#when 99% of these cultures burn their dead so enjoy me struggling up there

[midnightwind]

what if you were saving a bunch of elves and your estranged mother tried to reconnect after literally abandoning you

[skullshoal]

Very long post about reading don’t burn me on a stake please also

i read gideon the ninth (and harrow the ninth) last year bc people i follow were drawing stuff about it that got me interested and they were such good books and i remembered how much i love reading and how i hadn’t read in like. 5 years lol. So i’ve been trying to read more. I’ve really struggled with finding new books though. I used to just walk into a library and find something on the shelf and enjoy it but that feels impossible in the adult fiction section. Like half the adult fiction is boring. And my local library is organized...like a nightmare. idk there are just like all different types of fiction mixed together and it feels impossible to like wander into a subsection of a genre bc next to one book that seems ok is 4 about being like prairie farmers or some shit you know. I tried to use like online suggestions for books similar to gideon in genre but 99% of them the library doesn’t have and after checking out like 2-3 books that seemed really interesting but then i just couldn’t get into and stay interested in i just kinda gave up.

so anyway. I decided recently bc i really like reading to reread my fav children’s series since i own all of them, fablehaven. I read the first one and still really enjoyed it! It’s not...free of problems. I have been trying very hard to be a lot more conscious with how I read. When I was a kid i didn’t even know racial stereotypes put on fantasy races was like. a thing. I was very sheltered from fantasy writing and movies (raised catholic) and while i’m only half white my white mom raised me mostly in a white school in white southern american culture so like. I just. Didn’t even know. I didn’t know gay people existed until middle school. I didn’t know trans people existed until highschool. But anyway my point is like. racially charged and transphobic and homophobic depictions completely went over my head this is not excusing them obviously i have learned but like. idk. anyway.

So i’ve been trying to pay attention to how the creatures and people are described and decide for myself if it’s bad and I think the hardest part is trying to decide if a normal racial description is like. Weird? Charged? The books are written by a white person and centered on two white kids and their family. Their are supporting poc characters. I don’t think they are handled incredibly well to be honest. The first book has their grandparents house keeper Lena who is Asian and mostly its fine besides the occasional hmmmm that’s really weird! Example she just like offhandedly says her dead husband was of the “Asian persuasion” ie fetishizing Asians. I’m probably a third of the way into the second book and their is a Samoan character. I think I struggle with knowing what crosses a line and what doesn’t. The character is a potion maker and is generally treated with respect i think??? The descriptions of goblins are probably racist. They aren’t “greedy” but they do have close to the stereotypical goblin physical description. Most of the other fantasy creatures when they are “evil” or something are described as bad for not racially ambiguous reasons like inhuman limbs and sores and smells. I feel like even though I’m reading a children’s book i am literally terrible at reading subtext. It’s hard to come to terms with that. I have dyslexia and autism but i was always told i was good at reading until i became an adult and realized I am actually just kind of OK at reading. I am good at literary analysis according to school but I don’t feel like I am. Idk where this is going mostly I just wanted to get my thoughts down because they have been mulling over in my mind while i read these books. i Am still enjoying the books. I bought and read them a long time ago and have basically forgotten most of the plot. I like fantasy and i LOVE fantasy that says magic exists hidden in our world like fablehaven and percy jackson. anyway. If you read this thanks i love you. please don’t be mean to me this blog is my personal diary

[starlightafterastorm]

No spoons left to give

This past week has been really hard.

Really, really hard. 

I graduated with a Master’s Degree in Museum Studies this past May. I moved away from D.C., where I’d gone to school and made friends and made a life. I came back to California mostly because my parents were paying the bill for my tuition and my apartment and they wanted me to come back (demanded without demanding but demanded all the same). And I thought “I don’t have a job yet. The part time one I have here is not enough to keep me afloat. I’m burnt out. I want to go back and spend some time with family and enjoy the California sunshine.”

Here’s the thing. 

I am never more unhappy than when I am living with my parents. When I am with them my mental health always takes a drastic nosedive. 

It’s not that I forgot that fact. It’s just that I thought that the benefits of living rent free and getting to see my family would outweigh those issues. That I could stick it out until I got a job. 

Don’t get me wrong. I love my parents. I do. They’re funny and quirky and they’re my parents. They’ve taken care of me and loved me and when I lived across the country it was easy to tune out the things they said that I didn’t want to hear.  But that doesn’t mean that I like them or that they’re good for my mental health. And now that I’m back in California, I can’t tune them out. 

I feel like I’m trapped here with them. I am an introvert who relishes any alone time I have but there is never a day when I am not left alone. There’s always someone here, someone watching. (Literally. My dad put surveillance cameras everywhere because he’s paranoid af)

I feel on edge and bothered: a string about ready to snap. 

Because there’s always something. 

A comment about my weight (too fat), my face (breaking out again), my skin (too dry), my clothes (is that what you’re going to wear?), my teeth (so yellow), my ears (don’t you ever clean them?), my feet (ugly feet), my stomach (too big)...

Yelling at me about why I haven’t found a job yet, send out more applications, apply to tech heavy jobs even though i’m a humanities student, why couldn’t I have gotten a degree in something else like medicine, law, engineering...

There’s me mopping the floor, doing the laundry, doing the dishes, doing the cooking, cleaning out the bedroom I haven’t slept in in 7 years even though it’s filled with my mom’s stuff... All of this, it’s because “it’s the daughter’s job”.

I don’t remember when my eating disorder started. The first time I remember recognizing it was when I was about 15 or 16. 

