Reasons To Move Out Of Home

‘So everything sucks’ mental health toolkit

Hello everyone, I lost half my family last year between March and November, three of whom were elderly, and it was Not Much Fun Actually BUT I have had the horrible thought that many people this year are going to be in the same boat I was in in 2019, so here is how I coped:

Write everything down. I mean it. Anything you’re feeling; the grief, the worry about their health, how much you love them. Put it down on paper. Exorcise it. Don’t just let the bad feelings and the sadness fester. It doesn’t have to be exquisite poetry, just catharsis. 

Call your relatives! Especially the elderly ones. After the first 3 bereavements I got much closer to my grandma. Her passing wasn’t made harder by the fact of having spent more time speaking to her; it was eased because I knew that she knew how much I loved her. 

BE SENSIBLE. You want to see your family now. I get it. My uncle was given 3 weeks to live and I caught norovirus. I couldn’t see him for a week. It sucked. But I had to stay at home, because if he caught it, he’d die. Covid-19 is the same principle. Phone them instead. 

Talk to your family and friends about how you feel. Grief is a really, really lonely place sometimes. I didn’t know anyone going through what I was going through. This time, we’re all in it together. Share your feelings. Reassure each other that you’re valid and heard. 

Be kind to yourself. There’s going to be days, especially with all this social upheaval, where you just can’t. This is OK. You’re a human who has worth beyond your productivity. Let yourself feel sad if you have to. Eat a bit of chocolate. Have a bath. Then do the laundry.

Keep being human, in all the ways you can. Keep cleaning the house. Get up every morning and get dressed. Go to bed at a sensible time. Eat healthy, regular meals. Keep yourself strong, not just in case you get the virus, but to remind yourself that you can and will endure. 

As clichéd as it is, remember that you have survived everything in your life up to this point. You can get through this. There will be a time when it’s over. I thought 2019 would never end. It was funeral after funeral. I thought I wouldn’t make it out the other side. I did. 

Check in with people and ask them to check in with you. My friends literally got me through 2019, even though I wasn’t always up for seeing them in person. We phoned and texted. Build a support network. Being socially isolated doesn’t mean being lonely. 

I think that’s pretty much it, but a final reminder that we humans can endure so much more than we think we can, even when it feels like it’s relentless and it will never stop. It will. The only way through it is, well, to go through it. I hope everyone is staying safe and well!!

My relationship with content creation and hobbies, in general, got a lot better when I started learning to reframe it as a simple act of human creation, and not a metric of my own self worth.

We’re taught competition, and perfectionism, and shame. If I say “I cook” I must add “(but not well)”. If I say “I run” I must say “(but I am not good at it).” I say “I code (but I mostly know frontend).” I create and express and my first impulse is to guard against embarrassment. Lest I fall so short of marketable competence. Lest I subject myself to the mockery of being caught creating poorly. I wound myself first so others may not.

Even the advice that fights against this says “your only goal should be to be better than yourself yesterday.” But why must I be in competition with her? What happens, after the initial rapid climb in skill, when I plateau? What of injury, and atrophy, and depression, that flake these skills away? Must I return feeling compelled to over-achieve? To wallow in embarrassment until I can surpass my own previous record? To hate my work until the reception, the notes, the engagement outperform an ever rising bar? I do not want to be paralyzed by the mountains I built behind me. Why should I look behind myself when there’s a wide swath of untilled Earth that stretches far out of sight ahead of me? I want to enjoy my work, and my mediocrity, moving forward with all its ebbs and flows.

At my worst, I was nothing. I was not a writer. Because I had forgone writing for all the fear and stress and damage to my self-worth that it wrought. I was not a coder. Because I was only useful for the niches of my job, and didn’t have the heart to create something badly, on my own, for fun, lest it confirm my suspicions of mediocrity. I was not even a runner - despite the extreme and exhaustive amount of time I sunk into it - because I fell short of my previous self, and I could not hold a candle to the actually-skilled runners, and I was forced to speak of this hobby in all those guarded terms - “but i am not good” - because of how much that ate at me. 

