It breaks my heart that one of my friends had resisted getting a cane for so long because she was terrified of being treated differently until I got a cane myself to help with my feet. She had the courage to get one herself because she knew at least one other person had that shared solidarity with her if she needed to get one also.
While I'm happy and proud that she did so, it shouldn't have gotten to the point where someone else in the friend group needed to take the plunge for other people to feel comfortable and safe enough to get the same help themselves.
The way people are treated for having physical disabilities is abysmal if we (yes, we, because I am realizing my cane is going to be an as needed basis for the rest of my life and had to make peace with this for the sake of my anxiety) are so terrified of being treated like freaks and monsters, of losing any and all rights and autonomy just by having a visual aid.
I am not someone to be pitied, I don't owe you explanations for why I need my cane or why I don't use it all the time, and I demand the same respect you expect out of me no matter the circumstances. Visual aids do not justify being treated as helpless, incompetent, or seen as a freak. And if you need my health information for you not to judge me, suck my dick.
People that want to oppress me are not entitled to an explanation or sob story just to treat me like a person, even if I know they won't treat me like an equal even with the information anyway.
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I cannot donate to/spread fundraisers of any kind unless I know you personally.
I know that there's lots of people in need right now. But I am barely surviving right now, and I DO NOT have the mental capacity to verify the legitimacy of the dozens of fundraiser Asks I've been getting.
On top of that, my blog has almost 0 reach. I am not able to help. I'm sorry.
From now on, anyone asking for money will be blocked on sight and the asks will be deleted. Please stop sending me these. I don't have anything to give, and I don't want to risk spreading misinformation.
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Uh-oh! You are like, SOOO awkward!!
You're so awkward that it is occasionally mildly uncomfortable for people!
You're so awkward that sometimes people are confused by you and then there are awkward silences!
You're so awkward ...... that ultimately no one is harmed!!
Oh damn!!! What a vile crime you have committed! What an unforgivable thing it is to make a fellow human briefly confused!
Why, if *I* were ever briefly confused and kind of uncomfortable as a result, I'd be devastated.... by the absolute net zero change in my happiness and health! - From which I might never recover!! Yes indeed! No punishment can ever be enough for you!!
So you better absolutely hate yourself for it.
Better be SO MEAN to yourself about every single missed social cue so you don't forget your horrible crime! Meaner than you'd ever dream of being to someone else for the same thing! This is YOUR responsibility!
You need to show the world that you KNOW you are bad by punishing yourself constantly! After all, think of all the people who BENEFIT from you punishing yourself! - No, really! Think about it! Think about who benefits from your pain.
Think of alllllll the definitely-good people that your definitely-necessary self-torment definitely helps! I mean, you can't just cut off their definitely-life-sustaining supply of your suffering, right?? Sure, everyone else has a breaking point, but you're probably the only person in human history who doesn't, right? Best not to question it probably. Sure, it's a symptom that billions of people with trauma have had, but who knows? You could be a one-in-seven-billion exception. Anything's possible!
Instead, better just accept that idea that bullies carry like guns in holsters - the idea that people who have trouble with social cues deserve to suffer. Better carry on the burden they placed on you until you drop. Aid the cause of the callous by enforcing shame and suffering upon yourself extra hard; try your best to do their work for them. They're very busy.
Better not recognize that you need patience and kindness to heal from your trauma. Better not find out that it was trauma rather than personal weakness filling your head with self-hating thoughts. Better not find out it wasn't your fault.
Better not find out that awkwardness is not inherently harmful or unkind, and, in fact, the people who act like it is *are the ones enacting harm and being cruel.*
Better not get righteously angry when you realize just how much unnecessary damage this has done to you. After all, if you get mad, you might realize you deserve better. You might even feel brave enough to DEMAND better! You might build boundaries that keep you safe! You might make other people think they deserve to feel safe too! And we obviously can't be having that, so...
Better not show yourself even a little kindness a little bit at a time.
Better not make a habit out of it after all that practice.
Better not get confident.
Especially if you can't first wipe out every trace of awkward. (And you probably never will. Because people who experience absolute social certainty at all times tend to be insufferable assholes that enforce the status quo. And you just don't have the stock portfolio for that.)
Better not be confident and awkward because then you might confuse and delight people
- you might accidentally end up making other people feel less shame for their social difficulties
- you might make isolated, traumatized, and shy people feel like they deserve to be included in social situations
- you might even make them feel they can be themselves around you
- you might start loving the effect you have on a room
- you might enjoy conversations more
- you might forgive yourself and bounce back from shame more easily and frequently
- you might come to enjoy some of those moments of harmless confusion you cause because NOBODY expects the Confident Awkward, and that can genuinely be an advantage in social situations
- you might stop apologizing so much.
- you might find that socializing is like a video game: it requires practice but also a safe space for it to be fun and positive.
Or if you can't become assertive and confident, better not remain awkward and shy and quiet, and then love and forgive yourself anyway!
Why, it would be carnage!!
In either scenario, you run the risk of finding out that it's not your fault that safe spaces full of kind people can be really hard to find, create, and nurture. You could end up building a skillset that helps you do those things if you're not careful!
If you start giving yourself even the tiniest amount of grace at a time, you will find that you've accessed a gateway drug with extreme long-term side effects:
- You might realize that it was never your fault that it took so long to like yourself.
- You might realize that you were always worth talking to, even when you didn't like yourself and communication felt impossibly difficult.
- You might realize that you'll still be worth talking to even if communication becomes harder as you age and/or experience disability.
- You might come to know that you deserve to be heard even on bad days when words come slow and blurry.
You might discover that you were always deserving of kindness, first and foremost from yourself.
So. As you can see, it's FAR too much of a risk to start granting your awkward self free pardons for your many heinous and harmless crimes. Better to just leave it there.
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It's hard to pick a worst book because the thing I'd judge that on is whether all the stories are memorable and whether anything actually happens in them. Like, that anon who said all the Skarloey Railway books were mid? Those books do have a lot of stories that seem to be trying to make a brief stop on the rails a lot more of an event than it actually is. In fact, there's so many Skarloey Railway stories like that that I often confuse them and have to actually go back reference them to make sure I've got the narrative straight.
However, most of the books will have one or two good stories and then one or two of these goldbrick stories alongside. And that's true all the way through the series. So it's hard to say which one is the worst because almost all of them are like that.
But since you did ask specifically and I can follow directions, I'm going to go with The Eight Famous Engines since it has three stories that are about almost nothing. "Percy Takes the Plunge" is a nice solid outing, but "Gordon Goes Foreign", "Double Header", and "The Fat Controller's Engines" all feel like they have to be there to pad this thing out.
More than the question of which of his books is the worst though, maybe we should consider that Awdry himself was just not that good a writer. He was good at collecting trainedotes and putting his characters faces on them. And that's a fine skill to have, but a good book it does not necessarily make, as Awdry Jr.'s additions to the series go on to prove...
Damn, DJ sees "I'd like to nuke six whole books from orbit at once" and raises it to "Can Wilbert Awdry even be said to write?"
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