NOBODY ASKED BUT I WANT TO TALK ABOUT MY ADHD STIMS!!!

Ok ok so flappy hands big time, it's like unsupressable. You can not stop the flappy hands. Just for context, my phone only recognizes flappy in all caps at this point. It's just so good.

Scratching and picking! Bad things, dont do them friends, your fingies will hurt and you will bleed a lot and get scratch marks everywhere. I usually only pick at my fingers, scabs or my scalp cuz I have some bad dandruff but I also have a high pain tolerance so I wont know what I'm doing a lot of the time. I mainly scratch my arms and legs cuz I get mild hallucinations that I have bugs landing on me and so I end up scratching like crazy to make it stop. I dont ever scratch myself raw tho, if anything I scratch over a scab or smth and god this is a tmi but I'm in a really good mood for some reason. These are both very unconscious but are just as hard to stop as flappy hands, you can ask my parents heh.

Chewing!!! Ok so I just dived back into this after having not done this for years, but I chew shit bad. I used to chew my shirts a ton, my mom h a t e d it. I'd just nom my collar when I was super nervous. I realized a good bit into quarantine that I had started fucking nomming the shit out of my mimikyu plushies ear. I bought myself some chew stim toys which I love and it gets it out of my system much quicker cuz they're tougher. I love them they're the only stim toys I've ever actually bought myself.

Tapping, clicking, thumpy noises. Pencils and pens clicking, the pressure you have to use and the release pressure and inertia make me so calm I love buttons and clickers and tapping things it helps me focus a L o t. Course its distracting and drives everyone else fucking batty. I had fake nails once for my mom's wedding, and while I hate having nails cuz it's bad sensory shit and I feel grimy, the tapping noises were a definite plus.

P e e l i n g. Another weird tmi but like, I started playing ukulele and now my fingers on my left hand peel a lot and it's so s a t i s f y i n g. It's like peeling Elmer's glue.

Idk what to call this other than zoomies. I like, ok so especially in the morning I'll like stretch and do a little small flappy hands cuz I do that to help me wake up my body, and sometimes itll get stuck in a super fast loop for a few seconds and my hand like tenses to where I cant like stop it. It also happens for my feets, they like twitch for several seconds and then calm down. Idk if this counts but I think so.

I have an auditory stim! I'll obsessively say it's fine over and over when I'm super stressed! Again, another one that's fucking impossible to stop. I also have it with sorry when I'm panicked.

Bouncy leg, simple bitch, I'm doing something so I can focus better, that is if nobody fucking calls me on it cuz then I get hyper aware and stop doing it. Sometimes I'll try to force the bouncy but it never works.

LOUD!!!! I am very loud and it's never on purpose but it's sort of something I learned when I was a kid, my mom and dad were very loud and unkind to each other so I think being loud was a coping mechanism that I can not stop, I have a terrible time controlling my volume except for when singing. It's a pain.

Just being destructive ig. I rip and tear at things when I'm not paying attention and I either, have nothing in my hand, or have a sharp thing in my hand. I'll tear holes in clothes, rip at stray threads, cut paper things up into tiny pieces and I will not know I'm doing it until someone screams at me for breaking things. I have destroyed my parents vacuum filter and bed because I was bored and had scissors. I swear to god my parents didnt let me use scissors or knives until I was 16. If i needed scissors for class i had to borrow them because they wouldnt let me have scissors it was. Bad.

Playing with my hair. It's no good. Vvv bad. My hair is so fucking curly it tangles together as soon as I'm done brushing it. I Will rip my hair out on accident and it's just a bad time. I dont take care of my hair enough to have playing with my hair be a valid stim. Its invalid and it should feel bad.

Crushing things! Like water bottles and cans, I love crinkly plastic and metal noise and it's a great texture too.

I think that's the most of them! I just, got really excited to tell you guys all about it and how I stim and!!!!!!!

[afoolforatook]

A RWBY V7 Ep12 rant.....When I say this is long..... Legit was fucking 37 pages double spaced at one point. Sorry....

Before this gets started I want to warn you, this is long (even longer than I thought it’d be going in). It’s probably too long ... actually it is definitely too long but if I agonize over editing it down again and again I won’t get it up before the finale. It’s probably repetitive at times, and most certainly not anything I’ll be showing off as an example of my top essay writing. And I want to be able to say that the length pays off because I have some grand hopeful insight at the end. I want to say I know things will be okay. But the fact that I can’t is exactly why I’m writing this, and why it’s so long. So if you need this to have a hopeful ending, I’m sorry, I don’t have one for you currently. I want to, so badly. But to me false hope would be even worse.  So if you can’t handle another long post that doesn’t end with a way to fix things, it’s okay, take care of yourself. But maybe the most hopeful thing I can tell you, and tell you up front, is that you aren’t alone in your pain. 

I want to preface this all with one more thing: I don’t hate CRWBY. I respect them, support them. I’ve wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt as much as I could.  That doesn’t mean I can’t criticize them or expect more from them or just be plain angry with them. I can be vocal about all of that without harassing them, without hating them. I don’t think they’re just plain evil or homophobic. I still want to believe that they can do things that will allow me to trust them again. Maybe it’s naive, but I want to, at the very least, still have hope that this wasn’t malicious, just very poorly conceived and executed. 

And I know that other people who are hurting like me are lashing out towards CRWBY. And while I don’t at all condone that kind of reaction, I can understand it to an extent. Because I’m very, very hurt and angry and it would be so easy to let loose and say all the awful stuff I want to in my anger. To yell and call people out and not care how I come across. It would definitely be a lot easier than spending all week writing this long thing and agonizing over making it perfect. There is nothing wrong with venting and being raw and open and angry, but just as we want CRWBY to be aware that their actions can truly hurt people, we need to be conscious of the fact that so can ours.  Many people are very hurt right now. And whether or not you think it was queerbaiting/BYG or not, or even whether or not you just think it was bad writing, no one has the right to invalidate the people who are hurting right now, many of whom are queer people dealing with personal traumas and mental illness. 

The few people who are attacking CRWBY and other fans (and there is a difference between being angry and vocal about that anger and just attacking them) do not invalidate the hurt people are feeling. If you are hurt or angry you have every right to be. You have every right to stop watching the show or leave the fandom, or communicate your hurt to CRWBY. But communicate means just that; communicate. Talk. You can be as angry as you are, you don’t have to temper your pain to be more tolerable to the people who caused that pain. But there is a difference between being harsh and honest about how hurt you are, and harassing real people. And I won’t say “harassing real people over a fictional character/show” because I know it’s more complicated than that. My hurt this past week isn’t over a fictional character or a ship. It’s about me and what I’ve been through and the fact that the very thing that gave me strength in hard times was turned into something that confirmed my biggest fears and hurt me immensely. 

The world always gets so sentimental when we see things about fictional stories giving people some comfort, and we celebrate that. But as soon as people say they can be hurt just as much by media, we lash out, say they’re overreacting, that they’re just getting upset over fictional characters. But you can’t have it both ways. We can’t want fiction to be important and inspiring to people and then belittle people who are negatively impacted by the same material, especially when often that vulnerability comes from a history of trauma and/or being neurodivergent. I am extremely hurt. I feel betrayed and abandoned and angry. And it will take time for me to process all of that and move past it. But I can be all of those things without attacking CRWBY or the people who might disagree with me. 

To me, this isn’t about disagreeing. We can argue forever about whether or not this was queerbaiting or bury your gays or poor writing (and I honestly at this moment don’t even know what I think about all of that because I’m not in that headspace currently) but the fact is that there are many, many people who feel it was, and who are hurting because of that, and whether you believe it was or not does not give you the right to invalidate the real pain that they are feeling.  Who is right is less important than the fact that people, people who were already vulnerable, have been hurt. So, please. Respect each other. Respect those who are hurting. Respect those who aren’t and don’t understand, and respect CRWBY. You can still be angry and speak out without attacking others. 

