#bc ive been fed so much shit all my life about how women have to look A Certain Way

[magnoliamyrrh]

. ive got such a long list of reasons to be bitter and fed up and angry. i have so much pain within me. sometimes i feel like pain, deep, deep, sorrowful pain, mourning, grief, anger, a desperate need to stop feeling suffocated is what i know best. and u know as much as i think all thats justified and as much as i think my anger is important for my sanity , and as much as tbh i like by this point to an extent that my over it little tolerance for bullshit angry kinda agressive vibe is a part of my personality - that my bitterness is earned and aged like fine win. but idk, i have tired to rein it in these last months progressively bc it was consuming me and my nervous system literally couldnt handle it

but. something i still havent figured out how to deal w is my very, very, very bad case of survivors guilt. maybe its gotten a bit better but that makes me feel guilty too. it always does. i try not to let it haunt me but It Always done it haunts me that its somehow not supposed to consume and haunt me

. after everything my own pain and trauma is not what fucks me up the most. its always that its not over for so many others. for so many others its not over, its never over, theyre going through it rn, many worse than anything i ever went through. many that wont make it out alive

.

my best friend says its not my responsibility especially with my crippled health and the little of my fragile sanity to try to do something about it. that spending years trying to do something about sex trafficking or whatever else would break me, eat me up inside, that people who aint traumatized end up killing themselves or alchoholics, shells from what they've seen, so what would it do to me? he says. ive earned my rest, ive earned looking away, ive earned my peace

...

but what does that matter? what it would do to me? he says he doesnt understand why i spend so much time writing and speaking on this shit. at first it was to understand myself. now it is the horror that it is so much more horrible and bad and keeps going, its not me. its others. i always have felt more impacted by seeing others in pain than myself. i never can stand seeing my pain on someone else.

he says he doesnt understand why i look. he says he doesnt understand why i think. he says he doesnt understand why i study. doesnt understand why i want to do something about it when its so horrible

........

but ive been.... lucky. not so but lucky. lucky enouth to live. to get out. to get my "freedom."

but what does "my" individual freedom mean? when others dont have it? what does it matter?....... what does it matter?

it feels like my trauma isnt over through them. its not. im just one person, but for so many its not over. it wont be over. they may never see over until their graves.... time is a flat circle and all

...

and i think, how many? how many? and i think too.... in the history of the balkans, of my people, my women and little girls... how many? for how long?

how many today? everywhere?

how am i supposed to rest easy. how am i supposed to live my life ignoring it

why shouldn't i burn myself out. i already am. why shouldnt i take on the trauma of getting back into it for the sake of others

.

what does my freedom mean without theirs?

.

their screams echo through my head. they were my own once. i have stopped screaming

they have not

[lesbian-ed]

🌸Hi, a few years ago when I was 16 (19 now)I was forced out to my friends by this homophobic girl, and I came out as bi (still in the closet to my family), I'm no longer friends with any of them, but I can't figure out what label I should have, I really want to just know who I am. I said to them I was bi, but I've never felt right with that label. I read about comp het and it makes so much sense to me, but I still don't know. 1/5

🌸I feel, like, attracted to male celebs, but only when they’re in films or tv, and watching interviews of them ruins it?, and whenever I’m around guys I get these thoughts I can’t control about kissing them and sleeping with them and I feel rlly self conscious, I said this to a friend who said it’s a crush, but I get it with people I don’t like at all 2/?

🌸 And sometimes I have a phase where I feel like I could date a guy and marry him and have kids and be happy but it feels like I’m imagining a perfect version of me that actually im not like at all? And as well I can only imagine myself with a young guy, once I think about a 30 yr old or older I don’t want it anymore, but the perfect fantasy seems so appealing idk 3/?

