#fuck I'm not even catholic why do i feel so much guilt for avoiding to suffer

[jackwolfes]

I've been reading smut for nine years so you'd think I'd be able to at least write a little bit of it, right? And yet, the minute it comes to even a kiss scene I get all uncomfy and just can't do it. Lately I've been coming up with so many smut scenes I wanna write but I keep second guessing myself and feeling all embarrassed. Any words of wisdom from a smut veteran like yourself?

i've shared some advice on this in more detail before and also here but the key question i'd ask yourself is: why

like. why are you embarrassed writing smut. why THIS and not writing fluff or whump or very elaborate longfics. because smut is at the end of the day any other type of writing, with just as much feeling and action and weird messy fluids.

"sex is taboo and shameful and i've got catholic guilt" - so fair, we live in a society. but also, sex is natural and a 100% morally neutral act. i'd be surprised if this wasn't underlying some part of the embarrassment but at a certain point, if this is the key thing holding you back, you might just need to sit down and consider whether you want the hegemonic bastards that suck the dick of advertisers and snuff out any sort of difference to be the thing holding you back from what is already a transgressive weirdo hobby. accept that if this is your biggest sticking point, you might not be ready to jump straight into writing a graphic monsterfucking piss play orgy and might have to start with heavy petting and missionary that's more feelings and "i love you"s than descriptions of genitals. and maybe you need to write 10,000 kissing scenes first to build up the courage to write the word "cock", but that's never going to be wasted time. there's no race. you don't need to jump straight in.

"fear of being perceived" - you are the arbiter of who sees this. you can post it anonymously, you can post this under a sock puppet account you made with a completely different email, you can wait until youve written 5 million words and post it all at once, you can literally never ever ever ever ever post it ever. but don't not write it because of an audience that doesn't even exist yet.

"fear of being cancelled for writing something weird" - the ao3 block button is a beautiful, beautiful feature. if someone reads something they don't like, what are they going to do? nark in your comments? whine? launch a smear campaign? fuck em. you should practice good internet safety to avoid getting doxx'd anyway, and if you do literally the only thing they can do is complain, which means all you have to do to get them to shut up is block them

"i like what i'm writing a Bit Too Much and don't know how to process that" - 1) self indulgence is the fucking shit but also 2) the writing is the processing it. writing is a tool that can help you identify the things that get you hot or your underlying opinions on the concept of intimacy and love. and dear god it's fucking awful to be vulnerable but the benefit is very very worth it. also no one's gonna know if you have a wank because you wrote a fic so hot you turned yourself on unless you tell them, so if that's how you gotta process it, then that's between you and god

"it's going to be bad" - it will unfortunately continue to be bad without practice.

if it wasn't immediately obvious from this answer, the only reason i ever got to 'smut veteran' stage was because i got really really fucking shameless about a lot of things, including the fact that i cannot say sexual things out loud, sometimes turn bright red while writing smut, and have still been known to get so embarrassed by a fic that i have to slam my laptop shut and put it away because i can't cope. and i think that part of writing anything that makes you feel that way is acknowledging that 1) you're strong enough to get through that discomfort and 2) a little bit of discomfort is probably worse than not writing anything at all

[bandofchimeras]

Buckle up cuz this is a longpost about Jewish conversion & transsexual identity.

A friend joked, "why do all the bad Catholic girls become good Jewish boys?" when I told them of my conversion.

which sure, it's a bit funny how common it is to find Jewish convert trans men.

but for me the joke formula is a bit off. I consider myself a Good (read: prudish, rule enforcing, obsessively observant) Catholic girl to a bad (read: indolent, irreverent, skeptical, punk ass) Jewish boy.

I had to ask myself, what does it mean to enter a religious tradition and outright declare oneself "bad"? Why do I even want to be part of the Jewish people?

Well it has to do with autonomy & reactivity.

Catholicism was forced upon my natural psyche, much like girlhood. I was assigned Catholic and Girl at birth.

To cope, aside from moments of lapse and rebellion that would explode out now and again, I strove to be "good," to exactingly follow this assignment, perfectly study all its rules and craft the perfect image of what was desired of me to wear as a mask over my realer, neglected and deeply wounded self.

