little-brisk-archive reblogged
Dear and sweet friends getting closer all time. Hurting is so much lighter when you’re near me, says Vulture Pony to Gut Baby, with not her words but her many little legs. Thank you thank you thank you
some notes for anon, who sent me a question about how to cope with the aftermath of a relationship shaped by lies and gaslighting, and then expressed concerns about its recognizability should i publish it. so here, without details, for anon:
little-brisk-archive reblogged
#thirty-seven unhinged texts in a row followed by 'i'm sorry' followed by thirty-seven more#in between long periods of total silence#is what it is like to be my friend#the 'i'm sorry' is both the truest most vulnerable thing i can say and a complete fucking lie#as evidenced by the second set of thirty-seven texts#things about relationships#comprehensive crazy tag#the cyclonic void#congratulations you are loved and appreciated by a total nightmare
it is very very good at a time when i am not very able to write to have these occasions you all have given me to learn about how things i have written persist in your minds and also to revisit some writing of mine (in several cases some quite old writing) in a way that allows me to see it as in some way meaningful if only as testimony to the fact that someone has been here all this time being interested in things. and then also to reflect on how many of you have been here all along bearing me company in these things and how remarkable that is, from many angles. jes talked about reading and writing as being-with and i think that’s just exactly what this is and is for; a lot of long-term dwelling-together is in evidence here and, too, newer things—new friendships, new ways of seeing and thinking—that open onto possibilities for the future. i am very comforted by this and very grateful to you all for showing me it!
realizing how stressed i am by the fact that 100% of my communication with everyone but the person i live with is not only virtual but textual. everything always in writing. i’m too tired. i can’t say in writing anything that i think, it is too hard. can’t we just go to a bar and talk to each other
#remember when i had numerous friends who lived within walking distance of my home#many of them within a five-block radius#and i thought i was lonely#lol!!!#that was also a time when i thought not leaving the house for two days at a time was a big deal#again i say: lol#things about relationships#the key to all mythologies#comprehensive crazy tag#not not#pandemicblogging#but it's not like i was doing huge amounts of in-person socializing before the pandemic either#agoraphobia as mourning#all that shared time in coffee shops and bars and on porches and stoops and in parks and walking and and and#lordy lord#anyway big weekend for scales of loss over here and also my brain does not fucking WORK and i want to write and can't#and can't talk either because talking is writing !#[scream]#scream at least is not writing. scream is just scream
addendum: the habit i have gotten into of beginning a text or an email to someone—someone long dear to me; someone new; any sort of someone—and then retreating from it. over and over and over and over i am doing this lately. the impulse to reach out—and these are always innocuous things, it is not that they are momentous and make me recoil, they are always so anodyne—and then the feeling that i oughtn’t, don’t deserve to, would be embarrassing myself or asking too much or exposing too much or whatever it is. i am trying to follow through on the impulse more but over and over and over i am starting messages and never sending them. that last post began as a thought that i might email a specific friend about these poems i am reading and then also about other things, and then i thought: better not. safer here where i just leave my typing at my doorstep and anyone can come along and take it if they want to, and i have not asked anyone for anything. when i say my world is small i do not mean i do not see that i have made it so.
most of the people in my life will accept as belonging to the category of reasonable correspondence any of my available topics including ‘hey i love and miss you’; ‘here is a deranged rant about someone being wrong on the internet’; ‘i have a star trek opinion’ [+53 new messages]; or my newest love language ‘pictures of shohreh aghdashloo’, but for those for whom these are not appropriate i literally do not know what to do
#trying to write to advisor and all i want to say is 'i love and miss you and am glad you are safe' but she can't cope with that!#'i was reading this thing and here is a thought i had about it' used to be the safe low bar with her but unfortunately as we all know#gaaahhhh.#things about relationships#comprehensive crazy tag#i long to return to personhood is all
little-brisk-archive reblogged
I personally wanna see less 'you are not a burden/it's not work to love you' and more 'you are worth the work it takes to love you.' I KNOW I'm a burden sometimes. that isn't such a terrible thing! humans are strong. we can carry burdens. and it is work for me to be there for my friends, but it's work I'm willing to do.
we need to acknowledge this because pretending love isn't work will never make people like me feel less guilty for accepting love. we need to talk about it so people don't feel bad for having boundaries and not always being up to do the work. we need to accept it so we can properly appreciate what others do for us and what we're doing for them.
yes it does take work to love you. but guess what? you still deserve love, and you deserve people who are willing to do the work to love you. it doesn't make you bad. all love take work. and everyone is worth it.
