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Cake day: August 22nd, 2025

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  • I didn’t realize it until after she died, but I mourned my relationship with my mom for years before she actually kicked the bucket. I had long since accepted that she didn’t want to have any kind of relationship with me and that I would almost certainly never have any meaningful relationship with her, unless she had a serious change of heart. So I just assumed that I would never speak to her again. Then when she actually died, it just kinda… ticked from 0.1% chance to 0.0% chance. Still felt shitty to have it finally close on that note, but I hadn’t really expected anything different. I still sometimes wonder if I could have had some kind of breakthrough conversation with her but the reality is that she made her choices and there was nothing I could do to change her mind.





  • Thanks ❤️ I really wish I knew what to do, because I still have relatives on both sides that are deep in the cult. Not to mention my inlaws 🤦 They occupy a spectrum of dangerous / crazy and some of them I don’t talk to at all, some I still talk to occasionally but it’s hard to figure out where the cutoff line is. I think I’ve had some productive conversations around how dangerous Trump / MAGA are, but it’s hard to tell because I think the effects only manifest in the long term really and it’s hard to tell whether I’m helping or just pushing them away. I don’t think anyone suddenly has a lightbulb and thinks “Oh god, I’m in a cult”, at least not in my experience. It’s more gradual and requires sustained conversations, which incidentally is why cults generally encourage victims to cut off family members who aren’t also in the groupthink. So, I just try to meet the ones I don’t think would likely try to kill me for being trans where they are and do my best to be a good influence in the sphere of influence I have.

    As for the reroll, lol I hear ya, but as a wise wizard once said, “so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”


  • My parents were both… medium-core republicans. Didn’t go to rallies or buy swag, but they weren’t interested in non-R candidates or ideas. Dad died of covid before the vaccine was available. Pre-existing immune deficiencies. He was one of the ones they couldn’t fit in the morgues because they were all full. My mom watched all this happen, still refused to get vaccinated, got covid twice (that she told me of) and died of “complications from asthma” two years after the vaccines were generally available. IDK what role covid played in her death but I doubt it helped much. I really don’t know what I could have said to her if watching dad pass in isolation wasn’t enough. I think about it a lot though.






  • oddlyqueer@lemmy.mltoADHD memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com*cough*
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    5 days ago

    I know I was being flippant. What I mean is, the few (several…) times I’ve gotten into internet arguments I am always drained and unhappy and profoundly do not want to do it anymore, even if I am arguing over sincerely held beliefs. I guess I can see why trolling can be addictive, eliciting engagement is a kind of power over people, and power is addictive. And arguing over things I don’t care about probably takes a lot less emotional investment than things I do care about… I feel like I’m talking myself into being an internet troll. Still though, seems like a miserable way to get your rocks off :/



  • A practical addendum to that last point: I am eternally grateful that I am too old to have had to deal with the current landscape of app-based dating, so I am definitely commenting on something out of my experience, but I would advise trying to meet people in real life and make non-romantic friends, rather than “trying to date”. Book clubs, Ultimate frisbee leagues, activism groups, etc. I met my partner doing community theater. I think if you want to find someone you can be friends with as well as partners, you have to try being just friends first. And it doesn’t always progress beyond that, and sometimes that sucks like a bastard. But I still think it’s better than the alternative methods I’ve seen.


  • Who’s going to be doing this railroading? It’s going to be up to you and whoever you decide to have a relationship with to decide what your roles in the relationship will be. When I started getting serious with my partner (now cohabitating over a decade and going strong), we both thought we were cishet little ex-christians. But we were buddies from the start, and that hasn’t changed even when we started to question our gender identities. For all I know, it may have been the fact that we were in a stable, loving relationship for the first time in both our lives that made it safe enough to start exploring that aspect of ourselves. I know for us it took (is taking…) a while. I loved them when they thought they were a woman, I love them now as their NB self, and if they discover more about their gender identity I’ll love them then. We’re still, and will hopefully always be, partners and best buds.

    So if you want to try being in a relationship with a girl, find a girl you like, and love her.






  • I agree. I think with a robust enough proposal, there are a lot of people with power who would be willing to get on board. Some people though… they’ve shown that they’re willing to kill huge numbers of people to maintain and expand their power, and I don’t know that that kind of powermonger can be dealt with gracefully. And I think an internet-native global democratic movement would have to be started by people with internet access, and one of its goals would have to be providing, to the best of its ability, internet access to everyone.