Breaking free of both those constraints in rapid order, there was no going back. I would never again be a Catholic, bad or otherwise, or a girl, feminist or otherwise. Yet in my heart of course, I will always be a Catholic girl with the attendant moods and desires and shapes of understanding that it required me to take.

Now, in conversion and in transition - there is a choice. I could remain nonbinary, fluid, in constant flux, agnostic, ungrounded, dynamic and in conversation with the questions of the world. For a time I thought yes this is who I really am. Not seeing, of course, this is who we all are at our core. Living in that non-identity and infinite identity at once for a time spiritually reconnected my soul back to its own shapelessness and shape shifting power.

But there comes a time when life requires you make some commitments. This is not to say nonbinary or gender fluid people must pick a side. Some folks need to carve out something different entirely. But while my soul remains genderfluid, pagan and animist, I felt the need for communal identity and a structure to build myself on in the world. What aligned most was ftm transexuality, and Judaism, both strains of music I'd been hearing since early childhood, hints and leads all along the way.

See it's that, the formless mischievous spirit within me takes on the shape of a Jewish boy reconnecting with his Slavic roots.

But! In having so much a choice in this (not really, but it was a choice to follow the path that called my name), means it is my Identity. And while Judaism comes with a large set of rules, guidelines, practices and a huge long tradition of scholarship to draw on, and while I did hear jokes about and feel concerned about the similarity of Jewish and Catholic guilt ....none of that has been much of a problem. I'm a very bad and rules avoidant little punk. I tried for a minute to be a "good" man and it fucking failed, fell flat on my face and in the end had to laugh at my attempts. I'm kind of a slut, a fag and a sleazebag. I do what I want, no matter how I try, and that's that. Judaism, I hoped would be a forcefield of community to help me hold onto morality and find a light of belonging in the darkness.

Post October 7th, it has become exceedingly clear that no, it will not be the institutions of Judaism that light this candle, but the weirdos, the queers, the witches and outcasts and converts in conflict. Judaism, as a spiritual /shape/ has a home for us in the corners even though the solidified institutions are entrenched in Zionism. It breaks my heart to pieces but I feel lucky to have seen it before formally converting. It's the storytellers that means the most to my heart, the subaltern keepers of memory. The survivors.

So I revel in being a bad Jew before I am finished becoming one, embracing the role of black sheep before even entering the fold, and will not fight against it.

Similarly, allowing my masculinity to be odd, offbeat and expressive - I did get beat down into a kind of cishet conformity for survival for awhile, and I'm not talking about feminizing my expression, but just being a weird fucking guy who violates male social contracts by existing as myself.

There's a freedom in renouncing desire for recognition, validation and asserting oneself (with humility!) in a tradition while still embracing it. Like hah! You can't get rid of me, I'm the pest assigned by G-d to question your assumptions unto my own exclusion, or relate freely to G-d, look them in the eyes while praying. I have an attitude and I'm not good, and don't care to be. Nothing has illustrated this more beautifully than the graphic novel The Rabbi's Cat. In which the figure of the dog and the cat play out as different orientations towards Hashem and Judaism itself.

There is room for all of us. If you don't think so, okay. We will keep making room for ourselves anyhow.

Meow meow.

[enthusiasticarsonist]

rant incoming everyone ignore me ✌

[uncloseted]

Hi, my name is Ava and I'm broken. I feel like i live through this ongoing depression since I was a child. I'm filled with negativity, hopelessness, loneliness, anger, frustration, guilt, regret but at the same time, emptiness. I feel like I don't belong. I'm not trying to be dramatic, I'm just suffering. I'm 18 now, I thought this was gonna stop once I change myself, stop doing bad things like drinking to forget the pain or to party too much. I came here because I have no one and you seem like

Anonymous said: Ava part 2- a good psychologist. Let me tell you a story that might make you understand why I'm so fucked up. It starts with a family, the father is islamic, strict, controlling, a little abusive and the mother is catholic, calm, nurturing but superficial. They make 2 babies, a boy, energetic and full of life but jealous of his little sister (me), the quiet one. They grow up nice if you look from the outside, their parents offer them everything! They are also rich. They seem like a happy family.

