#this is you guys' fault btw (talking about the people who reblogged this horrible idea)

[hellishkittycat]

who let the phone cryptid eat battery acid. (i mean he's technically not eating it buuut)

[the-bookself-dark-fairy]

Favorite book dads/father figures, pick #5 : Tom from Girl Against The Universe by Paula Stokes

Summary : “ Sixteen-year-old Maguire knows the universe is against her. No matter how many charms she buys off the internet or good luck rituals she performs each morning, horrible things happen when she's around. Like that time the roller coaster jumped off its tracks. Or the time the house next door caught on fire. Or the time her brother, father, and uncle were all killed in a car crash--and Maguire walked away with barely a scratch. Despite what her therapist tells her, Maguire thinks it's best to hide out in her room, far away from anyone she might accidentally hurt. But then she meets Jordy, an aspiring tennis star who wants to help her break her unlucky streak. Maguire knows that the best thing she can do for him is to stay away, but it turns out staying away might be harder than she thought. “

My goodread review

If you remember , I said that the idea for this top came from me reading about a good father figure. Well, Tom is that guy. And since he sparked the idea I thought he would be the perfect pick to start this top.

In my review I said this : “I loved that she (Maguire) had a good mom and step dad to help her too. I love a healthy family dynamic and that was great. I particularly liked how her relationship with her step dad evolves. It's really sweet and his few scenes may be some of my favorites ^^”

And I stand by that. This book is great and not at all about her relationship with her step dad (which is why this isn’t higher, he really had only a few scenes) but Paula Stokes took the time to do something really good with him.

Let me explain. When we start this book Maguire is starting therapy because she had a breakdown after the house next door burned. She thinks it’s her fault, that she is bad luck. And she thinks the same things about other traumatic things like the car accident that killed her father, uncle and brother. Pretty heavy stuffs to deal with. Thankfully she has a lot of people willing to try their best to help her deal with this and move forward. One of those people is Tom.

Maguire’s mother remarried to a man named Tom and they had two kids. Tom and Maguire don’t have much of a relationship when the book start. It’s not that she doesn’t like him, she actually is totally fine with her mother remarrying and she’s glad Tom is such a nice man. But there is this awkwardness between Tom and Maguire because he knows he won’t remplace her dad and she doesn’t want him to replace her dad but that leave them not really knowing how to deal with each other. Or at least that is how it felt to me.

Honestly the author could have left it at that. But she didn’t. And I am very grateful for that. They actually end up talking about it (in a scene I totally didn’t reread to write this post ^^ I didn’t tear up either).

Light spoilers ahead! (well, it’s a contemp so it’s not really like spoiling a twist but I’m just warning you if you llike going in totally blind ^^)

So this is what happens : after a bad day Maguire has a nightmare and wakes up at 2am. Tom hears her crying when he goes to feed her baby brother. And so at 2am they end up having a heart to heart were he comforts her and they talk a bit. It helps Maguire realise that she is not the only one feeling awkward about this and they both agree to try to do ‘better’ in the future. (also : they hug and my heart basically exploded)

That leads to another scene where Tom tells her that if she needs any help with her therapy ‘challenges’ he is totally ready to help her. (Maguire and her therapist agree on challenges that help her deall with her problem and the endgoal is for her to be able to fly to Ireland for a wake for her dad, uncle and brother). He also tell her that he totally believe that she will achieve her goal to go to Ireland but he even if she doesn’t she should be proud of how much progresses she made. 

Btw : he totally helps her with one of her challenge.

He’s just so supporting and caring! I loved how he was developped with so little space and I want more dads like that. I just love awkward dads who aren’t sure they are doing the right thing but they try their best and communicate with their children. Give me more of that!

Bonus : in the first scene I describe he is wearing a Dr. Who shirt. I wil always support more nerds in my books!

PLEASE REBLOG AND CHECH #BOOKDRAGON’S TOP 5 AND #BDT5 FOR MORE!!

