Love Letters for Fall: LGBTQIA+ // 2020

I dunno if this belongs in a US Politics thread or elsewhere, but the past 24 hours have been really nuts. The world looks different, like, I feel as if this awful psychological malaise of the past four years has been slowly but perceptibly dissipating.

Moments enter into my head like faded memories of awful past relationships-- remember when Melania plagiarized Michelle? remember Sean Spicer?-- shit like that. I genuinely feel as if the past four years have been like some kind of psychosis-inducing nightmare.

Anyway I'm cleaning my house today, listening to Deerhunter, and putting gut strings on my violin for a change of pace

Yes, nightmare is the word. Lots of feelings for sure. Like fuck. The last for years ACTUALLY HAPPENED. it wasn’t an evil SNL skit!

(And yes tabes that makes total sense)

Yeah i went to the park yesterday and everyone who was there was looking around like “did we all just wake up from the same nightmare?”

We legit met two of our best friends at the abandoned golf course and sat in the sun for hours, lighter than any of us have felt in years. And we all identify as radical leftists and hate Biden! It really was a beautiful day for it to go down.

My favorite was the Jezebel headline

“Coherent Adult President Speaks Sensical Words to American People for the First Time in 4 Years”

to paraphrase a friend: "our long national nightmare is finally over! now, onto the next nightmare!"

Biden/Harris: New Nightmare

yeah :|

so this is kind of related i guess but i just need to vent somewhere about facebook drama (i know). my boyf is long-time friends with this girl i'll call betsy. i hung out with betsy once over a weekend irl and she was very funny and nice. several months ago she posted some delicately racist thing on facebook, i got up in her comments questioning her, she took offense, i apologized for my tone, she seemed really mad that i called her out. i can't even remember the details anymore. anyway i made some dumb post today about centrist democrats ruining everything and she basically told me i was a moron for believing that politics has any effect on anything at all and that i don't know anything about how the world works. i told her in a pm that her comment hurt, that i thought we were friends but that i don't do name-calling (i know, a little rich from me), wished her the best and blocked her. my read on her is that she is a gen-x ex-mormon who has been through a lot of trauma and bullshit due to her family and abusive ex-husbands but is still fundamentally closed off to the outside world, very much sheltered, has never encountered or sought out cultural or racial diversity in her life and is still attached to a lot of reactionary beliefs. a lot of that might be inaccurate or unfair idk but i just.. can't really excuse her comments, you know? my boyfriend, who generally agrees with me about politics (we have had a lot of discussions, poor guy), considers her a "sister". they aren't constantly in each others lives or anything, but they have known each other for twenty years, and he says he loves her and he's sad that she would say that to me. i'm pretty sure i don't like betsy though - her behavior is total anathema to me. so we agreed that me blocking her was for the best and that if she chooses to keep their relationship going, i would be fine with that, that if she eventually apologizes to me, i would accept it, but that we might not all be friendsies and that vague plans we had talked about re: her staying with us were probably off the table. both he and i are absolutely fine with that and supportive of each others' choices which is great. and i'm glad i'm no longer friends with this person who is probably ten years older than me (grown-ass!) and is racist and randomly attacks a generic complain-y post i make on facebook. i love my boyfriend but there is a small part of me that's disappointed that this person he's close with .. behaves so poorly. oh well, people are complicated and i've never been in a relationship with someone who is so ok with setting boundaries when they need to be set, that is a big important part of what's making this relationship so solid rn, and this boundary seems like a relatively clear-cut one that should be easy to set and forget. anyway, just needed to get that out somewhere.

Good for you. We’re at a point where people need to learn the hard way. It sounds like you guys understand and empathize with one another, and it sounds like he doesn’t shy away from hard practical decisions, which to me is one of the sexiest things. Also you could have been way harsher so don’t lose any sleep.

I feel you on this. One of my oldest friends from college and her boyfriend have been saying some weird shit... It’s the third time she’s been describing where she lives and she’s had to call out someone’s race to do it. Once in talking about her neighbor who is loud and disrespectful she ‘s like “well, he’s Asian ...” and that was it. No idea how that’s relevant. Another time we were walking into her building and this guy asked us a question about the front door and she was all weirded out. later when she told her boyfriend about it she was like, “this Asian guy didn’t know what he was doing” .... like zzzz you’re boring me pet and you were a poly sci major at Smith so not sure what’s up. Also her bf didn’t vote bc .... the whole system is fucked anyway! Well there’s a new one you sheltered fuck! Ok yup anger issues sorry anyway yeah BUH-LOCK

Haha. Yeah, people need to either 1) not be racist or 2) not be in our lives.

