i felt the same way last christmas - i was still living at home, deep in the closet, dating a wonderful butch but unable to tell anybody. i felt completely hopeless and like i would never get out of my house or be able to be happy, or live my authentic life. one year later and i’m spending christmas with my girlfriend who’s teaching me to crochet, watching muppets movies with her, and doing the dishes late at night like an old married couple.
your circumstances WILL change. maybe you’ll come out soon, maybe you won’t, but your life will change and for the better. there’s no wrong time to come out, and you can take as long as you need to. in the meantime, surround yourself with sympathetic friends who can encourage you when you’re feeling trapped and hopeless. vent when you need to. you can make it through this period of life - we all can. i have faith in you <3
Full offense if I see one more person say “femmes” when they mean women and woman aligned ppl, I’m going to burn twitter to the ground
Not only are you stealing a lesbian identity and applying it to our oppressors, but ur also implying that your brand of feminism doesn’t include butch women which is honestly disgusting
Shout out to people like me who have parents who are loving but are black holes of emotional labor… It took me a long time to realize that it’s okay to have mixed feelings about your parents, about your relationship with them.
Sometimes parents can love you but be somewhat toxic to you and your growth, and that’s a very hard realization to come to if you, like me, grew up extremely close to them.
Sometimes parents can love you genuinely but lack emotional maturity, forcing you to perform disproportionate amounts of emotional labor. Some parents manifest symptoms of their mental illness in ways that are toxic to your mental illness.
Some parents, like mine, try so hard to be good parents but fall back on habits of emotional manipulation because they haven’t processed their own traumas and are modeling behavior they grew up with. That doesn’t make their behavior acceptable, and it’s okay to feel exhausted and hurt when they betray you. You don’t have to forgive every mistake.
I want you to know that it’s okay to protect yourself, to need some space apart from them. The love you have for your parents is still valid, and you are making the right decision.
Placing a safe emotional distance between myself and my parents has been one of the most difficult, heartbreaking processes I’ve ever gone through… it hurts to try to curb the strength of your own natural empathy around people you love. It feels disingenuous to your heart’s natural state.
But I promise you, you are not hard-hearted or ungrateful, and you are not abandoning them. You are making a decision about your own emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
I know what it’s like in that confusing grey area of love mixed with guilt and anxiety, of exhaustion and quasi-manipulation and unreciprocated emotional labor, and I promise you, you are not alone.
Your mixed feelings about your parents are valid.
Thank you thank you thank you bless this post ohmygod thank you