With that said, to fully understand why this has affected me so much, and why it’s going to take a long time for me to get back to where I was, regardless of how the volume ends, there are things you need to know about my history. It’s a lot of background and this is already going to be a longer post than I’d really like, but it’s important to understanding why RWBY is so important to me, and thus able to have such a negative effect on me. So please, bear with me. Also, fair warning, though at this point it’s probably obvious, but my story isn’t happy. I still haven’t found my own positive ending to it. If it’s too much for you to read right now, please, like I said before, take care of yourself. 

I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Farley. I’m 24, nonbinary (they/them), biromantic, demisexual. I have MDD, GAD, ADHD, Panic Disorder, OCD, Comorbid PTSD, and am trying to get an official autism diagnosis. I’m a full on alphabet soup. I struggle with imposter syndrome, intrusive thoughts, self-isolation, dermatillomania, and multiple trauma related phobias. My queer and neurodivergent identities are huge parts of my life and I try to be as open as possible about them, in the hopes of helping end the stigma around them. One of the main ways I cope with my mental health issues on a day to day basis is through hyperfixations. While it might not technically be the healthiest method, it’s what I’ve found to work for me when I’m in a really bad place and unable to practice more active coping skills. Through stories and characters that I relate to, I can separate my problems from myself a little and both escape from them for a while when needed, and view them a little more clearly from a new perspective.  

That’s some important info about me, but what really matters here is the past five years of my life and the trauma within them. 

In October of 2015, a few months into my sophomore year of college, I went into a deep depression, mostly brought on by multiple family deaths and stresses over the past summer that I had not properly had time to process and recover from. I quit my job as an RA and withdrew from school and moved back home with my parents.  While this was the right decision at the time, it wasn’t easy. I left a very close group of friends at school, and didn’t really have a strong support system at home aside from my parents. My friends from high school had all gone off to college themselves, and the few that still lived in town were often busy with work or school. And because I have an intense fear of driving and needed time to get myself in a better place before starting a job, I ended up spending most of my time home alone. I became more and more isolated, to the point of verging on agoraphobic, and my parents and I started thinking about ways I could basically get my life started again. 

 But isolation messes with your head, and makes you want to just isolate more and more. In mid February of 2016 I started to really work on being social again. Mostly because I started talking to my best friend from high school, Emma, regularly again. She knew I was struggling, and while I’ve always had a hard time keeping in touch with people, Emma has always been the person I never felt self conscious about going to. We talked everyday. After high school, Emma’s mom and younger brother had moved to Ohio (I live in NC) and Emma had gone to school in Oregon. Her father lives in Germany. So between visiting her family in Ohio and Germany she didn’t have a lot of time during breaks to come back to NC to visit friends. Since we graduated I’d only seen her once for about 12 hours during that awful summer. But now we were skyping and chatting everyday. And slowly I started to be less and less scared of being more social. I wanted to hang out with friends. I was excited about going back to school in the fall. 

Something important to understand about me and Emma is how close we’ve always been. We’d been best friends since 8th grade. We told each other we were soulmates, soulfriends, when we were 15. Nearly everyone in our small high school thought we were dating at one time or another. I always knew I loved her. I was fine with our relationship being “only” platonic. Because platonic wasn’t “only”. It was absolutely perfect. It was having her as one of the most important people in my life, and me in hers, and that’s all I wanted. But I also knew that if she ever wanted to try a romantic relationship, I’d be open. 

Around the time I left school Emma had been going through a lot herself. She was finally getting help for her own mental health issues and she was, for the first time, really thinking about her identity and sexuality. On May 4th 2016 she texted me like always, but this time she was nervous. She wanted to tell me something. She said she was still confused about her sexuality and didn’t know where she fell. But when she tried to think of being with someone, the only person she pictured was me. And I told her basically what I just told you. So we started talking about testing out us being a couple. She had already been planning to come to NC to visit after she went to Ohio later that month for her brother’s high school graduation. And my parents were going on a two week vacation around that time as well. So we decided that she would come and stay with me for two weeks. We would keep this to ourselves until then, so that we could see if this was really the best thing for us. And if so, then we’d tell people. We’d always talked about living together after school, but now we wanted to see exactly what we wanted our relationship to be. She bought a bus ticket for May 26th and would stay through June 10th or so, which would mean she’d be there for her 20th birthday on June 5th. We talked everyday about our plans for her visit. How excited we were, how we could cook dinner together and dance around the house in our underwear, and just get to be Us again. We talked to friends, planning to visit friends from high school and maybe even my friends from college.

On May 18th I texted Emma around 11 pm. I hadn’t heard from her all day which was unusual but she was in Ohio celebrating her mom’s birthday and getting ready for her brother’s graduation that weekend, so she was probably just busy. We’d told each other goodnight every night for months at that point. So I told her I loved her and was so excited to see her in just over a week.

The next morning it was a bit odd that she still hadn’t texted me back but again, I just assumed she was busy with family. And then the mail came, and the last part of a birthday present I was making for her arrived. So I got to work, giddy. 

Around 2 pm my other best friend from high school, Juli, called me. For some reason I decided I’d just call her back later, I was too engrossed in making Emma’s present. About 20 minutes later I heard a knock on my door and turned to see my parents standing in the doorway to my room. I vividly remember spinning around happily and saying “Hey! Everything okay?” even as I noticed the tears on my dad’s face and how pale my mom was. My stomach knotted and I stood as my mom said “N-no. Honey…..” and walked towards me. I took a deep breath, preparing myself for her to say that a grandparent or aunt or uncle had died. But as she got closer and put a shaking hand on my shoulder, I got a little more confused, a different kind of scared. One of my cousins? One of my baby cousins?  

Nothing could have prepared me for her telling me that there’d been an accident in Ohio. That Emma, and her mom, and her brother, and her aunt had been in a crash…. And that all four of them had been killed on impact. The only thing I remember about the rest of the night is the pain of continuously screaming, punching the wall until my dad stopped me, and calling my friends from college, trying to have someone to talk to, someone who I could call who wouldn’t also be mourning. I couldn’t handle my own grief, let alone anyone else’s at that moment. 

There’s a lot more to that story. There’s the memorial service in Ohio and meeting her dad and stepmom for the first time. There’s the service we put together at our high school and seeing our friend group all together again, except not. There’s the panic attacks every time I saw a garbage truck, or my parents drove off to work. 

But most importantly for what you need to know right now, is my sliding back into isolation. I barely ever saw my friends from home and every time I did for the next two years it had something to do with mourning Emma. I saw my college friends a few times; them coming to visit or me taking a bus to stay the weekend. But eventually they went back to school and I stayed at home. I drifted away from high school friends because I didn’t know how to handle being with them when everything we did together reminded me of what I’d lost. I didn’t know how to talk to them because I needed their support but knew I didn’t have it in me to be supportive of them, and that wasn’t fair. I drifted away from my college friends for the same reasons, and even more so as the group dynamic that I had left slowly changed and faded until I didn’t know who was talking to who anymore and I again felt bad for dumping my shit on them when I couldn’t do the same. I began to think that all I brought to any social interaction was my pain and hopelessness. I would just bring everyone else down. They shouldn’t have to deal with my pain. So a year after I left school I was even more alone. I’d lost or pushed away all the people in my life that I’d expected to be lifelong friends, family. And I didn’t know how to begin to fix that. I didn’t know if I wanted to. I didn’t know if I deserved to. 

The only reason I was even still alive was because anytime I even got close to thinking about hurting myself, I could just sense Emma glaring at me, yelling at me, telling me that I couldn’t let this stop me from living out all those dreams we’d talked about. And I knew that my life wasn’t just mine anymore, that all those dreams, that bond, the parts of my favorite person that only I knew, would be lost if I died. 