🌸I feel different about girls but I don’t know I’m catholic and I feel like it’s always been other people are gay and that’s ok but not me? And I don’t know whether I feel no attraction to girls or I’m pushing it down bc when I see girls kiss on tv I literally have started crying and I saw a lesbian couple in public once and I got butterflies and also Ive found myself changing pronouns in songs in my head without realising but I’ve never had close to a crush on anyone especially not a girl 4/5

🌸Ive never even met a gay girl except for one pan girl at school but she was really weird and rude so I don’t know what it’s supposed to be like to like someone? writing this all down it makes it sound like I’m definitely a lesbian but that scares me so much bc ill never have a normal life and I can’t shake this feeling that actually I do want to be with a guy but I’m trying to be interesting or I’m faking this or something. Pls tell me your thoughts on this 5/5

Oh, anon. This literally all feels as if my younger self came into my ask box just now to ask for advice. 

I understand your pain, I really do, I went through so many of the same thought processes you’re describing now. It’s good that you’re aware of compulsory heterosexuality, since I believe that will make sorting your feelings easier. Still, I recommend you look through our tag (if you haven’t already) to read more thoughts on this. It’ll help. 

I obviously can’t tell you what your sexuality is for you, that’s your own journey to make, but this sounds so much like my own experience that I’m pretty sure what the answer is already.

Anon, let me tell you a story, I went to a catholic school and while my parents are pretty liberal and not that religious (in fact, my dad’s an atheist) I was also raised with the idea that ok, there were gay people out there, and I didn’t care what other people did with their lives! But honestly that was kind of weird and I couldn’t be like them, because they weren’t normal, like I should be. I was bullied a lot as a kid, because I was weird and ugly and way too shy and easy to pick on, so I grew up with this idea that whatever else happened, I had to stop being like that, I had to be beautiful and normal and acceptable. And that of course included a perfect fantasy of marrying the man of my dreams after he fell in love with men when I suddenly grew up to be the most beautiful woman there was, and having kids, and holding down a successful job that I was happy doing and having lots of money and well, just having the most perfect life. How could I not want that? Ever since I was old enough to walk, society fed me the idea that this was my ideal endgame, how could we ALL not dream about that at some point? 

I used to be obsessed with those stories where the “ugly” girl suddenly turns beautiful and the Nice Perfect Popular Boy finally notices her and they get together, those stories were my dream life. As a kid and young teen I’d fantasize about them constantly, I’d make up characters that would always end up fulfilling those same tropes. It was the way to prove to all those who ever called me ugly or belittled me because I was nerdy that “see? I got the happy ending” so when I was twelve, and suddenly all the girls were having crushes on boys I felt nothing for, while I started noticing seemingly out of the blue just how incredibly beautiful so many girls my age and older were, I got veeery scared. I couldn’t like girls like that, I wasn’t like that, I was already weird and had no friends, so how could I ever hope to find a girl who liked girls who’d like me? And if I did, everyone already hated me, so how would I bear it? The stares and the insults and the danger we’d face if people saw us together on the street? So I pushed that attraction down as far as I could, I convinced myself I was actually just too inmature to start thinking about crushes and all that stuff, and obviously when I was mature enough and the time came, I’d like boys, because that’s what Normal Girls did right? And I had to be normal.

In my school’s equivalent of US’ eighth grade, a new boy came to our class, he was pretty, and friendly, and most importantly, blonde! and he was the school sports star! It felt like every movie-like fantasy I ever had come to life. Every girl was in love with him, so one time I had a dream where we were dating. I woke up being absolutely ecstatic, that must have meant I had a crush right? I liked a boy? I was definitely straight?

I never actually began feeling nervous around this boy, or looking at him any more than usual until I had this dream and decided that meant I was in love. I told a friend eventually because I was excited about being in love and the fantasy I had created for myself about our perfect relationship (which did involve us kissing and having sex, and I never actually felt turned on about it but I did imagine it a lot because it meant we were In Love, so those fantasies happen even if you don’t actually like like the person in question, dw!), and isn’t that what you do when you like someone? Gossip about it with your friends? She told some of my bullies and the dude found out, so he started laughing at me in the middle of the class and calling me ugly and saying he was traumatized at the mere idea of me liking him. 

