these are the sometimes longer things, the more personal things... see also shooshee
sadly necessary disclaimer: these are my personal opinions and don’t necessarily represent my employer’s positions, strategies, or opinions.
Too often when I hear people laughing, I automatically feel they are laughing at me. (via PostSecret)
If I say something, I’m the bitch who doesn’t have a sense of humor. If I don’t say something, then I am condoning it as okay. It feels like a lose-lose a situation.
Rick Santorum (with bonus video proof - this totally made me laugh)
excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, Illustration by William Nicholson
For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and lost most of his paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of referring to his rigging in technical terms. The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn’t know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles. Even Timothy, the jointed wooden lion, who was made by the disabled soldiers, and should have had broader views, put on airs and pretended he was connected with Government. Between them all the poor little Rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse.
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
I don’t know that my son gets it quite yet - heck *I* am just beginning to start processing it - but he and I are both entering a very similar phase in life. It’s that phase where you are figuring out - who am I?
My son is 18 and, as long as he doesn’t fuck around too much, he’ll be graduating high school in June. I’m 38 and for almost all of my adult life my primary role, my primary identity, has been mom. We’re both looking at this new phase in life where we starting defining who am I? and what is my identity in this world?
I will always be a mother. I will always be mom. I also know that in some ways I’ve used that as a safety net and a crutch that has let me skate around who *I* am. I didn’t have to define it, I didn’t have to face it - I had an identity - I’m a mom. Soon “mom” will not be my primary role. The only other way that I have identified myself so far is by my job.
But now that my son is reaching one of those first major milestones of becoming an adult - graduating high school - we’re both facing the same thing. There is a great big world out there full of possibilities and opportunities. It’s exciting and terrifying. What is my place in this world? What is my identity? He gets to do it with the enthusiasm and energy of youth, while I have the benefit of 38 years of life experience.
I don’t know what’s next for both of us. It is interesting, after all the things my son and I have gone through together with me as a single parent, we’re both now facing a new chapter of growing up.
Reblogged from seanoftheundead
if my body looked like this - I wouldn’t hate it.
(Source: laflackiss)
more information about each of these at the link above.
