#those traumatized kids are me

[introspectivememories]

sorry but do you ever think about the fact that the bernard we have today is a direct amalgamation of everything that happened in his past and i know that sound like such an obvious statement to say but it actually kills me to know that you can draw a direct line from who he is today all the way back to that sixteen year old boy who watched his best friend bleed out. like it is the defining moment in his life. it fundamentally shaped who he is and the person he's become. he is the bernard we know and love not despite the grieves shooting but because of it. because the gangs all got together and shot up his school. because tim walked out of that room with nothing but a baseball bat. because his darla got shot. because he watched her gasp and cry as she died. because he watched the blood coagulate around the wound. because he sat there and held her hand as her life drained out of her. because he walked into school that day with a joke he knew would make her laugh and her nose would scrunch up and she'd snort a little and tim would roll his eyes at him and call him ridiculous and instead he walked out with a bloody white shirt, blood under his fingernails, and two friends less. because, even now, almost half a decade out from the shooting, he thinks that if he closes his eyes, he will always be that stupid, scared little sixteen year old, holding the cooling body of dead best friend.

[ftmtftm]

I do wish more posts about Aaron Bushnell would get tagged with a suicide warning honestly. I don't really want to have to blacklist his name outright but it's likely I'll have to unfortunately - just to save my own sanity for a little while.

[backpackingspace]

thinking about how for like the first two years of obi wans apprenticeship qui gon did not give a fuck what obi wan did (or even really what happened to him) before snapping out of it and realizing he was actually very much responsible for this child and course corrected into being a helicopter parent and how obi wan always read this as mistrust instead of concern and guilt.

[lesbianrustcohle]

lizzie (fave fic author/new friend) and i have been video chatting almost every week since we met in march, and it still feels so magical to make a friend like this in my 30s, wow!

it still hasn't stopped having that "playground feeling" in the best way

by which i mean: i used to meet another kid on the playground or at the swimming pool or at school, and we had like one (1) major interest in common and in my head i would be planning how we'd be best friends our whole lives

except with lizzie, we really do have that much in common, and so far all the things we don't share complement each other

she's already on my shortlist of people i could spend essentially infinite time with (we were up until 3am last night on a work night just because we were having so much fun – huge sleepover vibes)

so i just get to walk around feeling like the happy, emotionally secure child i never was while we both are marveling that the other person thinks we're cool :')

and it's so fucking nice :')

[jankwritten]

yall wanna know how fucked up my anxiety is about some shit

i scroll past a post that's about a topic i don't like. whatever, it's fine. i scroll past a video that's a topic i don't care about. that's normal.

i scroll past a video that's a topic i don't like or care about but the person presenting it is a person of color? i IMMEDIATELY feel immensely guilty and need to "compensate" by "proving" it wasn't because of race by also skipping other random posts, JUST IN CASE someone thinks I'm racist because I didn't want to watch a video on a topic I didn't like or care about, that happened to be presented by a person of color.

this just in on: the police in my brain are loud and i'm scared of them

[winepresswrath]

the emphasis on theatre has improved the amc iwtv claudia experience for me so much. i am looking with my eyes at an obviously grown woman. but when armand says "oh what a shame she's baby in form but not in spirit" i nod along because we're playing make believe to create an experience together. as opposed to last season when i was experiencing a near fatal failure to suspend disbelief as the show tried to simultaneously tell me that claudia was doomed to a sad half life & also could pass as an undergraduate (which she could! for obvious reasons).

[theblacktigrr]

Watching the hunger games with my friends who haven't read the books, and desperately trying to convey the horror of the mutts to them. They are not just big dogs! They are the other tributes, they look like them! They have human eyes!

Katniss stared into Rue's eyes as she died! Now those eyes are in a blood thirsty beast who is trying to kill her!

Maybe my imagination is just too good, but those things terrify the shit out of me, and they did not do them justice in the movie.

Still love the movie tho!

[flitterywings]

I can’t believe I’ve lost two years of my twenties to health problems and disability. it’s still baffling me that I’m not anywhere close to recovering

[oldestenemy]

Thinking about Duncan Grimwater again.

Thinking about the wizard letting that fight play out.

About letting him win, landing in the commons, and using dungeon recall to go back, showing up behind him.

Thinking about "Did you really think with everything I've been through, that I would go down that easily?"

[forgottencartoons]

ok I’m watching the Disney+ Goosebumps in the middle of the night and while this is clearly A Middleschooler’s Intro to Horror-Comedy (which I respect, because that was how the original books were), the guy who is possessed keeps looking for “his friend” and let me tell you right the fuck now, if Slappy’s demonic wooden ass is about to show up, I want to know in the middle of the afternoon, not 1 AM.

[kyuala]

SOOOOOO hard to go through everyday life trying to ignore the never-ending feeling that im just irreparably fucked up and therefore should just give up on everything

[coulsonlives]

I just had to share this video because holy shit, it hits the nail right on the head! So well spoken. This stuff needs to be circulated more, esp with the growing number of people thinking they have this because of misinformation, or just outright faking it.