But I didn't have my friends to vent to, and as supportive as my parents were (I’d told them and a few close friends about me and Emma that first terrible week) I needed friends. But I didn’t know how to reconnect and I was too scared to go out and meet new people, especially knowing that at some point I’d have to drop the “dead girlfriend” bomb on them, and who’d want to stick around after that?  So I tried to use media and hyperfixations to pull myself out of spirals, like I always had. But it was hard. Because most of the things that had been comforting before were all things I’d shared with Emma, and so now they were just more reminders of her absence. And even new things I found soon turned rotten because I couldn’t help but think about how I wish I could show it to Emma. Everything that made me happy for even a moment would pretty soon make me sad. 

Eventually I found things that comforted me and helped me be creative again and that led me to starting school again, nearly three years after I’d left, at SCAD.  I loved the classes. I wanted to be there. I’ve always been a fiction writer but now there was so much in my head that I needed to get out, to process, and to share with people, especially people like me dealing with an unimaginable grief. Those past few years had been made even more difficult by the lack of representation I found in grief material. Everything was either about grieving the elderly, not someone who’d barely even gotten to live. Or if it was about someone young it was due to suicide or disease or violence; in other words things that at the very least, left the grieving with some cause to care about, or something to be angry at, some real world outlet. I didn’t have that. I didn’t relate to that. And even harder was finding anything I could relate to that included the complexities that my queer identity put on my grief; there were people I could and couldn’t tell about our relationship. Did I say I lost my best friend or my girlfriend? What if her family didn’t approve and wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t let me have any of her things, wouldn’t want me around? And one of the biggest things I kept thinking those first few months; why had my life become a ‘bury your gays’ soap opera plot line. Was Emma supposed to just be my tragic backstory now? Was I just supposed to use this as angsty fodder for the rest of my life? What about her? What about her dreams, her potential? What about her progress? She’d just gotten to a place where she was accepting herself. Where she was overcoming her mental health issues, where she was proud of who she was. Why was I allowed to keep going and she wasn’t?  I couldn’t find any support for these feelings. Not books or groups or forums. So I decided to make them myself. I started writing and drawing, putting together what I called my Grief Scrapbook. I was working towards the thing that mattered to me more than anything; telling our story. I was getting the chance to create the content I’d so desperately needed. 

But I was still alone, even at school. I was 23 living with mostly 18/19 year olds. And while there wasn’t anything wrong with them, I was struggling with a strong sense of dissociation. Everywhere I looked I saw Emma, forever 19. And there I was, continuing to age and getting further and further away from her. 

My first year at SCAD I made two friends, and while I love them, they didn’t fulfill the hole left by the large close knit groups of friends I’d lost. I tried to get back in touch with my best friend from college, only to find that she was no longer talking to me. And I don’t blame her really. Yes I’d been going through things, but so had she, and I hadn’t been able to be a good friend for her. So if she needed to move on for her own good, no matter how sad that made me, she had every right to do what was best for her, just as I had been trying to do. 

I’m now in my second year at SCAD and recently started hanging out with a new group. And they’re great and I’m slowly feeling more confident and secure around them, but I still struggle. I still miss the relationships I held so dear, the relationships I let dissolve. I still worry I’ll never have that kind of connection with people again, and that if I do somehow manage to find it, I’ll mess it up again.  Some days are particularly rough, when I sit with my thoughts too long, or see something that reminds me of any one of the many people I miss, and I ache for the happiness I had. And it’s those moments when I turn to hyperfixations (I do promise this is getting to RWBY). 

This past February the final How To Train Your Dragon movie came out. The HTTYD franchise holds a very dear place in my heart, as it was my main hyperfixation during high school, and something I shared with Emma and other friends. The second film came out the day of my graduation. It was the last movie Emma and I saw together before she moved to Ohio and then went to school in Oregon. It was the last movie we saw together at all. I knew it was going to be very emotional for me to see the final movie, alone now. But I had to see it opening night. And (spoilers for The Hidden World I guess) the movie ended up being about the reality of having to let go of the important people from your childhood as you grow up. About dealing with the fact that sometimes the people you expected to always be a part of your life, aren’t. I loved the movie, but it destroyed me. A few months later I had to get through May, the 3rd anniversary, away from home for the first time. And it was extremely difficult. I’d had to take a break from HTTYD and process things. 

So my main hyperfixations weren’t helping me get through a really difficult time. But around the time HTTYD 3 came out I happened to get back into RWBY. I’d watched the first season or so when it first came out, but then had just kind of forgotten about it. And so, in the absence of HTTYD, I got caught up. And I can’t say there weren’t things that hurt, that made me have to take a moment and collect myself.  Watching the end of volume three, watching Pyrrha and Jaune finally kiss, and then watch their relationship die with her before they even had a chance to be together, hit way too close to home. Logically I should have projected on Jaune more than I did but I think I couldn’t, because it wasn’t just similar, it felt like I was literally watching the worst moment of my life play out. He was too much like me to handle. But there was Qrow. And at first I just kind of latched onto him because I liked him. I like his characterization, his design, and I was a fan of V*c ( I hate to even mention him here for fear of causing a totally different discourse, but Emma and I were big fans of his and high school and met him and when everything happened with him it was just another thing that felt like a good memory of Emma had been tainted.)  

And so I was watching while the last half of volume six was airing. And I was watching Qrow slip further and further into his depression. I watched as he felt betrayed by Oz after grieving him and then getting him back. I thought more about how he’d basically lost his sister, about how he’d grieved for Summer (regardless of whether it was platonic or romantic), how he lost hope in having strong relationships ever again. How he felt cursed and how he pushed people away to protect them and himself from more pain. I saw how the Apathy affected him and how close he was to giving in before Ruby and Weiss snapped him out of it. I saw him struggle to get himself back together for Ruby and the rest of the kids, but not know how. I saw every single fear I’d struggled with those past few years in him. I related to Qrow more than I’d ever expected to. And so my hyperfixation on RWBY grew. His addiction was my isolation. His insecurities of hurting others and thus pushing them away was my fear that for the rest of my life, I would be alone because I was always going to be too broken to be worthy of friends and love. 

And then everything happened with V*c and for a bit everything hurt again and I had to get away from RWBY and the toxicity within parts of the fandom. And when I was able to come back I was excited but worried. I hoped that Qrow would continue to develop, continue to progress alongside me, that I would like his new actor enough to finish healing the sting I’d felt over V*c.  I just wanted Qrow back, I wanted this character to be there to help me again.

Because Qrow Branwen gave me hope. He gave me hope that I could get better. He gave me hope that even with my insecurities and trauma, something I’ll never be fully free from, I can deserve people who care about me, and that there are actually people who will care about me. He gave me hope that good things can still happen to broken people. And not just people who were once broken and have healed, but people who are still figuring out how to heal, who know they will never fully heal, but also know they still are worthy of support and care. And then volume 7 started and I got more than I’d ever dreamed. 

