eat your hamburgers, apollo

we got 13-17 yr olds diagnosing themselves with personality disorders like NPD (relax i am very pro-self diagnosis when done right) due to literal Symptoms Of Being A High Schooler like…..there IS a reason minors can’t technically recieve certain diagnoses, and that reason isn’t ableism- they pass in adulthood. yall have literal kids saying that their desire for attention and dislike of/percieved inferiority of their young peers are cut and dry personality disorder symptoms (hey, i did the same thing at 16-17).

what’s normal and ok is these teenage beliefs/mindsets being phases, what’s completely fucking abnormal and unhealthy is folks rallying around them and encouraging they adopt, and in turn water down, these very heavy labels. what’s abmormal is fostering the belief that these negative aspects of teens’ inherently-volatile and unstable personalities, and dip in empathy, assuring them they’ll be like that forever so no one is allowed to criticize them or offer the wisdom that it’ll VERY LIKELY all pass as their brain development reaches its next stage. as someone who’s fought (since elementary school) for, and retained the debilitating diagnoses ive recieved, but CHOOSES to fight them and better myself even now, into adulthood, it’s very difficult to swallow, and frankly i won’t try.

if you were to give every high schooler a test for all the PDs i assure you a majority of them would “meet” a whole lotta their criteria. test them 10 years down the line you’ll probably see a drastic decrease.

I took this picture of a sting ray at the aquarium while I was in San Francisco. I didn’t check the picture until later, but somehow the lighting there made it look like the sting ray is… I dunno. floating in space? ascending to heaven? it’s weird.

- quicksand - ghosts

Life problems I did NOT anticipate as a child: