#seriously when I worked at the daycare we had this mom who taught an ag class

[cygnus-is-tired]

So I’ve been lurking in the gravity falls tags for a bit and seen quite a few vampire Fiddleford aus. Which is wonderful don’t get me wrong, but most of them lean into the more classic victorian aesthetic. I however, wanted to lean more in a southern direction, I drew on some classic cowboyish designs as ways for him to hide his… affliction

Cowboy hat to shade his eyes and cover his ears (sorta)

Bandana to shield his teeth from view

Boots and messy jeans (because every farmer/ worker I know is always covered in various muck and viscera) to cover any blood he may accidentally leave on him

Vest because it looks neat

[mooncruiser]

Heyy!! I’ve been meaning to pin my testimony, so here it is :)

So, my life wasn’t really the greatest growing up. I mention C-PTSD in my bio, and that’s what I’ll get into a bit. I’ll try not to be too graphic, but I can’t guarantee it’ll be totally safe.

There were some questionable things in my toddler years, a neglectful daycare center for 3 months, my dad being in and out of my life due to fear of getting attached at first, him flying off the handle once with me (my mom got on him for it, so it never happened again) but I think the trauma started with my cousins leaving me stuck out in a baby swing twice, a near death experience with a dog bite, and a homicidal attempt on me and my mom by my sister, who was 16 at the time (I’m 5 years old). 

There was also the dog cage incident I believe at…6 years old? Me and my brother were playing and he forgot me on accident. I pretty much accepted at this point that life was gonna chain me up and try to kill me lol, but it let up for a good while, and I had a pretty decent childhood. At 9 years old, there was the torturously loud school program in the gym I had to sit through for 2 hours, I think. 

It was at 10 when things became chronically ongoing. Domestic violence at home from my sister (physical, emotional abuse on me and my family), more physical and emotional abuse at school from my assistant teacher because I was on an IEP for my autism. At 11, I was sexually abused by my female friend who was 12, and her female cousin, who was 13. I was abandoned by my cousins and aunt, and I was being placed in a seclusion room at school during standardized tests (which was sensory deprived solitary confinement) even after I was finished for the day. At 12 years old, I started being emotionally neglected by my mother.

I mean, I was so angry and depressed and secretly suicidal at 10, but by 12 I was severely dissociating (I had been dissociating during trauma at various times prior). I had so much fear and anxiety that by the time I was 13 I’d be feeling like passing out 24/7, so I got on meds, which only helped the more severe physical symptoms, I guess. 

At 13, I started being groomed by this high school girl that liked me. She was a Sophomore, and I was in 7th grade. She noticed the neglect and told me she knew me better. She would give me gifts, teach me to ship gay pairings, gave me a gay pedophilic manga. Shamelessly told me she had sexual relations with her male cousin and his friends who were around my age. I blocked it out. 

I also had a very abusive friendship with a girl online who had BPD. My assistant teacher, who came with me to middle school, restrained and tortured me with the marching band’s loud music in the hallway, which only intensified my dissociative symptoms (I was actually switching alters at this point regularly and having no idea).

I remember at 13 being confused about my gender and sexuality. My mom was no help and just wanted me to hide it from my family and everyone else, for reputation purposes and she didn’t want me bullied. That was actually how I decided to get in contact with my grooming abuser, which I wonder at this point whether that was my fault. I didn’t expect her to really take over like she did, but I was essentially brainwashed into accepting whatever I was feeling for her benefit. I just wanted advice and a friend. 

I was so lonely, I had been desperate for friends for years, and I was desperate for someone to love me in any way, honestly. I was overeating. I’d spend hours daydreaming, in video games or entertainment to escape from school and everything else. During meltdowns, I’d be doing self injurious behaviors. 

So by 14, I come out as a lesbian. Had a couple relationships with girls who just saw me as a sexual object (I remember saying yes to sexual things even though I didn’t want to, just so that they wouldn’t abandon me. Dissociating off and finding it disgusting), would cheat on me with multiple people, ignore me for new friends, etc. 

The BPD friend I dated, when I broke up with her, immediately attempted suicide so that scarred me more into our trauma bond. She’d show me self harm pics she took from time to time. It scared me into making sure I didn’t trigger her again, but u know I never knew what triggered her in the first place, so, like with everything else, I had no strategy to life. It was either fight, run, dissociate or nod yes to everything. She took up the latter lol. 

I came out as trans my Freshman year, and stayed that way into my Sophomore year. I was bitter about dating because of the whole sexual object thing, and full of shame at the same time, thinking no one would want me. I thought I was asexual. I tried out a career high school honestly just to get away from the memories of my old school. 

Some feelings about being trans started to fade, but not entirely, so I went by genderfluid/genderqueer from 17-19. I was excited to make new friends at my new school, but my anxiety kept me from it. I opened up very awkwardly about my dating history to one girl (which tbh I shouldn’t have, but I had been brainwashed so lol) and she told all the girls in my lab, and I was excluded and bullied (and cyberbullied) from thereon. 