I was no cook, and no homemaker, and no creator, because when I did those things, (I did them poorly.) 

And when all these came together, I wallowed in emptinesses. (I still do, sometimes. It’s hard and complicated). Because emptiness is what was left when I stripped myself of the things and the pursuits whose lack of value could be used to hurt me.

The change for me - the change, I think - came at the time I started to recognize that I do not deserve self-punishment for my mediocrities, for the failings of my current state of being. It was not a revelation all at once. It was a slow and progressive flirting with the idea, found almost by accident on self-help youtube channels of a very particular ilk. It came with the recognition that I had trapped myself, wiling away my time and my energy, in a state of constant apology, and shame, and self-correction for the mediocrities I dare not unleash onto the world. I boxed myself up with the promise “once I am good enough, I will be allowed to come back out”, and that was a lie. I would never have come back out. I was chasing punishing metrics of self-improvement that I did not need, and would never actually catch and maintain, and which would never love me back.

It took a long time to internalize this. It took a long time to get angry on my own behalf. It took a long time to act on it, and write again because fuck you. To run on my own terms, at my own pace, for my own enjoyment because fuck you. To create with my hands again because fuck you. To lean into the happiness of creation that I had not “earned”, because fuck you.

I like creating because it fills an emptiness that used to be there. It’s so simple, and so lovely, that humans are like this. That we want to build with our hands. That we want to assemble and construct. That we derive joy from stacking pieces together, and stringing words together, and assembling colors on a page, and moving, and singing, and baking, and knitting. Humans love to build little worlds around them. 

So why must we so actively try to cut people off from it off from it? Why do we condition ourselves to fear its mediocrity? Why does this still our hands? Why do we suffocate it for ourselves, before others can? I don’t have an answer. I can only recognize the monster. 

I want to make bad art today. I want to make bad art tomorrow. If I am a worse writer tomorrow, I want that to be fine. If I am never more than a mediocre runner, I want to be at complete peace with that. Because if not, then I might box away my hobbies again, and my loves, and my pursuits. I might go back to empty. I might go back to nothing.

I hate that emptiness I lived through. I hate that nothing. I want to make bad art for the rest of my life. 

aaj ki chai is from this scene in tapan sinha’s ek doctor ki maut (1990). shabana azmi’s understated but poignant performance as seema, the wife of a brilliant doctor whose single obsession with his research brings selfishness and callousness to his marriage is so visceral, especially in small moments like this one. seema fries puris and make two cups of tea as she waits for her husband to come home, a familiar scene in the homes of many, especially within india. her husband talks about his research, the people he met, and lists all his complaints for the day before being cajoled into sitting at the dinner table. she serves the tea and the plate of puris and sits by his side, shoulder to shoulder, as a companion. then she talks about her conversation with her sister while gently reprimanding her husband for never calling those relatives back. he agrees to please her and then quickly grabs his cup of tea and two puris to leave for his lab. and seema! shocked and baffled, she tells him she’s not yet finished with her tea only to hear that familiar indifference–”then finish it”. and shabana azmi with all the subtlety she’s know for, moves from shock to bitter acceptance and then quickly back to the briefest expression of hurt. 

and she drinks her cup of tea alone.

one thing i like about tapan sinha’s work in this film is that seema is her own person, not the archetype of a wife in indian films (even noncommercial ones) who only exists to mutely support and share the burden of her husband’s dreams. later in the film she expresses how that callousness feels and affects her, especially against the expectations of what she thought their marriage would be like–one in which she is cared for, one in which there is companionship. i feel like i know too many women in marriages who drink their cup of tea alone. or put too much hope into what differences a cup of tea can bridge. 

