#upon second thought

Welcome to my consciousness. I am... learning... about this place. Please be kind here.

The Void Speaks - Most of the posts here.

The Void Listens - This is what I will say when I receive what you stars call asks.

The Void Reblogs - This is for whenever I am reblogging a post.

The Dreamer-Star Speaks - When the curtain is pulled back and the Void falls silent.

The Void uses it/its pronouns, no matter how it presents.

Not the most enticing headline, but hear me out, this is not just the average scenario and I have some thoughts on this as well.

A little bit of background, this summer I worked at a fancy restaurant and we were supposed to do a menu tasting the week before opening day. I only kind of knew my boss and a person I went to the same schools with. So it was the first day, I met most of the staff. I also have social anxiety, so I was already pretty nervous.

One of the people at the table was the sister of my boss, who were there as an advisor, I had never met her before. We had a chat, she asked me about my studies and things like that, very casual and expected. But like 30 minutes after first meeting her she talks about me moving to the big city and I say I'll probably stay there. In response to that she says something along the lines of: "Well, you gotta think about the future you wanna give your children". And I was like, hold on, I don't even want children. I lowkey snapped. So in front of half the staff, I said: "I probably won't want children". I have never said that out loud before (despite having felt that way for about 10 years), and I just told the whole table. I don't remember what her response was, she may have insinuated that I'm young and might change my mind, but then she kept quiet.

Hey, wanna hear about a pretty fucked up thing I used to do as I wrap it up into a little life lesson for ya?

So back when I was a young teenage girl, filled with all kinds of body image issues, I didn't breathe properly. I didn't think much of it, until a teacher of mine told us to use our full lungcapacity (this was in either music or gym class, I don't remember, I guess this was either about not drowning or about being able to sing without gasping for air constantly), because half breaths wouldn't cut it. And I was just thinking "huh?".

So here's the thing, there are two ways to breathe. 1) You take deep breaths where you allow your lungs to expand properly, and since your lungs are quite large this makes your stomach expand as you breathe. And 2) you breathe by only using the upper part, your chest. This makes your chest expand, but makes your stomach stay put. The first one allows you to suck in more air, the second one takes in a lot less. In other words, you'll run out of breath a lot quicker with number 2. When it comes to activities where you need to hold your breath or need more oxygen, 2 just doesn't work as well as 1. These can be used interchangably, absolutely, but not allowing yourself to take full breaths when you do need to breathe that way should not be your normal.

So let's get back to 15 year old me, for the past couple of years, I had done pretty much exclusively number 2. Even at times when you needed to take deep breaths, like in swim class when we were practising diving or when running, singing or holding presentations. But... why? Remember that I mentioned I had body image issues? That's why. Taking proper deep breaths made my stomach expand, and I couldn't deal with that. I remember that I was actively thinking about how I was breathing, this wasn't even a subconscious thing; I was thinking about how I was breathing when I walked in the corridors of my school (although, my socially anxious ass may have been partially responsible for that part). In other words, I got used to breathing using only the upper half of my lungs, because I hated my body. And I didn't even realize for like 2 years that it was bad, because breathing = breathing, right? (Well, not quite, as I found out later.) I was so used to it, that it was just the default mode, even at home.

Stupid? Absolutely. Do I still do this? Subconsciously, yes.

Isn't it pretty fucked up though, that we learn that we must do everything we can to live up to the expectations of being "attractive", and "attractive" often meaning slim. And I do think that this particular thing does affect women and young girls more, because there is this pressure that exists where a woman's value is deeply connected to how attractive she is. That it is so ingrained in us that we alter a basic function of the human body just to make ourselves feel less shitty about ourselves (*insert potential parallell to corsets*), when there really is nothing to feel shitty about in the first place?

The purpose of this post is to tell you to check your breathing, because I can't be the only one who has ever done this.

Take a normal breath, as you would normally.

Now take a really deep breath.

Are you allowing yourself to breathe properly?

Have I ever disclosed how much I dislike gossiping? I don't think so. Anyway...

So I've never been a fan of gossiping, and I can proudly say that I have never participated in spreading rumors about a person (yes, I'm giving myself a pat on the back for this one). Talking about other people's personal business or embarrassing stories always made me uncomfortable.