That’s what I’m thinking

And really i mean people should be anti-racist because i know for me it has been and will continue to be a process

Word
PIZZA FOR BREAKFAST today y'all

I was an anti-racist before, but my partner has done a lot of training me in that regard, since he is of ambiguous ethnic appearance, and often is mistaken for ethnicities he is not. He comes from southern Italian and Chinese stock, so he has darker skin than many Chinese people...let's just say that when we lived in California, people assumed he spoke Spanish. Hell, the first time I took him home, I thought he was a weird goth cholo because of all his gnarly tattoos.

In any case, the strangest thing about our families is that his white mother and stepfather are Trump voters, and he hardly talks to them. They're awful people. His Chinese dad and indigenous Hawaiian stepmom are amazing, but they're so far away from us. So it's just my parents as nearby family, and they are lovely, but have had to be trained over the years, too, particularly my mom. Dad is a leftist at this point.

Long story short: good for you for putting boundaries on idiot racists, and good for your boyfriend for understanding.

ty

🤍 Happy Friday
Love u guys

back at you, take care of yourself this weekend. ready to be a house-bound do-nothing slug myself.

had an emotional morning after having That Dream where i yell at my parents

O no. I’ve definitely had those dreams. Weirdly I had a Very Good family moment this weekend, which is pretty rare and surprisingly uplifting

Was your morning at least cathartic?

yes i lifted a bunch of weights :). glad you had a nice family moment.

now i'm running down the clock at work

Damn I just realized today was Friday
Bummer

Why bummer bb?
map how much do u lift?

i'm finally at 315 for squats

Well fuck! Nice. I have to pick up some kind of routine again, I was doing push-ups every morning and then I was just like, nope

Soooooooooooo i’ve been nonstop texting and jamming music over the phone with this guy from Virginia, this is the first time I’ve met someone i jive with like this since I met my boyfriend all those years ago and it’s… Freaking me out

I m like ... Not ready

does he live in virginia? how did you find him?

He does. One of my best friends lives there, and he’s been a super close friend of hers for years now. I’ve hung out with him a number of times but for some reason when I visited her over Halloween it was the first time I seen him since I was single and it was just like I needed to see him, it was uncanny

And also I shouldn’t even be thinking this hard about it, I am NOT that girl right now

lol

🤪 what’s funny is that I just finished a song about how I’m falling for a guy but I know deep down it’s too soon, it was a fictional piece but looks like I made my nightmares come true

Wassup tonight mappy

I've always had a really hard time reading the people that I've been interested in. In retrospect it seems like there's a fine line between over-eagerness and dismissal and I feel like I've so often been on the wrong side of that line on both sides

you seem grounded surm

💙 I totally understand what you’re saying, and I gotta tell you that being grounded is not a familiar feeling to me so I’m enjoying it while it lasts

I think my own projection often obscured a real understanding of where the person I was interested in was coming from. I wish I had realized that then, it would have been helpful

You’re walking around in my brain. I know that now but boy did I fuck that up way too many times

Very angry at my guy right now, he's being an absolute asshole, just need to type that here to get it out! Please continue scrolling.

Noooooo! You’re definitely not the only one who’s getting into fights with their loved ones. You guys able to resolve things?

gl table

my cat is snuggling with me on the couch atm

I can’t believe I don’t have a dog or a cat in my life right now

Snuggling with the pup.

Everything okay here. Just had to hash it out.

Oh good so glad
I will say that’s one of the things I do not miss about being in a couple, those fights wd tear me apart
But it is worth it for the right person 🤩

my third ltr is proving to be the least fight-y

Excellent. I was just thinking today if I happen to wind up in a relationship again it will be my number one goal to not have shouting matches

Hardly ever shouting matches, tbh. Mostly just little disagreements and smoldering anger and processing.

same here

although...i did actually scream in the heat of an intense talk last week. tbh i've had a lot of smoldering anger about a lot of things lately and haven't really had an outlet for it and it all just sorta bubbled up to the surface. i don't feel great admitting it, and i still feel shitty about having done it.

I'm in a good (avoidant) place with regard to fighting, but part of it is probably due to my being on absolute pins and anxious needles for the last 10 months.

Had good sex today tho, fwiw.

Nice!! Honeymooners u

JG don’t beat yourself up. I’ve been there way too many times to count. Be kind to yourself and let yourself process why you think it got there, it’ll take a couple of days.

Instances of smoldering anger have subsided significantly as the pandemic has gone on, to be frank. There just isn't as much to be upset about, and anything I am upset about seems pretty insignificant.