[imminent-danger-came]

Extremely specific shadowpeach moods. You get it

I get it

[robinsnest2111]

just remembered a little song my mother used to wake me up with as a kid... something along the lines of "good morning dear worries, I see you're back again. did you sleep as nicely as I did? Well alright then"

pretty dark sarcastic stuff to sing to your kindergarten/primary school age kid each morning while waking them up for the day (in her defence, I've had sleep issues since birth and was always super difficult to wake up in the mornings. each day was a fight getting me out of bed and ready for the day. wouldn't wish that on anyone. probably was her way to cope and stop herself from punching/dragging me out of bed and yelling or something. I should be grateful)

[self-shipper-snowdrop]

wouldnt P.E need to like... accommodate a disability like asthma

It's status as a disability around here is... debatable. I'll admit, I'm not sure if I feel comfortable calling my asthma a disability. It does impede my life, yeah, but it's one of those things that's a weird area. My asthma has been labelled "moderate" and it's not really considered one unless it's labelled "severe" around here. Basically, I don't feel like I have a right to use that label for myself, and critically it also means that legally they don't have to give a fuck.

Long blurb ahead about shitty HS experience lmfao

I got diagnosed around age 12-13, although I had been showing symptoms as early as age 10. It just got brushed off by the clinic as allergies at the time [dude literally said 'it acts exactly like asthma, looks exactly like asthma and we're giving you an asthma inhaler, but it's just allergies.' Like okay dude. Even 10 year old me felt that was weird] but my then family doctor was finally able to take a look and he gave me the diagnosis. Also he took me seriously right away, since he's known me since I was born. Literally, he delivered me as a baby.

The first year of gym was only not an issue because my ankle was broken for 75% of it. It was that long because it ended up re-injured thanks to a shitty teacher. [My mom was VERY close to bloody strangling that woman. Only reason they didn't charge in was me insisting they not and that I was fine. Also mom had a busy job but ngl she would have blown off the Prime Minister at that point;;;;] I also got diagnosed near the end of it so I didn't know until later.

Second year was where things got. Dicey. Originally was assigned to a male teacher; don't remember his name because we barely saw him. When I asked him if he could hold on to my inhaler or if I had a safe place to put it down, since I wanted to participate without holding it getting in the way [girl's pants not having pockets, I had to hold it in my hand] and the dumbass told me to put it in my gym locker. I, then 13-14 years old, had to explain to this fucking clown in a greasy wig why that was stupid. I told him by the time they recognized I was having an asthma attack, found the locker room key, figured out which locker was mine, either unlocked it or broke it open, found my inhaler and came back to me, I would be LONG dead. I just held it from then on. Thankfully, someone threw a dodgeball at his head and he got a scratched cornea, so he was out for the rest of the semester recovering. Ngl I like to pretend that kid did that intentionally, lmao. Unsung hero, that kid 🫡

Third year, the main issue wasn't the inhaler itself, but expectations to push myself WAY harder than was safe. I was kinda chubby then, still am, and they believed I was lazy. Truthfully;;; I just didn't like the activities they did, so I wasn't invested. On the mechanical bikes [which I actually didn't mind] the teacher there would come up and turn the tension WAY up, trying to force me to work harder. I'd get shouted at to "do better" and "put in more effort". I was putting in effort- I was trying, despite hating it- but like I said in that post's tags;;; it's a tightrope. I need to put in enough effort to actually get the benefit of exercise, but not SO hard that I ran myself into an asthma attack. My main triggers for an attack are allergies [which is basically outdoors, so it's dangerous as fuck in allergy season], illness [thus the special inhaler for when I'm sick], and heavy exertion.

I've run myself into an asthma attack several times- but only once when not in school. It's very scary, but it wasn't scary enough for the teachers for them to care. Also, it was autumn, so whenever we were outside it was even harder for me because of the cold, dry air. I really struggled, and became timid, because asthma attacks happened so often it was starting to hurt. I wouldn't be surprised if my asthma actually got worse in that time, because it was really, really rough. But them pushing me to "work harder" was a problem through everything, even if that last year of gym was much worse for it. There was a constant mantra of me being "lazy" and "not trying" even when I was. But they expected you to run until you puked your guts out. I was so, so lucky my parents told me "as long as you do your best, we don't care what grade you get" and made sure I didn't even try that. My brother had done that before me and that was devastating enough, my parents and brother didn't want me doing that too. Especially with asthma.

And really? Those teachers didn't care about any of us. One even told us all not to rough house [directed this at the boys but said it to everyone] because "I could get sued if someone gets hurt". The attitude was so bad that even kids who didn't like me- or even who didn't think I could speak because I was so quiet- would make sure I was okay after asthma attacks. The teachers never did. It was kind of wild, because the same people who pulled out your hair, grabbed your chest, called your slurs and slammed your face into lockers would also be the only ones on your side during a health emergency.

They didn't like me. I wasn't one of them, but they didn't want me to die. They did tone things down after that [not stop mind you] but still. It kinda brought people together. Alongside the whole "pedo teacher" thing; the mean girls may spread rumours about you but they still protected you from Mr. Pedo.

Basically, it was a weird experience. The teachers didn't care at all, and weirdly, it unified the kids. Even the ones who really did awful shit to the others. They still wouldn't watch as other kids got hurt. A dysfunctional kinship, really. But I find it sad how kids that literally yanked my hair out were also bigger defenders of me in gym than any teacher ever was.

[radioisntdead]

Accidentally stumbled onto the dark side of Tumblr again, DEAR GRACE SOME FOLKS NEED INTENSE THERAPY, or need to stop doing drugs, maybe both, my eyes, my poor, poor eyes, I need a holy water and bleach combo

Also I should watch gravity falls again