I’m Proud Of You For Facing The Days You Really Don’t Want To Face

twenty-eight laps around the sun later,

mercurially aligned,

I am

refusing to fall

apart this time—

at least,

not as if I haven’t walked this path before.

I know

I know

I can survive this one.

I can breathe

through

it— it’s

less than 12 months

from the day

you asked me to marry you

and it hurts so bad I can’t breathe

but I

am not going

to give up

or to kill myself over this

bullshit.

not your bullshit,

not again.

me [coming to terms with a truth about myself]: hm..................................................... unfortunate

I wear the ring you gave me on the opposite hand

I get tattoos without you

but your memory haunts the ink

piercing

dark

it was a life lesson learned

a decision changed

a future imagined but scribbled out

I don’t think it was worth it,

actually

and I don’t think

you have any idea

how much you took from me—

no one does.

to admit that

is to ask

a harder question:

is

there

anything

left for me?

growing up autistic / growing up gaslit

I.

this is the first lesson you learn: you are always wrong.

there is no electric hum buzzing through the air. there is no stinging bite to the sweetness of the mango. there is no bitter metallic tang to the water.

there is no cruelty in their laughter, no ambiguity in the instructions, no reason to be upset. there is no bitter aftertaste to your sweet tea, nothing scratchy about your blanket.

the lamps glow steadily. they do not falter.

II.

this is the second lesson you learn: you are never right.

you are childish, gullible, overly prone to tears. you are pedantic, combative, deliberately obtuse. you are lazy, unreliable, never on time.

you’re always making up excuses, rudely interrupting, stepping on people’s shoes. you’re always trying to get attention, never thinking about anyone else, selfish through and through.

it’s you that’s the problem. the lamps are fine.

III.

this is the third lesson you learn: you must always give in.

mother knows best. father knows best. doctor knows best. teacher knows best. this is the proper path. do not go astray.

listen to your elders, respect your betters, accept what’s given to you as your due. bow to the wisdom of experience, the education of the professional, the clarity of an external point of view.

what do you know about lamps, anyway?

““When I was about 20 years old, I met an old pastor’s wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn’t believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time. But one day, when her son was four or five, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking–the first in his life. She told him that he would have to go outside himself and find a switch for her to hit him with. The boy was gone a long time. And when he came back in, he was crying. He said to her, “Mama, I couldn’t find a switch, but here’s a rock that you can throw at me.” All of a sudden the mother understood how the situation felt from the child’s point of view: that if my mother wants to hurt me, then it makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with a stone. And the mother took the boy into her lap and they both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever: never violence. And that is something I think everyone should keep in mind. Because if violence begins in the nursery one can raise children into violence.””

— Astrid Lindgren, author of Pippi Longstocking, 1978 Peace Prize Acceptance Speech (via jillymomcraftypants)

Everyone playing the "what kind of queer is MOST oppressed?" game is wasting their time on pointless bullshit, and, quite frankly, they're doing the feds' work for them.

Stand together or die together. They want to put us all in the same pit.

they should invent something transformative and rewarding that happens inside my comfort zone

I need to see some transition timelines from fat transmascs / nonbinary folks / others on low dose testosterone aiming for androgyny

how’s that house that raised you?

lowkey things are shaping up to be pretty odd