There was the hug with Ironwood. And even though I shipped Ironqrow, the idea of there being a romantic aspect to that hug wasn’t what made it important. It was the fact that we got Qrow connecting with an old ally (and an adult), finding that he even still had an old ally. That despite everything that had happened with Oz and Lionheart, despite all the trust he’d had broken, maybe he wasn’t actually alone yet. And then we got Clover. I’ll admit I was wary of him at first. I was worried about the traitor theories, the death theories, and then the theories that he’d negatively affect Qrow, making him feel worse about his semblance. But then he grew on me so quickly. Because he smiled at Qrow. He got him to talk about himself, called him out when he was putting himself down, told him how well he was doing. And while it’s wasn’t because of Clover, he was sober, and Clover had to at the very least help him stay that way. Qrow was hunching less when he walked, opening up, being more vulnerable and social. He was smiling, laughing, making jokes. He had a steady partner that he trusted and worked well with, likely for the first time since team STRQ. And yes, I shipped them, but honestly while I would have still been disappointed if it was never canon, given how blatant it really seemed like it could be, it would ultimately have been okay. Because again, it was less about Qrow finding love and more about him finding support.   And then I saw Qrow and Clover and Robyn team up, and whether it was canon or just fandom I felt represented. Not just in the way I had with Qrow about my mental health, but as a queer person struggling with complicated grief; the exact thing I had never been able to find and had taken upon myself to create for others. I saw Qrow being loved (again, whether platonic or romantic isn’t as important) and healing. Even if Fairgame never actually happened, I could still see them as queer characters helping each other process trauma. And maybe I set myself up in a bubble part of the fandom that fully convinced me that Fairgame was possible, but at the very least I truly, undoubtedly thought that Clover would side with Qrow. 

And as I watched episode 12, I could feel my stomach sinking. Okay Clover didn’t side with Qrow at first, but maybe he’ll come around. Okay maybe he won’t come around, but maybe he’ll take Qrow in and they’ll have time to talk, maybe even with Ironwood. But then Clover abandons the ship, abandons Qrow and I was scrambling even more for hope that things would be okay.  Maybe he’s trying to get away to diffuse things. But then “Never pegged you for the manipulative type” the first sign of Qrow doubting their entire relationship, of feeling betrayed again. And then Clover calls Qrow cynical? Maybe I’m forgetting something, cause I haven’t gone back and analyzed every scene with them, but I can’t remember Qrow ever being cynical around Clover this volume that we’ve seen. Self-deprecating yes, but this is legitimately the happiest and most secure we’ve ever seen Qrow. But okay maybe they’ll reason and Clover will come around. But then “We don’t have to fight, friend.” and it’s friend not Qrow. And then “You don’t know my friends. That’s how it always goes.” and I broke. I almost stopped there, a part of me wishes I had. Because it was already so broken, this thing that had even in the past few weeks, been a main pillar of hope for me. But maybe they’ll come together to fight Tyrian. And then Qrow goes after Tyrian and Clover keeps attacking Qrow. Well maybe he’s really trying to protect him, or has some plan. But then they continue to fight each other. And they don’t have even a moment of “who’s the bigger threat here? Us or the serial killer?” And then Qrow works with Tyrian?! Tyrian the serial killer? Tyrian the unstable maniac? Tyrian who tried to take Ruby? Tyrian who nearly killed Qrow? Tyrian who fucking worships Salem, who Qrow has spent most of his life fighting, has lost Summer to, and countless other traumas? (and I get the possible reasons, realizing that Clover won’t lay off of him so Tyrian is his best bet and then he can take care of Tyrian, but I still don’t like it. But this isn’t even about whether or not I think it’s good writing or characterization and it’s too long already to get into that.) And then Tyrian and Qrow fight so well together and I honestly felt sick. We haven’t seen Qrow work that well with anyone. Not RWBY, not Ironwood, not Clover.  And now we see it with fucking Tyrian? And maybe it’s a stretch but it honestly felt like another nail in the “Qrow attracts bad” coffin that is his insecurities. Qrow and Tyrian fight nearly perfectly together and it felt so damn wrong. Clover’s wrong here, Qrow’s wrong here, and it all feels so very very wrong based on the entire progression of their relationship throughout the volume. And then Qrow takes down Clover’s aura and I’m just empty.  There’s no hint of him trying to just beat Clover and not kill him. He has no reason to think that Tyrian won’t actually go for the kill during this fight. But they continue to have these snippets of “We don’t have to fight” or “I want to trust you” while showing no signs of holding back and still caring about the other’s well being. And then Qrow’s voice breaking during “Why couldn’t you just do the right thing…”. We’ve literally never seen Qrow this emotionally compromised, let alone during a fight. He’s crumbling because he finally had someone who made him think he could get better, that he could have close relationships, that he could be good for the people around him. And now he’s losing it. 

I was broken here, I was already spiraling. I knew Clover would get hit. I knew I would be struggling to deal with this episode because I had so fully expected a different course. But I thought there could still be hope. There had to still be hope. CRWBY wouldn’t give us all that development, wouldn’t show Qrow finally happy without leaving some hope for things turning around in the finale. He’d get hit by Tyrian’s stinger and Qrow would have to work to save him and they’d work things out. But then “I trust James with my life… and I wanted to trust you.” And I’m sobbing. Because I get it, Clover’s loyal, but when Qrow’s face hardens I know what he’s thinking. What he’s trying not to think but it’s so hard to fight: “Maybe it is me. Maybe I can’t be trusted. Maybe I’ve ruined things again”. Even though he knows what James is doing is wrong. But he trusted James, he trusted Clover. And he thought they trusted, cared for him. And now they’ve both turned against him and no matter how much he knows he’s doing the right thing, he can’t help but worry that he’s still the thing broken here, that he still messed up somewhere and ruined the relationships he needed so much. I was breaking more and more as I watched this source of my own hope lose all hope. 

And then Harbinger. The weapon Qrow built himself. That he modeled after his hero. The literal extension of his soul. And only moments before, Qrow destroyed the one thing that might have protected Clover. Clover’s emblem falls. Tyrian with “Like you killed Clover”. And yeah yeah Qrow being framed is heartbreaking. But it’s more that he’ll believe it. He did. He fucked everything up again. He tried so hard to do the right thing and still managed to hurt the person he cared about. And if Clover, the foil to his bad luck, could be destroyed by his semblance, how does anyone else stand a chance? And then blaming James. Swearing to make him pay (I honestly don’t remember if he says make him pay or kill him but I physically can’t rewatch that scene to see which it was). And yes he blames James. He hates James. It was the last straw breaking on someone he wanted to trust so much, wanted to have as a friend. But he still blames himself. He still knows he’s cursed and all the progress he’d made with Clover’s help is ripped away. 

And then “Good luck”. I’ve seen people saying it’s sweet, that it’s a moment of reconciliation, of Clover showing he still cares. And I don’t necessarily disagree. But I hate it. Because Qrow won’t take it that way. It’s just another reminder that good luck is out of his reach. And then the goddamn sky and the bi flag colors. And then we see Qrow cry for the first time. And then…. The scream…. I literally nearly vomited and that was the thing that sent me over the edge into full blown panic attack. Because I know that fucking scream. I know how it feels. I hear it ringing in my ears, I feel my throat getting raw. I could hear and see and feel myself in the same position. The nightmare I’d fought off for years; kneeling over Emma’s body and there being nothing I can do but scream and scream as the last of the hope I was clutching to faded with her… with Clover’s eyes.

It wasn’t that Clover died. It wasn’t that my ship won’t happen. It was how traumatizing it was. It was that Harbinger was now defiled. It was that Qrow set it up to happen. It was the sky. It was seeing the light go out of Clover’s eyes. It was Qrow’s scream. We’ve never seen a death like this on RWBY before. Yes we watched Pyrrha’s death. But there was no blood. We didn’t see her bleed out. We didn’t see the exact moment the light left her eyes. We saw Adam stabbed and some bleeding and then hitting the rocks, but we weren’t right there, seeing the exact moment of his death close up. If Clover had been stung by Tyrian and died I’d be upset still, and many of the issues I have would still be relevant. But using Harbinger like that, playing directly into Qrow’s own insecurities like that, after having him do things that felt extremely out of character in order to set things up for Tyrian to kill Clover like that and blame Qrow? It felt vile. 