Useful links :

My Goodreads

Roby’s Goodreads

The Rules

[angry--tiresia]

Why I’m fucked up [part 1]

REBLOG WITH YOUR OWN ‘WHY I’M FUCKED UP’

YES THIS IS ME OVERSHARING

There’ll be 3 parts I think;

1) I always feel stupid

2) I always feel ugly

3) I always feel unwanted

So;

1) Me feeling stupid. In primary school I was bullied, nothing big, a beating here and there but mostly just threats and repeated public humiliation. This made me hate everything to do with school and I don’t think I ever studied for a single test, however it was a rich afrikaans school, and this is an incredibly important point, being in a good school makes it hard to do badly. So even though I did terribly in comparison to my classmates, compared to most people from worse schools I did great. That obviously didn’t matter and I was constantly laughed at for my marks. 

Then I decided to change environment to an artschool, started acting classes a week before the audition, and I got in. This school used to accept 10% of applicants based on their audition and every other person in my class had been acting for years and had usually starred in at least one piece of commercial media - I was totally out of my depth and had a lot to catch up, and was again, continually humiliated for my inability to just know what to do. But by the end of the four years I kind of knew what I was doing and it was acknowledged, but by then I’d had years of insecurity buidling up. 

Now this school was amazing for the arts, heck even Charlize Theron went there, but in every other aspect it was truly horrible, with teachers blatantly lying to students. For maths, I could count the number of problems we did in a year on one hand. I was best friends with someone who worked 8 hours every day, so they did well, but from primary school - [and an initial month or so in the begining of high school where no teacher would translate single words in test questions/content because I was learning the language] - I knew that I was too stupid to ever reach that point. So they too humiliated me nearly every day, sometimes with a bit of a crowd, for how stupid I was. In grades 10 and 11 my maths teacher called me in at least once a week to tell me that I really don’t have enough intelligence for pure mathematics, and I should rather do mathematical literacy.

But I wanted to become immortal, to get to a point where I was better than I am now, and to do that I’d have to do biology, at a good uni, so I needed maths, and in matric my dad finally convinced me to do some work and I ended up getting the second best marks in my class, with my best friend [whom I was obviously inferior to] got the best marks of anyone in years. 

So I got into a good uni for science. But I wanted to prove to everyone for once and for all that I wasn’t an idiot, so though I did biology I also did pure physics and pure maths. And here’s a part to understand, for the past five years I’d been taught crap for maths. And doing maths trains your brain to do maths, it trains you to think in a certain way, and not only was I in class with people that had come from schools that had reputations and were significantly better than mine. And not only that, but the vast, vast majority of them had taken subjects in high school that I had never heard of, ones that had covered essentially the entire first year of mathematics. Throughout this year I was repeatedly laughed at and called an idiot. And even my closest friends would make jokes, for years afterwards, about my stupidity, the only comfort for 3 years being from my best friend [and fp for those that understand bpd] ; “It’s not your fault you made friends with clever people”. 

In second year I decided to do physics instead of biology, but at that point the people in my class had again, done applied mathematics in first year, something that was not required but was assumed knowledge for physics, and again, I cannot emphasis enough, it trains their brains to solve that kind of problem, and be more malleable to learn solve those kinds of problems. Objectively at this point I was years and years behind everyone else. It was during this time that my best friend again made a joke that for some reason goes in the book of things that people have said that completely change the way I see the world, myself and the way I act - it was that moment that I was finally convinced that, yes, after almost 14 years of being told I was stupid on a near daily basis, that I was in fact stupid. Even before this, the opinions of people outside my field didn’t matter to me because all my degree was was a mask to hide my stupidity, and I knew fully that any of them could do everything a million times better. 

I have tried to fix this, but it’s impossible, I’m to this day seen to be the stupidest person in my friend group, most recently we were at a restaurant and someone made a comment of “who would be the most likely to invent teleportation” and everyone pointed at my best friend, [except said best friend who pointed at me, n’caaw]. Someone said “But [referring to me] has a degree in physics” To which the response obviously is “But [best friend] has the brain for it”. 

And my favorite thing is to hear people say “You shouldn’t care about what people think” when they’ve been showered with affirmation for years. The best I’ve gotten is my room mate saying “No, you’re not stupid”, in the same way you would tell a dog “Oh you’re a good boy” and my best friend [only in the past year and a bit] saying “I think you’re smart”. And my parents, and I can’t deny the solid base they gave me, but a solid base can only take you that far.

