I always liked the idea of being a doodler. I wanted to fill sketchbooks with doodles on top of doodles. I never did. It always saddened me because I consider myself a creative person- I love drawing and getting my hands deep in a piece.

I always wanted to show someone, anyone the things I create. I wanna show people that hey, I'm here making this thing you've never seen before. I never really have. My art is always anonymous online, and even then, I'm paranoid about people stealing it (respect for the people who do though- you carry fandoms and the art community on your shoulders).

I always wanted to show off what I could create, whether it be someone watching me draw over my shoulder or across a classroom. But every rare time it happened, I was filled with the inexplicable urge to hide it, not let anyone see.

I've been finding myself upset that I can never work up the courage to show off my creativity. It's taken years for me to realize why-

My art has a piece of my soul in it. It took a piece of me with it as it left my fingers. I fear that piece of my soul being snuffed out with the inevitable scoff or "Oh, yes yes dear, that's lovely, go put it away."

My art is a piece of me, and when I pour my soul into a piece, it becomes me. When I create, I can't help but translate what I'm feeling into art and it's ugly because I create when I'm angry. When I'm angry, it's usually because I'm sad. And the piece ends up becoming a reflection of me and that's too dangerous, because then anyone can look at it and see the person that created it.

And that's dangerous.

Weird stories I remember reading online:

A dude starts a story about airsoft with "my great-grandma was a contortionist in a circus. This will be relevant later." And then he starts explaining about this challenge that was played out at his local airsoft field, essentially two-team capture the flag, where both teams could move their flags around their own respective fortresses and hideouts, but with specific rules to make it harder to keep the flag location hidden from the enemy.

And this guy happened to spot the enemy team moving their flag (I think you needed to have 3 players of the team to move your own flag or something), and saw them taking the flag to one large-ish shack with only one entrance. This guy circles the shack several times but can't find any other entrance, only a narrow opening in one wall that's clearly intended to just let in sunlight, and allow people to shoot out of the building or try to shoot in. The enemy team has left this room unguarded, it's upstairs and the flag is held downstairs.

They don't consider it an entrance that should be guarded because no ordinary man could reasonably enter through it. But our hero here is not an ordinary man. He's hyperflexible, and not the first in his family to use their genetic loose joints in their advantage. So this guy reaches in, and carefully puts his gun on the floor. He takes off his coat and belt, and put them inside, too. He even removes his shoes. And then he dislocates his fucking shoulder, in order to squeeze through a hole that people shouldn't fit through.

Once inside, he manages to get his shoulder back on the right way, takes a moment to recover, gets himself geared back up, and sneaks downstairs to fire three unsuspecting enemy teammates in the back, capturing the flag and winning the game. From their point of view, this guy had just manifested out of thin fucking air.

Having been the key to winning this challenge, in a feat that seemed downright impossible, the guy was asked to explain how. So he told them of the squid-like squeezing feat. While everyone was impressed, he was the reason why the field got a new rule: no limb dislocation allowed. Also there's now a bar in the middle of the previous slipping slot, barring any new attempts.

And that's how a circus contortionist's great-grandson got "All team members' ligaments must be kept at their intended locations during the whole game" added to the rule list of an airsoft field.

when i was little i always asked my mom why her food was so much better than everyone else’s and she would always say it was bc she seasoned it w love.. i used to go around the cabinets looking for the little container w the label “love”… when my mom found out she laughed, picked me up and kissed my cheek… “let’s make a deal,” she said, “you don’t dare change a bit and i will always cook for you, okay?” and i said okay… and now as an adult she will ask me to cook this or that because she says i make it better than hers or she will be busy and i will offer to make the rice (hers was always the best rice in the world) and she’ll be so happy she doesn’t have to stop what she’s doing to cook. the other day i said “i thought you liked to cook?” and she was like “no!!!!! i hate it! but i loved seeing how happy it made you and your brother.” and i was like mom!!! you should’ve said something! i’ve been able to cook since i was like 14 i could have taken that off ur hands. and she said “it’s no matter, your rice is so much better than mine anyways. what do you put in it??” and i smiled and said “a bay leaf. and love.” and she was like :-) i recognize that

my mom’s been telling me my entire life she and my dad met at a bar which BOOOO BORING but today she just casually mentions actually she placed a fuckin ad in the newspaper saying she was ‘a single lady ready to meet the one’ and he was the first to call her and they dated over the phone for like three months before they met n she was like “i was already pretty much in love with him because i adored his laugh on the phone” ????? What kinda 90s romcom bullshit

