Optimisticcatdeer - Untitled

I remember this story mom told me and my sister when we were little. Two frogs fall into a milk churn, and start swimming to stay on the surface. After a long time, one of the frogs tells the other that it's tired of swimming, and is just going to give up now. The frog sinks and drowns, while the other frog keeps swimming. Eventually the surviving frog that never gave up has been swimming for so long that the milk has been churned into butter, and the frog can hop out. The moral of the story is that life feels hopeless a lot, but if you give in to despair, you fucking die.

I had two aunts from my father's side. I don't remember anything about one of them, she died when I was three years old. We were never lied to about how it happened. She killed herself, jumped out of a window. She gave in to despair. My paternal grandmother lost her mind over the grief, developing dementia overnight. I never knew her as a sane, coherent person. She gave in to the despair. That's what I was taught, that's how I was raised. Life is pain, but if you give in to the despair, you fucking die.

I am an optimist. Always have been. I had to be. Indulging in pessimistic fatalism was a luxury that I could not afford. I'm not an optimist out of some naive lack of awareness that life can be bad sometimes. I grew up very familiar with how bad life can be. I was an optimist in believing - against all the proof of the contrary - that life could be other things, too. That it's possible that there could be a life that doesn't hurt all the time.

I can't afford to be a pessimist. I don't pretend to believe that things will never get bad, but I have no choice but to believe that no matter how bad things will get, there can be good things in life, no matter what. I don't talk to my family anymore, but I did survive being raised by them. The ones who give up hope don't make it. If you let the darkness seep in, and give in to despair, you die.

WOMEN!!!

i did not mean for the height diff to get that exaggerated but tbh this feels canon accurate anyway (vox WOULD lean at like a 45 degree angle so she can get little spooned even though she literally doesnt need to)

*right clicks on you*

when your circle small but y’all all crazy

You're stressed? Why dont you get high for me so you can be vulnerable and easy to manipulate while I fuck you better? The weed will make you warm and fuzzy and I can fuck all of the bad thoughts out of you head so you'll just feel fuzzy and not have a single important thought!

Please understand that not every marginalized person is going to have a list of peer reviewed sources and accurate statistics proving the bigotry they face in their daily life and you sometimes just have to decide to believe people when they tell you they are suffering

this is so dumb, but you can read the whole thing here (this is abt my post abt caitlyn hitting vi).

but, of course, because comparing caitlyn’s slap to a family dynamic makes so much sense. i mean, who wouldn’t think that a random act of violence from an enforcer of an oppressive system is just totally the same as a frustrated mom slapping her kid? it’s basically exactly the same thing, right? both have nothing to do with systemic power imbalances, trauma from being literally beaten by enforcers, or, you know, the fact that caitlyn represents the very institution that’s responsible for vi’s pain. but hey, let’s ignore all that, because clearly, your personal experience trumps the actual context of the show.

and the "one act of violence" argument? classic. i mean, sure, if you’re completely ignoring that caitlyn is not just some random person but part of a corrupt, violent system that’s actively destroyed vi’s life for years, then yeah, i guess it’s just a "one-off." totally. but maybe take a minute to consider the actual context of what that slap represents. oh wait, you’re too busy comparing caitlyn to your mom, because, obviously, it’s exactly the same dynamic.