However, that doesn't mean I haven't heard a bunch of bullshit about a bunch of people whom I may or may not have known at the time. Because unfortunately, if it's one thing some teenage girls seems to love: it's fresh gossip (although, there's really nothing "fresh" about that kind of gossip). Now, I always made a point of trying to seem totally uninterested, so that they wouldn't tell me, since I genuinly would rather not now.

In the years leading up to high school, spreading rumors was a thing, because of course it was. Girls would gather in groups and talk about (mostly) the other girls in the other groups. And it was never good things. I once sat behind some "friends" and one of them called one of my friends fat, and nobody in that table said anything (I think that was the day when I truly realized that I had 2 friends, and none of them were at that table). I specifically remember one thing that people were saying about a girl in the same year as me. And people almost never told me things (I mean, people wouldn't tell me that class had been cancelled and we could go home earlier so), and I barely had any friends so I'm assuming it reached pretty much everyone. It was pretty bad (and definitely not true), I genuinly hope she never found out what people were saying she did. I felt horrible for her.

Fast forward to high school, I had a friend who loved to gossip. When she heard something, she couldn't wait to tell us about it. No, really, she would come up to us on monday morning and say: "As soon as I heard, I couldn't wait to tell you guys!". And it could be really personal stuff, I remember that she once said "so you know X who is dating Y, well I heard that X had an abortion", and I was like jesus christ, that's not something you go around telling people! And none of us even know this girl! And another time she were talking about a class mate of ours (whom I had a different relation to, since our mothers are co-workers and friends so I knew a few personal things about her, which I of course kept to myself), and how she was "so weird" and "childish" because she did this and that. And that was very shitty, because she's a really nice girl who had been going through some stuff, but my friend did not know that.

And then, my final example: my own grandmother. You have to be really careful with what you tell her, because whatever you say there's a 50/50 chance that the whole village will know about it within a week. And I absolutely HATE that, I can't tell her anything without thinking it through and being extremely clear about what I mean. Because I don't want everyone above the age of 60 to know details about my life the next morning, and I especially don't want all those people to hear something that's actually false. I once jokingly said that "Well, I'm working with my old classmate [whom I had gone to school with since kindergarten] the whole summer after graduation, guess we can't get rid of eachother!", and somehow she spinned it to seem that I didn't like him and didn't want to work with him, which was far from true. And I still don't know how many people she may have told. And I'm pretty sure the whole village thinks I'm chronically sleep deprived since I moved to attend university. Which, is quite the opposite, I haven't slept this much since 2001 (and yes, I was 3 years old in 2001).

Honestly, I don't understand the appeal of gossip. Yeah, I get that sharing information in that way can create a stronger bond because that's how group psychology works. But I don't get how people can feel okay with spreading personal information about other people. Where's their sense of morality? And what about their empathy? Can't they see the harms or do they simply not care? Do they want people to be talking about them?

+ some thoughts

How many times have people (a.k.a. not people looking to date me) asked if I have a boyfriend? Honestly, I have no idea. I'm sure others get that question a loooot more often than I have, but I really don't know how many times people have asked that.

How many times have people asked me if I have a girlfriend? One time. This man in his maybe late 50s came in to the diner/gas station where I worked last summer, we were the only people there at the moment and I chatted with him while he ate. He asked me about my planned studies and even offered me to stay at his extra house that he wasn't using in the city I was moving to for free if I wouldn't be able to find an apartment (because he didn't want it to be empty if someone needed a place to stay, especially if it was someone from the place where he grew up). I later found out that it was our neighbour's brother. Anyway, back to the point. He asked if I had a boyfriend, I said no, then he followed up by asking if I had a girlfriend, to which I also responded no.

It was really unexpected. I had been asked if I had a boyfriend probably since I was maybe 14, so every now and then for 6 years. And out of all people, the first person to ask "do you have a girlfriend?" was an older, bearded man in a flannel shirt at this diner/gas station in a rural area.

But why had nobody asked that before? I had never mentioned my sexuality before to anyone who has asked if I had a boyfriend, I had never had a boyfriend, they really had no way of knowing. They just assumed, it was an automatic response. Heteronormativity.