like people forget that weird girls grow into weird adult women. it doesn’t just go away. and no you don’t perish when you turn 25 or automatically turn into a nonweird wife and mother like some kind of Pokémon end evolution, you end up like me.
The official sequel to that one post. It got very popular and I thought I would share the “answer” I found to my original “question”.
The original comic is about growing up aneurotypical (specifically I have autism and ADHD among other things, e.g. being LGBT) in a world not made for that, and my profound feelings of alienation as a result.
Whether you share those specific problems or not, I am sincerely happy if it resonated with you and humbled that it meant something to so many people.
A popular addition to the post was “you will find your people”. I think it is absolutely true that you can and will find people willing to support you and love you for who you are - I have, and their support made much of my growth possible (as well as therapy). I am grateful to the artist that made that addition and think it is important.
But I wanted to make this because to me, it was important to learn the message that you are allowed to exist as yourself, even if you were to never find a single other person who accepts you. You do not need the validation of others. Even if you feel like you were somehow made wrong, or will never fit in with anyone else, you have the right to exist.
Live authentically for yourself, and not for others. Pursue your passions.
It is intentional that the person in the comic never fully regains their color. I will never be the untraumatized child I once was. But that doesn’t mean life is not worth living.
I love you, and I hope you try to live as you are.
I don’t usually reblog my own stuff much but I keep getting notifications for the old one (it has like 230k notes or something wild like that) and a lot of them are vulnerable kids who seem like they could use this message instead. If my work is going to continue to circulate I’d really love if this became the one that was circulated instead.
guys….,, being friends, like actual friends, with people you have systemic privilege over is going to involve some good-natured ribbing. it’s going to involve them complaining about [insert privileged group you belong to] in front of you or even to you. that’s not a personal attack, it’s because they think you’re cool enough to hang. it’s because they think they can express their frustration to you without you attacking them. you really want to prove them wrong?
I will complain about white people and it is in no way an attack on my palm coloured friends.
Most of the time they’re like you know what yeah you’re right or just listen and that shows me that they care.
It means this is a safe space for me, one where I know they’ll have my back and I can talk or vent about something that may be a lot heavier.
I mean I live in a country where my government don’t think of me as human. I know that judgments about me are made both consciously and unconsciously simply because of how I look and who my parents are.
So of course I want to surround myself with people I trust and know I can make comments about that without worrying they’ll take it as a personal attack.
If they can’t take that then they won’t have my back when it feels like the rest of the world doesn’t.
Every time I’m forced by circumstance to hand-sew something, I remember a fairytale I once read. There are lead-up shenanigans as the humble protagonist helps small animals and meets the princess and all that, but in the climax, the princess rigs a contest for her hand by setting her own task: sew her a dress in a single night.
The noble suitors, who have never sewn a thing in their lives, sabotage themselves by their own ambitions: they choose difficult fabrics to work with and cut huge, elaborate patterns and select gems and pearls and beads to sew onto it, and snip such long bits of thread that they lose time detangling their stitches, and ultimately resort to pinning bits together as they run out of time, so that their offerings initially look beautiful and flashy, but when the princess tries them on they stick her with pin ends and fall apart as she moves.
The humble protagonist uses a very simple pattern without embellishments and sews using short lengths of thread (snipped off and threaded for him by little birds of course) which don’t tangle and therefore save time. His dress is plain by contrast, but holds together and the princess is able to move freely in it, and so he wins the contest and her hand.
I particularly think about the bit about threading the needle with shorter lengths of thread, needing to tie off more often but avoiding tangles and thereby saving time.
I then ignore that piece of wisdom passed down through who knows how many years and proceed to cut the longest damn length of thread I can manage because I hate tying off beginning or ending knots and I will not subject myself to more of that even if it does mean more tangles along the way.
i find it v cute when rpgs offer me, someone whose sole strategy is “attacking enemies,” status changing effects. “this lowers your enemy’s speed” you know what else would lower their speed? being dead, from my fists
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