thegreenpea:

fr3ight-train:

acutelesbian:

fat-thin-skinny:

acutelesbian:

A lot of people ask me what my biggest fear is, or what scares me most. And I know they expect an answer like heights, or closed spaces, or people dressed like animals, but how do I tell them that when I was 17 I took a class called Relationships For Life and I learned that most people fall out of love for the same reasons they fell in it. That their lover’s once endearing stubbornness has now become refusal to compromise and their one track mind is now immaturity and their bad habits that you once adored is now money down the drain. Their spontaneity becomes reckless and irresponsible and their feet up on your dash is no longer sexy, just another distraction in your busy life.
Nothing saddens and scares me like the thought that I can become ugly to someone who once thought all the stars were in my eyes.

this fucks me up every single time

I never expected this to be my most popular poem out of the hundreds I’ve written. I was extremely bitter and sad when I wrote this and I left out the most beautiful part of that class.

After my teacher introduced us to this theory, she asked us, “is love a feeling? Or is it a choice?” We were all a bunch of teenagers. Naturally we said it was a feeling. She said that if we clung to that belief, we’d never have a lasting relationship of any sort.

She made us interview a dozen adults who were or had been married and we asked them about their marriages and why it lasted or why it failed. At the end, I asked every single person if love was an emotion or a choice.

Everybody said that it was a choice. It was a conscious commitment. It was something you choose to make work every day with a person who has chosen the same thing. They all said that at one point in their marriage, the “feeling of love” had vanished or faded and they weren’t happy. They said feelings are always changing and you cannot build something that will last on such a shaky foundation.

The married ones said that when things were bad, they chose to open the communication, chose to identify what broke and how to fix it, and chose to recreate something worth falling in love with.

The divorced ones said they chose to walk away.

Ever since that class, since that project, I never looked at relationships the same way. I understood why arranged marriages were successful. I discovered the difference in feelings and commitments. I’ve never gone for the person who makes my heart flutter or my head spin. I’ve chosen the people who were committed to choosing me, dedicated to finding something to adore even on the ugliest days.

I no longer fear the day someone who swore I was their universe can no longer see the stars in my eyes as long as they still choose to look until they find them again.

This is so fucking important and I think it’s something I needed right now

phoenixiancrystallist:

ghostmage:

i’m starting to realize the “friendship where we bully each other” thing is a complicated subject for me, because as a survivor of bullying and my interests being mocked for basically my entire life, i don’t really find it funny or endearing when pals do it. i don’t mind gentle insults and inside jokes, but idk, there has to be a point where you go “maybe i shouldn’t cut on my friend’s new oc or special interest” and stop yourself. i think we should all try a little harder to know that boundary and not put our friends in those situations

My best friend and I used to greet each other with insults (“hey bitch!” “wassup slut?”) and generally poke fun at each other all the time. It’s how we showed affection, just constant little pokes and prods and minor nuisances. But I noticed that these exchanges were wearing her down through little behavioral ticks, like she’d go quiet or her laugh wasn’t as bubbly. So I changed how I show her affection and now scream “hi Dawn I love you :D” at the top of my lungs when I say hi. And I hear her stifle a giggle and she answers with either “love you too” or “hiiiii, love you!!!” depending on her mood at the time.

It’s fine to have a close friendship where you can pretend to be mean to each other and you both understand that none of that meanness is real. But the second it starts to feel real to either of you, that behavior should change.

bludeb:

bounding-heart:

deflecto:

sternbeere:

prideprejudce:

prideprejudce:

prideprejudce:

here’s a hard pill to swallow: abuse does not just exclusively occur in romantic or family relationships. friends can be just as toxic to your physical and mental wellbeing as a partner or a family member. also, the aftermath of being in an abusive friendship can be just as traumatizing as any other abusive relationship. don’t boo me i’m right 

for some reason people don't know this but toxic friends can mirror all the same behaviors as seen in an abusive romantic partner. i will use my own story of my ex-high school best friend who abused me for several years. signs of abuse include but are not limited to:

1. Humiliating or embarrassing you - my ex-best friend LOVED to try and make me squirm in any way possible to see my reaction. once she went up to a guy and told him i had a crush on him to watch me struggle to explain myself
2. Unreasonable jealousy - if i so much as went to hang out with any of my other friends i would have to let my ex-best friend know beforehand. i pretty much had to get her permission to see other people or she would be convinced that i was ‘ditching her forever’
   
3. Refusing to communicate - if she was ever angry with me or upset she would never tell me that so we could talk about it. instead, she would ignore me or respond to all my texts with ‘k’ or ‘ya’ and i would have to struggle for hours to get her to tell me what was wrong
4. Ignoring or excluding you - she would ignore me for weeks at a time as a ‘punishment’ knowing that it would eat me up inside wondering what i did wrong. i still remember spending nights wide awake crying in bed because i didn’t know what to do 
5. Mean jokes or constantly making fun of you - she would constantly poke fun at my appearance and personality to where my self-confidence plummeted. god help me if i ever said anything about her though
6. Saying things like “If you don’t _____, I will_____.” - she would constantly threaten to kill herself if i didn't do what she wanted
7. Guilt trips - she never apologized once to me in our seven-plus years of being friends. not once. every time we argued i would be the one who apologized in the end. once when i stood up to her and called her out on treating me like crap she would make up a story of how her life was miserable and that i was making things worse 
   