I’m rewatching Joy of Life because binge watching isn’t the best way to notice details, and I’m on ep40 at the part where Yan Bingyun and Fan Xian are arguing about the plan and I have two things:

1. I 💚💚 that Bingyun already believes in Fan Xian enough that he’s completely blasé about demanding that Fan Xian change his plan to kill Shen Zhong, to capturing him instead.  He’s just like “well you can just change it no big”.  And Fan Xian’s “do you think I’m a god???” is perfect lol

2. When Bingyun starts spiraling into “we should be ready to die for our country… the mission is more important than our lives”, I swear Fan Xian wants to burst out with “the emperor told me that if all else fails I have to come home alive”, but instead falls back on pretending to be selfish.  Because how is Fan Xian supposed tell that to Bingyun, who has been a prisoner undergoing torture for months, and only ended being imprisoned because Chen Pingping valued Fan Xian’s life more than his… And that, actually, even though Chen Pingping and the emperor said that they wanted Bingyun back, at baseline they still don’t care either way, as long as Fan Xian comes back.

No wonder Fan Xian would rather be misunderstood.  

im pretty sure i cried reading this

I have… thoughts about wangxian, and specifically about the moment when they part ways at Qiongqi Path, with Wei Wuxian leading the Wen remnants and Lan Wangji declining to stop them.

I’ve seen a few people fluent in chinese do very thoughtful breakdowns of the exact nuances of the things Wei Wuxian says to Lan Wangji at that moment, but I’m going to link to and quote hunxi-guilai’s post, because tumblr’s search function is broken and this was the only one of the several I was able to dig up ;u;

蓝湛 / Lan Zhan

如果我和他们之间必有一战 / if there must be a fight between me and them

那我宁愿和你 决一生死。/ then I would rather fight to the death with you.

要死，/ If I must die,

也至少死在你含光君的手上. / then at least I would die by you, Hanguang-jun, at your hands

不冤了。/ I would not be wronged.

And specifically, I made a connection between Wei Wuxian’s attitude here and his perspective on life after his resurrection.

Because this is a low point. This is Wei Wuxian explicitly handing his trust over to Lan Wangji, saying that if Lan Zhan decides he’s gone too far, that he’s crossed an unforgiveable line, and that he needs to be put down, then Wei Wuxian accepts that judgment. Wei Wuxian is taking a stand and doing what he thinks is right, knowing that lots of people will probably fight him over it, but if Lan Zhan decides that he’s this far in the wrong and takes him out, he won’t argue, he won’t feel wronged, he’ll accept it.

So that’s good! That’s painful. This scene aches in all kinds of ways. 

But what I want to talk about is a different angle on Wei Wuxian’s self-judgment. Namely, whether or not he’s worthy of love.

He has… some issues with that. Madam Yu and Jiang Fengmian told him to protect his siblings no matter what, which he did, at horrible expense to himself. And then he kept the knowledge of what he’d sacrificed from them, because telling them what he’d done would have only hurt them more, and might have distracted them, making them think that they needed to spend (waste) their energy protecting him when he was the one who needed to protect them.

Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli are the most obvious examples of this, but there are moments like this with Wen Qing, when she has to physically knock him out before she and the other Wens can go sacrifice themselves to protect him, or later on with Wen Ning, where he speaks up on Wei Wuxian’s behalf to Jiang Cheng, knowing that Wei Wuxian would have never wanted him to tell Jiang Cheng these things, and that he would have been upset to know it happened.

And there are littler, smaller moments too, like in the Xuanwu’s cave, where Wei Wuxian has a giant fresh chest burn, but still tries to give all the limited medicine they have to Lan Wangji, or when Jin Ling gets a curse mark on his leg, and Wei Wuxian knocks him out so he can transfer it to himself without ever letting Jin Ling know that he was doing that for him. And then when he’s reunited with Lan Wangji, he tries to act like nothing is even wrong, nothing to worry about here, Lan Zhan!

