this korean butch lady is so cool she legally changed her name to lesvos, a variation of lesbos the birthplace of sappho. which is also the name of her lesbian bar, the first one ever established in south korea in 1996.
link to article here
YES!! We're here, young'uns!! Just as wonderfully warped and smitten with our fandoms as anyone.
tbh shoutout to the over 40s on tumblr, sorry the internet acts like yall belong in the retirement home when ur literally just regular adults with hobbies
Here’s 3 easy ways to get started: 1.) Get a library card (it’s free and usually just requires proof of residency!) 2.) Attend your local library’s events and programming. 3.) Advocate for increased support and funding.
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trauma doesn’t often feel like trauma is ‘supposed’ to feel. it feels like indifferent detachment, watching from outside yourself because nothing can hurt you there. it feels normal, just how people interact, so why are you making a big deal about it? it feels like a joke – just how kids play, just how adults tease, just how some relationships work.
you wake from nightmares five years later and still wonder if you made it all up.
trauma can look like bad behaviour. like the stubborn refusal to get better, to stop self-destructing. trauma is putting yourself in harm’s way because you don’t really mean it, or because it’s funny, or because you just want to feel something, or because you just want to stop feeling. it’s wanting to destroy and reassemble yourself into another person entirely, so your real life can begin. because this isn’t real. because really bad things don’t happen to people like you.
trauma is the constant feeling of being an impostor. it’s the drive to survive twinned with the impulse to make yourself more sick in more ways. to hurt yourself to prove how bad you feel, or to punish yourself for exaggerating. you want people to believe what you’ve been through, to tell you your feelings are real, that your memories really happened. but when people do take you seriously, you play it off as a joke, apologize for bringing the mood down.
you go on and on about how it wasn’t that bad. you seek permission to still love the ones who hurt you, because it’s the people closest to us who can hurt us most deeply.
you can feel like the people who hurt you are the only ones who really knew you. in low self esteem, you can mistake cruelty for honesty.
there will always be people who have been through worse. that doesn’t make what happened to you okay.
there will always be people who don’t believe you. that doesn’t mean you are lying.
at some point, you have to take yourself seriously. you have to make a life you can stand to live. it’s the only way to survive.
I feel like it would be useful if people conceived of causing emotional harm to others more through the lens of being the emotional equivalent to stepping on someone’s foot. Like obviously you can step on someone’s foot deliberately and maliciously, but most of the time if someone tells you you stepped on their foot you’re going to go “oh sorry I didn’t realise!” and stop doing it and try not to do it again. Getting caught up in how it makes you feel to be Someone Capable of Stepping on Others’ Feet would be a transparently self indulgent distraction from the other person’s pain, but also like… that’s just a status you hold by virtue of being human. Never ever ever stepping on someone’s foot is not really achievable, and therefore is not necessary to being a Good Person: what matters is that you do not step on others’ feet deliberately, and – most importantly – that you react kindly and calmly to any inadvertent foot-stepping you have been doing being brought to your attention, so that you can make best use of it as something that will help you reduce the amount of foot-stepping you will do in the future.
If your parent is a covert narcissist, then most of the usual narcissistic parent information won’t ring as true, and instead you’ll be in a situation where you feel great worry, concern, protectiveness, desire to care for, desire to rescue, feeling responsible for, and longing to be acknowledged and loved by your parent.
Your parent was always the ‘weak one’, and you were the one who was strong, and there to protect them. There was a neverending stream of afflictions plaguing your parent – they struggled with the child care, they had a tough time being married to the other parent, they were sick, they were bullied by the other family members/people at work, they had too much housework to do, or the housework too hard and they were too weak to handle it, they worried about the future, they didn’t know what to do or how to go about life, they lacked support, nobody took care of them, nobody gave them affection. And you wanted to rescue them so badly. You were there for everything, if something needed to get done, you tried your best to do it in order to spare your parent the extra worry and work, you anxiously tried to help them as they were sick, you stood up for them when they were bullied, you reassured them and tried to take as much stress as possible on yourself, only so they would have to do less.
It never worked. Regardless of how much housework you did, or how hard you tried to ease the tensions or make sure they have the peace and care to get better, they would never be quite okay. And it always felt like you were so close to getting your parent to a place where they’d be fine, and then, they would finally have space in their life to love you. Because, in your head, your parent did love you, only they were always so preoccupied with their own life, they could never relax enough to show it to you. So they never did anything you did for them – they didn’t protect you, or stand up for you when you were bullied/abused, they didn’t nurture you or take care for you when you were sick, they didn’t help with your studying or chores, they didn’t give you their time or affection. And you felt empty, but you understood it was only because they couldn’t, they were never okay enough to do it. You had to be strong enough to handle it all for them.
Sometimes, they’d lash out at you, and say things you were sure they didn’t mean. And you understood even then, they only did it because other people were bullying them, and they had to lash out at someone. Or they didn’t understand it was wrong. Or they didn’t realize it would hurt you because they were used to you being so tough. You still believed that deep inside, they loved you. Hateful words from them hurt you immensely, but you couldn’t find it in your heart to accuse such a troubled and anxious person of being a bad parent, you didn’t even want to think about how badly this would hurt them. Getting angry at them was likewise impossible, because you understood just too well where they were coming from, and you felt so bad and worried for them already, you couldn’t even think about turning against them. You didn’t want them to have to deal with life without you, when it was already so hard for them.
It was next to impossible for you to realize that you were neglected, because you were the one who was supposed to provide care and solutions. You didn’t have love, but in your heart, the love existed, just out of your reach, just a bit more work to get it. And if it never happened, you blamed yourself for not being enough to get it. Abuse from someone who you were so worried and concerned for, doesn’t read as an abuse, but as action from a person in desperation with no other option but to lash out. Your entire experience growing up was the one of ‘unavoidable’ and ‘necessary’ pain.
We are now in the two last months of the year, and I hope they will bring wonderful moments. I also just wanted to remind you that there is still time if there it something you have been meaning to do this year, but haven’t gotten around to for whatever reason.
I also wanna say that if this year has been difficult and you do not feel like you did enough, then please be extra kind to yourself in these months. Sometimes when we feel like we have been doing too little or nothing, it is because we have been fighting or some things has been out of our control. Both those scenarios are rough. And I want to remind you of that, of how exhausting it can be, of how strong you are, of how loved you are and of how enough you are.
I hope this last part of the year brings you ease and leaves you more hopeful than you think it will. 🌸
i honestly think that the reason that the whole "staff shortage" thing still hasn't been resolved is because employers legitimately aren't trying to remedy it.
like as this "shortage" drags on it seems less and less like a natural phenomenon and more like excuse for employers (especially large employers like grocery store chains) to see just how few people they can have in their stores and still make money. like this pandemic has given them the perfect opportunity to see just how shit they can make the customer experience while still turning a profit
and when you look at it that way, the countless stories of people being denied jobs that were supposedly in DESPERATE need of filling totally make sense! because even if your store has ten-person lines at every cashier, if it isn't hurting your bottom line, why would you care? businesses are finding out now just how much that they can get away with before losing business, and it's WAY more than they previously thought