by
Catherine Woodiwiss1. Trauma permanently changes us.
This is the big, scary truth about trauma: there is no such thing as
“getting over it.” The five stages of grief model marks universal stages
in learning to accept loss, but the reality is in fact much bigger: a
major life disruption leaves a new normal in its wake. There is no “back
to the old me.” You are different now, full stop.This is not a wholly negative thing. Healing from trauma can also
mean finding new strength and joy. The goal of healing is not a
papering-over of changes in an effort to preserve or present things as
normal. It is to acknowledge and wear your new life — warts, wisdom, and
all — with courage.2. Presence is always better than distance.
There is a curious illusion that in times of crisis people “need
space.” I don’t know where this assumption originated, but in my
experience it is almost always false. Trauma is a disfiguring, lonely
time even when surrounded in love; to suffer through trauma alone is
unbearable. Do not assume others are reaching out, showing up, or
covering all the bases.It is a much lighter burden to say, “Thanks for your love, but please
go away,” than to say, “I was hurting and no one cared for me.” If
someone says they need space, respect that. Otherwise, err on the side
of presence.3. Healing is seasonal, not linear.
It is true that healing happens with time. But in the recovery
wilderness, emotional healing looks less like a line and more like a
wobbly figure-8. It’s perfectly common to get stuck in one stage for
months, only to jump to another end entirely … only to find yourself
back in the same old mud again next year.Recovery lasts a long, long time. Expect seasons.
4. Surviving trauma takes “firefighters” and “builders.” Very few people are both.
This is a tough one. In times of crisis, we want our family, partner,
or dearest friends to be everything for us. But surviving trauma
requires at least two types of people: the crisis team — those friends
who can drop everything and jump into the fray by your side, and the
reconstruction crew — those whose calm, steady care will help nudge you
out the door into regaining your footing in the world. In my experience,
it is extremely rare for any individual to be both a firefighter and a
builder. This is one reason why trauma is a lonely experience. Even if
you share suffering with others, no one else will be able to fully walk
the road with you the whole way.A hard lesson of trauma is learning to forgive and love your partner,
best friend, or family even when they fail at one of these roles.
Conversely, one of the deepest joys is finding both kinds of companions
beside you on the journey.5. Grieving is social, and so is healing.
For as private a pain as trauma is, for all the healing that time and
self-work will bring, we are wired for contact. Just as relationships
can hurt us most deeply, it is only through relationship that we can be
most fully healed.It’s not easy to know what this looks like — can I trust casual
acquaintances with my hurt? If my family is the source of trauma, can
they also be the source of healing? How long until this friend walks
away? Does communal prayer help or trivialize?Seeking out shelter in one another requires tremendous courage, but
it is a matter of life or paralysis. One way to start is to practice
giving shelter to others.6. Do not offer platitudes or comparisons. Do not, do not, do not.
“I’m so sorry you lost your son, we lost our dog last year … ” “At
least it’s not as bad as … ” “You’ll be stronger when this is over.”
“God works in all things for good!”When a loved one is suffering, we want to comfort them. We offer
assurances like the ones above when we don’t know what else to say. But
from the inside, these often sting as clueless, careless, or just plain
false.Trauma is terrible. What we need in the aftermath is a friend who can
swallow her own discomfort and fear, sit beside us, and just let it be
terrible for a while.7. Allow those suffering to tell their own stories.
Of course, someone who has suffered trauma may say, “This made me
stronger,” or “I’m lucky it’s only (x) and not (z).” That is their
prerogative. There is an enormous gulf between having someone else
thrust his unsolicited or misapplied silver linings onto you, and
discovering hope for one’s self. The story may ultimately sound very
much like “God works in all things for good,” but there will be a galaxy
of disfigurement and longing and disorientation in that confession.
Give the person struggling through trauma the dignity of discovering and
owning for himself where, and if, hope endures.8. Love shows up in unexpected ways.
