A Few Years Ago A Roommate Abruptly Decided To Move Out To Live With Her Boyfriend, And I Ended Up Spending

Noooo Titch my beloved

RIP Titch, that was fucking intense (and holy shit, over 400 people voted)

When I was training to be a battered women’s advocate, my supervisor said something that really blew my mind:

“You can always assume one thing about your clients; and that is that they are doing their best. Always assume everyone is doing their best. And if they’re having a day where their best just isn’t that great, or their best doesn’t look like your best, you have to be okay with that.”

Any now whenever anyone in my life, either a friend or a client, frustrates me, disappoints me, or pisses me off, I just tell myself They are doing their best. Their best isn’t that great today, but I have days where my best isn’t that great either. 

This adorable proposal.

images and info regarding the explosion today in Beirut, Lebanon, please add on in notes and share

Y'know, whenever people want to talk about why aspec people 'count' as an oppressed identity, they tend to go for the big stuff like corrective rape and conversion therapy. And like, we should absolutely talk about that stuff. Obviously those things are terrible and important and we need to raise awareness and deal with them.

But I feel like people often gloss over how… quietly traumatising it is to grow up being told that there is only one way to be happy— and that everybody who doesn't conform to that norm is secretly miserable and just doesn't know it— and then to gradually realise that, for reasons that you cannot help, that is never going to happen for you.

You're not going to find a prince/princess and ride off into the sunset. Or if you do, then it's not going to look exactly the way it does in fairytales. You're not going to get a 'normal' relationship, because you are not 'normal', and everybody and everything around you keeps telling you that that's bad.

You see films where characters are presented as being financially stable, genuinely passionate about their work and surrounded by friends and family, but then spend the rest of the plot realising that the real thing they needed was a (romantic and sexual) partner, to make them 'complete'.

You absorb the idea that any relationships you have with allo people will ultimately be unfulfilling on their side, and that this will be your fault (even if you discussed things with your partner beforehand and they decided that they were a-okay with having those sorts of boundaries in a relationship) unless you deliberately force yourself into situations that you aren't comfortable with, so as to make uo for your 'defects'.

You grow up feeling lowkey gaslighted because all the adults in your life (even in LGBT+ spaces. In fact especially in LGBT+ spaces) are insisting that it's totally normal to not be attracted to anybody at your age, and then you go to school and everybody keeps pressuring you to name somebody you're attracted to because they can't imagine not being attracted to anybody at your age.

And then you get older and realise that one day you're going to be expected to leave home, and that one day all your friends are going to be expected to put aside other relationships and 'settle down' with a primary partner and you don't know what you're going to do after that because you straight up don't have a roadmap for what a 'happy ending' looks like for someone like you.

(And the LGBT+ community is little help, because so many people in there are more than happy to tell you that you're not oppressed at all. That you're like this because you don't want to have sex, and/or you don't want to have any relationships, that your orientation is some sort of choice you made— like not eating bananas— rather than an intrinsic part of you that a lot of us have at some point tried to wish away.)

Even if you're grey or demi, and do experience those feelings, you still have to deal with the fact that you're not experiencing them the 'normal' way and that that's going to effect your relationships and your ability to find one in the first place.

If you're aiming for lifelong singlehood (which is valid af) or looking for a qpp, then you're going to have to spend the rest of your life either letting people make wrong assumptions about your situation (at best that your relationship is of a different nature than it actually is, at worst that the life you've chosen is really just a consolation prize because you 'failed' at finding a romantic/sexual partner) or pulling out a powerpoint and several webpages every time you want to explain it.

This what being aspec looks like for most people, and it is constantly minimised as being unimportant and not worth fighting against— even in aspec spaces— because we've all on some level absorbed the idea that oppression is only worth fighting against if it's big, and dramatic, and immediately obvious. That all the little incidents of suffering that we experience on a daily basis are not enough to be worth bothering about.

I mean, who gives a shit if you feel broken, inherently toxic as a partner, and like you're going to be denied happiness because of your orientation? Shouldn't we all just shut up and thank our lucky stars we don't have to deal with all the stuff some of the other letters in the acronym have to put up with (leaving aside the fact that there are many aspec people who identify with more than one letter)?

