If you have a chronic/mental illness, its okay to take care of yourself. Its okay to have to miss work or school. Its okay to struggle. Its okay to ask for accommodations. Its okay to take medications. Its okay to go to therapy. Its okay to use a mobility aid. Its okay to not be professionally diagnosed or not have a diagnosis yet. You are valid. Its not your fault. You’re sick. You’re not too sensitive or making this up. You’re doing the best you can with the spoons you have. You’re a disabled person and its okay to be that way.
Can I tell you a secret? You don’t have to be in a relationship.
I mean it. I know they force it down your throat until you choke on it. Girls aren’t pretty unless they’re wanted. Boys aren’t men unless they’re having sex with someone. People aren’t lovable until they’re dating someone.
But a relationship won’t always make you happy, and as wonderful as romance is, it isn’t the only love that exists. I have seen friendships that are deeper and more pure than couples who swear it’s forever – and yet the friendship is the one people ignore.
I have heard so often “nobody loves me” out of the mouths of people who are single. And it kills me because if you ask them: where are your parents, your teachers, your classmates, your pets – they say, yes, okay, but it doesn’t count. Of course it counts, love doesn’t diminish just because someone doesn’t want to have sex with you. In fact, doesn’t it sort of make that love more real that they want nothing – not even a date – out of you?
It is pretty to be in love. It’s magical, I’m sure. But it’s also wonderful to stop for ice cream in your prom dress with six other girls. It’s also wonderful to go visit the world with nothing but a bunch of buddies who are really excited about learning.
The problem is: we’ve made everything about “the one”. But maybe “the one” is just you, loving yourself, having fun, and being happy. Maybe instead of looking for our other halves, we should be piecing ourselves together.
Maybe I wasn’t born unfinished. Maybe I am the one who makes myself better.
Have adventures with your friends celebrate healthy friendships feel comfortable and safe with those who want the best for you no physical or romantic incentive just support and platonic love
I know, I know. Another episode of A Very Special Halfhardtorock Post but
I was talking to a rl friend the other day and she was surprised when I offhandledly said this. So even though I thought it was obvious, I am sharing it here because it’s apparently not obvious. ????
But being married or being in a relationship with someone doesn’t mean they get unfettered access to your body. And I don’t (just) mean sex, but I mean like…
you get to decide when you feel comfortable being seen naked by them. You get to decide if you want to change in front of them or if you want them to come into the bathroom with you when you’re in the shower. You get to decide comfortable boundaries around your space and nudity and privacy.
Even married, you have a right to privacy (in so many ways, though we’re just talking about this one right now).
When I was first living with my husband, I was in the shower and heard the bathroom door open. He came in and was talking to me through the curtain, going to brush his teeth. Which was ok, I didn’t mind that. But then he kind of moved the curtain to look in and smile at me and I remember sort of…cringing back, alarmed. Partly because I didn’t realize he was looking at first because I was washing soap out of my eyes, and then he was just RIGHT THERE.
It seems really…innocuous I think, but for me, it was surprisingly triggery and I got upset. He was all confused but listened when I was like “Look, if I’m in the shower and don’t invite you in, I want my privacy. I don’t want to be watched or spied on or looked at if I don’t expect it. My body is never going to be open access. I don’t like that.”
He never ever did it again, and now will always ask permission to even come in to the bathroom if I’m in the shower.
The expectation I guess is, when we marry or are in a relationship, we are giving up rights to our privacy and that’s just not true. You get to decide what you want to give up. It should not be taken for granted that every time you are naked for now on, the other person is just welcome to that space and belongs there. Your body isn’t open access, it is whatever you need.
i support girls anger. i support girls who yell. i support girls who get called bitches and cunts at parties because they’ll swear at guys who won’t leave them alone. i support girls who don’t believe in second chances and cut off people who hurt them. i support girls who say no the first time and flip you off if you ask them again. i support girls who will never allow themselves to be pushovers and constantly get shit for it. you’re fucking incredible.
1. If you don’t like the way he kisses you, you won’t like the way he fucks you. Get up and leave.
2. If he won’t go down on you, but expects you to go down on him, laugh. Get up and leave.
3. If you don’t want to do something and he doesn’t respect that, slap him round the face. Get up and leave.
4. If he isn’t okay with the imperfections on your skin, if he says they turn him off, get up and leave.
5. If you don’t want to shave your legs and he thinks that’s disgusting and refuses to touch them, get up and leave.
6. If he doesn’t see your body as a masterpiece, as a complete work of art, get up and leave.
7. If he makes you feel uncomfortable about any part of your body, get up and leave.
When I was nine, possibly ten, an author came to our school to talk about writing. His name was Hugh Scott, and I doubt he’s known outside of Scotland. And even then I haven’t seen him on many shelves in recent years in Scotland either. But he wrote wonderfully creepy children’s stories, where the supernatural was scary, but it was the mundane that was truly terrifying. At least to little ten year old me. It was Scooby Doo meets Paranormal Activity with a bonny braw Scottish-ness to it that I’d never experienced before.
