#especially the second one like goddamn

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I should leave this in a tag post so it's not on main but whatever, I'm in a mood and listening to "peace" for the first time in awhile along with this rambling mess from the other night puts me in my feelings because "[you know that I'd] give you my wild, give you a child" is such a vulnerable, raw, honest confession to share with someone (let alone put in a song on a Grammy-winning album) and I don't know how much clearer the pipeline from there to the events on TTPD could be but just. It's heavy, but obvious and understandable (to me). And I'm not about to delve into why because of reasons and also don't want to come across as projecting or speculating or whatever but. Once again I think if you're in a certain age bracket and life stage so much of this just makes sense inherently.

[alsaurus-loves-dean]

.

[fourswords]

forgot how fun writing hurt/comfort is actually it's been so many years since i did this

[gently-decaying-flowers]

sometimes it takes really really paying attention to the lyrics for a song to sink in for me

sometimes what the artist is saying makes me very sad

[farceargon]

I just realized the snake statues in the church of Eiglay have wings and clawed feet.

This feels significant somehow (whoops I hijacked my own tags).

Either way fantastic choice in decoration they look like if you smooshed an eagle and a snake together. Would have one in my room.

[transingthoseformers]

Now that I realize it, tfp au Megatron is actually a very anxious carrier. Plus, you can argue that he's sorta anxious as in general a baseline, and it's probably because a lot of his life has been spent in dangerous situations and he's become wired over the kilovorns to think worst case scenario.

[suddenlymicah]

some things are big and scary even though they cant hurt me. posts or fics that are really long with hardly any space to break them up (eg one or two big paragraphs that have like a bajillion words)? no no no if i read this my eyes will evaporate and my brain will explode. making a choice of food at a restaurant? may i have help. what do i enjoy. reading the menu was hard enough it just looked like a bunch of scribbling and now i have to choose?

[oikawas-toris]

I go to a new school in 3 days I'm so terrified ಥ⁠‿⁠ಥ

[keyboard-cowgirl]

so I recently finished a year’s worth of therapy. In an effort to continue the destigmatization that’s been happening for the last decade+ and encourage others to improve their own health, here’s some stuff I’d like to share.

Yes, it is prohibitively expensive. My therapist, who specialized in the kind of issues I have, wasn’t covered by my insurance (most therapists in America aren’t covered by major insurers). I would not have been able to afford a full year without financial support. And that sucks, but if you can swing it, it can do a lot of good. (26 sessions x 135 per = $3,510 usd, over half of which I paid myself.)

I never tried in therapy before. I’ve had therapy. But I didn’t try. At the time, I did it because I had to--my family thought it would help and I was too young to be able to decline--but I didn’t care, so I didn’t make progress. It wasn’t the right time. I didn’t believe it would help. This time, I sought it out on my own. I did the fucking work, and it is fucking work.

In spite of all the personal learning and study I have done on PTSD, depression, anxiety, and chronic pain, despite how we are hounded with self-help tips and free information online, I still learned a bunch of new things about trauma and health that I didn’t know. My therapist was great and constantly challenged me. I understand myself so much better now. I give myself the space and time and patience I need to get through difficulties (and I can see them coming now! I can act instead of always reacting). I give myself grace, and I tell others what I need. I have boundaries(!!!).

After a full year, not everything is fixed. Not everything can be fixed. That shit gets baked in, and that’s biology, but it’s biology, too, to identify it. Name it. Work through my process and stop catastrophizing and keep building new patterns. I will never be a person without baggage, but fuck if I’m going to let it own me all the time. The past cannot steal my joy for the present, and the future is still an insurmountable beast of what-ifs, but I’ve got a Batman belt of tools and I’ve seen what they can do when I practice with them. That’s worth every goddamn penny.

So, yeah. Therapy. It’s my sincerest wish that you’re able to do it if you want to, that you find a good therapist, that you try. Self-improvement is hard, but don’t let the phrase fool you. “Self”-improvement doesn’t have to be single-player. You can co-op it. You can MMO it by getting help from others. Stop being a tank, go DPS and get yourself a healer.❤️

[universalsatan]

i’m only 3/4s of the way thru the first season of x-files and im already losing my mind. is this how unbearable slowburn is from the outside??? jesus christ i am so sorry to everyone around me irl LMAO. and the fact that i can See myself in mulder in so many ways (yes fine, another adhd idiot on which to project), but most significantly, that he Realizes. he Realizes he’s falling for scully halfway thru the FIRST season, but also that his lil crush is already COMPLETELY obvious to the rest of the office, apparently????? i have never been so thoroughly called out by a show,

