dreamt i was pouring millions into developing a “sexy diving suit” and it was like a chunky victorian deep-sea diving suit except with most of it cut away so all that remained was the helmet, the boots, the gloves, and a two-piece bikini. i was so invested in the concept but everyone i sent down to test it immediately got squished by the pressure.
I ended up having a really interesting conversation with some people at the bus stop today. They were getting out of some sort of ‘clean and sober’ meeting and had starting saying how they were so bored because they didn’t have anything to do, and had to stay at home because all their old friends would pull them back. So I said something like, ‘So this is the time to do all the stuff your parents told you they didn’t have money/time for!’
“Whatcha mean?”
“You know, like when you were five and you REALLY wanted to have that toy or do that thing and you were like, ‘Please mom please I gotta have this I gotta go do this’ and they went ‘Hell no you think I’m paying for that do you want to goddamn EAT?’ “
And this light went on in their eyes. The lady is going to go check thrift stores for an Easybake Oven and I told her about Wilton cake decorating classes. The dude is going to Griffith Park and ride horses, because, ‘I always wanted to be a cowboy, and you can’t drink when you’re on a horse ‘cause you’ll fucking die!’
Fuck it. This is what being an adult is. Sure it’s bills and work and relationships, but damn it, it’s also time to do the things you LIKE.
I signed up for a free class/lecture on Water Gardens. I’m going. It’s time.
Jill. Jill you are wonderful.
no joke, this is such an important aspect of overcoming trauma. I mean the trauma of abusive parents, the trauma of broke ass parents who got toxic because of it, the trauma of capitalism. Like fuck it. Go to Wrestlemania. Build a shit ton of terrariums.
I took a stained glass class during the pandemic and now I have a hummingbird hanging in my kitchen window. And this year I’m finally getting chickens!!
This is literally why I have my Sailor Moon thermos.
it doesn’t even have to be the trauma of bad parents. It can be the everyday human pain of “I lost my favorite toy when I was 12 and never found it again.” It can be the parents who loved you and fully sympathized with your desire to have the thing, but honey, we just don’t have the money right now. It can be the fact that you no longer live with your brother who’s highly allergic to dogs, so you can finally have the dog you always wanted that you always understood why you couldn’t get, and you accepted it, but it was still painful. It can be the Atari games or Nintendo games or Sega games that don’t exist anymore that you played in your childhood.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized – you don’t have to be suffering some great trauma, something unusual and particularly damaging, to feel pain. You don’t have to have lost your entire home in a hurricane to have lost something you truly valued and miss a lot. You don’t have to have had toxic parents to have been denied some things you wanted because they just didn’t have the money, or the resources, or the health.
Time is pain. Loss and disappointment are part of human existence. But you don’t have to try to justify why your specific loss or disappointment is especially bad to admit that it hurts and do something to rectify that hurt in some small way.
ALT
