Stop telling yourself that the grass is greener on the other side, because it’s not. It is greener where you water it. So take control of your life and start watering your own pastures and grow your own greener grasses.
Stop both envying your neighbor’s green grass AND watering your own. We’re in a fucking drought. You can’t sustain that shit. Think beyond the lawn that society told you to want. Put in some native plants that will thrive and bloom with very little water. They might be a little more spiny than what you first planned, but there is great beauty and variety in these hardy survivors. Your yard will be way more interesting and friendly to wildlife than that of the people who took the easy route and poured on water at the expense of other people and organisms. (This has been a California-themed post hijacking.)
No but like along with being literal good advice (GRASS AND LAWNS ARE A TERRIBLE IDEA WE SHOULD REVERSE THIS CULTURAL EXPECTATION NOW) this is also metaphorically good advice (as I’m sure you knew when you posted it).
There are sometimes things that you take for granted that you are just Expected To Want or Do or Be that you don’t actually have to. You’re so used to it you don’t even think about it, but the moment you do a less resource-heavy alternative appears.
On an environmentally friendly level this is a terrible example, but a couple years ago I was talking with my therapist about problems I was having being a functioning human being, and I went on a rant about the dishes and how they stress me out and I feel like I never get them done and then I hate myself and after listening to this whole rant I expected my therapist to give me the normal pep talks about being kind to yourself and taking it on a little bit at a time but instead he just had the most exasperated look on his face and he said,
“Buy some paper plates.”
He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world and I was completely speechlessly thunderstruck.
He said, “As an environmentalist, I am giving you permission for your own health to buy some paper plates. Problem solved.”
I don’t always use paper plates now. My mental health does allow me to keep up with the dishes better than I was (though these days my physical health has started interfering). But when I feel that slipping? I skip the cultural expectation that I should just be doing the dishes all the time. I conserve my (metaphorical, the opposite of literal in this case, sadly) water, and I buy some paper plates.
There a thing that’s ruining your mental health? Your life? It feels like a simple thing that other people can just DO, but you can’t? Often there’s a simpler solution. If you are tired of taking care of your hair, cut it into a pixie cut to save yourself the hassle. Hell, shave it off. You don’t need hair! Google hangout is a great alternative to going out when you want to talk to a friend but aren’t sure you can get yourself out of your house. If food stresses you out, buy shit you can just grab and eat without even having to microwave (I fucking love cottage cheese and vegetables for this exact reason).
You do not have to cook. You don’t have to date or get married. You don’t have to be monogamous if you do want to date or get married. You don’t have to be straight. You don’t have to be a boy or a girl. You don’t have to look a certain way or talk a certain way or eat certain things. You don’t have to go to college. You don’t have to be in that major. You don’t have to own a house. You don’t have to want or have kids. You don’t have to wait for the perfect partner to have kids if you do want them.
It’s such a normal thing to have a lawn that many people don’t even consider the time, money, and water it would save to just get rid of it and replace it with an alternative that takes into account the native environment of where it’s growing. How much easier their life would be without maintaining something that just went there because it was expected with no regard for whether it naturally fit, and instead put in plants that serve the same function but actually thrive and take root with no real effort.
Instead of fighting to maintain expectations, throw away your lawn and plant natively instead. Both literally and metaphorically.
when you go from a bad situation into a better one you may collapse exhausted and unsure what to do and full of grief, you may need time to regain the ability to do things as yourself or motivated by anything other than terror, you may need time to process or mourn or fall apart in ways you could not before,
and people may use this as proof that the old situation was better for you, proof that you need to go back, and it is not proof that it was better for you or proof that you need to go back
!!!
It’s so incredibly common to “fall apart” when you’re finally safe. You no longer need to stay so tightly coiled in on yourself, you can finally leave survival mode and process your trauma. You’re not holding yourself up by sheer terror anymore and suddenly the damage that terror has done to you becomes immediate and obvious.
This is so important. Don’t go back. Things are already getting better, even if it doesn’t feel that way.
This is a documented phenomenon with abuse in particular. I’ve had a number of people ask me why they’re falling apart now after they’ve moved into a safer home, or they’re in a less dangerous area, or they’ve left an exploitative job, or they’re in a healthy relationship for the first time. Generally, it’s because they made that positive change.
When we’re still in the midst of crisis, we’re often too overloaded and physically/emotionally unsafe to really feel or process anything. So for most of us, everything gets pushed down/repressed/dissociated until later, when we’re safe and supported. The threshold of safety at which processing begins to occur varies from person to person. And the mental calculations used to determine “safety” usually happen on an unconscious level. Very few of us have the conscious thought “I’m safe now, so I can process what happened to me.” Instead, the subconscious realizes some level of safety has been achieved, and so it just dumps a load of suppressed stuff.
Sometimes, it’s contrast to past experiences that makes us realize something was traumatic at all. In such cases, it’s not that we’ve reached a level of safety and can thus begin to process, it’s that we finally have a basis for comparison to know that what went before was unacceptable.
this is also the case for getting treatment/medication for an ongoing illness. it’s theorized that’s why antidepressants sometimes seem to cause suicide – someone who was too defeated and exhausted to even try to kill themself might react to the return of energy by following through on suicidal ideation they just didn’t have the wherewithal to address before.
i’ve even observed something similar with physical illness. when i found a pain medication that worked for my chronic pain, i slept like 14 hours a day for the first couple weeks – because finally i COULD sleep without being woken up by pain.
please spread the word that it’s normal to faceplant when a long-term stressor is removed. you’re not getting worse. you’re starting to heal.
anyway, you gotta think that experience will stay with him. all these people clutching him like family, desperate for him to live, simply because he’s a human being and that alone is precious beyond price.
anyone else get a fuzzy-restless feeling when you need to do something but your brain won’t focus on anything and you’re silently begging yourself to just do one thing but instead you’re scrolling tumblr even though you don’t even want to be … it’s like your head is filled with heavy electric cotton like you’re both uncomfy and unable to stop
This is the best damn description of executive dysfunction I have ever heard
just moving along like everyone else 