#therapy homework

[a-j-s-the-only]

you search for chaos because you don’t know how to sit in peace. You’ve never had the opportunity to rest.

-my therapist

[pinehutch]

When I say that I want to be evil

what I mean is I want to be powerful. What I mean is I want to be free.

Some weeks ago I spent more money than I should have on my first ever (ever!) two-piece swimsuit. You have to understand that as a child I was told I was fat, and as a teen I was told I was fat, and as an adult I've always been fat*, and you can't read your way out of the shame caused not strictly by the word but by its connotations.

(I know, because I've tried. I have been trying for almost twenty years. Looking for plus-sized fashion brought me to the digital 'fatosphere.' It made me a better person as I learned about another dimension of intersectionality and about power and oppression. It made me feel like I could wear clothing that I liked. It made me more informed about the diet and wellness industry. It's been over 20 years since I first read a critique of the BMI; it's been almost as long since I started wondering why gros/se in my close-second language didn't have the same (haha) weight to it as fat does, in my first.)

At the tail end of June, days long and scorching, I stepped into a two-piece swimsuit with a deep-v neckline and my whole midsection exposed and I spent the day in full view of dozens (hundreds?) of strangers. Cold, cold water on the joints; warm, soft pools for the evening. My hair got bigger and bigger. My neck and chest sunburned. My midriff stayed comically, blindingly pale, and everything else? It was lovely; it was fine. I rarely thought about my body, unless it was 'this feels nice' or 'my swimsuit is so pretty.' I took a selfie, even, though I deleted it. I was worried that posting it would count as thirst-trapping; shame has cored out and replaced so much of me. It was a good pic, though, and I wish I'd kept it.

What was true of me that day: I was a quite tall, very fat femme person whose feet swell with arthritis and whose hair takes up the entire frame and who's had cellulite since grade eight. What else was true: many people complimented my swimsuit. I looked out across the valleys and the mountains from the top of my almost-six-feet. I let my shoulders roll back and smiled at the sight of my bare skin gone blue-wavering-dappled beneath the surface. I stood tall. I made eye contact. I enjoyed delightful company, and let that enjoyment extend to the simple pleasure of having a body that felt fairly good, in garments I had chosen for the joy of it.

You can't read your way out of shame; it's only part of the equation. I didn't go swimming the next day with my family members, because I didn't want to feel them looking at my body and being disappointed that What A Beautiful Girl turned out like I did (though: if What A Beautiful Girl then why You Need To Watch What You Eat?). But for an entire day I felt like anyone else, gentle enough, good enough, in my skin.

It would have been good for me to swim with my family that weekend, because I'm finding that - as in all things - the practice is important. You can't read your way out of shame, not entirely, but in working with and through it there's maybe a chance to rewrite our stories.

There's a fallacy that I think a lot of us fall into, when we're trying to counter and challenge fatphobia, both culturally and in ourselves. It's the fallacy of the Good Fat. It's why I want to tell you about how two-pieces are maybe a better swimwear choice for me because of the drastic difference between my tits and hips vs my waist. It's why I wanted to post that selfie, so people could shoutycaps and fire emoji me on twitter. It's why I want to craft this post into a narrative where spending a single day mostly-unburdened by body shame has led to a hot girl summer, and I'm walking for miles every day and going to the pool four times a week. (I'm not. I still have a day job, and writing to do, and a physical disability, and the ol' depression. I'm more active than I was three months ago, and working to improve that, but still. It's not a lot.)

It is, simply, the same lie as we tell ourselves along so many different axes of marginalization: that as long as we are exceptional in a way equal and opposite to our marginalization, we'll be fine. It's the model that says you earn the right to exist fat and unashamed by being healthy, by being active, by being hot. Sorry my hip is squished against yours on the airplane; at least I've got a nice face and good hair and am well-dressed, wanna admire my hip-to-waist ratio about it?

There's no such thing as a Good Fat because we live in an inherently fatphobic world. I mean: airplane seats are too small for anyone average sized. I mean: 20 years ago I was a size 16/18 and couldn't fit into the newer lecture hall seats at my university without a lot of stress and embarrassment. I mean: I can't buy a compression sleeve for my arthritic joints at the drug store. If I ever needed to take Plan B, it might not work because I weigh (as do most adults of my acquaintance) more than 165lbs. You cannot be hot enough or active enough or well-dressed enough to escape from this; the only option is to be Not Fat.

