How a friendship (or a relationship) should NOT make you feel:
What if I’m not good enough to be their friend/partner?
If I keep doing everything in my power to please/impress this person, then maybe they’ll someday acknowledge me and like me
I’m not worth their attention. I was stupid to expect them to care about me. I should have known I’m not special to them from the start.
What they just did crushes me inside and makes me feel invisible/worthless/forgettable/abandoned but I know it’s my fault for being like this and I can never bring it up or they’ll think I’m a freak
I should stuff my feelings down and accept that I’m just not that important and that if they accidentally walk all over me this is fine and I have to find a way to be at peace with it
I wish they would give me at least half as much attention as I’m giving them. But if I bring it up, they’ll think I expect too much or that I’m keeping count and I shouldn’t. Maybe one day they’ll return the attention.
I don’t feel cared about at all. I feel just as lonely as when I didn’t have anyone, but now also scared that it’s my fault.
I’m scared of what they’re going to think of me if I say how I feel. I’m scared what they’re going to think if they find out more about me.
I can tell I’ll be abandoned as soon as I confront them about anything unfair and painful they’ve done to me.
I want to have someone but this is painful.
I don’t think they realize my feelings are real, and that I’m a real person who exists even at time when they don’t need me. I don’t think I can explain this to them.
I feel used, but it’s my fault for allowing them to use me. I need to figure this out myself.
I feel that for every good thing I do for their life, they make mine more painful and unbearable. They don’t even notice it because they don’t know what I’m going thru. And I don’t dare to tell them.
If I tell them what’s painful for me, when they inevitably do it again, I’ll know they knew they’re hurting me. I wouldn’t be able to stand it.
Would they just be happier without me?
I’m spending more time fretting and over-analyzing what they’re going to do than enjoying their stay in my life..
I don’t think this person ever cared about me. They only saw what they could get out of me.
I feel like crying repeatedly when I remember things they did and said to me
I feel that they want to keep me even when it’s incredibly painful for me to endure it. I want to be set free. Why won’t they let me go.
If this is your experience in a friendship or a relationship, it’s not love and care that you’re getting out of it. These situation should not happen in a loving, healthy and mutually caring friendships or relationships.
It’s unlikely that you feel slighted by things that aren’t meant to slight you. Being ignored, neglected, left behind, manipulated, used, lead on, groomed, shamed, forced to fear what their perception of you is - those are all scenarios that would upset and bring pain and misery to every single person. You’re not irrational for feeling this, and you don’t have to hide it. If someone is repeatedly making you feel this way, you’re more than justified in leaving. You don’t need to endure this for anyone.
tfw all of your girlfriends are very devoted to a deity or a higher figure meanwhile you're just kinda... doing your own thing!! oh you guys are praising/giving thanks?? I WANNA DO THAT TOO!! (idk if lae'zel would say this specifically but for the sake of the joke... please let it slide DFSIUHDSIU) (also this is pre-mountain pass act 1 lol)
I can't be the only one surprised how casually you're just. Here. Mind talking about what it was like to like. Join Tumblr?
It was 13 or 14 years ago. From what I remember you just shouldered aside the mastodons, went into the Tumblr cave and carved your mark on the wall, telling people you were now signed up for tumblr, and then they would haul memes on animal hides past you. Back then it was mostly cats doing amusing things, obviously, but we would watch them by the flickering firelight, and chortle to ourselves hopefully before leaving the cave and trudging back to our lives.
Team building
sometimes i think a little too hard about how percy jackson started as bedtime stories that rick riordan would tell his son when he was being bullied for his adhd and dyslexia because he wanted to let his kid know that he could also be a hero. and how after his first books were so successful he started to realize that there are lots of kids out there who don't see themselves in any heroes because of various other aspects of themselves, and he doesn't want any kid to feel like how his did, so he started writing heroes that were poc and gay and religious minorities and homeless and genderqueer and physically disabled and from an array of different cultures and he just made it his absolute mission to make sure every single kid could see themselves in his universe. about how the primary purpose of these books is to make kids feel a little bit less alone, and how the percy jackson books are so well loved because they are, themselves, an act of love. percy jackson came into existence as an act of love towards his struggling son and this story grew and expanded into what it is today because so many kids needed that same kind of love, and even those of us that aren't kids anymore still find a home in a story that was made for that exact purpose. and then i cry.
I sat with a crying second grader today. (The age range is outside my wheelhouse but I was the most convenient adult.) He was crying, the other adults said, because his brother took a phone he was playing on. “Phone addicted,” everybody said. “If he would get up and play games with the other kids he wouldn’t be crying.”
He told me everyone lets his brother take things from him because his brother is younger, and doesn’t know better. He told me he doesn’t want to play because he’s tired, he has too many extracurriculars this summer and can’t get good sleep because “everyone in my camper is so loud when I’m trying to sleep.” He’s exhausted and only eight. His mom’s an acquaintance and told me she and the kid’s father are going through a separation — mom and four kids left the house to stay in a camper.
But people will seriously not listen to kids crying over seemingly minor things because on the surface it looks like a tantrum. If kids are given the space to articulate themselves they often will.
Here's my lyric comic based on the song "Water Witch" by the Secret Sisters
I somehow knocked this out in three days
Hi Mr. Gaiman. Are you aware that your use of correct punctuation in replies is sometimes seemed as scary? Is this on purpose to intimidate the masses, or you being a stickler for punctuation?
Authors gonna auth.
Just so we’re all clear, it is okay to miss people you no longer want in your life.