It didn’t just feel like bad writing or different narrative choices. Hell, it didn’t even just feel OOC. It felt malicious. It felt like twisting established plot and characterisation completely in order to make it fit some tragic climax that was only chosen because it would have the biggest emotional impact, not because it was the best way to continue the plot. And they can’t say that they didn’t expect people to be so attached to Clover. Because if they didn’t expect that to be so emotional for viewers, then why do it like that in the first place? Why put in the climatic cinematic shot that mirrors when Yang lost her arm? Why have Qrow screaming over Clover’s body be the final shot?  If Clover was never meant to have significance to both Qrow and fans, why make his death so painful? They can’t say that they didn’t know fans would get so invested at the same time that they say that it was necessary to make it that traumatic. It’s not that you can’t kill off beloved characters, no matter how long they’ve been in the show. But if you do, it’s got to feel important, it’s got to feel necessary, and it’s got to make sense for those characters, or else it just feels like you’re playing with peoples’ emotions for no reason other than shock factor. 

I’ve seen a bunch of theories and discourse. Arguments over whether or not it’s queerbaiting or bury your gays. Over whether or not it’s bad writing or out of character. And I’m sure I’ll eventually have a stronger, more thought out opinion on that, but right now I can’t even get there. 

I’ve seen theories as to why CRWBY did this, why it’s important to the plot. And maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’ll be just as surprised in a good way next week as I was in a traumatic way this week. But it will take a lot, and I will still need time to recover and dig myself back out of my own intrusive thoughts that saw this episode and rejoiced because “See!? See, good things can’t happen! You’ll always lose whatever good you find. You’ll always ruin whatever good you find.” And none of the theories I’ve seen make that better. Maybe they’ll bring Clover back with the Staff of Creation or some other method: doesn’t matter, the damage is still done. Qrow still is betrayed and traumatized. And even if Clover came back and Ironwood realized he was wrong and stopped, even if everything went back to exactly what it was, Qrow still would have lost all the progress he made this season. Because even if everything was fixed, Qrow would still have to fight down the newly boosted fear that everything will fall apart again. And similarly even if I come back to RWBY and things are good, I will still have a hard time trusting the show, and will still have to climb my way out of a hole I had just gotten out of, except this time I won’t have the comfort of RWBY to help me. 

Or maybe Clover won’t come back and Qrow will relapse and try to kill Ironwood and lose his mind like the scarecrow he is. And what will that do but reinforce the fear and idea that “broken” people can’t escape their vices? That they’ll always come back to pain. Yes, it’s important to show that people can relapse and still get better, that relapse doesn’t mean all hope is lost. But there’s a difference between a relapse and new trauma that directly undercuts all the progress you’ve made. That’s not inspirational, it’s exhausting. Yes, you can come back again, but what about the next time and the next and the next? When will you just get to be secure in your happiness without worrying that at any moment you’ll thrown back to square one?

If it turns out there’s some great plot point this creates, some big revelation that fixes things, I still think it wasn’t done properly. Fine, have that, have that pain. But don’t end on that and leave people for a week. It’s not about it being a cliffhanger. It’s about people who are traumatized being abandoned. (Again, I’m not even getting into how, if this did happen, how episode 12 would still feel off from a characterization standpoint and whether or not it was poor writing. It’s an analysis I can’t currently do.)

And maybe my least favorite theory and the one that I might see as most likely; that Qrow won’t relapse. That he won’t completely lose it and instead Clover’s death and influence will be what keeps him going. Because yeah, that sounds great, that sounds heroic and strong and like the progress that came from knowing Clover did make a difference. But it feels wrong in this instance. Qrow’s had that. He’s had loss that hurt him but he kept going to finish something or honor them. He kept going after Summer died. He kept going for Ruby and Yang and Tai. If he didn’t have that, why would he have kept going when things were so bad? But Qrow doesn’t need that again. He doesn’t need another pain to spur him on. He needs support. He needs proof that his hard work, his struggle, has been worth it and that he still has allies. And not just the kids. Because as much as he respects them, as much as he believes in them and their abilities as hunters, he’s still protective of them, they still aren’t on an equal level. He still feels responsible for them. And that’s good for him, but he needs adults too. He needs people who aren’t his responsibility. He needs adults who can call him out on his shit. He needs adults he can lean on, who can take care of him. And now who does he have? Summer is gone. Raven is gone. Tai is back at home. Oz is gone. Lionheart betrayed him. James has now betrayed him. Winter has sided with James and might not be alive much longer? Robyn is there, but also hurt, and we haven’t seen anything to suggest that they are particularly close. And now Clover is dead. Clover, the only person we have ever seen Qrow let his guard down around like we did this season.

And it’s not that the “Staying alive for the person you’ve lost” is a bad plot line, and if I’d trust any show to do it I would’ve thought it’d be RWBY. But I can tell you from fucking experience, forcing yourself to keep going in honor of someone? Yeah, it might keep you alive. It might give you meaning and even lead you to do great things. But when it’s just you and your head? When you’re alone because you’ve lost everyone who kept you going and now you have to keep going without them, for them? It fucking sucks. It’s not poetic. It’s not this heroic strength that lifts you up. It’s a crushing weight of fear that you will fail again, that you’re the only one who can carry this burden, but this time you’ll let down the person most important to you.  And then not only will you have fucked up your life but you’d have made their suffering and loss meaningless. 

And I can see why CRWBY might take this route, what their message might be, and maybe for them and for some people it’s good, but personally it’s crushing. Because it can be a good thing to have the desire to honor someone spur you on, that’s literally why we still have RWBY. But if that’s the only thing you have? It’s toxic. You have to have other support and motivations of your own to keep you going without becoming hollow inside. And right now, Qrow doesn’t have that. Right now, if Qrow uses this to push him forward, it’s not recovery, it’s not avoiding a relapse; it’s falling into a new, much harder to spot, addiction.

Yes, shitty things happen regardless of whether or not you’ve recovered from previous shitty things. Yes, life isn’t fair and sometimes it feels like you just get hit down over and over. And yes, people die in war and it’s ruthless and unfair. But RWBY is still a show. It’s still a show about hope. It’s still fiction, an escape from the cruelty of reality. And to me there were multiple other options for the plot to create conflict and sacrifice without doing it in a way that seems so needlessly cruel.  

This is complicated and layered and I think there have been mistakes made on multiple sides, and in the end, we still don’t know what CRWBY has planned and how things will go from here and why they chose this. Because everything has a meaning in RWBY. At least I want to believe that. But right now it’s very hard to think that all the meaning that was what made this my favorite volume, was anything more than a trap to make the end that much more painful. And that hurts. I want to believe that’s not the case. But it’s very, very hard. And like I said before, even if they pull it off amazingly and everything makes sense after next week, damage has still been done. No matter what happens, there were ways things could have been handled either throughout the volume or in this episode that, while still having emotional significance and sacrifice, could have been less traumatizing to a large portion of the fandom who supports CRWBY specifically because they trust them not to do something like that to them. 

In the end I’m hurt because right now it feels like the entirety of this volume was just a build up for the shock value of tearing Qrow down again. And I’m just tired of it. I’m biased I know, and maybe for some people it’s an important narrative. But to me it just feels like angst just for the sake of being cruel to a character who can’t catch a break. Since Emma’s death I understandably haven’t been a big fan of really angsty fanfiction. At first seeing fics where a character lost their partner made me irrationally angry. Because why can’t good things happen in fictional worlds? Why do characters I care about have to suffer like I do just for the sake of being angsty? Why would someone do that to a character they love? Why inflict that absolute agony onto a character when you could just, let them be happy? Yes conflict and sacrifice are crucial to good storytelling, but you still have to leave a character some hope, or else what’s the point of just watching them linger in misery? This kind of pain isn’t just a plot point that gets addressed for one or two episodes and then is fully dealt with. It’s a part of who you are now and will be for the rest of your life. 