8. Isolating you from friends and family - been mentioned before but she was extremely jealous of all my other relationships and would override my plans with other people on purpose and would guilt trip me if i still went to see them
   
9.  Domination and control - also mentioned before but i needed her permission on everything. if i joined any group or extracurricular activity without her knowing she would be furious   
10. Extreme moodiness - after ignoring me for weeks she would contact me out of the blue and act as if nothing happened. she would also refuse to talk about why she ignored me for so long and did not care if my mental health suffered from it

anyway, abusive friendships need to be acknowledged more because they are not only extremely common but also very damaging to someone’s mental health. i personally had to go through years of therapy to unlearn the guilt and self-hatred that my ex-friend helped instill in me. stay safe yall

a GREAT addition from @mememic-bry

#also- because sometimes I think people throw around words like ‘abuse’ a little carelessly on this site #people who aren’t abusive sometimes might do one or two things on this list #because people are flawed #and sometimes we screw up and hurt each other and it’s ouch and it sucks #if your friend does one of these things once they are not an abuser and please don’t bring it up by saying ‘you’re being abusive’ #instead say ‘hey this specific thing you did hurt me and here’s why it was p stressful’ #and a good friend will hear you out. maybe they will get defensive or sad (cause who *likes* being called out let’s be real) #but ultimately they will listen to you. they will own up to their actions. #and they will make a genuine effort to not act in that way that hurt you again

#ON THE OTHER HAND #an abusive person will do several of these things *repeatedly* and *consistently*. it is a pattern woven in your relationship #and it just keeps happening #and if you try to bring it up they will deny any ownership of their actions #they will either say they never did those things OR that they *DID* but it’s not their fault #every single time they will gaslight you or make themselves the victim and refuse to hold themselves accountable for hurting you #that’s an abuser. that’s a toxic friend 

last part is important as well

Add one more to the list. If a person who is supposed to be your friend intentionally puts you in a situation which gets you in trouble (while staying out of the trouble themselves), knowing full well what they do and yet still doing it, they’re not really your friends. You’d better finish this “friendship” before they get a chance to really hurt you.

Treating you one way in public and being a completely different and much nastier person when you’re interacting one on one. 

Also, saying you have to choose between her and another friend.

afairlypudgycat:

robotsandfrippary:

stillstreetjoshua:

bpdzoldyck:

As someone who has been living with severe suicidal ideation my entire life I wanna tell you all something, you don’t have to stay alive for yourself. People will say it’s a bad idea to live for external things because they’re temporary, and it’s true living for yourself is ideal but if you’re not to that point yet that’s ok too. 

I’ve lived for my dog for the past 4 years, before that I lived for my snakes, before that I lived for my cat. You can live for whatever needs you and whatever matters to you. Live for your best friend, live for your plants, live for your pets, live for your animal crossing town. Live for whatever keeps you alive and the day will come when you can live for yourself.

This is something everyone should see. Thank you for sharing this.

Transformers kept me alive. When the 2007 movie was announced I was going through an incredibly hard time emotionally. I saw the preview and every time I thought about killing myself I thought, “but then I won’t get to see this thing I’ve always wanted to see, good or not.” And it got me through.

I’m in a place where I live for myself now, but don’t toss away a life preserver just because other people think you should be able to swim on your own.

don’t toss away a life preserver just because other people think you should be able to swim on your own

imxginethemxgic:

adventuringchangeling:

ottpop:

eatgeekstudy:

Me: I just sometimes get so stressed that I just want to screech

My Therapist: Then do it.

Me: I’m sorry?

My Therapist: Primal screeching is one way of completing your stress cycle, do it. Be mindful of where you are, I usually do it in my car, but yeah. Go for it.

Me: Ah- Oh.

My Therapist: Holding that kind of thing in is what’s locking you into that stress state. Screeching, running, dancing, that tells your body they the danger has passed and you’ll relax. Since you have a lifetime of that shit locked away, it’ll take a sec but yeah. Screech if you want to.

YO this is legit

My dad has always had me do this, especially when I was little and kept the baby up. We would go into the back yard, point to the river (to keep the ship captains up at night) and scream. I was also told to jump up and down to “get all the scream out” 

I did this in college too. There’s nothing more cathartic than climbing the fence of the fishing pier, running to the end of it and screaming into the wind. It’s powerful, it’s therapeutic, it’s feral and wonderful. 

I did this with kids too, when they have too much energy. When I worked at a children’s camp and the kids had too much energy when the rain canceled pool time I took them out in the rain, made them jump up and down and scream, and then 15 some nine-year-olds and I would rance across the field screaming in the rain

Go scream, just face towards the river when you do it

Adventurer’s Tip #345: Sometimes you just gotta scream. Just face towards the river when you do.

My brother had a lot of trouble focusing his energy when he was little and my mom would have him go out in the yard and run a lap around the house screaming at the top of his lungs and it was like a reset button and also he loved it

whatbigotspost:

crimsonqueen3991:

whatbigotspost:

lesbepals:

whatbigotspost:

If this resonates with you at all PLEASE, for your benefit, go read this tweet thread on “fawning”

Oh my god i finally have a word for it….

There’s such enormous power in naming and understanding things, isn’t there 🙏

I nearly fucking scrolled past this, but I came back and read it.

Now I’m sitting here, re-thinking all my past and present relationships with everyone, and….

Fuck

I mean I’m saying, y’all, if it gives you pause, let it!