[lightningfilledsaber]

I FUCKING WALKED 6.5 MILES IN ONE GO TODAY

[shrekyaoi]

In the spiral series or whatever it's called, what happened to Eliza?

i just call it spiral, but you could also call it “the zombie au.” since i never actually say in the fic you can believe whatever the hell you want, but personally i think that eliza went back to missouri where her family lives. they’ve either died or left and she never does find them, but she finds her girlfriend who went there to find eliza since, well, that’s where she’s from. a LOT of shit happens to the world post-spiral but to put it simply, they do manage to find a home for themselves

[mailperson]

Find Reddit thread posing a question about issue you are experiencing or a topic you want to know more about informally.

The comments:

-Deleted response, often with a reply to that deleted response that praises its usefulness

-Unwarranted harsh passive aggressive jab at the original post that does not actually address the topic at hand

-Factually incorrect or grossly outdated response

-Response that references pop culture in an irrelevant fashion with 50 replies to it of a similar nature that floods the thread and helps no one

-Some variation of "I also want to know the answer to what OP is asking"

-(Rare) zero replies at all

[violetclarity]

started last night online shopping for new bras/bralettes because mine have gotten gross af, ended it looking at crochet bralette patterns so I could make a rainbow top for pride. I solved a different problem??

[spicysucculentz]

laying in the grass to reconnect with nature after spending 3+ hours at the mall shopping for business casual attire

[inbabylontheywept]

i did wrestling in middle school. on one hand, i was actually quite good at it, which was nice. being good at any sport was a new achievement for me. on the other hand, i was bi, and i was trying very hard not to notice that i was bi, and getting folded into knots by very kind, very muscular dorks made that task somewhat difficult.

adding fire to the problem was that my parents and my grandparents wanted to watch my matches, because they were very proud that their Gangly Nerd Son was actually Sporting, and they wanted to cheer me on. which would've been sweet and all, but if there are four people you do not want there during a key part of your Burgeoning Sexual Awakening, it is your mom and your dad and your grandma and your grandpa.

right? i mean, imagine some guy's got your head in his armpit, and you're going you know, old sweat smells bad, but fresh sweat has a sort of and then you make eye contact with your grandpa in the stands and you remember you're swearing spandex so if you pop a boner people aren't just going to be able to see the outline, they're going to be able to count the veins, and the only way you will be able to restore your family's honor after that would be by moving to siberia and renouncing joy, forever. that, or lift your entire body up by your kneck then twist 180 degrees without paralyzing yourself.

it’s a lot of pressure, is what i’m saying.

still it did motivate me to win my matches really fast. because i was so tall and skinny, i was stupidly good at the double leg takedown, and then once someone was knocked down, i'd just do the half nelson and kind of flip em over for the pin. then the ref would count to three and i’d win. EZPZ.

i had one match where that went great. won in the first ten seconds, sat back down, and prepared myself for a good hour or two of doing fuck all. didn't even feel bad the parents/grandparents were gonna be bored. the matches went up from me in 5 pound increments (i was in the 115 lbs division) and it was going great until we got to the 145 lbs division. the other school's wrestler stepped onto the mat, and she turned out to be a girl so our guy flipped, because for straight guys, wrestling a girl is not a pleasant experience.

i'm not entirely unsympathetic. my experience wrestling dudes was definitely a little traumatic. but also, i dealt. guy could've dealt too. instead, he refused to wrestle, and the coach went - fine. not even worth fighting over.

so he went to the 140 pounder, and that guy said, nosir, my mom said mormons can't wrestle girls. next guy down, 135 pounder, now he knew he could pull the same card and thus did. 130 pounder, 125, both tapped out. he got to the 120 guy, and that guy was catholic, but he said he was considering being mormon, and thus would have to pass. as a precaution.

coach blew up a little at that. he said "is there anyone - anyone - on this entire goddamn team that is willing to wrestle a girl?" and then he pointed at me and said "YOU. MAT. GO."

and i'll be real, if i'd been paying more attention, i'd have pulled the mormon card too, but i'd just been putting all that audio into a buffer file because i was reading, so i was halfway across the mat before i even processed what had been said and by then it was too late to turn back.

still i had a plan. and my plan - my beautiful, perfect plan - was to do what i'd always done. tackle, flip, pin, win. sit down. read. bore my family to death. move on.

