just like enamored by this interaction i had yesterday and again today with this old gay man…not to be like ‘oh what a feeling to see someone who has survived’ but literally that & today we actually ended up chatting and he asked me “are you family?” which i didn’t catch at all until he gave me an extremely knowing look (chin tilt, raised eyebrow. and he really just had such a shine about him, too) and i just got flooded with this big stupid feeling thinking about how much he has seen and known…about many things but esp lgbt community as it exists offline and historically & how if i were to ask, and were somehow able to know, there are 1000 different lifetimes in his, i’m sure. his name is leonardo
oh how sad that “family” meaning queer is dying out. that’s always been such a lovely code word.
It is the most important lesson in interpersonal communication to learn:
Your friends and loved ones aren’t stupid. They can think of solutions. They have tried different things. They have lived this experience, and you have heard two sentences.
You are there to listen, empathize. If you have lived experience, sympathize.
Problems are often not easy, but at least they don’t have to be lonely.
madoka magica is sooo crazy imagine being in middle school and your crush dies and you’re so upset that you kickstart a time loop and repeat the same month 100 times over trying to stop her from dying but unwittingly you make her more and more important to the universe’s continuation (because you have effectively created 100 timelines that are dependent only on the survival of your crush) and therefore her death becomes more and more devastating to the world as a whole in every new timeline and finally your crush sacrifices her life willingly to become a god and you’re the only one who remembers her and this depresses you so much that you construct a whole imaginary universe where your crush is alive and you trap yourself and the souls of your friends inside it and then when you realize it’s Not Real, Actually, you pull your crush (who, again, is now god) down from heaven and become the literal actual devil
get okay with being some level of burden on others, seriously
you know what’s a real burden? a person that is so scared of leaning on other people that they try to be completely self sufficient and you end up either having to help them indirectly to save their ego or they have to break down in order to receive help, both of which are so much more heavy to the person that loves them than just being leaned on casually
That’s the thing about people who haven’t been loved much..They think about every kind gesture, a slightest touch of fingers, kind smiles, random acts of love, intimacy in every small thing done. They find that love wherever they can cause it was never given to them freely. They don’t ask for love, they search for it everywhere.
