This is the center of the universe at this moment

…

Like I thought I was just acquaintances with this person because they never told me details about themselves and we just talked movies and writing . But then they made time to have coffee with me and they showed up out of breath because they ran. Like. RAN to be on time for coffee with me?

And I was like “i don’t mind waiting” cause I never want to run

But they said they wanted every minute they could get because I’m so busy usually

Which is when it clicked that I didn’t get how much they considered me a friend because I just straight away didn’t see MY signs of affection in them and went “cool! Casual buds it is.” But now that I’m seeing their signs of affection, I feel a little silly for dismissing them like that even though I felt like we could be best bros.

TOUCH got a bro that likes to give high fives? Back slaps? Are they a hugger? Do they not blink an eye at cuddles?

QUALITY TIME this bro will (as op stated) sprint to spend every minute possible with you. Every second that you guys are together is a declaration of affection.

WORDS does your bro tell you how amazing and great and fantastic and wonderful you are all the time? Guess what…?

GIFTS do they buy you coffee? Snacks, energy drinks, spot you at the restaurant? Did that one key chain remind them of you? Ding ding!

ACTS are they always doing things for you? Ie: Nah bro, I got this, I can do that, need me to get anything for you, I can help with…?

For those of you who are wondering who else the original tweet is referring to, they are talking about Margaret Atwood, a very prominent feminist author (probably best known for The Handmaid’s Tale). Because she is a feminist the terfs assumed that she’d naturally side with them, and it came as a massive shock (for some reason) when she very publicly opposed and humiliated all of  terfdom.

But yeah I don’t know how terfs can possibly get through Discworld books without any kind of self-awareness but apparently they do. I’ve also seen them talking about how the Wives in the Handmaid’s Tale are all trans women (solely based on the fact that they are infertile). If you know anything about the plot or even the basic premise you’ll know how ludicrous that suggestion is.

Also there’s this

Also, this is the one that made me get all teary:

ALL DOGS ARE PRECIOUS.

It is a weapon

look, when i was a kid i was passionately in love with the idea of robots--that humans would one day create another sort of intelligence to share our world with-- and believed very firmly that we should respect and protect all our robot friends from the start, so there would be no violent humans-against-robots revolution or anything.

anyway it turns out that the people trying to keep end-stage capitalism running are really banking on us feeling more love for the robots than for the kind of people they're going to be using the robots to oppress.

so like. maybe lets all agree right now that if a robot is being used to hurt a person, you need to smash the fucking robot. they're going to make the robots really cute. they're going to show us so many movies about how much robots need to be loved. and then they are going to use robots to hurt people.

In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.

Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.

What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.

The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.

Redditors crashed the website with donations over $25k and 0 wishes left. via /r/MadeMeSmile

At some point in recovery/therapy you will have to face the harsh reality: there will never be anyone. Not like that, not anymore. And mourning that? That’s too much, that feels like a pain that cannot be survived. A pain that will swallow you whole, a pain that will drown you.

Therapists can offer a lot of support, but not like that. So maybe you want to switch therapists in hopes of finding someone who can (even though, if they are a good therapist, they can’t), or you would rather be without therapists because then at least they won’t have to suffer the pain of “someone’s here but they’re not enough”. 

Getting a little support, a little of everything we missed, a little of everything we want… Getting a little is worse, in some ways. Because getting a little bit activates the pain; it triggers the feelings of what we miss. Dripping a couple drops of water in an empty bucket makes you feel how devastatingly empty that bucket is.

you DO NOT HAVE TO FEEL THIS WAY FOREVER

the solution is reparenting yourself

YOU be the parent you wish you’d had. 

YOU give yourself comfort and love and acceptance (and ice cream and stuffed animals).

YOU talk to yourself the way a good parent would – tell yourself “it’s okay” and “everybody makes mistakes” and “you will feel better soon”. 

YOU can change the voices in your head. listen to those thoughts and hear whose voice they’re speaking with. your parents programmed those intrusive thoughts. and then ARGUE with them the way you were never allowed to before. tell yourself “YOU DESERVE NICE THINGS” and “YOU DESERVE TO BE HAPPY” until someday someday someday with enough time you CHANGE your programming into something BETTER.

It’s a process. it’s a looooooooooong process. I’m still going at it. BUT. it can really really help to know that the way you feel right now is not forever, and that you can re-parent yourself and start to feel better. that you have power now that you didn’t have before, and you can use that power to reinforce your programming and you can use that power to change that programming, and it’s all up to you.

OP is right that no one else can do it for you. you can’t get adopted by a new perfect family. your therapist / partner / BFF can’t do it.

but YOU CAN.