i got the first part right. she was bigger than me, but she wasn't taller. just an incredibly stout woman. god built me like a snake with glasses, just as he built her like a combat cube. the problem was the half nelson. soon as she was down, i tried hooking my arm under hers from behind and for both genders, the defense for this move is just clamping your arms really fucking tight against your sides. if you're a guy, that's whatever, but if you're a girl - especially if you're god's chosen combat cube - that pins your opponents hand right against your boob.

so, i got the hook in, she clamped, my whole arm pressed against something soft, my coach was yelling THE HALF NELSON. BABYLON! JUST FINISH IT! FINISH THE HALF NELSON! and i was just trying to press hard enough to finish, when then my brain went

...oh.

and i flipped out. of course i flipped out. i like girls, and touching a boob is an elemental experience, and i was not ready. i was not prepared. i had not committed the sacred rites. i recoiled like i'd just brushed my arm against the surface of the sun, stood up, and backed away. nobody in the room knew why i'd given up. all they saw was me, right about to win, suddenly flailing around and scrambling. so everyone started screaming at me to just get the half nelson again, and i couldn't really yell back there's a fuckin' boob in the way and it was very distressing, and the only way i could think of to make them stop was just doing it over again the right way.

so i did.

i hunkered down and prepared myself for Wrasslin' Attempt #2: The Sequel.

i knocked her down again, EZPZ. i went for the half nelson again, but she knew what i was about to do so she super clamped, and i knew she was gonna super clamp, so i wound my arm back like a pop-eye cartoon punch before swinging my arm through the gap between her bicep and her side, but the amount of time i spent winding back super signalled what i was about to to do, which gave her time to clamp even harder, which somehow redirected the entire force of the popeye punch to the bottom of her bra.

it spat out a single boob the same way an action hero might spit out one single tooth after getting a solid crack across the jaw. as if to say:

*ptooie.* "that all you got?"

i did not actually see this. my experience was that first there was an arm, then there was a bit of boob, but i was braced, i was ready, forward at all costs, tatakae motherfuckers, and then the boob went away, and i didn't know where it went but my team, and the audience, and everyone who was in front of me, they all gasped like i just kicked them in the stomach. except for my coach. he was behind me, and thus one of the four people in the room who did not see the boob. now my mom, my dad, my grandma, and my grandpa, they all got flashed but nooooooo, coach thunderbutt was behind me, and he didn't see shit so he was still yelling NOOOOOO BABYLON WHAT ARE YOU DOING JUST FINISH THE NELSON! GO FOR THE KILL! BABYLON! BABYLON!

but i did not go for the kill. i stood up and she stuffed her boob back real fast, and we just kind of circled each other awkwardly until time ran out and i won on points. that's not technically allowed, but the ref had some mercy on me.

my coach did not.

i barely had time to sit down before he strode over to the bench to chew me out.

"babylon," he said, in that very calm way people get when they're too pissed to yell. "why didn't you pin?"

and i didn't know how to say well coach, i tried, but there was a boob, and it kept getting in the way, and my mom was watching, and so was my dad, and so was his dad, and his mom, and god (like bible god) and that's a can of worms because i'm pretty sure he was already mad at me, and i'm wearing spandex, and i think i might have to move to siberia, so instead i said

"i uh. i forgot how to do the half nelson."

which is actually impossible. forgetting how to do the half nelson is like forgetting how to swallow your spit.

and he looked at me, like i was the dumbest person in the entire world, and i looked through him like i'd just survived my 250th day in a trench at verdun, and he said: fine.

fine.

but we're all going to practice it for an hour tomorrow because you forgot.

and then he left.

and my buddies had the gall to be salty about it. i got so many comments saying "dude, why didn't you just tell him the truth?" and i said "you can if you care so damn much. you could've wrestled the girl too. maybe someone else should do the hard thing today."

but they didn't. so the next day, we did an hour of half nelson drills, and i spent a decent amount of time getting thrown around the mat, and it was pleasant in exactly the way that i hated and the year after that, to the surprise of everyone but myself, i quit wrestling and joined the trivia team.

and if you want more reasons to love my mom, my grandpa joked after the match that i might have to talk to my bishop about it, and my mom told him he would be allowed to make jokes after he stood in front of a crowd of 110 people in spandex underpants while wrestling a woman that was not his wife.

he paused for almost five seconds after that. then he said: aw. hell. sorry babylon.

and i'd have preferred my apology from god, but getting it from him was pretty good too.