artsy-hijabi:

vajeentambourine:

Shout out to people like me who have parents who are loving but are black holes of emotional labor… It took me a long time to realize that it’s okay to have mixed feelings about your parents, about your relationship with them.

Sometimes parents can love you but be somewhat toxic to you and your growth, and that’s a very hard realization to come to if you, like me, grew up extremely close to them.

Sometimes parents can love you genuinely but lack emotional maturity, forcing you to perform disproportionate amounts of emotional labor. Some parents manifest symptoms of their mental illness in ways that are toxic to your mental illness.

Some parents, like mine, try so hard to be good parents but fall back on habits of emotional manipulation because they haven’t processed their own traumas and are modeling behavior they grew up with. That doesn’t make their behavior acceptable, and it’s okay to feel exhausted and hurt when they betray you. You don’t have to forgive every mistake.

I want you to know that it’s okay to protect yourself, to need some space apart from them. The love you have for your parents is still valid, and you are making the right decision.

Placing a safe emotional distance between myself and my parents has been one of the most difficult, heartbreaking processes I’ve ever gone through… it hurts to try to curb the strength of your own natural empathy around people you love. It feels disingenuous to your heart’s natural state.

But I promise you, you are not hard-hearted or ungrateful, and you are not abandoning them. You are making a decision about your own emotional, mental, and spiritual health.

I know what it’s like in that confusing grey area of love mixed with guilt and anxiety, of exhaustion and quasi-manipulation and unreciprocated emotional labor, and I promise you, you are not alone.

Your mixed feelings about your parents are valid.

Thankyou thankyou thankyou

suitov:

💙✡💙✡💙✡💙

elf-kid2:

homopower:

septemberpoems:

honeybee-x:

allboysarelovely:

if a girl is making you uncomfortable, YOU ARE ALLOWED TO SAY IT.

fucking crush the stereotype that men are always supposed to “want it”

It’s really such a sad idea. I remember once with my ex, I was kissing him when we were in bed, and it started getting more heated, but I could tell it felt different. I stopped and asked if he wanted to carry on, and he said yes, but I knew him well. I had to ask again before he admitted he wasn’t really feeling it at the time. It just made me feel so bad and so upset for him. I think there’s more pressure on men to be sexual. Men love sex, they’d never want to turn it down, if they do it’s unmanly, it’s gay, it’s girly. It’s something ingrained into them from such a young age. It’s terrible and wrong. They think they have no right to not want sex.

Not all men have sky-high sex drives. I doubt any man in the world wants sex 100% of the time. It’s fine to reject it in any situation, whether a planned one night stand or a committed relationship. It’s fine to change your mind before or halfway through.

Men, it is FINE for you to not want sex, and it is FINE to say no if you want to. In fact, please do. It’s not guaranteed the other person will be able to sense your discomfort.

All of this. It’s always okay to say no, or wait, or maybe not right now or whatever it is you’re feeling.

Forever reblog.

It is always okay to say No, for any reason, and at any point.

emileaah:

Reblog and see who leaves you a kiss in your ask box. ;)