In honor of the SoMa zine I received in the mail this week and the fact that itâs October, Iâve decided it only makes sense to rewatch the Soul Eater anime, get to almost immediately after the kishin revival, and stop just like I always do
Could you imagine if edward had just been some regular dude like fucking around with bella and she said with the utmost confidence âi know what you areâŚ..youâre a vampireâ and heâs just out there alone with her in the middle of the forest like
Take a moment to remember why you first fell in love with your WIP. Why it matters to you so fiercely. And remember you can write whatever you want – this is something that is possible for you – in reach whether itâs now or in the future itâs waiting for you. And Writing will wait as patiently as you do.
One of the things that really gets to me about Tumblr fandomâs view of relationships is the idea (sometimes stated outright, often implied) that thereâs some kind of clear dividing line between healthy and not-healthy, between abusive and not-abusive, that people never slide back and forth between those things or slip over the line, and thatâs just ⌠not how human relationships work. And itâs one thing when youâre holding fictional characters to an absurdly high standard, but it makes me worry that a lot of people are internalizing the idea that human relationships arenât messy and complicated and sometimes painful, and thatâs really going to make life hard for you. Youâll either end up beating yourself up way too much for doing utterly normal things, or beating up on other people for doing utterly normal things, and youâll let a lot of things that could have been good slip through your fingers because they arenât perfect.
Look, Iâm not saying anybody should stay in a relationship thatâs toxic for them, and ideally we should all be in happy supportive relationships with people who make us happy all the time, but human emotions are a mess.
You WILL do terrible, awful things. Youâll be selfish. Youâll hurt people. Sometimes theyâll forgive you and sometimes they wonât. Every long-term relationship you have will end up being littered with the memories of times you were both awful to each other.
Youâll fall in love with people who donât love you, and be loved by people you donât love. Sometimes you might try to make a relationship (or a friendship) work anyway. Sometimes itâll even work out.
Youâll end up loving some people you never in a million years thought youâd feel that way about, because you got a terrible first impression and misjudged them. Youâll look back and think, How could I not have known how awesome they were? But you didnât, then. And youâll walk away from other people who could have been just as beloved and never know it.
A lot of times you wonât be able to tell how other people feel about you at all, and youâll just have to keep going anyway.
Youâll break up friendships by doing stupid, selfish things.
Youâll put your trust in the wrong people, and the wrong places, and have it broken.
Youâll do some things thinking youâre the good guy at the time, and realize in retrospect that you werenât.
Youâll change your mind about a lot of stuff. Youâll realize that some of the things you used to believe were kind of messed up. Sometimes youâll change your mind because of people around you and then realize that you were right all along. Sometimes youâll realize that nobodyâs right or wrong, but have to make a decision anyway.
Youâll interfere where you shouldnât and get your ass handed to you. Youâll fail to interfere where you should have, and feel guilty for the rest of your life.
(Not everyone will do all of these things. But itâs humanly impossible not to do at least some of them.)
And none of that makes you an awful person or undeserving of love or bad to be around?! Itâs just how people are. Itâs how EVERYONE is, even the ones who seem like they have it together. Life is messy and complicated and confusing, and it hurts. People can do awful things and be forgiven. In fact, if that werenât true, none of us would have any relationships at all.
I donât know, Iâm just thinking about this today, because expecting perfection of fictional characters is one thing (theyâre fictional, it doesnât hurt them) but itâs going to mess you up in all kinds of ways if you think thatâs actually how real life works.
Sometimes people hit a place in their life where things are going really well. They like their job and are able to be productive at it; they have energy after work to pursue the relationships and activities they enjoy; theyâre taking good care of themselves and rarely get sick or have flareups of their chronic health problems; stuff is basically working out. Then a small thing about their routine changes and suddenly theyâre barely keeping their head above water.
(This happens to me all the time; itâs approximately my dominant experience of working full-time.)
I think one thing thatâs going on here is that there are a bunch of small parts of our daily routine which are doing really important work for our wellbeing. Our commute involves a ten-minute walk along the waterfront and the walking and fresh air are great for our wellbeing (or, alternately, our commute involves no walking and this makes it way more frictionless because walking sucks for us). Our water heater is really good and so we can take half-hour hot showers, which are a critical part of our decompression/recovery time. We sit with our back to the wall so we donât have to worry about looking productive at work as long as the work all gets done. The store down the street is open really late so late runs for groceries are possible. Our roommate is a chef and so the kitchen is always clean and well-stocked.
Itâs useful to think of these things as load-bearing. Theyâre not just nice – theyâre part of your mental architecture, theyâre part of what youâre using to thrive. And when they change, life can abruptly get much harder or sometimes just collapse on you entirely. And this is usually unexpected, because itâs hard to notice which parts of your environment and routine are load bearing. I often only notice in hindsight. âOh,â I say to myself after months of fatigue, âhaving my own private space was load-bearing.â âOh,â after a scary drop in weight, âbeing able to keep nutrition shakes next to my bed and drink them in bed was load-bearing.â âOh,â after a sudden struggle to maintain my work productivity, âa quiet corner with my back to the wall was load-bearing.â
When you know whatâs important to you, you can fight for it, or at least be equipped to notice right away if it goes and some of your ability to thrive goes with it. When you donât, or when youâre thinking of all these things as ânice things about my lifeâ rather than âload-bearing bits of my flourishing as a personâ, youâre not likely to notice the strain created when they vanish until youâre really, really hurting.Â
Almost two weeks after reading this, and Iâm still kind of blown away at what a ridiculously fruitful definition this is. Like I had no idea that load bearing things were a thing that needed to have a word for them, but now Iâm like holy shit Iâm so glad that thereâs now a word I can use to refer to this really important class of Thing.
This is astounding. Load-bearing. Forget spoons, this concept is wonderful. Iâm going to update my Spear Theory with this.
bullshit central 