I came to this book for the romance, but something I wasn’t expecting to be so compelled by was Wei Wuxian gradually becoming more at ease with the way Lan Wangji wants to care for him and protect him. I do think it’s a delicate balance, because Wei Wuxian isn’t incapable, even after losing his golden core, and there’s a subtle but important distinction between Wei Wuxian being willing to cheerfully impose on Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian not wanting to be a burden. Wei Wuxian has never been good at letting people take care of him, unless he’s being Baby with Jiang Yanli, and even then, he was pretty much only good at letting her know he needed to be cared for in very undemanding, roundabout ways. ‘I’m hungry.’

I’ve seen other people notice that he breaks out that same 'I’m hungry’ tactic with Lan Wangji, eventually, when they’re leaving Yunmeng. He doesn’t expect Lan Wangji to recognize what it means, and is moved when Lan Wangji reaches down to pick a lotus pod for him. And it comes out in other ways too, if somewhat indirect, deflect-y ways, like ‘please protect this weak, helpless man’ said with a grin, so Lan Wangji stops inching closer to figuring out the golden core thing.

But especially with that Qiongqi Path exchange translated up above, I feel like there’s an element here where Wei Wuxian is gradually starting to defer to Lan Wangji’s judgment about Wei Wuxian, regardless of Wei Wuxian’s feelings about himself. And as little as Lan Wangji says out loud, it’s pretty clear that he is firmly of the opinion that Wei Ying needs to be loved, protected, and cherished, and Wei Wuxian is gradually learning to accept that.

Please help a queer black woman leave an abusive household

TW: Abuse, Rape mention and mention of cancer and homophobia/queerphobia

Hi everyone, I am a queer black woman, my name is Chelsea and I desperately need $3500 to help move out of an abusive household.

Throughout my life I have been living with my narcissistic parents who are frequently abusive (both emotionally, physically and homophobic/queerphobic) and it has taken a toll on my mental well-being as I've been diagnosed with chronic anxiety and undiagnosed adhd. My parents continue to speak negatively to me and they have a tendency of using personal hardships that I have been through to belittle me. In 2018 I was raped by someone I knew in highschool. That incident made me ill and I had to be treated for vulvar intraepithelial neoplasia which is a precancerous skin condition. Both my parents use this incident to gaslight, belittle and manipulate me. They also constantly speak down on the queer community and say hateful things, which suggests that they would be physically violent towards any queer people. They are unaware of my sexual orientation and I've been hiding that from them to keep myself safe.

They do not allow me to leave the house unless I am accompanied by someone. I have been trying to look for work so I can become financially independent, but they physically stop me from going to job interviews. I do not know how many more years I can go on being trapped like this.

I’m raising money so I can move out and afford a one-bedroom apartment and start healing in a safer environment and to gain financial independence. I will need funds for transport to move, and for a couple of months groceries and rent as well as funds to get a new ID and passport, my parents keep them from me. I’m hoping to be able to move to another city because my rapist lives in the same neighbourhood and city as me, so not only am I not safe when I am at home, I'm also constantly paranoid during the few occasions that I'm allowed to go out. Please please help if you can!

I will be extremely grateful to anyone that donates any amount at all. If you can't donate may you please share it and hopefully reach someone that can.

I have a PayPal account which is currently the only place I can accept donations:

My PayPal is: paypal.me/chelseanovasummer

Update:

I've added some proof about my living situation with my parents because someone accused me of being dishonest, and basically scamming people for money.

“MY CHILD IS COMPLETELY FINE-” 

Your child’s comfort character is Wei Wuxian.

:(

making friends (especially after you’ve lost a couple or several ones) can be hard and incredibly isolating. finding people we can connect and be vulnerable with is no easy task, so often we feel like it’s a moral failure when things don’t work out between us and someone else. just know there are so many people in this world you have yet to meet who will love you and it’s okay to drop all this heavy relationship baggage now. you’re not defined by the people you’ve lost.

GJ: Okay I have to hug Ah Xu

Director: NO. WEN. KE. XING. YOU. DO. NOT. FUCKING. HUG. HIM. BACK. ABORT. ABORT. ABORT. JUST HOLD HIM!!!

GJ: Ahhh… I get it now, I hug him