I don’t remember when my depression started but I do remember hurting myself at 14 and wishing I was dead. I never left scars but I left scratches deep enough to welt in places no one would see. I wrote “not enough never enough” on the inside of my thighs and my hips and my stomach as reminders of what I knew was the truth. 

I don’t know when my anxiety started but I was always a nervous child. I was conditioned to be polite and to smile even when I didn’t feel like it. Even when I felt like screaming at the top of my lungs. 

My depression feels like a burning star in my chest. It’s anger and malice and tears and hysteria all trapped in my rib cage wanting to burst out. 

I hit rock bottom my sophomore year of undergrad. I went days without eating, only sleeping when I passed out, missing classes. I saw someone there. I saw a lot of someones there. I don’t know if they helped but they did clinically diagnose me so there’s that. 

But I’d been doing mostly well since then. I had one breakdown early on after I’d started grad school but for the most part I thought I had done well for myself in D.C.

This past week has really been a challenge. This past month with them I know I’ve had disordered thinking. But this past week I noticed the skipped meals but the secret binging when no one else is looking. Or eating the regular meals and binging even more later only to skip everything again the next day. I feel guilty for eating. I feel guilty for being hungry. I feel guilty for hating what I look like in the mirror but I can’t help but find flaws in everything I see.

My dad dragged me to the gym on Friday. I hate the gym. I hate the smell, I hate gym culture, I hate working out around strangers who all turn to jeering shadows in the corners of my mind. I hate the comments my dad makes trying to direct what kind of workout I do and why I need it (weight. it’s my weight. i’m too fat). I tried to drown everything out through music but I could still feel the anger sizzling in my veins. 

I cried myself to sleep at 3 am. I’ve gotten very good at crying without making any noise or leaving any traces of tears behind. 

And then the next morning.  Mom was at work. I got into a fight with my dad about finding a job. you know. nothing new. just him yelling about applying to google or tesla or apple, all companies where I am most certainly not qualified for, and how i should have chosen a different field because mine is worthless and won’t get me any money. I yelled back a bit but I bit my tongue for an hour while he lectured me and I tasted blood. 

I know it takes time. The job market is shit for everyone and even though I have a Master’s it’s still going to be tough. But they don’t seem to understand that. 

Going to the store and to a luncheon with my mother after that fight was hell but I was texting my best friend and I cried a little bit out of my mom’s eyesight in the shampoo aisle of the 99 Cents Store. Also I got a few hours away from my dad and a few hours with a puppy in my lap at my mom’s friend’s house so that made it a lot better. 

But that ache in my chest won’t go away. It ricochets from that shooting star, burning, burning, burning, to a black hole filled with nothing but numb emptiness and everything feels cold with a dull sheen over it. 

I am walking on eggshells here and every time there’s a little crack it throws me completely off balance. I left scratches on myself the other day just to feel something and was satisfied to see the red marks. I woke up this morning with clenched fists and gouges in my hands that didn’t break skin but still ached hours later. 

The first thought in my head the other day was “I want to die”. I thought about it. About the alcohol and the painkillers or sleeping pills in our cabinets. About the knives in he drawer. It would be very easy. And every so often the words keep flashing in my head. Like they’re branded in my brain and I can’t get them out. “If I died, it would solve everything.”

Two years I had lived in D.C. and I thought about it only the once. I mean, I still struggled with my eating disorder. There were till days I skipped, still days I binged. But for the most part I did moderately well. Enough to keep my days on a mostly even keel. And I had a good group of friends who were willing to listen when I had troubles. 

I thought that I had come so far from where I used to be. But that’s not true. 

I am more suicidal right now than I have ever been in my life. 

I feel like I’m in a cage or in a dark tunnel where I can see no light. I have no way out of here unless someone decides to finally fucking hire me. That is literally my only hope right now so I can get out of these circumstances. I am stuck here in this stupid small town I grew up in with no friends left here and no way of getting out. 

I like to think that I am strong enough not to go through with it but it is so hard. When every moment I feel like I can’t relax because something is going to set something off into another fight or there’s going to be some other comment about my intelligence or my appearance. 

I don’t belong to myself here. I belong to them. And after having a little bit of freedom where I could break away parts of me just for myself, I don’t know how to deal with the fact that they literally pulled those parts back and locked them up. Return possibly contingent on me getting a job. Probably. 

I don’t have any more spoons left to give. Even when I do have spoons to give, it’s not my choice when or where to give them away. They choose that for me. But this past week I haven’t had any. And have still been forced to get up and be a put together person who is deferential to her parents and does chores and applies to jobs and goes to the gym and eats what they decide to eat because I need to lose weight. 

I don’t know if any of this makes sense or if anyone is even going to read this but this is mostly just for me. To ramble and to try to articulate what I’ve been feeling. 

Reading back on this. I keep trying to rationalize it to myself. My brain keeps going “you make it sound so bad. it’s not that bad.” But I have to remind myself that it is that bad. That’s why I wanted to write it all down in the first place. I wanted a record of it so that I can remember. I’ve always been shit at writing in diaries. But someday, I want to look back on this and know that, it WAS THAT FUCKING BAD. I did feel that fucking bad. I want to remember that there were days, even now, even after everything I’ve been through, after thinking that I was strong and adult, at 24 with 2 degrees, I can’t handle it. And that I broke down, I’m struggling to do it without my parents knowledge, but I’m falling apart all the same. 

I want to someday look back at this post and be thankful that I didn’t kill myself. That I got through it. I got through it before. I’m thankful that I got through it before and even though I’ve taken 10 steps back, I hope that I can find the strength to get through it again.