But why on earth would we want to accept this? We know the system is fucked up and evil, and so: we want to be evil. Just a little bit, just enough. We want to be hot villains. We want to serve cunt and to be cunts. We want to nailcare emoji, fire emoji, crown emoji, and we want to take no prisoners unless it's between our thick thick thighs. Sit on their face; if they die, they die. It's fun and sexy, in a world where "everything is sex, except sex, which is power" to dig in and grab handfuls of what looks like empowerment, fuck the rest of it, get what makes you feel best.

It's a mirage; freedom doesn't live there.

Because of course fat people are hot. Fat bodies are desirable. Fat bodies are strong, sometimes, and athletic, sometimes, and powerful in whatever way you'd like to read that. That's true no matter what.

And yet (this will hurt) fat bodies are still (I'm sorry, I'm so sorry) not good enough. If the system is the problem, your individual empowerment is not the (whole) solution.

When I say that I want to be evil, what I mean is I want to be free. I want the strange rare days I've known I was desirable because I was desired, specifically and individually. I want the days where I grant myself dignity. I want the day where I lived peacefully in my mostly-naked body around hundreds of strangers, and went to bed happy.

Reading is input, it's taking in. I can't read my way all the way out of fatphobia, out of body shame because that's like trying to put out a forest fire 2000km away by throwing baking soda on your stove element. (Not harmful, but insufficient and misdirected.) It has been so helpful to know that other people wrestle with all of this, in ways that are more intelligent and expert than mine; it doesn't change material reality, though.

It's not the shame that's the problem, but where it comes from. It's not my internalized fatphobia or low self-worth or lack of body confidence that keeps people from life-saving medical care because their doctors were obsessed with their weight instead of their symptoms. My soft abdomen has never shamed a stranger on the internet, my calves (never in tall boots) haven't forced someone to buy a second seat.

Maybe it's time that I redefine what I mean when I say I want to be evil. I want to be a hot villain that was justified in their takedown of the status quo. I want to put a crown on every head. I want these thick thighs under me as I pull you into my lap and love you, and to use those fire emojis to make room for new growth.

I want us all at the pool together, celebrating as the sun sets.

*I'm using "fat" to here mean something like "size 16 US women's or larger," but there's no good definition

[johnfair]

Dear Christopher,

This is homework. For therapy. It sucks.

Sometimes I think it's a mistake letting you go.

You're the best parts of me and your mom and your Buck. But I don't think I like that you got running away from your problems from us

Shit examples

Fucking terrible role model

I failed you more times than I can count. Maybe it's better that you're far away from me. I drag down everyone with me But I try, and I won't stop trying. I just wish I wasn't so broken you deserve better than

I hope you're settling in okay with you abuelos. I missed you the second you left

It's

I miss you, kid.

I know you don't want to talk to me. And that's fine. You can be mad, and feel hurt, and you can hate my guts. You can hate me. I deserve it

More than anything else, kid, I love you. And nothing can change that.

Dad

[euthanarexia]

therapy homework done. these are called coping cards apparently and they're meant to be read when you're in distress to bring yourself back to a more positive or at least neutral state of mind. all backgrounds are from unsplash and the words are from @cryptonature's books, all of which i own and make me feel better (can't wait for "something in the woods loves you"). feel free to use them if they can help. and also make sure to check more of jared's work.

[toalloftheboysivelovedbefore]

My J.D.B.,

I love you.

It was the start and the end of everything, so it only feels right to start her by reminding you of that fact, in case you ever foolishly forget. I miss you. With as much of my heart that a human is capable of missing another human. I miss you. I carry you with me, everywhere, with all that I am.

To live this life without you is to have a little less color in it. You always loved color, so I suppose it is only fitting that you took some with you. You always laughed at my love of neutral earth tones, but that was why our pieces fit together. You brought color into my life and I grounded you in yours. There are remnants of the colors you took, like watercolors bled onto the edges of a page. Not there purposefully, but spilling over from a work of art.

I know that you didn't want to leave. I didn't want you to. I wanted time with you -- so much more time. The weight of unlived plans is a heavy burden to shoulder. We only got two years together in this life. I hope that we find each other earlier in our lives next time. I hope we spend every minute of it together, and that we never take the time for granted. I hope we spend our days reading together, spending time in nature, and going on adventures. I hope that I can draw you because you sit before me and not from memory or a photograph. I hope we spend our nights with soft kissing, you wrapped around me, my octopus; me wrapped around you, your pretzel.

The last night that I had with you was beautiful and we did just that. You peppered me with soft kisses and I did the same. You held me closer than I think you ever had. When I woke up, you were gone, and my life has been irrevocably changed in so many ways.