I remember him as a gangling man with a wiry beard that made him look older than he probably was, and he carried a leather bag filled with paper. He had a pen too that was shaped like a carrot, and he used it to scribble down notes between answering our (frankly disinterested) questions. We had no idea who he was you see, no one had made an effort to introduce us to his books. We were simply told one morning, ‘class 1b, there is an author here to talk to you about writing’, and this you see was our introduction to creative writing. We’d surpassed finger painting and macaroni collages. It was time to attempt Words That Were Untrue.
You could tell from the look on Mrs M’s face she thought it was a waste of time. I remember her sitting off to one side marking papers while this tall man sat down on our ridiculously short chairs, and tried to talk to us about what it meant to tell a story. She wasn’t big on telling stories, Mrs M. She was also one of the teachers who used to take my books away from me because they were “too complicated” for me, despite the fact that I was reading them with both interest and ease. When dad found out he hit the roof. It’s the one and only time he ever showed up to the school when it wasn’t parents night or the school play. After that she just left me alone, but she made it clear to my parents that she resented the fact that a ten year old used words like ‘ubiquitous’ in their essays. Presumably because she had to look it up.
Anyway, Mr Scott, was doing his best to talk to us while Mrs M made scoffing noises from her corner every so often, and you could just tell he was deflating faster than a bouncy castle at a knife sharpening party, so when he asked if any of us had any further questions and no one put their hand up I felt awful. I knew this was not only insulting but also humiliating, even if we were only little children. So I did the only thing I could think of, put my hand up and said “Why do you write?”
I’d always read about characters blinking owlishly, but I’d never actually seen it before. But that’s what he did, peering down at me from behind his wire rim spectacles and dragging tired fingers through his curly beard. I don’t think he expected anyone to ask why he wrote stories. What he wrote about, and where he got his ideas from maybe, and certainly why he wrote about ghosts and other creepy things, but probably not why do you write. And I think he thought perhaps he could have got away with “because it’s fun, and learning is fun, right kids?!”, but part of me will always remember the way the world shifted ever so slightly as it does when something important is about to happen, and this tall streak of a man looked down at me, narrowed his eyes in an assessing manner and said, “Because people told me not to, and words are important.”
I nodded, very seriously in the way children do, and knew this to be a truth. In my limited experience at that point, I knew certain people (with a sidelong glance to Mrs M who was in turn looking at me as though she’d just known it’d be me that type of question) didn’t like fiction. At least certain types of fiction. I knew for instance that Mrs M liked to read Pride and Prejudice on her lunch break but only because it was sensible fiction, about people that could conceivably be real. The idea that one could not relate to a character simply because they had pointy ears or a jet pack had never occurred to me, and the fact that it’s now twenty years later and people are still arguing about the validity of genre fiction is beyond me, but right there in that little moment, I knew something important had just transpired, with my teacher glaring at me, and this man who told stories to live beginning to smile. After that the audience turned into a two person conversation, with gradually more and more of my classmates joining in because suddenly it was fun. Mrs M was pissed and this bedraggled looking man who might have been Santa after some serious dieting, was starting to enjoy himself. As it turned out we had all of his books in our tiny corner library, and in the words of my friend Andrew “hey there’s a giant spider fighting a ghost on this cover! neat!” and the presentation devolved into chaos as we all began reading different books at once and asking questions about each one. “Does she live?”— “What about the talking trees” —“is the ghost evil?” —“can I go to the bathroom, Miss?” —“Wow neat, more spiders!”
After that we were supposed to sit down, quietly (glare glare) and write a short story to show what we had learned from listening to Mr Scott. I wont pretend I wrote anything remotely good, I was ten and all I could come up with was a story about a magic carrot that made you see words in the dark, but Mr Scott seemed to like it. In fact he seemed to like all of them, probably because they were done with such vibrant enthusiasm in defiance of the people who didn’t want us to.
The following year, when I’d moved into Mrs H’s class—the kind of woman that didn’t take away books from children who loved to read and let them write nonsense in the back of their journals provided they got all their work done—a letter arrived to the school, carefully wedged between several copies of a book which was unheard of at the time, by a new author known as J.K. Rowling. Mrs H remarked that it was strange that an author would send copies of books that weren’t even his to a school, but I knew why he’d done it. I knew before Mrs H even read the letter.
Because words are important. Words are magical. They’re powerful. And that power ought to be shared. There’s no petty rivalry between story tellers, although there’s plenty who try to insinuate it. There’s plenty who try to say some words are more valuable than others, that somehow their meaning is more important because of when it was written and by whom. Those are the same people who laud Shakespeare from the heavens but refuse to acknowledge that the quote “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them“ is a dick joke.
And although Mr Scott seems to have faded from public literary consumption, I still think about him. I think about his stories, I think about how he recommended another author and sent copies of her books because he knew our school was a puritan shithole that fought against the Wrong Type of Wordes and would never buy them into the library otherwise. But mostly I think about how he looked at a ten year old like an equal and told her words and important, and people will try to keep you from writing them—so write them anyway.
*sobs for like the umpteenth time this day and reblogs the fuck out of this*
Reblog, Facebook, and sending it to myself so I can always find it…
shealwaysreads 