Such as It Is

Thank you if you read all that and thanks for stopping by.

Sometime during those two weeks before she moved in, I asked him, "what happens if we don't like her or aren't comfortable with her?" He kept insisting that we'd love her, that she's super sweet and nice and was a Montessori teacher, that she had a super cute dog that we'd also love (another massive red flag, we have two dogs of our own so we had no idea if they'd get along.) But he gave me his word that if we didn't like her, he'd ask her to move out. NO. DON'T DO THIS. ASK FOR DETAILS (AND GET SHIT LIKE THIS IN WRITING.) Like it shouldn't matter what our reasons are for not being comfortable with her, if we say we're not comfortable with her, that in itself is a valid enough reason because... THIS IS A BUSINESS DEAL. Buying a house with someone is a business/financial transaction. Your business partner should not be making decisions that impact the other partners and the business (house) without proper consent from all business/financial partners involved! This is where our roommate made a crucial mistake, too. It didn't occur to him that we might actually not like her. He was so certain we would. Never assume such things! Even if on paper/in concept it looks like two people would be besties, that doesn't mean it's bound to happen! Sometimes people simply don't vibe well together for whatever reason. Though in this case it was clear why we wouldn't vibe well together - I WOULDN'T GET ALONG WITH SOMEONE WHO ACTIVELY SUPPORTS HARM TO ME AND THOSE LIKE ME. Seriously! WTF! What in his addled brain would have him believe I'd like her???! I tried talking with her and it's simply impossible to reason with her because she literally doesn't use logic or critical thinking. Like I asked her, "given all that's happened and all that's he's done, would you still vote for Turnip again?" SHE SAID YES. I asked what policies of Turnip makes her support him. SHE COULDN'T LIST EVEN ONE. (Later she mentioned him also being against trans women athletes. I told her I was discussing things involving people dying, inhumane treatments, etc. and she comes back with some transphobic bigot shit??) She also claims to be Christian and I asked her if she thought Jesus would condone any of this and she said that I should be turning the other cheek and just letting her stay. Oh, and that she stopped watching the news because it depresses her and she needs to consider her mental health. The audacity of this puta is endless. The crazy shit this person has said and done is too many to write out given how long this post already is. (Wait! I forgot one of the juiciest parts! When I asked her to move out, she gave me these sad puppy eyes and said, "but I'll have nowhere to go and I can't afford to move out because I have a lot of debt." SO I GOT TO SAY, "oh, you mean the same shit you voted to happen to immigrants? That's called karma!" Also, who da fk isn't broke and in debt in this economy?? Can you believe she expected sympathy from me???) Anyway! Long story short, our roommate refused to move her out so we're going to refinance so that the mortgage is solely in his name and we'll be moving out instead. I'm actually not that upset about it because my long held dream has always been to own a good sized land lot (like 2-5 acres,) to grow a food forest on and to let my furbabies run freely and this whole "buying a house together" situation was something the roommate had asked of us because he was tired of leasing/renting and we needed to move anyway. (So it was a favor to him! The audacity of this whole situation! UGH.) But yeah, we'll be using the money we get back to hopefully set ourselves up on the path that we originally wanted. I'll update ya'll on how the refinancing goes if anyone's interested.

But yeah, my circle of friends was never large to begin with, but now I have almost none. I was disheartened by how many people didn’t met my 3 standards, which I thought were fairly reasonable - basically ‘be a decent, mature person.’ Now I’m super lonely and don’t know what to do with myself. So this is me awkwardly reaching out in hopes that maybe some of you might be interested in being friends? I'm interested in most things, so few topics are off the table. I actually love chatterboxes as I am a low energy spoonie and their hype is really cute to me. If you're a fellow low energy bunny, too, I don't mind that at all. Maybe we can recommend to each other new books or tea to try. Basically I'm open to all types of friends (within the laid out standards.)

I'm extremely ecstatic right now and feel like I'll burst if I don't share this... We bought a house! We officially closed on it today. The notary came to our current home and we signed off on everything. It's a super adorable 3 bed, 2 bath that we kept calling the "grandma house," and it actually was, lmao. Turns out the seller is a 82 y/o grandma. (She moved in with family.) It was built in 1982 and we could tell that it had been lovingly tended to. (Seriously though, there wasn't any damage to the house whatsoever despite being 43 years old while a bunch of newer houses we saw were disasters.) It was the last house we saw on our 3rd round of house viewing and as soon as we walked in, we knew it was the one. It's got a great yard and a sunroom! The living room and kitchen area is vaulted! The bedrooms are spacious! It's so, so lovely! (And it's 10 min from the beach!) I'm super excited to get a million potted plants and try my hand at growing an edible garden with a bunch of fruit trees primary, so really an orchard with extra steps. I also want to try getting back into reading, writing, and art, so I've got a lot of ideas about an office/library with all my walls being bookcases. I've got sewing and carpentry lessons lined up, as well! I've genuinely never been this happy. I have an amazing spouse. I've got two precious furbabies. I just got a house. I've got a new job lined up that I'm excited for. I've got the best inner circle of friends and loved ones after years of shitty, toxic relationships. I'm getting back into beloved hobbies and picking up some new ones. And there may be babies on the horizon. I literally couldn't ask for more or better. I count my blessings every day and my only sadness is that my mom isn't here to see how far I've made it and how well her sacrifices and love paid off.