My second favourite thing to hear is, upon asking for help [which takes nth level courage btw] “I don’t know any better than you” when they’ve literally already made the most perfect decisions or answers for that exact question and you’re entirely lost cause you don’t have 4+ years of direct experience in that field/thing because this is the first time in your life you’re seeing it. 

And logically I can see why I feel the way I do. The moment I get good at something I drop it to throw myself into a field that I know nothing about. At the end of high school I auditioned for the new york film academy, and at the time they had no bursaries for South African kids, but they wanted me so badly they sent a million letters to a million sponsors to try get my tuition paid for, but my audition had been live and no bursary came. At the end of my physics degree I went to one of the professors that I thought wasn’t too horrible, and I pitched an idea to him about how to model the fundamental forces in a more unified manner, to which the response was ‘It sounds amazing and innovative, but I simply don’t know enough to be able to tell you anything more’, and had to send me to an expert in the field, who liked the idea enough to want to make me do a project that would lead into it for a masters project, unfortunately I couldn’t. Or my current supervisor, upon hearing my ideas on the possibilities of time travel offered to write me a recommendation letter to the most prestigious theoretical physics institute in the world.

But instead of pursuing any of that I’m throwing myself into software engineering, again, a field I know nothing about, where I will be laughed at and humiliated for not knowing.

And what’s shattering about it all is the way it changes the way I interact. Earlier this year a friend said “I’m going to see a Wagner opera - you’ve probably never heard of him” and instead of replying “No, actually I know Wagner’s work pretty intimately, I can’t agree with the directing style he pioneered, nor his style, however his concept of the ubermensch really inspired me for a while”, I said “yeah, I don’t know much. I think I might have heard his name before” Because, lets be real, they almost definitely know so much more than me. 

Or last year I was on set with friends and someone was constructing a grid and they simply wanted to know that if they had [say] 20 tiles and the grid had to be 4 tiles wide, how many layers deep the grid would be. They were 100% in arts and honestly didn’t know how to do it, and in front of a small group of people they asked me, as they knew I was a final year astrophysics - physics major. But in that moment I was too insecure to be able to lift my voice to divide 20 by 4. So I rather said “No, ask [this friend] they know better”

I’m terrified of giving my opinion because I know chances are that it’s wrong, because I’m stupid, and the person I’m telling will know better, and they will see my mistake, and they will make fun of me. AND  when I do gain the confidence to give my opinion, usually only to the people very closest to me, they will stop listening to me halfway through my sentence, and I would end it with “Oh, you’re right, no one cares”, and not a single person has ever noticed. Most notably [because I suffer from jealousy when it comes to this person] was when me and my best friend were out, but she was talking to this guy on her phone [someone I’m jealous of for the attention she gives him - I’ll get to his in the ‘unwanted’ section], and eventually she clearly felt bad for straight up ignoring me [lol this is actually seen as abuse towards people with bpd] she said that they were talking about the ethics of supporting a politician who’s personal life contradicts his policy - and, other than being totally jealous of the ability to have such a conversation - she asked for my opinion. So I gave my first point of his policy affecting more people than his personal life so I’d vote for them, to which she responded that ‘he can’t be trusted to stick to his policy if he doesn’t believe in it’. I was a full sentence into my reply when she looked down at her phone and started to message him, and it was just, once again, such a thorough “Lol your opinion doesn’t matter cause you’re stupid and who cares, but his on the other hand” As a safety check I again ended with “Oh yeah you don’t care” with no response. And this also, not from her spesifically, happens about once a week, perhaps once every two weeks, but if we’re going with this week I think we’re going on 3 already and it’s monday.

So, my final note is, why would I feel anything but stupid? On some logical level I want to say that I know I’m not stupid; but it never feels like that, and in addition to that, what evidence is there that I’m not stupid? There is literally none, and significant, 14+ years, worth of proof that I’m an idiot. 

Also sorry for grammar/spelling typos, I’m really tired. 

REBLOG WITH YOUR OWN ‘WHY I’M FUCKED UP’