Anonymous said: Ava part 3- But they're not. The boy is jealous of his little sister because the parents give her more attention. The father sees her as his little princess, always wants to protect her. The boy begins to go crazy because of little mistakes kids make and he gets beat up by his dad. Mother says nothing.. As days pass, the kids grow up so afraid of their father. This fear traumatizes them. Especially the girl as she becomes more quiet and the boy becomes angrier. In middle school....

Anonymous said: Ava part 4- They are both bullied badly. This makes them go suicidal. The boy tries to look on the bright side and the girl goes insane and keeps so much to herself. She has these horrible emotions. She just wants to die and stop suffering the pain that comes from hating herself, her life, her school, her parents..She doesnt know what to feel. The brothers confide in each other and they want to go through this together. The girl starts cutting, the brother saves her from herself

Anonymous said: Ava part 5- Cause if she kept going she would've killed herself a long time ago.. The boy starts drinking, doing drugs, rebelling against his parents, fighting with his dad. He starts to hate his dad as he grows up he realizes that the source of the problems is his own father. The girl sees this and it breaks her even more. She cries herself to sleep every night.. Her brother was getting drunk and almost passing out, the parents freak out, he even got shot but he doesnt remember.

Anonymous said: Ava part 6- He wants to forget..Parents go mad, where did we go wrong!? Why are our children like this!? Oh wait, not me. I wanted to stay a nice good girl so I avoid problems with them. I thought, the only thing my parents could offer me is financial support but at the moment, not even that because my father out of nowhere decides to be angry at us. Today, my brother is still mean to my dad (because he deserves it) and I'm just calm, trying to survive. But I know I need help. I want to run away

Anonymous said: Ava part 7- I dont know, I just want to feel better, I try to but I cant. The past haunts me, the cutting, the drugs, the bullying..I got better a little but its all coming back. Ive been to a psychologist but said i dont have depression or anything, I'm just sad and i need to accept my life. I cant...Its all so hard, my father is so strict he forces his religion on us and they even started to fight, he cheated and my mom is so stupid that wont file a divorce. My family fucked me up.

So a quick COA because I think this is a common misconception on here- I’m not a therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker, or any type of mental health professional, nor am I trained to be one, nor am I claiming to be one.  I encourage you guys to think of me more as a friend who can listen to you talk about what’s going on in your life and give thoughts and advice based on my life experience and what I know about the world.  I’m definitely not infallible, and everyone should use their best judgement when thinking about what I say and taking my advice.  Ultimately, I only know what you guys tell me about your situation, but you know everything about your situation.

Anyway, onto your real message.  I’m sorry you’re struggling so much.  I think tumultuous or chaotic upbringings can definitely manifest in depression, and I think those feelings of negativity, hopelessness, loneliness, anger, frustration, guilt, regret, and- especially- emptiness are indicative of a mental health problem that needs attention from a professional who can work with you to unpack the trauma of your childhood and help you to move forward from it.  I don’t think you’re being dramatic at all, but rather that you’re struggling with something really difficult and profound, and that you need some help along the way to get through it.  Sometimes we can’t do it alone, and it’s totally okay to ask for help from the people who know how to give it.  Whether or not they diagnose you with anything, having someone that you feel comfortable with to help you deal with the past and plan for the future is invaluable.  And don’t worry if the first person you see doesn’t work out- there are plenty of people out there and one of them will be right for you.  Keep seeing new therapists until you find one that clicks.

I think the best advice that I can give you other than to see a therapist is to start setting yourself up for financial independence.  Now that you’re eighteen, you have the right to make your own decisions about your life, and I would take advantage of that.  See if you can go to university somewhere far away from your family, for example, or join a volunteer organization that will put you up if you help them out, or move in with a friend and get a part time job.  Anything that will help you start distancing yourself from the situation sounds like it will help.  And if you need any thoughts or advice on that, let me know!  I’m happy to help any way that I can.