there’s obviously a lot of nuance to to this conversation, but I feel like the way that people nowadays talk about friendships is so cold and devoid of love or empathy. like you aren’t allowed to complain or be sad, ur burdening ur friends with ur problems, helping someone through a hard time is ‘emotional labour’ and ‘you don’t owe anyone anything’ and I’m just thinking what does friendship even mean to you then? like honestly? people say ‘I’m not your therapist’ as if therapy is the answer to everything. what a sad world where a paid clinician is the only person you’re allowed to be emotionally vulnerable with. this ultra individualistic mindset leads to everyone feeling alone and isolated and we’ve lost all concept of community and support systems
Men need to normalize having friendships with women without a sexual or romantic foundation. Some women are just really cool people to know, regardless of your attraction to them.
My dad and I once had a disagreement over him using the adage “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
I said, “That’s just not true. Sometimes what doesn’t kill you leaves you brittle and injured or traumatized.”
He stopped and thought about that for a while. He came back later, and said, “It’s like wood glue.”
He pointed to my bookshelf, which he helped me salvage a while ago. He said, “Do you remember how I explained that, once we used the wood glue on them, the shelves would actually be stronger than they were before they broke?”
I did.
“But before we used the wood glue, those shelves were broken. They couldn’t hold up shit. If you had put books on them, they would have collapsed. And that wood glue had to set awhile. If we put anything on them too early, they would have collapsed just the same as if we’d never fixed them at all. You’ve got to give these things time to set.”
It sounded like a pretty good metaphor to me, but one thing I did pick up on was that whatever broke those shelves, that’s not the thing that made them stronger. That just broke them. It was being fixed that made them stronger. It was the glue.
So my dad and I agreed, what doesn’t kill you doesn’t actually make you stronger, but healing does. And if you feel like healing hasn’t made you stronger than you were before, you’re probably not done healing. You’ve got to give these things time to set.
In the words of Taliesin Jaffe as Caduceus:
“It’s not pain that makes people. It’s the love that saves them. The pain is inconsequential.”
ACTUALLY acting silly is one of the greatest joys of life. if you see me in the street meowing back at cats I see and kicking snow piles down know that I am living my best life.
Born ridiculous, Forced to have opinions on the economy 😔