“Most autistic people who are capable of formulating questions have frequently experienced the following scenario: We ask for information that we need in order to prepare ourselves for a new experience. Instead of answering our questions, NT people tell us that we don’t need to ask these questions at all. We just need to relax and stop being so anxious. The fact is that being able to ask questions, and getting clear answers to our questions, and thus knowing what to expect, are often the very things autistic people need in order to be able to relax and not be anxious. Asking a lot of questions about the details of a situation is usually not a “maladaptive behavior” that increases an autistic person’s anxiety. More often it’s an adaptive strategy that an autistic person is using to reduce anxiety or to prevent being in an anxiety-provoking situation in the first place. It’s very important for us to have thorough explanations and ample opportunities to ask questions.”
— Jim Sinclair, “Cultural Commentary: Being Autistic Together”
#this is obviously something that has specific punitive consequences for autistic people#and in particular ‘therapeutic’ (abusive) circumstances#but the principle that if someone is asking for more information it is inappropriate-to-cruel to dismiss it as baseless worry#is very broadly applicable#things about relationships
women who spend most of their time feeling irreducibly alienated surprised by a sudden intimate connection with each other: my genre of choice in art as in life
you can’t really miss someone until you have the experience of being unable to share with them a thing that they, and they alone, could hate with a fury to equal yours
wip of working title GERIATRIC POLY DRAMA has two fundamental themes: one, experiences that are specifically and uniquely enabled by advanced age—what becomes possible as a function of experience and memory and coming to terms with mortality, with the simple fact that there is more behind than before you; and two, the sort of distributive property of intimate relationships, by which intimacy with one person reverberates into other relationships, most obviously with partners of partners, but ultimately into the whole social unit. one thing these two themes have in common is the idea that meaning is cumulative; that what generates the richness of a life and what generates the richness of a social world is the accumulation of memory and the accumulation of intimacies.
there are people i want to be in touch with but if i had little enough to say in the Before Times, i have absolutely nothing at all to say now. i am trying to write emails but they all go like this: ‘hello, i am extremely feral. i don’t know how to read and haven’t been outside since may. how are you today?’
aeide-thea replied to your post:
a thing i felt in the story of yours that i read, and maybe you conceptualize this as part and parcel of ‘safe and understood’ but idk that everyone would, quite (though i think i might), is that in order for the safety and understanding to be possible there has also to be a willingness to go to a place of unflinching bare honesty, and to stand in that place together with someone, and to deal with them there as carefully as you can manage, even as the glare of it maybe hurts.
which feels of a piece with how brave and honest and fiercely compassionate you are in your own self, outside of the writing.
no one does testimonials like @aeide-thea does testimonials. what was i saying about wanting to be understood? and yes: the difficulty of safety, the work of it, yes, yes. if it is easy it is (probably) not safe. thank you so much for saying this, love <3
i think it would be great if we made unsolicited advice as socially unacceptable as shouting insults at strangers
#as a recovering fixer myself it’s not like i don’t understand the impulse#but what if as a place to start#when you find yourself wanting to respond to someone’s account of an experience by telling them what to do about it#you first pause and ask yourself: why do i want to respond in this way?#just. as a start#things about relationships#this is about an incredibly trite reply to a years-old post that just absolutely mystifies me#in its combination of obtuseness and condescension and sheer capacity for missing the point#but as a general principle just. ask yourself. why giving advice is how you want to respond to another person
little-brisk-archive reblogged
omegaverse
ppl like “i was a gifted kid but now im dumb as shit ahhhh im so sad now weeeeh” shut the fuck up i grew up smart as shit and i’m smart now and i’ll die smart as fuck too. youre nothing.
the thing about this post is that if you admit to its making you feel bad you identify yourself as precisely the kind of sensitized sad person it’s making fun of, so there’s no way to criticize it without looking like an oversensitive overearnest loser
proud to be an oversensitive overearnest loser honestly. i hate this petty culture where bullying is somehow hot and funny? some people really are living out a high school reboot where they’re the bully this time and it’s the least attractive thing
#1. man i love you both#2. thank you @proudheron for saying what i could not make myself say when i saw @aeide-thea's rb this morning#3. guys for real being mean is never. ever cool ?#3b. it is also a hilariously ill suited way to set yourself up as an adult#3c. it does indeed as k said feel like middle school#4. so let's let 'grow up' and 'be smart' mean: exercise the slightest bit of compassion instead of building your ego on tearing others down#please.#okay#things about relationships#i suppose#is where this goes#be less fucking mean. is all