To love you was to find a piece of myself I didn't know that I was missing. "Ah. There you are. I've been looking for you." You returned that piece to me when we met and took it again when you left. I wish on every 11:11 that we had a different ending. You always promised me that I could die first. I wanted to hold you to that promise.

The boys miss you too. Arlo lays at the door most nights, looking out into the darkness. He never used to do that before you. He won't let me shower without being in the bathroom with me. I think that he feels my pain and he carries your absence as much as I do.

I look for you everywhere, in everything that I do. I see you in the trees, in the bookshops, in every pair of blue eyes that I find. All the things that drove me crazy, all of the bad puns and dad jokes, all of the movies and television shows that I never wanted to watch, I would give anything to have them back.

I miss dancing in the living room with you. I miss reading to you and you reading to me. I miss showing you my writings. I miss you telling me that you are proud of me. I miss showing you music and dramatically singing Tina Turner to you. I miss the face you would make when I was being ridiculous and silly -- the slight shake of the head, the crinkle of the crow's feet, the smile that isn't sure if it wants to make an appearance or if it wants to turn into a laugh. I miss picking you out gifts at Target and leaving them on your side of the bed to find. I miss writing in cards to you just so you knew I was thinking about you. I miss showering with you, our little dance squeezing by each other and arguing about the temperature of the water. I miss out routine when we were going to bed. I miss crawling into your arms and falling asleep to you rubbing circles on my back. I never felt safer or more at ease than I did in those moments. I miss you reaching over and pulling me close to you in the darkness when the nightmares woke me crying or yelling out, again. I miss our coffee in the mornings and your determination to perfect a vanilla latte for me. I miss the smell of you. I miss washing our clothes together. I miss cooking for you and sending you to work with lunches. I miss getting our pizza and salad and watching a movie together. I miss you bringing me chocolate from Sprouts and watching with delight as I picked out my favorites. I miss your parents. I miss the smell of their house. I miss combing through the books in your dad's office. I miss your mom and making iced tea and I miss her garden and the bees. I miss wrapping my arms around you and clutching the back of your head and playing with your hair. I miss kissing you like we were made to do so. I miss the way our bodies fit together, like we were cut from the same mold, desperate to find each other. I miss our date nights and getting dressed up with you. I miss the joy in your face when I ate something I loved and did a little happy dance. I miss running errands with you. I miss you being my rock in Costco. I miss you pushing the cart while I stressed over the grocery list. I miss walking laps around Target, window shopping and talking. I miss calling each other on our drives home -- it's too damn quiet now. I miss calling you to complain about my family and how crazy they're driving me. I miss dreaming about creating a family of our own, about how much you wanted a daughter simply so she could wrap you around her finger and you could spoil her rotten. I miss dreaming about giving you a boy to carry your name on. With all that I am, I miss you, my love.

I would give everything for a different ending for us. I would give anything to touch you one more time. I wish we had more time to grow together and learn from one another. I love you in ways I am not sure I knew I could love someone. "We loved with a love that was more than love."

You will always carry me with you, just as I know I carry you. I've never known anyone more beautiful than you. Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen.

I don't know how to end this. I don't want to end this. I want to spend the rest of my life writing you this letter and telling you how much I adore you and all the things I miss about you and about all the plans we made. Time was never on our side. If I could, I would go to war against time itself to take back all that it stole from us.

I will find you again. I will search for you in the eyes of every stranger until I feel that familiar tug on my soul strings. "Ah. There you are."

With all that I am, all that I was, and all that I could ever hope to be, I love you. Eternally. Endlessly. Infinitely. Irrevocably. Until my last breath, you carry me in your heart.

Until I find you again, Your Sunshine

[hersurvival]

Look at her, 8 years old

With her hair chopped off

Rather than be taught to take care of it.

Old enough to watch the two younger kids

And sometimes the neighbors

But not quite old enough to make dinner yet,

Not yet expected to keep anything alive.

That would come at 10,

Full swing by 14.

By then, I was skipping school to drive them

To appointments in the city,

Not even old enough for a permit.

Woken up early by frantic phone calls

To go find and pick up my parents.

[daniellasalamao]

I haven't posted here since last year. So here's my "homework" from therapy. I was supposed to do a piece that was a message for me in 2025.