I’ve been sad over shows before. I’ve thought plot lines were bad and like I’d lost a character that deserved better. But I’ve never had something take me from a (relatively) stable mindset to a truly frightening spiral like I’ve been in this week. If this had happened when I was younger (granted if it had happened before Emma’s death it wouldn’t have had the same meaning), if it had been during that first year? It really might have been a breaking point for me. The final straw. The only reason I’m able to know that as truly devastating as this has been for me this week, I’m not in actual danger of getting to a critically low space, is because I’ve learned how to deal with those low places these past four years. I’m still in a dangerous headspace but I know how to handle it.  I know to reach out, to vent, to ask friends to keep an eye on me, to keep an eye out for critical signs that I’m getting worse and I need more professional help. But if I’d had this trauma as a teen and saw this, or if I’d seen it before I’d built up this method of keeping myself safe even when in the worst headspaces?  I don’t know that I would have been able to deal with it. 

There’s a loud part of my head that is berating me for letting this affect me so much. For letting a show and fictional characters be the catalyst for me having to actively ask my friends to keep sharp instruments away from me for the first time in years. I’ll have a moment of clarity of “It’s not that bad, you’ll get past it” before being swallowed back up by the hopelessness. I have moments of “How could you let a fictional character’s death put you in this place, but not Emma? How is he more important?” 

But it’s not about RWBY or Clover or Qrow. It’s about my brain, and how I as a neurodivergent person deal with things. It’s about this how thing that I use to filter parts of my life through so that I can handle them in more reasonable chunks, is now a trigger itself. I currently don’t have any other hyperfixations, which means every time I have a moment of silence, or start to get feeling down again, my brain goes to RWBY, because usually that’s how I pull myself out. But that just reminds me of the loss RWBY currently represents. Not just the trauma this has brought up, but the fact that I’ve lost this source of comfort. And then I’m left scrambling for anything as I spiral further and further. I’m at the point where unless I am having constant outside stimulus to keep my brain occupied I go right back into a nosedive. And there’s nothing I can do on my own to stop it. So I just have to ride it out, fight back dozens of overwhelming intrusive thoughts, and try to think that I won’t always be this miserable, even though the current thing that was helping me believe that has just shown me the opposite is true. 

And no, creators can’t be held responsible for the mental states of fans of their work. But when things are done that directly hurt so many people, that even if not intended to, feel so calculated and malicious, they have to acknowledge the part they played in that trauma. 

The point of whether there was queer baiting/byg, and mlm representation and how its handled, is very important, but it is also something I just can’t even begin to look at right now from an analytical viewpoint. I can’t begin to come at this from an activist place right now. And I know there are plenty of other people who can speak on it better than I could currently.  My queer identity is largely wrapped up in my grief and how it affects me, but that also means that when I’m spiraling, it is very hard to focus and make good points about things that are not issues I’ve directly experienced. The only reason I can write this at all is because these are really just emotions I’ve dealt with for years that were dragged back up.

RWBY has always been about finding hope when it feels impossible. But this feels like it’s becoming “keep finding new hope but know you’ll lose it too and have to start over”.

RWBY has been what gave me hope that even when bad thing after bad thing happened, there was a reason to keep going, that eventually something good would come your way and you don’t have to live in fear of losing it. That you can still be broken and be worthy of good things. But this episode ripped that all away and told me that sometimes a person is never meant to be happy no matter how hard they try. 

A big reason I have clung to RWBY so much, and admired CRWBY so much, and in turn been so forgiving of plotlines or details that I maybe wasn’t the biggest fan of, was because I see myself in them. They lost Monty so suddenly and tragically and I understand that as much as anyone who isn’t them can. I understand the drive of keeping the show going. When I’m working on my own writing and art about my story and my loss, they are a huge inspiration to me to keep going even when it feels impossible. I can barely listen to Indomitable because, much like Jaune losing Pyrrha, it is uncanny how close to home it hits. They have been through more than we as fans can or should ever expect to know. Because even as someone very open about their grief, who wants to get rid of the stigma of expressing grief, I know that everyone deserves to keep as much of their grief and pain private as they need. And I can't even begin to imagine how hard it is to work on a show that is literally a feat of love and honor to a person you’ve lost, and then have people attack it and you, and make huge accusations, even try to use your loved one’s memory against you. It’s my biggest fear in creating something so incredibly personal but so important. 

And I know that everyone handles grief differently, and no matter how many people you have to support you it can be an extremely isolating thing. I know that no one has the right to tell someone else they are grieving wrong, and I would never dare do that to them. Because I know that the ways I grieve and the things that piss me off about grief and people’s reactions to it, will not line up with everyone else’s, and that’s okay. So the exact things that hurt me so much may be the things that CRWBY find cathartic. 

But I still think it’s important to talk about something that hurts you. To help people understand a facet of grief that might not be what they’ve experienced. Because even people who want to help, who want to provide representation to those hurting, can never please everyone, and even can even hurt people. I want to trust CRWBY. I want to believe they care about the queer community (even if they don’t always succeed in providing good representation), I want to believe they wouldn’t purposefully try to hurt queer fans with queerbaiting or byg. I want to believe they don’t actually hate mlm. 

Narrative is complicated and sometimes things are done that will unknowingly cause harm, or that were topics that the writers didn’t understand enough to properly execute. Things that may seem so obvious to the people who were hurt could truly be things that hadn’t occurred to the writers. And that’s not to excuse those writers from acknowledging their mistake, but to give them a chance to learn and improve. I think a great example is The Adventure Zone (slight spoilers ahead), and how Griffin McElroy handled the fans’ reaction after Sloane and Hurley died in Petals to the Metal. He hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone but he made a decision that was very upsetting for many people and that wasn’t okay. But he listened and apologized and from there on not only tried to provide better representation, but asked about how he could do so, consulted the people he was trying to represent in order to do everything he could to not cause that kind of pain again. Creators are human and deserve second chances, as long as they show they are actively trying to improve.

Things will be learning experiences, but the people who are hurt in those learning experiences, and who are often the ones hurt in such things over and over, are still allowed to be hurt and upset. Intent is not effect. And for creators who want to be inclusive and supportive, it is their responsibility to accept criticism and work to avoid making the same mistakes. Like I said at the start of this, criticism is not harassment and harassment helps no one. Be as angry as you are, be as open as you need, but cruelty to people who are honestly trying to do good but will still make human mistakes just creates more pain and conflict. You don’t have to like it or forgive it but you can’t invalidate the people who are hurt, who do. 

I love RWBY. I want to love CRWBY. I want to keep watching. I want to keep supporting and trusting them. And maybe I’m letting a show have too much influence over me. Maybe it’s unhealthy to project so much on a character. Maybe things will prove to be necessary to tell the story they want to tell. But speaking as a neurodivergent, traumatized, grieving, queer person, I still feel betrayed and hurt by something that I trusted enough to be vulnerable about and I don’t want to sugarcoat or hide that. 

I can’t say I hate CRWBY or I’ve lost all hope in or respect for them, because I’ve related to them so much and know how complicated things like this can be. And because I don’t think I personally can write someone off while still in such an emotionally raw space. I’ll have to take some time to see if I’m able to watch the finale this weekend, but I will most likely watch it, if not just a bit later than I usually would. And RWBY has thrown big surprises at us before, and I can’t know what will happen in the finale and how it will feed into or try to heal some of the pain we’re feeling. But regardless of what the narrative intent is in Clover’s death, it needs to be acknowledged that episode 12 alone, ending on such an intense scene that wouldn’t be resolved for at least a week, hurt people. And CRWBY needs to acknowledge and take responsibility for it. I can’t say that I’m the most up to date on social media and what each person involved with volume 7 has said in the past few months. But I know that numerous official twitter accounts posted things that led people to put more credibility in Fairgame, myself included. And that even after seeing how big the ship had gotten, and knowing what the outcome was, some of CRWBY continued to seemingly feed into the excitement, even teasing about how hard episode 12 would hit us. 