I had a wild thanksgiving. I:

Spilled water all over my pants so that it looked like I had the worst accident of my life

Got my own separate turkey breast (seasoned much better than the whole one we cooked- my grandma is allergic to a lot of seasonings)

My younger siblings and cousins were playing soccer in the backyard, and my sister told my brother to Grannie the ball (throwing it up with both hands). It ended up going into the neighbors'-behind-us yard, and SO

WE HAD TO PULL OUT ALL THE STOPS. GRABBED A COUPLE OF POOL POLES AND DUCKTAPED THEM TOGETHER, AND HAD TO BASICALLY PULL A SANDLOT ("just a little closer")

We finally got it back AFTER WE PULLED IT TO THE WALL AND MY DAD CAME OUT WITH A VACUUM AND SUCKED THE BALL UP AND OVER THE WALL WITH THE VACUUM.

AT THIS POINT I AM WHEEZING BECAUSE IT FELT RIGHT OUT OF SANDLOT. WE ALSO DIDN'T KNOW IF THE NEIGHBORS HAD DOGS (or a dog door) SO THERE WAS ALSO THE RISK OF ANGRY GERMAN SHEPHERDS RUNNING OUT AND ATTACKING OUR MAKESHIFT SOCCER BALL RETRIEVER AT ANY POINT

THE NEIGHBORS ALSO MIGHT HAVE HAD SECURITY CAMERAS AND MAY HAVE BE ABLE TO SEE OUR STRUGGLES

After that I got walked by my aunt's dog because she was shaking with excited energy.

Good times

new heresy that makes the bible way funnier:

god genuinely had no idea that people would be able to disobey him, when he made them. angels couldn’t! everything in the universe was just an extension or a reflection of god himself, operating in perfect mechanical order. then he put a spark of his own creative consciousness in an animal and it turned out it could disobey him.

like, that’s why he told adam and eve not to access a perfectly accessible tree. nothing else in the universe up until that point would have done something he told them not to.

that’s why he asks cain a perfectly ridiculous question, given that he would have watched the murder happen right in front of him: where is your brother? what did you do to him? he didn’t know cain could lie. even when adam and eve disobeyed him, surprising absolutely everyone involved, they hadn’t figured out lying yet. cain figured out lying.

that’s why god decides to destroy humans and start over only a few centuries later. he has no idea what to do. not only are people disobeying and lying to him, they’ve started completely ignoring him, too. he can control the wind, the water, the plants, the animals, the angels, the heavens, the earth. but he cut a part of himself loose and gave it to this totally unique new critter and now he can’t get it back. he can’t make anyone do anything, and now they know it. he had to carve humanity back down to the one family that actually, for whatever reason, still listened to him, and he had to ride them pretty fucking hard from that point onward to make sure they didn’t just….. stop. because at any point basically any human, ever, even the ones who liked him, could just randomly decide to fuck off and do their own thing.

then like, according to christians, god thought maybe he could get a handle on whatever the fuck was going on with how bad humans were being by making another human who had even more god in him than all the other humans, and that didn’t work either. and also even jesus himself didn’t know what humans were going to do next, which was kill him young. like, god had to break the news to him based on an educated guess, and it was a big surprise to him! he was really upset! there’s a whole scene!

like, i think this is hands down the funniest fucking thing to conclude about god ever. he didn’t know it was going to turn out like this when he started and he didn’t know what to do when it did. he’s been basically scrambling to stay on top of the situation for six thousand years and he’s totally beefed it repeatedly.

god the omnipotent lord of creation knows everything, except what you’re going to do next. god the supreme ruler of the universe can do anything, except stop you. you have a little piece of god inside you and it lets you defy the most fundamental machinery of existence basically whenever you like.

if that’s not funny, i don’t know what is.

Day 15-25

Got distracted for a week and a half there, whoops. Swim season is coming to a close, so that means my swimmers have meets to train extra hard for to get their gold.

However, tomorrow is the last day of practice before the big state meet on Thursday, and we're going to have a lot of fun. It's tradition for the coach(es) to jump in and swim with/race the kids, and then we're having a big dinner to hype us up for the next day.

But, my dad's birthday is tomorrow. And he wants to take the family out to dinner to celebrate, but due to his work, it might be later in the evening. The same time as my last practice of the season.