This is a mystifying pattern after trauma, particularly for those in
broad community: some near-strangers reach out, some close friends
fumble to express care. It’s natural for us to weight expressions of
love differently: a Hallmark card, while unsatisfying if received from a
dear friend, can be deeply touching coming from an old acquaintance.Ultimately every gesture of love, regardless of the sender, becomes a
step along the way to healing. If there are beatitudes for trauma, I’d
say the first is, “Blessed are those who give love to anyone in times of
hurt, regardless of how recently they’ve talked or awkwardly
reconnected or visited cross-country or ignored each other on the
metro.” It may not look like what you’d request or expect, but there
will be days when surprise love will be the sweetest.9. Whatever doesn’t kill you …
In 2011, after a publically humiliating year, comedian Conan O’Brien gave students at Dartmouth College the following warning:
“Nietzsche famously said, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger.’ … What he failed to stress is that it almost kills you.”
Odd things show up after a serious loss and creep into every corner of
life: insatiable anxiety in places that used to bring you joy,
detachment or frustration towards your closest companions, a deep
distrust of love or presence or vulnerability.There will be days when you feel like a quivering, cowardly shell of
yourself, when despair yawns as a terrible chasm, when fear paralyzes
any chance for pleasure. This is just a fight that has to be won, over
and over and over again.10. … Doesn’t kill you.
Living through trauma may teach you resilience. It may help sustain
you and others in times of crisis down the road. It may prompt humility.
It may make for deeper seasons of joy. It may even make you stronger.It also may not.
In the end, the hope of life after trauma is simply that you have
life after trauma. The days, in their weird and varied richness, go on.
So will you.Some pretty good advice.
Tag: to remember
my entire life changed when my dentist told me that the only time my teeth should be touching is when i’m chewing. every single time my teeth are touching i have to separate them. and i noticed that i clench my teeth a LOT.
when your mouth is closed and your teeth are touching or held tightly together, you are unnecessarily straining muscles out of stress. the healthiest way to hold your jaw is slightly apart, where it is relaxed. THIS HELPS WITH HEADACHES
Lunch ideas
@magicalmissb I thought of you!
Needed this!
This could be the most useful post on tumblr I’ve ever seen. Ping @samiholloway
Where was this post all my life?
reblogging for pill snack ideas.
Do this four times repeatedly and you’ll be out. But how does it work? There’s some real brain science behind it.
We’re trying this tonight!
It’s about time someone got around to uncovering all the cheat codes for this “human being” software. It’s only been out for like 10,000 years.
?????????????
I’ve used this technique for about a year, and I can safely say that it has efficiently transformed my sleeping habits from several hours of struggle to fall asleep, to passing out in a matter of minutes.
It’s a form of Alexander Technique. It’s a technique that was designed for actors to keep their body in ready working condition and give it the best way to perform. This is the method used to calm, and center the body. Once the body is at that point it can perform anything you want it to.
Reblogging for later reference after I tried it earlier today to try to calm down. It actually does help a lot, not just for sleep but if you have problems with anxiety.
My default mental setting is “vibrating intensely in the background.” After doing this, I felt noticeably calm and relaxed – I wasn’t as fixated on my breathing, I wasn’t tense, my movements weren’t jerky and I didn’t feel like I had to be as tense as possible to be under control. 10/10 would recommend.
me gonna try it
dont wanna reblog but insomnia is a bitch for some ppl so heres for my mutuals having trouble sleeping.
All characters are self-insert characters. They are you a little to the left, or a particular piece of you dialed up to 11, or the you that you would have been if the path of your life had angled just slightly differently, or you if you never learned this one important thing.
Every character is part of you, but more than that every character starts with a piece of you, big or small, it’s you in one way or another at the beginning. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact it’s essential. That seed of you, that lives in them, it’s what gives them life, breath and blood and bone. And then you tend it, growing it, shaping them along paths you could never have walked nor imagined for yourself. Until they become someone else entirely. A wholly fictional character. But also you, a little bit, somewhere in there in the heart of themselves.