And I… felt nothing. I was angry of course, and sad, but it was just the same anger and sadness I felt when some random I didn’t like made fun of me, it wasn’t even like what I felt when former friends said nasty stuff about me. And I wanted to be heartbroken I wanted to wallow in the misery and the drama of it, but I just wasn’t, it was the same “well this shit sucks and I’m angry about it but it happens everyday so wyd?” There was no deeper feeling there, not even any special resentment, there was nothing. I never felt anything ever again when I looked at this boy.

Now, sometime later, the same boy starts dating a girl from our class, and it was around the same time that I was coming to terms with the fact that the latent attraction I had started to feel for women when I was younger had never actually gone away but rather had grown. Things were purely about sexual attraction for me at that point, not romantic feelings. I hadn’t actually been in love with a girl either by that point. Because even tho I was accepting my sexual attraction to women, I still had the idea in my mind that ideally I would end up with a boy, because when so much of my hopes for the future relied of me being beautiful and a man falling in love with me forever and ever so that I could have a normal future, letting go of that dream took a while. I called myself bisexual for a while, only to realize very little later that it didn’t actually fit me. When I did, it was hard, because I had to re-come out again to my mom and the two friends I had told, and that really scared me, because I felt like some fake, like what I felt was not actually real. I put it off, and my friends & mom were accepting but they also were like “you’re just confused about your sexuality!!/this is just a phase!!” so that fed into my insecurities. Even when I realized I was sexually into women only, I still hadn’t fallen in love with one, so that made things more confusing for me (I hadn’t fallen for any boy other than the one I mentioned earlier and one I met on a vacation that thought I liked for like a week because he had a pretty voice and was pretty androgynous lmao, but again, no heartbreak when he went away)

Eventually, (funnily enough through fandoms and f/f ships and fics that depicted them in loving relationships, And I cried when I read about girls kissing too, at first I thought it was because I was a Good Straight Ally, but I was just a lesbian lmao) I realized that I could also be happy in a relationship with a woman, that it was not only a possible future for me, but one that I wanted, one that felt right, one in which I wouldn’t be the beautiful, perfect, feminine, smart, succesful career woman I had dreamed of as a kid, but in which I’d be me, with all my quirks and faults, with another woman with her own quirks and faults who’d love me for who I am, because that was possible! It was possible to be happy like that!. When I realized this, that me liking girls romantically and sexually, and exclusively girls was okay, it felt like a veil was lifted from my eyes. Suddenly, all the feelings and attraction I had thought I had felt for boys paled in comparison to the intensity of what I felt for women, I learned what actual sexual desire was like, I yearned for a future with a real me in it with a real woman by my side, instead of the fake ideal I’d wanted to be when I was younger. It was around that time I fell in love for the first time.

Remember how I mentioned the boy I used to “like” got a girlfriend? Well, guess who I fell for? Me and her were assigned seats together one year in high school, and I got to know her through the first term, every time liking her more and more, until one day, she just walks into class, and I think she did something different with her hair? Whatever it was, seeing her felt like someone punching the breath out of me, it felt like watching literal perfection embodied. And I was gone, I was just so so sooo gone. I felt sparks when we sat next to each other, I couldn’t stop smiling like a fool whenever I looked at her, she’d say something nice to me and it felt like my soul was flying out of my body. And of course it was idealized, it was a crush on a girl I didn’t know that well, but the feelings I had, I had for her, for her actual personality, her actual sweetness, her actual kindness, even her actual rashness sometimes, not the fantasy I had made up of her that I projected onto her like I did when I “liked” her boyfriend. I liked her as a person. Plus the intensity of both crushes was just so fucking different. When I liked her, I cried when we were apart and at the thought of her with her dumbass idiot boyfriend, I listened to a love song and could relate to it for the first time. I understood finally why people would write poetry and songs and do all sorts of crazy things for this feeling. 

