In this world it's yeet or be yoten

every so often i will come across a macklemore lyric that just… catches me so fucking off guard

If your character has a chronic illness or chronic pain please understand that they have already made peace with a version of their life that other people would find unbearable. They are not constantly in crisis. They have adapted. They have systems. They know their body in a way healthy people never have to. They are also exhausted in a way that doesn't show and angry sometimes in a way they feel they're not allowed to be. Write that competence and that exhaustion together. Both are true at the same time.

if you can't handle me at my worst then stop dragging me there fucker

Real thing that changed how i write: I started asking "what does this character think is wrong with them" and separately "what is actually wrong with them." Those two things are almost never the same. She thinks she's too much. She's actually terrified of being too little. He thinks he's bad at commitment. He's actually just never met someone he trusted enough. The gap between their diagnosis of themselves and the real thing, that's your character arc right there. you don't have to explain it. just write both.

I’m just saying if they did make Muppets The Iliad, they couldn’t actually depict Achilles mowing Hector down and spearing him through the throat so instead how this would look is Animal dragging a very much alive Pepe the Prawn around in circles and laughing maniacally while an uncomfortable Kermit looks at the camera and does that face where the hand inside him clenches a little.

What helped me write trauma better is remembering that the nervous system learns predictions. If danger used to come after quiet, calm can feel threatening. If kindness used to come with a price, kindness can feel suspicious. So healing is not just “they know they’re safe now.” Healing is the slow, annoying, deeply unfair process of teaching the body that the old prediction is not always the present truth.

I recently confessed to my dad that for my whole life I’ve felt like there’s something wrong with me that makes me unlikable that everyone else can see but I can’t because I’ve always had a hard time making friends and he was like “well I didn’t know that and I genuinely can’t think of what it would be that people don’t like about you” so the mystery continues I guess