Growing Up Autistic / Growing Up Gaslit

something about hanging plants on the wall

reaching for the light,

aching,

twisting to contort to expectations—

well—

what looks best for the living room?

yet these are plants, living, breathing,

wilting,

dying—

for the privilege of “looking good”

and

what is that bullshit standard anyways?

attractiveness? style? beauty?

white supremacy in action, again—

over a plant?!

but yes—

(most times it seems to be yes)

so instead, maybe—

what feels best for the plant?

what supports growth the most?

when is your willingness to look good

outweighing your ability to feel good?

when did you start pulling yourself away

from feeling the light

when that’s all you’ve ever wanted?

““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)

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

does anyone know if you can get in trouble for feeling weird

lowkey things are shaping up to be pretty odd

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.

i’m proud of you for facing the days you really don’t want to face

Parents lie. The hardest thing to quit isn’t smoking, it’s loving someone you knew wasn’t good for you but couldn’t let go of.

You ever hear that old chestnut about how most people neglect the part of the story of Icarus where he also had to avoid flying too low, lest the spray of the sea soak his feathers and cause him to fall and drown? You ever think about how different the world would be if Icarus died that way instead? If the idiom was to Fly To Close To The Sea? A warning against playing it far too safe, about not stretching your wings and soaring properly? You ever think about how Icarus died because he was happy?

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?