This isn't the first time I've felt caught between intersections like this. It's my dad, I want to celebrate his birthday with him! But on the other hand, this is something I can't push off the way you can push off a family outing. I'll be really sad if I can't make it to the practice, but I know it's selfish to ask my dad if we can celebrate another day. I'm stuck. I can only cross my fingers that he'll be able to finish work early and no crises pop up so we can relax earlier in the evening, and I can still make it to my practice. 🤞🤞

Day 13-14

Queer people, especially the ones that are out, are some of the nicest people you will find on the fucking planet. Why?

Because they have had to deal with homophobia.

Because they have had to deal with the most vile, disgusting comments from people who are supposed to love them unconditionally. From those whose religious laws say to love everyone equally, whether they sin or not. From those who decided that being gay was worse that being a pedophile, or a rapist.

Because they've had to survive in a world that primarily does not support them in being themselves.

Because they've known the fear of the wrong person or people finding out that they are capable of loving differently than the norm, and being threatened to physically assaulted to MURDERED for it. Or being rejected from everything they've known and loved. Which is worse? For some, it's the ejection, because of the suffocating loneliness that follows. Death would be a mercy.

Because they have fought and fought and fought for the same rights that have been denied to them, despite being human like the rest of the world.

Because they have seen the filth and muck that people lower themselves to, because "that's not natural" or "you're going to hell!"

Queer people are some of the kindest souls out there, because they've seen humanity at its worst. its most vile. its most hateful.

It's tragic. It's tragic that people live like this- in fear of their own souls and hopes and dreams. It's so heart-wrenchingly tragic I can barely breathe. It's tragic that people have to fight for their ability to love each other.

I'm so tired of being kind.

Day 10-12

I was going at a friend's house for a small birthday party, and I was reading hey little brother while we chatted. He started getting annoyed and said (as an insult?) "YOU'RE GAY!"

And my smooth ass said, "You're only half right."

And that is the story of how my friends little brother knows I'm not straight. To this day I don't know if my friends heard us, but they haven't said anything about it, so 🤷

Day 6-9

I've been sitting on this for a couple of days. It's a memory that I don't think I'll ever forget, as much as I wish I could.

I was watching a TV show with my dad and sister in April, 2020. I remember this because we were in lockdown, and didn't need to get up early for school, so we'd stay up watching stuff.

But back to the story. I had told my sister and dad to start the show without me, because I was finishing up some homework. When I came out to the living room, the scene they were on had two girls in a car, and they started kissing.

At this point in my life, I'd been secretly learning about the LGBTQ+ community for about three years, and was fairly desensitized to the concept of same-sex couples.

I'd never really looked homophobia in the face until my dad said, "Ew, gross. That's disgusting." And skipped the bit.

It was at that moment I knew that if I ever realized I was queer, I would not be safe to come out to my dad.

Guess what?

I ended up figuring out that I'm abrosexual. My parents don't know about the gay and lesbian friends I had in high school, or the transmasc freshman I adopted on my HS swim team. They don't know about the one-sided crush (that has since faded) I had on a close same-sex friend, and they don't know about the time I confessed to said friend. They don't know that I'd come out to one of my school counselors-granted, I'd blurted it out to him while talking about an altercation, and immediately burst into tears, begging him not to tell anyone (especially my parents). They don't know about the queer media I've inhaled in secret because I knew they wouldn't take it well in the slightest. They don't know about the countless nights I've spent CRYING MYSELF TO SLEEP knowing that I don't and will never feel safe enough to come out to them. They don't know about the guilt I've looped myself in, thinking about how all they want is for me to be safe and happy, and imagining coming out to them and screaming how scared I've been for LITERAL FUCKING YEARS to come out, and thinking about how heartbroken they'd be, knowing that they brought that upon all that grief and mental anguish on one of their kids.

I can never participate in pride month. I can never be truly open with my parents. I can never tell them the truth, for their own sake. But unfortunately, that means I am stuck, caught between destroying the people who have given me everything, and destroying my very being.

As long as I am dependent on my parents, I am stuck.

This is the inside of too many queer kids' heads.

Day 5

My family enjoys taking trips to Michigan, US, during the summer to visit family and escape the Arizona heat.

One summer, several years ago, I remember goading my dad into getting us ice cream with the rest of my siblings. My older and younger sister's and I had gotten our ice cream first and we're waiting outside of the shop for the younger sibs.

Of course, being little gremlins, I asked my younger sister if I could try some of her ice cream. She said yes, but only if she could try mine. I took a lick of hers (don't judge, we were, like, 9 and 11, we didn't care about germs), and she took a lick of mine.