I didn’t know it at first, it was so subtle. But once I knew, I tried standing up for myself and told the principal, which made them leave me alone for the most part. They’d glare at me, use me at graduation, cyberbully me one last time 8 months after graduation, and that was it. I still had to deal with domestic violence until I was 22, but once I graduated everything pretty much hit me.

I knew I’d be too stressed out to go to college or work. School indoctrination tried to teach me to be neurotypical and expect this, but it wasn’t happening. I was too afraid to leave my house for a year, and too afraid to be honest online for fear of being watched and bullied, or stalked. I was seriously considering suicide down the line. I thought I had nothing left to live for. I was useless. Nobody cared. Friends moved on to their new lives and I was dying. 

That’s when Jesus stepped in.

I guess I started being curious about God again for the first time since I was 12. I always believed in God, was grateful to Him for being there for me during the domestic violence and never blamed Him for it. I found out about worship music and was thrilled, and a question came up. Was being gay a sin? My grooming abuser taught me that God made me gay, so it was alright. But I wanted to know for sure this time from the Word. 

To my surprise, she was wrong. The Bible said it was indeed, a sin (the practice, not so much the identity aspect). I couldn’t piece together why, so I struggled with it for months. On my 20th birthday however, when I got done creating fanart of a gay pairing, I felt strongly convicted by the Holy Spirit that it was wrong. So I went to God.

I said, “If it is wrong, please change me so I can make You happy, because I love You. In the meantime, I won’t do anything in support of it for a while. If it’s not wrong, don’t change me, and I’ll know which way is right because I trust You.” When I look back on it, it was a pretty crazy prayer. Lots of people have said they couldn’t “pray the gay away”, and I do wonder what the difference was with me.

After 3 months, I stopped to check if I still felt anything, and the feelings were gone. My gender dysphoria was gone, too. I was way too afraid to tell anybody yet, but I remember when I did, one of the first people I told was my grooming abuser. 

She was livid, tried one last time to intimidate me. Another time we crossed paths (she came out of nowhere saying hi, said she worked at that market, complimented me and walked away smiling) and I was triggered, I messaged her and told her how she hurt me and I couldn’t bear to be around her anymore, but I hoped she’d have a good life. She didn’t respond online, but she complained to my sister that I thought she was a predator, and by the end of the conversation tries to get her to tell me she said hi. When she had kids, she was planning on raising them to be nonbinary. Her husband was abusive to them, so she ended up losing them. She never bugged me again. 

I was blown away by how God had changed me. How He opened my eyes to the truth. I prayed for Him to open my eyes to whatever else I had been blind to, and He slowly began lifting off the amnesia surrounding all my traumas, urging me towards recovery with Him. I realized I might have OSDD-1b recently as well, which is strange that I could have possibly had DID prior to losing my amnesia? 

I have been on this journey ever since, journaling, blogging, researching, and finally in a wonderful therapy called EMDR where I truly release the traumas from my body, hear God’s new positive beliefs to replace old negative ones from my childhood, and experience loving extraordinary visions while processing that teach me to focus on Jesus, trust Him more, love and pray for my enemies, and have a real satisfying relationship with Him that’s unattainable with anyone on Earth, along with daily Bible study. 

The picture on the left was me at 16 in my old life, the one on the right is me in my new creation :) God bless all of you, thank you for reading this far 💕💖

[rachelzee143-blog]

Another Mother Against Promposals

<p>My stance on the issue of the Promposal trend was recently placed in public view when I read this blog post here: http://www.scarymommy.com/promposal-trend/</p> <p>A friend of mine, a millennial who is smart, outspoken and whom I hold in high regard responded by saying this: <blockquote>Hi I’m 22 this is sounds EXACTLY LIKE LITERALLY EVERY article by a bitter out of touch middle aged person ever. Seriously the world we’re growing up in is screwed the public education system is a shit show they deserve the whatever celebration they want for simply surviving cyber bullying, hormones, growing up, common core and deciding what to do with their lives before their brains are even done developing. You can’t make enough money working part time to put yourself through college (I would know I’m trying!) so they might not even get to finish. No degree? good luck making enough to get married or start a family, look at the people a few years older than high school seniors, millennials, people this woman’s age can’t fucking shut up about how we’re ruining everything by not getting married, buying houses and starting families AND WHY do they think we’re not doing these things?? Because we’re selfish and only want to be “free and focus on our selfies, avocado toast and careers” when the reality is we can’t afford to marry the people we love without coming under criticism for not having a dress or a church, we can barely afford the shoeboxes we do live in so a house might as well be a mermaid and if we kids living the way we do we’d never hear the end of how awful we are pawning them off on our parents because we can’t afford daycare and rent. Let these kids party as extravagantly as they please because it may be a long time before they ever seen the rest of those mile stones.“