That’s honestly one of the reasons I think this feels not just like bad writing or something, but betrayal. Of course RT can’t control everything everyone involved with RWBY posts, but for a company that has tried to seem so supportive of lgbt and mentally ill fans, they should have, at the very least, not have fed the flame and given people hope and supposed credibility that they knew would crumble after this episode. It feels like, even if they hadn’t intended this entire plot point to come across the way it has, they saw us going down this path and egged us on for added shock factor. 

And even if somehow the finale fixes everything, it doesn’t undo that hurt. It makes me think of the trailers for Insatiable when it first came out. How toxic and fat shaming they seemed and how people reacted poorly to it, but then all the people involved responded with how positive the show was, and that people shouldn’t judge it before they saw it. Or those “joke” videos or posts of kids coming out and the parents getting angry but then it’s about some stupid other thing. It’s meant to trigger a very sensitive issue, that people who have gone through traumas related to those issues are all too familiar with seeing over and over. So why would they have faith that this wasn’t just another one of those times when everything they see points to the opposite? Why trigger people who have already been hurt, for the sake of shock factor? It’s poor and callous writing. 

And that’s what this feels like. It feels like we were exploited in order to make this hurt more. And maybe that was a very unfortunate accident. But CRWBY still needs to acknowledge that they made mistakes, and do what they can to prove to the fans that they still deserve our trust. And that’s not going to be an easy one and done thing. For some it may never be enough, and that is completely valid. 

Of course everyone has different histories and issues that can lead them to be drawn to a certain show or character. And creators can’t ever know for sure that they won’t bring up painful things for any of their fans, and often trying to do so can make the content and message suffer. But even though everyone might not have a story that is as “obviously” traumatic as mine, might not have things they so directly relate to in Qrow and in Clover’s death,  they’re all still valid in the pain they’re feeling. One of my least favorite things about living with grief is people thinking that their traumas and struggles aren’t as big or important as my own. 

This week I’ve told people how hard a time I’m having, and why. And the people who know my backstory understood. The people who didn’t know though, brushed it off as crazy fangirl, tumblr discourse drivel. Even to my face after I told them how much I was hurting, they would groan about people getting so obsessed with fictional characters. You shouldn’t have to know why something negatively affects someone the way it does in order to respect the fact that it does. And I’m not more valid in my pain than people with “smaller” reasons. The fact is that a lot of people are hurting. A lot of queer and mentally ill people are reliving trauma. And like me, many of these people trusted CRWBY to be supportive, to be a comfort in a world where it’s hard to find sometimes. And that makes it hurt all the more.

I wasn’t in the fandom when Monty died, so I don’t know a lot about how CRWBY handled it, what they said publicly, what inevitable fandom discourse there was about how to navigate things. The only reason I bring him up at all, (because I’ve seen people mention him in discourse posts before and it’s usually hurtful and out of line and I truly hate it) is because he, and how CRWBY continues to honor him by keeping his creation going, is a huge part of why I feel so attached to it. My creative focus is on talking about Emma, about honoring her, telling her story, about sharing my grief with people. And while it’s extremely important to me, it’s also terrifying to think about people one day saying I let her down, or that because I made certain decisions I ruined the work or anything like that. And whether or not I am currently happy with every member of CRWBY doesn’t affect the fact that I will always keep in mind that RWBY is something directly tied to someone they’ve lost and it can be extremely difficult to have that kind of work criticized and not get defensive or angry (that’s not to say we can’t criticize things that are made in honor of someone, but that we need to remember there are still people dealing with grief on the other end of what we say). They’ll react poorly to certain things, they’ll say the wrong things, they’ll but heads with opinionated fans. And that’s not to excuse them for that, or to say we shouldn’t hold them accountable and communicate our problems with them and expect them to learn from past mistakes. But they aren’t faceless monsters in some big corporation who just make this for the money. They have real emotional investment in their work and I honestly believe they are well intentioned and want to support lgbt and mentally ill fans. But good intentions don’t ensure there won’t be negative impact, and if they truly want to keep, or regain fans’ trust and support they need to show they understand that. 

It may be naive and there may be things I don’t know that might have changed my view but until now, even with some writing choices I didn’t love, I've really liked CRWBY and trusted them. I personally can’t say I hate them and write them off right now. I understand if you can, if this was the last straw or just proving your view, and that’s all valid. But I want to, as much as possible, believe that they’re well intentioned. RWBY is far from perfect. CRWBY is far from perfect. But that’s ok. As long as there’s effort to improve and acknowledge mistakes and try to make amends

It’s possible that things I’ve said here may anger some people, and unfortunately, as much as I tried to avoid it, may hurt CRWBY. Because as hurt and angry with them as I might be right now, I don’t want to hate them or hurt them.  I’m human as well, and I’m very passionate about this and have a very personal attachment to it. So I acknowledge that it is totally possible that I have said something here that I could have handled better. If so, please, let me know. Constructively. If you need to, privately. Don’t attack me for it. I know when a conversation is toxic to me and I will not put myself in that position and will block people. But I want to be open to criticism, just as I want CRWBY to be. I want to know what I did wrong and how I can work to do better in the future. There are also certain things that I firmly believe that I know not everyone will like. And that’s okay. I have my own ways of dealing with grief and pain that will inevitably conflict with others. In those cases, while I won’t apologize for being honest about how I feel, I will understand and listen to how I may have hurt you. Different opinions and ways of coping will always be a part of grief conversations and it is less about making others agree with you and more about giving people a place to express their pain. 

This is ridiculously, stupidly, long and honestly I’m not sure there’s a clear point and if you read through it all the way, you’re a saint. But I just needed to get this out, and I hope that maybe, somehow, through the ranting, it might help someone feel less alone in their pain, or feel validated. I started writing this on Sunday and wanted to post it before the finale. It’s now Friday and who knows if there’s really any point to posting it now, but still. 

I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. I don’t know how I will handle it. I’ve seen discourse that made me anxious all over again all week. I’ve seen jokes or edits or trolls that made me sick. But there are people out here for you. There are people to talk to who will just listen. You aren’t alone. And while I can’t promise you that everything will be okay, I can promise you that there will be people here to help you get through it. There are ways to get through it. They’re not always fun or ideal, but they’re there. And eventually you’ll be able to feel okay again. The pain might not be gone for good, but you’ll have good moments again. You’ll learn how to create good moments. I still want to believe that “broken” people can be happy again, even though the world may try to show me otherwise over and over. It’s not easy, and sometimes I honestly just don’t see how it can possibly be true. But I keep trying to get back to those good places and appreciate them, for as long as I can. 

[caramelcaramelcaramelao3]

okay kids this isn’t my usual content but it’s been on my mind for a while so it’s going here anyways. also I haven’t been posting a lot bc school and not having a functioning laptop for a month, oops.

I saw a post on tumblr a few years back that was talking about adhd and other mental illnesses and the whole “you’re not adhd bc you get distracted sometimes” thing.

the bit that stuck out to me tho was an anecdote about being hyper focused on a video game to the point of ignoring your body’s needs and only being able to break away once you’ve literally peed your pants and need to clean up

and I get that it was an anecdote but it really made me feel as though I couldn’t possible have adhd bc I’d never been in that specific situation, but I did things like read through English class in school because in the 15 minutes we had at the beginning of class to read, I’d get hyperfocused on my book and accidentally read through the whole class and miss the lesson. I’d zone out in the middle of class for no reason, and get in trouble for not paying attention. I’d be chatty to the point of, again, getting in shit with teachers. I hated studying and bc I was a “gifted kid”, I never developed good study stills until high school, and still, going into my second year of university, I lack the ability to sit down and read my notes when I KNOW I need to. I would get bursts of energy and run around the sandbox at recess until I rolled an ankle or triggered an asthma attach. I’d interrupt friends because I had a thought, related or not, and needed to get it out right that second. I’d say and do things impulsively that pissed off my mom and started fights. all because nobody, including myself, had even considered that I had adhd.

it took a psychiatrist who absolutely invalidated every experience I had on antidepressants and kept me on them until I was too numb to care, a friend with ADHD who made jokes about how I probably had it bc all of her friends did, and a therapist who had ADHD but wasn’t sure if my symptoms were a result of ADHD or trauma. It took me asking my psychiatrist and being told to come back into the office in FOUR MONTHS for maybe an evaluation, my therapist and I going over all the symptoms and realizing I had all of them, my doctor referring me to a specialist after I asked, a 4 month wait, and several months of appointments, all 4 weeks apart, with a new psychiatrist who specialized in ADHD, to get my diagnosis and get on a medication and dosage that worked for me.

