In a sick way I find it really funny how toxic estranged parents say “in the old days, people had to stick around and work their issues out!”
Things People Did Back in the Old Days to Escape “Working Things Out” with Their Parents, A Short List:
Murder them!
Marry literally anyone who’d get you away
Fisticuffs
Change your name and pretend to be an orphan
Move out and feud with them for several generations
Join a monastery
Move to the city and get a job in a factory
Buy passage on a boat to some other continent
Convert to a different religion
Join the Navy
ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING
It’s incredible, the number of things people would do to get away from shitty parents. Then and now.
add the various (often deadly) ways people got out of no-divorce marriages, and you should start to realize that going no-contact and getting divorces is usually the safest route in dealing with unsolveably toxic relationships
One of the troubles I find with people in toxic relationships is that they sometimes want to “win” the argument over who’s the worst. What they did to me was worse than what I did to them! That proves I win!
And the thing is… in the West today, we benefit from centuries of legal change that have mostly decided that those arguments are stupid.
Like, in England in the first chunk of the 20th century, divorce needed a “guilty” party and “innocent” party. If one person committed adultery, they were “guilty” and the “innocent” party got to petition for divorce.
If both people in a marriage committed adultery, the law did not say, “Whoa, I guess this marriage is just not working out” and divorce them. It decided that if there was no innocent party, nobody got out of the marriage. They were indissolubly stuck with each other, quite explicitly as a punishment.
After centuries, really, of activism and change (England has had no-fault divorce for two whole years now!), we have won ourselves the most tremendous prize our ancestors could imagine, when they were trapped in inhospitable homes.
You get to leave.
That’s it. That’s your prize. That’s the pearl of great price. You get to say, “Fuck this shit, I’m out,” and nobody gets to stop you.
It’s absolutely unsatisfying and is not in the least a cure for your broken heart. It’s one of those rights, like quitting your job or opening a bank account, that feels like more of a burden than a privilege.
It’s just also the only prize worth having sometimes. It’s freedom.
“the arts and sciences are completely separate fields that should be pitted against each other” the overlap of the arts and sciences make up our entire perceivable reality they r fucking on the couch
Offer to let other people go ahead of you in line, especially if you’re approaching the line at the same time. This is double applicable if you’re in a store and the other person has fewer items than you.
This is a small gesture of kindness that in most cases will cost you very little time or effort. It shows consideration for other people’s time. Especially in the case of being in a store and letting someone with fewer items than you go first, there is no sense in making someone else wait for you who would otherwise be able to get in and out much quicker.
Let people with a few items go first in line.
Slow down a little and let the person in the lane next to you merge.
Hold the door for someone if you go through first.
Offer napkins to the person at the next table who just spilled their drink.
Help someone pick up things they just dropped.
Say “Thankyou so much!” to workers who help you even though it’s literally their job.
Wish everyone a nice day, because we all need a nice day.
Can confirm, the thank yous to a service worker for doing their job has the potential to be the only thing that sustains us through a shitty day. It’s tiny for you, but big for the other person
This is it, I found it, the funniest post on this entire godsforsaken website
I will never get over how brilliant this comic is. The artist could have just drawn a single image in response, but instead we have this masterpiece. The world doesn’t deserve @iguanamouth.
If you have achieved something, please remember to observe a mandatory period of basking in the warm glow of your achievement like a lizard on a stone, lest you teach your brain that effort is futile, actually, because it didn’t get to enjoy its happy chemicals, so, naturally, nothing good ever comes of trying. (And no, avoiding punishment is not a reward!)
I recommend, like, 5% of basking time in relation to whatever time you invested into achieving the thing minimum. And if you can’t make your own bask, friend-brought is fine (= tell your friends!).
there is a huge difference between criticizing an institution and criticizing individual behavior. i can criticize the makeup industry without criticizing the 14 year old girl who uses concealer because she’s self-conscious about her acne; i can criticize the plastic surgery industry without vilifying the woman who decided to get a nose job after two decades of pointed comments and bullying. it is intellectually dishonest to respond to an institutional criticism as if it were a personal attack; on the flip side, it is cruel and unnecessary to leverage personal attacks in the name of institutional criticism
if i see one (1) more person respond to a perfectly reasonable beauty-industry-critical sentiment with “but i personally enjoy eyeshadow. why are you attacking people who like eyeshadow :(” or “exactly, all women who wear makeup are miserable and brainwashed” i am going to climb a tree and bite the top of it
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amhrancas 