My response? I read the article twice before posting. I have a general rule against posting propaganda that perpetuates generational divide. Because the truth is, when I was 22, it sucked just as much. For different reasons, but it sucked. When I was 22, we had new frontiers to handle. We were not certain this planet would be around long enough for us to see our own children. Would it be nuclear war? The hole in the ozone? Pollution? Many of our parents got divorced when we were young, giving way to the term "broken homes”. Ours was the first generation to have predominantly two parents working full time. We were called the latch key generation; later the more ubiquitous Generation X. We witnessed the AIDS epidemic first hand and a government try to ignore and scapegoat it away. Trust me: we had plenty on our shoulders and I remember. At 22 I had to drop out of college (lack of finances and inability to pay back loans.) I worked two full time and one part time jobs plus babysitting and lived with my parents for the next few years. When my husband and I finally got married we had been together for six years. He received some money from his grandmother to put a down payment on our house - a double, so we always have income from the upper. At a time when weddings were expected to cost 15-30k, ours cost about 6k. My mother hand sewed my dress. We got an amazing deal on tulle and other decorations from a florist that happened to be closing. We made it work. So when people lament about how great it was “back in my day”, I hesitate to get on board with that. We had the same criticisms of “kids don’t play outside” and “none of the parents understand the way their children are being taught.” We felt misunderstood by the Boomers and the Silent Gen'ers who raised us. And they felt misunderstood by the Greatest Gen'ers before them, and so forth. The struggles that occur as part of a coming of age may be painted with different medium, but they are all the same. And I don’t want to pretend that somehow my people got it all sunshine and rainbows right just because we brought the world Google and our mothers could yell for us from five blocks away to get us home in time for dinner. But this prom thing… my God, the pressure! I went to three proms (mom made those dresses too.) For the first two, I asked my dates to go with me. None of the guys I asked were even in my grade. I am quite certain nobody wanted to take a chubby weirdo like me. I cannot for the life of me imagine if the expectation had been a promposal that for me would simply never have come. The humiliation would have been crushing. Seeing others in my not quite fully developed but highly perceptive mind experience this might literally have killed me. But I did go, with nice boys who were my friends. One of which I felt compelled to bribe by buying his ticket and arranging for him to wear my brother’s vintage tuxedo. My mom tailored it for him and made him a tie and cummerbund to match my dress. (And I was rejected by the first guy I asked for that year.) [The third prom was my boyfriend’s senior prom. He actually asked me. I was in college. I married that guy.] And even then, I remember parents complaining about the unnecessary extravagance of it all - the limos, kids renting hotels… my junior prom date wore his nicest suit (not a tux) and our parents drove. For my senior prom, my dad borrowed a friend’s large van and took us to our restaurant and then to the prom. [My future husband has his own car]. I think my point is… I don’t want to take anything away from the experiences of the people who come after me. But at the same time, there is elegance in simplicity - which often gets overlooked in our youth and only more so when parents encourage it. I don’t want to take away anyone’s opportunity to celebrate and live it up. It’s just that when I look at these things, I wonder why this has to be SO big? It felt enormous when I lived it and it wasn’t this big. The expectations become even more difficult to meet. Seems like so much pressure to create a massive set up for potential disaster.

<p>Later, I spoke with my oldest daughter about this phenomenon. She is an incredible romantic who swoons at rom-coms and spent much of her earliest years enacting weddings with Barbie dolls and such. She is fourteen now and even though she is pretty certain all boys her own age are immature and gross, there is certainly a part of her that yearns for the summery sweetness of a fumbling slow dance on a dark and starry gymnasium floor, or a hand to hold while strolling through a carnival.

To no surprise, she said that these are “so cute” and “sweet”. And I get that. Some of these kids really come up with unique and fun ways to get the date.

But as the article says, when is enough enough? As a Gen-Xer myself, I tend to revolt against the mentality that somehow other generations (before or after) are wrong, or had it easier or whatever. We have all sailed uncharted waters. We have all taken risks by ignoring the warnings of our predecessors, and benefitted from them as well as failed. We have traded things along the way that have both helped and hindered our worlds equally. I believe this to be one universal truth of the whole human existence. Gen-Exers were once classified as cynical if not ambivalent, helpless, hapless and hopeless, in some ways eternal seekers - though that was not a compliment at the time. So by no means am I into speaking out against a generation. That’s just mean. <p>What I see is the nefarious underbelly of teenage expectation. For example: what if the askee still says no? What if the askee is asked by more than one person? What if the askee thinks the asker has bigger feelings than they do? What if the asker has bigger expectations in mind, since they went though all the trouble? </p> See, those problems have been there all along in the history of proms, and yet somehow the Promposal seems to amplify the stakes even more.