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Kindle Notes & Highlights
I think of all the things I could have done, all of the things so many women could have done, had men simply let their longing go, and I feel a fury flare in my belly.
I learned HMTL and CSS so I could build elaborate webpages on Neopets.
Omg same
For my birthday, she had gotten us matching Juicy Couture tracksuits.
Communities like old internet forums were so different from the social media popular now. For one, there were so many of them. They usually centered around a specific topic of interest, so the number of people involved was naturally more limited. I think this humanized the relationships people had — it was more like a small town or village, where people might have feuds or flame wars, but always on a smaller scale.
I was young and queer and had already had enough orgies to know that I didn’t wanna stop having them any time soon.
I still think about that place. I had never feared death, but after experiencing dying in that way, some part of me longs to go back.
Which is more soul-crushing: getting paid minimum wage to tell someone they can’t afford a lifesaving medical treatment or getting $50 to give some asshole a blowjob?
If you are the passive, receptive partner, then some might think you cannot be the one to cause harm.
If we want to experience love, we will by necessity experience pain. Of course we can limit our attachments, if we want to follow that path, but that has never been my way. I love love, relationships, caring for others and things, appreciating beauty, and mourning tragedy. I have no desire to be enlightened, because for me, so much of the joy of being alive is the burden of it. The work of living and loving and caring is what brings me satisfaction. Putting it all into balance.
People love to discuss with great angst the ever-rising divorce rate. I like to point out that whenever states passed laws allowing no-fault divorces, the homicide rate against women dropped dramatically. Forcing women to stay in marriage is literally putting people’s lives on the line. So is linking marriage to access to health care. It’s obviously much easier to break up with someone if your ability to have food, shelter, and other basic necessities of life are not tied to maintaining a relationship with them.
In a family therapy session with my mother, when I was a child, the therapist discussed resilience. “It’s a measure of how well you are able to cope with trauma,” he said. “Some people naturally have more resilience, some people have very little.” My mother turned to me, rapidly, without prompting. “You’re not very resilient,” she said, laughing.
I think the hardest part about growing up, at least for me, was accepting that there is no perfect love and that absolutes are rare.
My mother is by no means perfect, a statement I think she would agree with. It hurts me that she still doesn’t fully see me. But she loves me and she is learning to care for me in the ways I need.
