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“Art is restoration: the idea is to repair the damages that are inflicted in life, to make something that is fragmented—which is what fear and anxiety do to a person—into something whole.” —louise bourgeois
great fucking quote
I have skills, people, I know what I am doing, even if you don’t like it.
The witch they are looking for is context.
truth
“I will always love you no matter what, but I don’t have to like you.”
Kudos to having the bravery to say outloud what I am sure many others feel. Brutal honesty may not always be nice, but it is better.
It is very easy to pick kids with ASD off their pack because we tend to lurk around the edges anyway and we trust very, very easily. It would be great if more people in the world understood just how trusting autistic kids are, because at the moment, outside immediate families, it seems like the only people who see the link between vulnerability and easy trust are predators. This is not so safe.
Not so safe… it’s fucking scary. We need to do better. Now.
The one subject I did well in during my year at Launceston College was art, but let’s face it, most brooding teenagers with a penchant for internalised morbidity do well at art.
So that’s why! I was the broodiest.
But to catch you up…Fauvism is what you get if you take Post-Impressionism and put it on Expressionist steroids through a Technicolor lens.
Yes!!
modern art, which, if you are unclear on that as a concept, is the art that tends to look like your kid could do it, but your kid couldn’t do it and your kid didn’t do it, so it’s probably best if you let go of that cliché and just think about how it makes you feel.
touché
In less than two weeks after the massacre, the Australian Government changed the nation’s gun laws, placing strict control over the sale of semiautomatic and fully automatic firearms. A fact that should make any sane American insanely jealous.[*19]
It does, but so few of us Americans are even vaguely sane adjacent.
I thoroughly understood the way that life is like an undertow for people who aren’t tethered to the world properly.
and for some a fargin’ anchor.
develop complete muscle memory around the whole process of a phrase. This means repeating it so many times that it loses all meaning and becomes a word bicycle that my mouth will never forget how to ride.
word bicycle <— Hannah is fargin’ brilliant
peloton of pre-prepared statements
see previous
Fat jokes were my bread and butter, which is a shame, because that kind of bread and butter is basically a shame sandwich, and shame is never part of a healthy, balanced diet.
They say that comedy is trauma plus time. But I have never needed time. I have always written my stories for laughs at the same time as the humiliation is tearing my self-esteem to shreds. This is my gift.
ouch The world owe you an apology.
I listened. Of course I did. I always listen, even though I always find it so painful to listen to thin people lecture me about fat. But I listened, because I have also been lectured by people who don’t believe I qualify as “fat” and so they don’t think I have any authority to talk about body image on stage. My body is just wrong, I have been told as much my entire life, so there is nothing else left to do but listen.
people suck
greasy smile of pity dripping in smug
oh we’ve met this person.
The breakup was, however, very difficult for me to process. I wanted to be in a partnership more than anything. I come from a family of marriers. It’s all I knew, and I always did my best. And yet I just couldn’t steer the Good Ship of Intimate Relations out of the shallows.
It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to advocate for quiet time. It was more that I wanted so badly to be the person who loved going out, hanging out with groups of friends, because that’s what well-adjusted people all do. I’d seen it in films.
I had previously told him that I suffered from suicidal ideation and depression when I took the pill, but that fact had been thrown away with other such trivial details like my age and humanity.
fuck doctors … well not all of them.
I heard him tell me that I had no right to make decisions about my body without first discussing it with my husband. I got up and left.
The way she words this “I heard him tell me” versus “he said” makes the point. brilliant
The myths around ASD and ADHD have wasted enough of my life, so I don’t really want to waste any more of my time thinking about them, much less writing them down. These diagnoses have given me a pathway to understanding myself, and for the first time in my life, I am able to like who I am. If that’s not enough for you, if you want me to convince you that I am autistic, or prove that ADHD exists, then you can just go fuck yourself.
Brilliant!
If you are a conspiracy theorist, this is where you begin to wonder if I might perhaps be a lizard. I am not. Now piss off.
I have never managed to develop a reliable system to file and separate my thoughts into individual think-pieces, and so I am utterly incapable of having one thought without at least another hundred coming along for the ride.
same
“But it’s all part of the soup. Too late to take the onions out now.”
I am not, nor will I ever be, a matriarch. I represent the very end of my branch of the family tree. Which, in and of itself, wasn’t a painful thought; it was just that I had never been entirely sure that I was attached to the trunk at all.
I put my drink down and began to think about how I’d been forced to deal with far too many onions growing up, and how many of those onions had not become part of my soup as Nan had promised. They were still very raw and stung like an absolute bitch.
Novelty socks are the gift you get adult men who have everything except a personality.
Fuck, I have like 10 pair!
direct line from Picasso to Trump. Apart from the pithy line “Let’s not make art that great again,”
true
suit-wearing butch lesbians with statement glasses and fancy shoes.
she was a furious thumb in an apron, mean squared to the power of guppy.
there is no straight line to be found through trauma.
pilfering
I could no longer believe that I was assaulted because of my sexuality alone, it was my gender expression that had invited the brunt of the violence. If I had looked like what he expected a woman to look like, it would never have happened as it did. I think he hit me because he saw me as being incorrectly female. I think he hit me because he saw me as a threat to his masculinity. But most of all, I think he hit me because he saw it as his job, as a man, to enforce the rules as he understood them.
Most of my life summed up perfectly. I can only hope my years in martial arts, learning to always be aware of and looking for escape routes has allowed me to avoid any violent confrontations. That and I am told ...I used to look intimidating.
I felt too small and too weak, which is to say, I felt too traumatised.
Because trauma won’t leave you alone until you feel safe,
Safety is not a gun. Safety is being able to trust that those around you WANT to protect you from harm. But if those around you don’t believe you are “like them,” then they will focus on the discomfort you make them feel, and that discomfort is not a safe space.
yes how queers are made to be unsafe when really it just the normies feeling a bit not-normal for a minute.
But I made a decision not to diminish my ambiguity by explaining it; people would just have to sort me out on their own. It was, after all, their problem.
Yes
None of it is gendered. None of it. I love who I am. It’s only on the other side of my skin where the pain begins. But I will not negotiate anymore. I am proud to be Queer.
It was a bold idea, but bold ideas will often happen when desperation pushes a creative brain to find a solution.
I had long known that sounds had the potential to trigger physical pain in my body, but I had only just begun to actively search for sounds that triggered pleasant responses.
because I knew better than most that “coping” takes a fuck-tonne more effort and energy than “thriving” ever will.
So many truths in this book, but this gem really hits home. Like a rock hitting your glass castle you thought was made of stone
Nanette is basically Eat Pray Love for autistic queer folk.
Bah!!
Adrienne Truscott was responsible for one of the most powerful shows critiquing rape culture in comedy—and
I’ve never seen Nanette. I’ve heard it’s not very funny. A little joke there. You’re welcome.
thank you
The best way to judge a woman is by the way she looks. The best way to know a woman is to let her speak her own story.
Ducking brilliant!