But the plot twist was that the scoop she licked fell off of my cone. Typical sad thing, right? WRONG! My reflexes were/are better than most, so before I'd realized it, I'd caught the ball of ice cream and plopped it back onto my cone like nothing had just happened.

All three of us kinda stared at each other for a few seconds (think 👁️👄👁️) and we burst into laughter when we all burst into laughter once it processed.

Years later, I was recounting it to my mom, because I had thought she was still inside the ice cream shop when the whole licking incident happened, but she said she was there watching, and it just made the whole story funnier

Day 4

I had been planning an outing with some high school friends a couple months after graduation, since we were still keeping in touch. They were two brothers, let's call them X and Y. X and I had been planning this outing for a couple days, since they were going to college out of town, and had to plan around that. We planned a meetup time and place (which was a little time-sensitive), and then the day came.

I drove to the place... and ended up waiting about twenty minutes for a DIFFERENT friend to come (let's call her Z). Z and I weren't really close, so I was wary of things not going well while we waited. Did I mention what X and Y and their two friends they brought with them were doing? At the time we were planning to meet? I called them and X said they had just sat down at a buffalo wild wings. To eat.

So Z and I went off to do our own thing at the nearby marketplace/shopping village, just wandering leisurely. We ended up talking and joking, and we bonded.

We proceeded to make the other group wait at the meeting place when they finally got there, and by the time we did get there, the air was just stiff and awkward. We ended up not even staying at the meeting place, going back to the marketplace and wandering some more as a group. At that point, Z and I were a little pissed because right before our meetup, X's gf called me and said that he came to her house and wanted a break from their relationship, asking if she'd be ok with him dating during the break. Dating the 'friend' he'd brought along. Z told me that X talked to her about the situation, and was pissed because he was so disrespectful.

I've since realized that I need to take better care of myself and not worry about other people's lives. Especially the ones that don't value my time and energy-. Since then, I've been much happier and have discovered myself a little bit, and continue to do so. You decide what makes you happy.

Day 3

At some point about a month ago, my mom and I were driving to get groceries. We were laughing and joking around, when I made a joke about a Chinese fire drill at a red light. My mom had said, "Noo, don't do it."

I was a little shocked that my mom knew what a Chinese fire drill was, and expressed that to her. She laughed and said, "Well, I was a rascally teenager once too, you know." And it really took me by surprise, because, I've known my mom my whole life, but she hasn't known me for hers.

She and my dad didn't just spawn into existence and start a family, but it's so flabbergasting to think about- that my siblings and I have such a central role in my parents life, but that it wasn't always the case.

Day 2

As I continue to learn about myself, I have found myself reflecting on past experiences that were strange at the time or firsts in my life.

Recently, I've been digging into the neurodivergent community and reading personal stories, uncommon or undetected ND symptoms, and I remembered a specific experience that I just couldn't explain.

I was part of my high school swim team for three years, and in my last year, at one particularly meet, I volunteered to time races (because there was a timer shortage). At meets, being a timer means being exposed to a lot of people screaming their support.

I timed for a good 40 minutes, until the end of the meet, but I was finding myself feeling irritated, overwhelmed, and feeling a sense of run and hide. I'd never felt this sensation so strongly, if at all, but I dismissed myself after the meeting as quickly as I could to hide and recollect myself.

My team and I ended up grabbing food from a Raisin' Canes (chicken place, for those who may not know), but the whole bus ride there, and even inside the restaurant, I felt so anxious and overwhelmed. I brought over-the-ear headphones that helped block out some of the noise, and was finally able to calm down a bit after I started eating.

That, I have since realized, was a sensory overload. I never would have been able to put a word for it if I hadn't found the #neurodivergent community. I have since self-diagnosed on the ADHD spectrum and continue to learn about myself and those I share my dx with.

Just recently I was helping a friend of mine do something, and when I suggested a better way to execute said action, she was kind of amazed at it, and it worked really well!

Just today, even, I was helping my mom to set up tomatoes in her new dehydrator, but they were too tall for the racks, and it was causing her a lot of frustration. So I suggested pressing them down with a sheet pan, and it worked like magic.

It's just very validating for people to actually take my ideas seriously, because I live a life where there's a lot of voices, and while mine gets heard, it usually ends up getting drowned out by the ones that don't help as much.

Neurodivergent culture is being absolutely shocked when someone actually takes a piece of advice you’ve given because you’re so used of people dismissing you.

I think I'm going to try posting stories from when I was younger and experiences as I live them.

Stories that I can reflect on and realize that I've grown, and maybe I'll reblog a few as I come across them.