I need to say this in case someone who was in my shoes needs to hear it.

look up the DSM-5 criteria for ADHD. talk to your doctor, a therapist, someone with adhd, look up YouTube videos from adhd educational sources. this applies to any condition, but adult adhd is ridiculously underdiagnosed.

I have never peed my pants because I was wrapped up in video games. I’ve never starved to the point of passing out because I forgot to eat. but I still have moderate-severe ADHD. I still need treatment to function.

please. if you genuinely think you have a mental illness/disorder. GO GET EVALUATED. ask a therapist, get a referral from your doctor, if you’re doubtful get a second opinion. I know that these options are a privilege, but if you have the ability to, get diagnosed.

I made this very primitive graphic to show the spectrum of experiences.

thank you for coming to my ted talk

sincerely, an ADHD writer who should’ve formatted this better but honestly my meds are wearing off so I’m sorry it’s a little disorganized

[bittersot]

2020-12-17 pt

Wrote this to vent and it became much longer than planned:

So I've been feeling like shit since I was 13 cause around that time I got depression due to me ending up in a class with mostly new ppl(I had pretty much only gone to school with ppl who had known me since kindergarten until then), and at the age where me being autistic being very obvious to everyone around me and me feeling extremely othered and cut everyone off because of #fear due to social anxiety when I got singled out by my classmates, and I didn't know what was wrong with me, or that anything WAS inherently different abt me, I thought I had ADHD at age 17 and got diagnosed with that + Autism(which I didn't expect at all) right before I turned 19.

And inbetween the age of 13-17 I did a LOT of introspection to like, "solve" what I did wrong so I could get along with people again, and I realized that I fucking hated my dad and that he has raised me and my siblings to take criticism and bullying, because ever since I was little, whenever me or my siblings did something bad/wrong (cause we were KIDS lol) we were met with snide comments and made to feel bad for not knowing things, and learned to lash out and attack to "defend" ourselves because we felt that we had to, cause we were told our everything would attacked whenever anyone said anything ever. And that + RSD was NOT a good recipe for most of my life (and still affects me to this day).

I would compulsively lie because when you have ADHD you fuck up a LOT due to impulsiveness, and never learned how to back off and do things calmly cause admitting I was wrong was equal to admitting that I was worthless and would never make it on my own(my father has said this exact thing in swedish). And like, my mother never defended me and instead defended HIM by telling me that "old dogs can't learn new tricks" when I talked about how he invalidated my emotions and how he made fun of my little brother SPITTING on me and tried to play it off when he could tell I was clearly hurt because it made HIM uncomfortable to deal with.

He has clearly never actually wanted us kids and had us to make my mother happy but didn't actually think too much about actually raising us, much less that we'd be around for(at least) 20 years.

Anyways, so, my point is, I have wanted to move out for a WHILE, because my family have been terrible for my mental health and I can't stand eating with them cause I'm autistic and they are loud and it wears me out and everyone is competetive cause we were raised that way and all advice I offer to them in how to deal with their issues and what I can do to make shit easier for them is brushed off. I want to move out cause I've noticed that lately, when I am home alone with only my cat I feel as if I have SO much more free time, cooking went by fast and I felt like I had time to do everything I wanted, despite being at work 9 hours every day + transit to and from work taking roughly 1 hour itself. When I was alone I felt more comfortable to move around in the house, it's like when an option showed up, I still had issues with executive functioning and doing stuff immediately, but I did do it, and I've noticed that when the rest of the family is home, there is a 90% chance that whenver I am deciding on what to do(eat, shower, bake, draw, play video games etc) that I just end up going to my room and lying in my bed, not sleeping, but not really enjoying it either, I just, don't feel comfortable doing anything with them around, they tire me out.

So, I want to move out, but I just recently got my first job, and there is a LOT to do when caring for your own place, even if its an apartment run by.landlord, and, besides all that, I could NEVER live alone, I NEED to have at least 1 more roomate, and here's the thing: I cut off EVERYONE in highschool, I don't hang out/talk with anyone my age in Sweden. Not only that, I'm autistic, regulation deficit, bisexual and questioning my gender, and on top of all that, I am very opinionated, so to find someone who 1, is not ableist/homophobic/transphobic/racist, and 2, is very much like me in terms of morals and 3, can STAND being around me, I am going to need to be SUPER picky. And like, finding other LGBT people in Stockholm around my age alone is difficult, I've tried on social media and barely gotten anywhere, and lord knows I don't know my social places where others like me would hang out.

I've always been the black sheep of the family and I don't think my siblings don't have it hard, but they very much do not understand what it's like to have no one around IRL who you can trust completely, and they like to make fun of it. I've never told them about my neurodivergence, but at this point I would be genuinely surprised if they didn't at least expect it. The thing is, they shit on things I do because of it all the time, in front of my parents, who know I am neurodivergent, and they do nothing about it, because me defending myself is on the same level on them calling me weird for very obvious autistic traits that aren't in anyway harmful. And I do think my mom wants me to be happy, and wants to care for me, but I really do think that she also wishes I wasn't like this, and that she too would be happier if I moved out, or didn't even exist at all. This is where I start crying while writing this, ha ha ha.

Anyways, my little brother has made fun of me for being uncomfortable with him screaming ableist slurs specifically to bother me, and my sister calls me weird and annoying for not wanting to eat with the rest of the family(when they always yell and almost constantly argue), and outright said she doesn't want me to live here anymore, and I'm just. Tired. I agree with you, I don't want to be here, but you don't understand what it is like to not have anywhere to turn, you're always surrounded by friends and make sure to rub it in how weird it is for me not to be the same.

I don’t know what to do, I got a job, I got a goal, a degree I desire, and ideas as to who I want to be, what I want to do and who I want to surround myself with. I’ve tried looking, and I’m going to keep trying until I find the friends I can trust. I wrote all of this originally to quickly vent about how my little sister telling me she doesn’t want me here anymore feels like it has all come full circle in a way since I turned 13, seeing as she herself is 13 now. She’s absolutely being dramatic, I know that, but I also think she’s honest, I know she is, I think we all would be happier if I didn’t live here, but I know it wouldn’t solve the rest of the issues with this family, the way she thinks it would.

So to end it all, I posted about the hunger thing earlier today, so I guess I’ll leave something else here as well, because it made me realize how much I forget over the years. The only reason I get by is due to my OCs, I have no emotional intimacy with anyone else, but if I may say, I’m pretty good at understanding the complexity of individuals, and make up different scenarios in my head where I go through different things. Not that it can be compared to real beings, but being able to come out, handle rejection, deal with ableism, workout how to explain my desires and wants to others, have prevented me from stagnating over the years of this solitude, and I rely on them a lot, which I’m sure I’ll forget in 10 years if I’m still around by then. Well, anyways, this rant is now 7500 symbols long, as well as 2 google docs pages. so I’m going to end it here, future me, if you read this far, drink water and brush your teeth.