There's a difference between being someone's emotional support pillar and being their punching bag. You have no obligation to stay by someone through their healing journey. You can distance yourself or remove yourself entirely. You're allowed to say, "I love you but I cannot take this journey with you." You don't have to stick with someone through everything. That's actually unreasonable and kinda toxic, because no one should expect you to martyr yourself for them. The ride or die trope is only cute in fiction. You shouldn't have to set yourself on fire or jump through hoops for a relationship. You shouldn't have to hurt yourself or suffer in order to be able to provide something. The price of friendship or love should never be that steep. There's a difference between offering support and trying to rescue someone. That difference is called codependency. You can't save someone from themselves. You can't force anyone to change. They have to want the change. They have to put in the work themselves. You can't do it for them. Again, you're not a bad person or "selfish" for walking away and prioritizing yourself and your well being. You can love someone while acknowledging that they're not good for you. You can love someone but not keep them in your life. You didn't "fail" them. You're not "abandoning" them. They need professional help. That you weren't equipped or able to help them is through no flaw or fault of yours.

[P.P.S. - get therapyyyy. Self-improvement shouldn't be a privilege.]

If they can't meet these 3 standards (which are pretty low bar imo, essentially "be a decent human being,") then I don't allow such people into my inner circle. If you need more boundaries to be comfortable, then add as many as you need. These 3 are just basics. There also often comes a point where relationships change; it's inevitable because people change (even if you're the only one changing in the relationship.) Your hobbies change, your job, your marital status, you have kids, you move away, etc. This doesn't necessarily mean your friendships end, but they will become different. Here’s another life lesson I learned - we can only prioritize so much in our lives. As great as it'd be to be able to sustain a massive friends group, as an adult it's not really possible. Responsibilities that were taken care of by your parents now fall squarely onto you. This means you'll have less time and energy to socialize. You'll be too busy keeping a roof over your head and staying alive. You'll have a limited amount of time and energy to allocate your relationships, so you'll have to pick and choose which ones you want to sustain. Science says that it's around a handful of close friends, then some additional casual friends. But what happens when, for whatever reason, you and your friend no longer vibe well together? Then it's time to move on. Friendships, like romantic relationships, end, too. And the more you try to force them, typically the more unhealthy and potentially toxic they become, hence the list of boundaries. So sometimes the best thing we can do is let go. If it was a relationship that you're fond of, you can always leave the door in your heart open for them to potentially come back into your life if your paths cross again, but don't stay waiting for them. Move on. Make the best of your life. If they were truly meant to be in your life, then there'll be space for both of you in each other’s lives. If not, that means your lives are already full as is. I hope you're blessed with a life full of people who love and support you, even if that's just yourself. Sometimes that's all you need.

"Success" to me looks like living in my dream house on a 5 acre lot. I've yet to achieve that. I'm happy regardless. Happiness to me looks like waking up next to my loved one, with our dogs curled up behind my legs, and making our current home as cozy as possible with what little funds we have. At the end of the day, life is what you make of it. So what does success and happiness look like to you?

It seems very popular nowadays to call a lot of things “cringe,” and I find a lot of it toxic. Whenever we cringe, this is actually the “disgust” reaction. Disgust is there to help prevent us from touching or associating with things that could make us sick or otherwise endanger us. This isn’t only for cringing when we touch something slimy or smell something awful. It can also be what we perceive as danger to us as a person and our place both in society and our personal world. So when you cringe at a person, you are essentially thinking, “this isn’t correct, this isn’t how this should be, this doesn’t belong.” It is you essentially rejecting it, whatever “it” is. This could be someone confessing to someone very loudly and publicly. You cringe because you’ve deemed it unacceptable for a various reasons - it could be that you put yourself in the confessors shoes and thought, “I could never bring myself to do that” or the confessed person’s pov and thought, “I’d die if someone did that to me.” But...why? For a lot of people, it’s because we were taught that being that open and vulnerable is a bad and dangerous thing to do. It could result in public humiliation from rejection, and thus hurt. Or for the latter, it could be because we were taught to hate having attention brought to ourselves, that one should be meek and mild and stay quietly in the background. Basically, it invokes feelings of “this is not proper!” - “proper” being what you’ve internalized as socially or personally acceptable, and we reject it because it contests our personal world viewpoint of, “this isn’t how things work.” For some things, the societal norm we’re protecting has a lot of validity to it. For example, our disgust at pedophiles and child abusers. As a society, it stands to reason that we protect our young offspring to ensure our society’s future. There’s of course other valid cringey things, like sexism, homophobia, etc., and objectively noxious behavior that we cringe at, like poor sportsmanship. But for other things, it’s simply to perpetuate certain social constructs. Girls in particular are often hated because “she doesn’t look or act her age,” but this implies that there is an acceptable look and manner for one’s age...which is bullshit. (The exception being sexual objectification of children.) It’s not talked about as much as it really needs to be, but we’ve been aware of ageism for quite a while. We’re told that only certain things are “for kids,” but this is like being told only certain foods can be eaten at breakfast. It’s just made up crap. There isn’t a life manual that tells you exactly how one should look, act, and think by a certain age. This isn’t the universe of The Giver where things are systematically given and taken away at certain age intervals and simultaneously in batches of groups so that everyone grows and experiences life at an equal pace. So for the most part, cringing at others is being judgmental and raining on their parade for being their unabashed, authentic selves and living their best lives, or simply doing and trying their best, even if it’s wrong or it gives off secondhand embarrassment (aka, cringe.) All this comes from a place of conformity, with a lot of narrow-minded bigotry, self-hatred, envy, and past trauma under it all. Next time you cringe, consider taking a moment to reflect and see if you can pinpoint exactly why you reacted that way, and what exactly is it that you’re rejecting. I think what we cringe at says a lot about us and can better help us uncover and understand some of our most deeply entrenched biases and perceptions. So whenever someone calls you “cringe/y,” please know it’s a “them” problem, not a “you” problem.

Music and Wings