Tldr: I also fantasized about the ideal boy and I was never able to allow myself to feel anything for a girl because of how much I had repressed my sexuality due to fear of backlash until I was able to recognize that yes, liking women was OK and then all my repressed feelings came pouring out like a tsunami. 

If that sounds like something you can kind of relate to, then that’s your answer anon. However, it might not be, or maybe you don’t know if it is yet. That’s alright! Sexuality can be complicated and it can take a long time to figure it out. You’re not on a deadline here, you don’t have to stress about it.

As for the normal part, yeah being a lesbian in this society sucks a lot. And I still get terrified of the idea that I will not be “normal” and that I can never be happy. Even if I know deep in my heart that I can never be happy with a man, sometimes I wonder if it’d be worth it to spare me the pain. The answer? Hell no, I’ve got one life, one, what’s the point of wasting it on loveless unfulfilled relationships when I could try to go for someone I’ll actually be happy with? There’ll be pain, of course there will be, I live in a small town and I’ve only just started meeting other lesbians & bi girls offline this year because I’ve gone to university, and I’ve only ever actually started talking to and becoming actual friends with the ones I knew online this year too because I was so terrified before! All of them tell me about their hurt, and how lesbophobia affects them a lot, and yet I see them talking about how much they love their girlfriends/wives (I don’t have that because I’m an awkward potato but I’m trying) and also other lesbians, and it gives me hope, because I can be just like them, finding genuine happiness amidst the pain.

I hope this answer helps you. 

Mod M :D 

[attiqdemos]

it’s national eating disorder awareness week, and a lot of my friends are posting about it on facebook, but i don’t want to do that bc it feels weird so here

i had disordered eating for the last 2 years of high school. it seems more severe now than it did back then, maybe because back then i thought it was normal. okay maybe not normal--i knew it wasn’t normal--but i’d hear about the girls who dropped 60 pounds and got so sick they had to be hospitalized and fed through an iv tube and i knew that was never going to be me so i thought mine wasn’t that severe. looking back on it now, i’m honestly amazed that any part of me thought what i was doing was in any way rational. 

i never wanted to say i had anorexia; i read stuff online saying you could only have anorexia if you were underweight, so i never used that word about myself. it was just a diet, or, at worst, unhealthy eating habits. i didn’t tell anyone except three of my closest friends from other schools, because i didn’t want anyone from my school to find out for fear that they’d try to stop me, or worse yet, tell my parents. one of my friends from my school noticed something was weird and she actually reached out to one of those people that i told and it was one of the scariest days of my life even though i know it was coming from a place of love.

it was worst at the beginning of my senior year. college applications and schoolwork and honor societies and extracurriculars and band and my job and everything kind of came crashing down at once, and i wanted to feel like i had control over something at least, but i guess i overdid it. i have some strangely specific memories of that time, almost like vignettes: sitting in my first period ap gov class, not paying attention, writing out on the little calendar in my planner how many calories i would eat each day and meticulously calculating how long it’d take me to drop six pounds (according to my numbers, 25 days.) recalibrating my daily calorie counter in my head each time i took a bite of something to make sure i wouldn’t go over 700. i was obsessed with myfitnesspal; i would literally measure out half a cup of granola, weigh the amount of blueberries i put on it, to make sure i was getting accurate counts. i had the same thing at lunch every day: a handful of spinach topped with either a few berries and walnuts, half of an apple and a bit of crumbled cheddar cheese, or, if i was feeling extravagant, maybe slices of boiled egg. i drank a lot of those zero calorie fizzy water ice things for energy. i can’t even smell them anymore without feeling revulsion. 