I also made prints of it because a lot of people wanted to buy it after I posted on Reddit 😅

[valentijnsstuff]

There are not just 2, or 3, but at least 4 wolves inside of me. And at least 2 of them are horny

[badmimi]

Unabridged

There are things your rational waking self knows intrinsically. Like how not wanting things to fall apart isn’t enough to keep things from falling apart. Not by yourself. Not with considerable oppositional force. Your waking mind knows about gravity and entropy and loss and time going in a single direction without exception. At least in this place and in this body. You know you can’t wish cracks closed but for inside the alchemy of the dream.

As a practiced dreamer, you can summon form back into space. Visualizing where stray pieces fit. You’ve catalogued every shabby trapping chipped from you and rather than discard pieces where they fell, you stubbornly placed each into your pockets like dead things when no one was looking. Vestigial organs adding naught but weight inside pockets when the sun is high, but in the dream lay painstakingly assembled and unabridged. And now you reject that fickle waking. You cling to sleep and all its gifts. To this place where you are master and maker of gilded trimmings and wayward parts that once suited and served you. But oh!, how the dreamer’s hands can hold inside the dream. And all at once, you’ll pray to never wake up.

[sorryimnotsoberanymore]

I need some more relatable poetry. These are the ones I talk about in therapy most if that helps 😅

[sad-poets-society]

In Luke Chapter 1, we learn that Mary was a virgin, she was highly favored by God, she was blessed among women. Is it too difficult to see then, why the night my virginity was stolen, so was my belief in being blessed and favored?

My viriginity was stolen, my faith in the goodness of God was lost, and the idea that I would be favored or chosen forever disappeared from my mind. Don't get me wrong. I didn't lose my belief in God. I wholeheartedly believe he is there, I just no longer believed God was good all the time (and all the time, God is good). Because if there is a divine plan, a reason for everything, if he gives the hardest battles to his strongest warriors, then he chose wrong. Because I was no longer his strongest warrior. I couldn't handle the battles anymore. It wasn't the enemy that worked his way into my head and filled it with lies. It was religion. It wasn't the evil serpent that made me feel unworthy of Eden. It was the mother Mary. It wasn't Lucifer who dragged me down on his fall from grace. He simply kept me company on my own fall.

So as I sit here, in this single sitter bathroom on the floor of First Baptist, while my kid sings Jesus loves me from the top of his lungs, I cry. I cry for the fact that I never had the chance to feel worthy, I cry for the fact that I will always be skeptical of filling my children's head with the idea that God is so good, because he wasn't so good to me. I cry for the fact that they love Christmas and want the full christmas story experience with the barn and baby and that bitch Mary because I can't. I don't see the nativity as my innocent children do. It fills me with anger and dread and the feeling that His divine plan for me included losing every bit of self love I ever had.

So go tell it on the mountain all you want to, I'll stay here in the valley with my doubts and hurt and hope my children can make the climb without me. And pray to a conniving God that he let's them out of this childhood with their sense of worth in tact.

[lastsecondsquirrel]

Today's therapy homework was go to the grocery store and buy something and I did it and I'm back at home still arguing with myself about whether or not my entire existence was and is embarrassing and a failure

I did the homework I did the homework I did the homework I did the homework I did the homework and that means I did a good job I did a good fucking job

I'm exhausted

[toalloftheboysivelovedbefore]

Graveside Letters #4 J.D.B.

October 21, 2024

My Most Darling Love,

It rained on Saturday. Not just a drizzle. Huge, torrential downpours that made going to see patients and driving to Bernalillo somewhat difficult. I took Arlo out first thing it the morning and my hair was completely stuck to my head and face in the few short moments I was out there. It reminded me of that photo on your phone that you had of me, completely rain soaked with a shit-eating grin on my face.

I miss smiling for you — is that weird to say? There was a smile inside of me that only you could bring out. I had no control over it or my face when I saw you. Whether it was walking out of the elevators at work to see you in the waiting room with a cup of coffee or losing you momentarily at the store and then finding you again. It didn’t matter how long we had been apart, when I saw you again, I lost all control of my facial muscles and a massive smile crept across my face.

I miss that smile. I don’t know if I will ever have it again. Maybe I buried it with you. I miss you. I love you.

All my love,

Your Sunshine

[olameni]

My therapist advised me to start a journal or scrapbook to work through some grief I’ve not been dealing with.

I think I’ve found the appropriate medium

[olameni]

Yes. But as i often have to remind myself safety at the cost of one's purpose is an untenable sacrifice.

Glen Martin Taylor, “but i am safe in here.”

[confused-n-queer]

Role models

Relatable

Informed the protector squad/defensive aditude