So you know what? If you're aspec and you relate to anything I've said above (or can think of other things relating your your aspec-ness that I haven't mentioned) then this is me telling you now that it's enough. Even if we got rid of all the big stuff (which we're unlikely to do any time soon because— Shock! Horror!— the big stuff is actually connected to all the small stuff) we would still be unable to consider our fight 'over' because what you are experiencing is not 'basically okay' and something we should just be expected to 'put up with'.

No matter what anybody tells you, we have the right to demand more from life than this.

If you haven’t read the books

You won’t know that the Elder Wand was also called the Deathstick

Ron was actually a Prefect

Harry, Fred and George got a “life-long ban” from Umbridge after they attacked Malfoy on the pitch

Dumbledore hired a centaur named Firenze to teach Divination

Neville Longbotton could’ve been “The Chosen One” but Voldemort chose Harry

Fenrir Greyback was the werewolf who bit Remus Lupin as a child

Harry attended Bill and Fleur’s wedding disguised as Barny Weasley, a red-headed Weasley cousin

Lily was actually a few months older than James

While still alive, the Bloody Baron, who became the ghost of Slytherin House, was sent by Rowena Ravenclaw to retrieve her daughter, Helena, whom he was in love with. When Helena, who became the ghost of Ravenclaw House, refused to go with him, he became angry and stabbed her. Then, distraught with having killed her, he killed himself

Harry mended his own wand with the Elder Wand before he got rid of it

Harry, Ron and Hermione met Neville in St Mungos, who was visiting his parents and his Gran told them what happened to Alice and Frank 

The Potters’ had a cat

Harry got  miniature broom from Sirius for his first Birthday

Bathilda Bagshot was a friend of the Potters’

Cinderella was too weak to fight for herself...AND THAT’S OKAY!

I cannot believe we’re still tearing Cinderella down! 2018 only has a few months left and we’re still doing this, we’re still painting her as the weakest Disney princess and we’re still painting her weakness as a bad thing?

Why?

Why are people so caught up on bashing this princess?

“The movie is so simplistic—”

In what way is it possibly simplistic?!

“She didn’t work hard—”

YES, SHE DID!

“Well, okay, but the fairy godmother still had to come in—”

Yep, I remember the movie too, and the countless stories on which it’s based.

“So the fairy godmother was the one who caused the happily ever after.”

She sure was, now, what’s your point?

No, really, what’s your point? Is the point that Cinderella is somehow weak because she wasn’t 100% in control of her own life? Seems like a pretty disgusting opinion to have when the whole movie is about an abuse victim finding a way out of her horrible situation. So Cinderella wasn’t the one who got herself out. So what? Instead of looking the movie at its bare surface, maybe try analyzing it with a bit more thought and tact. You might see something a little different. A magical transformation, if you will.

Because Cinderella did work hard.

And guess what we learned from that?

You can work

and work

and work

And there will still be people out there who will try to tear you apart:

Literally.

And that sucks. It’s a horrible lesson to learn but it is something we will all face in our lifetimes. There will always be people who will try to tear us down, there will always be people who will try to rip us apart, until we’re in a low place:

Until it seems like there’s no hope…

Until it seems like you’re too weak to get out on your own…

And maybe you are.

Maybe you are too weak to get out on your own. Maybe you’re not the strongest woman in the world. Maybe you’re not capable of screaming at the top of your lungs or brandishing a weapon or throwing a punch. Maybe you’re not able to get out of something on your own. Maybe you hit a low point and maybe you have no way out of it. Not alone. But that’s just it.

You’re not alone.

Even at your lowest point, someone will come help you.

You don’t have to do it all alone.

It’s okay to have a little help when you have nowhere else to turn.

Cinderella is the story about an abuse victim who is unable to get out of her toxic situation by herself and just when she begins to lose all hope, is able to get help from an unlikely source. It’s the story about a girl who needs help getting to her happily ever after and that’s okay. 

Give us advocates:

They deserve their happily ever afters!

Give us warriors:

They deserve their happily ever afters!

Give us fighters:

They deserve their happily ever afters!

Give us girls who are not advocates, girls who are not warriors, girls who are not fighters, girls who still deserves their happily ever afters:

Old lady Margaery, don’t enjoy this TOO much

Shoot From The Hip, the great romantics of our time.

draco to harry