i would flip my shit over the smallest things. i’d never eat everything that was on my dinner plate; one night, i came home from work, where i’d had a leftover salad for dinner, and my mom wanted me to finish my steak from the night before. it was three bites. i knew automatically that was about 100 calories. i’d already gone over my limit and eaten 750 that day. i couldn’t fucking eat anything else. i ended up crying over a piece of goddamn steak and making up something stupid about failing a quiz in school. whenever possible, i’d throw food out sneakily, or not eat meals and then tell my parents i had. 

i was never bulimic, which i’m really thankful for. i remember the closest i ever got to making myself throw up: after my interview at barnard, my family took me out to an indian restaurant to celebrate. indian was--is--my favorite kind of food. my dad told me i had to order everything. i did. i tried it all. i ate so much that i felt sluggish. in retrospect, it was a normal sized meal for me now, but to my artificially shrunken stomach then, it was way too much to handle. i knelt on the tile next to the toilet in the single-stall bathroom staring at the toilet water like it was taunting me. i dry heaved a couple times, stood up, brushed off my tights and walked out. 

vomiting would’ve been a step too far. later on, while i was beginning to ‘recover’ (i didn’t fully get over my issues with food until this summer), i would stand over the garbage can in my kitchen, take bites of brownies my mom made, chew them up, savor the flavor, and then spit them into a paper towel and throw them out. if we ever went out to eat, i’d look at the menus online beforehand to figure out what the lowest-calorie option was. we went to cheesecake factory once; i remember being thankful they had calorie counts for all their items online, then disgusted when i saw how high those counts were, then breathing a sigh of relief when i found an appetizer-sized portion of vegetable tacos that replaced the shell with a leaf of lettuce. it was 300 calories--half of my daily total. 

the closest i ever came to telling a medical professional was during an annual checkup during my senior year. i’d plummeted from 162 lbs, my highest weight in the summer before my sophomore year, to 134. she asked my how i did it: was it exercise? was it being on my feet at my job? i couldn’t give her an answer; i just started tearing up. i’m sure somewhere on my record there’s a note about risk for an eating disorder, but that’s all it ever was: a note. 

there was no clear-cut recovery process for me. there was no one moment where i stopped and said ‘i need to fix this.’ it was kind of just gradual; i had relapses, of course, but it generally wasn’t that bad since i came to college. i did gain a ton of weight my freshman year; it fluctuated a lot because of the all-you-can-eat meal plan, which was designed to help prevent eating disorders and food related anxiety for the students at my women’s college, but ironically ended up giving me more anxiety because of the lack of autonomy i was given over my choices of what to eat. but at some point either at the end of my second semester or the beginning of the summer, i finally stopped tallying up calories in my head. 

my weight has stabilized since then. i haven’t been on a scale in a year, but last i saw, it was something around 140, which is probably where it still is. i’m fine with that. it’s weird: i’m finally the size 6 i’d always wanted to be, but i’m not even sure how i got there. i looked in the mirror this morning and realized that somewhere along the line, i’d developed the thigh gap i’d always dreamed of; weirder yet, i found out i didn’t really care that i could see light shining through a tiny gap between my legs. i bought a crop top this summer. i still have flab on my stomach. it pokes out over the top of my jeans. i don’t care, though; i like the way i look in crop tops. i still don’t own a single pair of shorts, a remnant of my battle with my most detested body part--my thighs--but maybe this summer, i’ll finally get there. 

i don’t have tips for recovery, unfortunately. i don’t even know how i did it. i just stopped caring at some point. i have better things to worry about than some arbitrary number that’s supposed to quantify my physical being. the best thing i did, i think, is that i stopped comparing myself to other people.

it still comes and goes in waves. some days i think i’m beautiful; some days i’m fixated on my acne, my fat chin, my saggy tits, the pouch of fat above my pelvis, the cellulite dimples on my thighs. there’s nothing i can do about it. the society i live in has programmed me to notice these things. the best i can do is remember that it doesn’t define me.