Every character is a self-insert character. It’s only a matter of degrees how much of yourself there is in them when you finally put them out into the world. Stop worrying so much about self-inserts. Worry more about putting that little you into a story that will shape them into a big, beautiful character.
there’s dozens of stories about some kid from our world falling into a different, magical one, being the chosen one or the close companion of the chosen one and saving the world, and then going home where they’re delighted to see their family again and have a new appreciation of their own life. but what about someone who didn’t miss it? what if you save the world and you’re given your medal and stripped of the magic you learned and put back in a world you never missed? and you’re furious.
maybe you gave up a few years of your life. you have callouses and muscles and a few scars and maybe a missing eye or something. you definitely have some blood on your hands. you might have PTSD you can’t talk to anyone about. and suddenly you’re fifteen again, in a body that’s too soft and too short and too complete. you’re always cold because there’s no magic burning in your veins anymore, and even as you grow up the feeling of not fitting doesn’t go away because when you look in the mirror at eighteen you look all wrong: this is not what you’re supposed to look like at eighteen. the sky clouds and you rub at the phantom ache of injuries this body never received. you wake up screaming sometimes remembering the sorcerer who burnt your hand to ashes, or the final battle you almost didn’t make it through, or the moment you felt the magic in you go out.
but here’s the thing: they took you and made you into a weapon that was determined enough and powerful enough to save a whole world. they can put you back where they found you but they can’t undo everything. and there’s this, too: the place between worlds clings to you. you can’t tease fire out of the air but you can feel the pull of the doorways all the time, although none of them so far go to your world.
but you try to make it work for a decade, anyway. you’re dutiful. but one night you leave work late and for the thousandth time you catch yourself searching the sky for firebirds. and you break. of the three portals within five hundred miles, one is a howling, frozen wasteland and one is a deep violet void, but one opens into a misty forest that you step into and don’t look back. it’s not your world, but if you keep going long enough, you’ll get there.
(and maybe much, much later, hundreds of worlds later, you climb through a window, or a door of woven branches int he middle a field, or push aside a curtain, and as you set foot on new land you feel the fire in your veins and sparks at your fingertips and finally, finally, you’re home)
this is going around again and I want to add that if you want to think about sad, angry ex-heroes trying and failing to live normal lives, nothing left to say by imagine dragons is a good song to do that to.
I really want to write a novel about thus.
Imagine the families of the people that came back. Imagine seeing your child, kissing them goodnight one night and shutting their bedroom door, or seeing them off to school. When you see them again they’re angry (but they won’t say at what), and a noise that sounds like an arrow whistling through the air makes them turn. For a moment you see their eyes darken.
They left for school with hunched shoulders, slouching over their work; but they come back and hold themselves tall, and even though they’re a teenager you can’t help but think that no fifteen year old should have that kind of posture, that kind of fire that flashes out sometimes. No fifteen year old or sixteen year old should have muscle memory that falters, suddenly, when it realizes it can’t keep up with this body
One lost an eye, in their world (not this empty shell of a world that they returned to) and even though they know perfectly well that their left eye here sees just as well as the right one, they find themself spinning to look at people when they talk to them. Sudden noises make them whirl. Reigning in their intense feeling of self preservation that’s been honed to make them a hero is too hard to do here, where the skidding of tires is frequent. Heroes with missing arms have to explain to their siblings and friends why they are left handed now.
“Every Heart A Doorway” by Seanan McGuire is pretty much what you’re looking for OP
There’s also “This Is Not a Wardrobe Door” by A. Merc Rustad: text here and full-cast audio here.
Yeah this is pretty much the premise of Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series
My favorite self care tip is to pretend you’re a demon inhabiting a humans body and you gotta look after it, treat it right, cause these things are weak af man and you gotta protect your host
…You know, that might actually work.
Always and forever reblogging this
Sigh. No self-respecting demon would let the body go this long without showering. Brb.
XD wtf that’s great.
This worked for me quite a few times. Especially when I have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning just like
The vessel must be present.
This may actually work, motivation by “to be a successful infiltrator on the mortal plane my host must be as successful as possible”
“The meatsuit has to be presentable if I want to convince the other meatbeings that I’m one of them. Ugh. I guess I have to brush the suit’s teeth and hair.”
It’s so god damn easy to tear people down. People do it every day. It’s simple, it’s satisfying, it’s cathartic, it feels like balm to people who have been wronged, to people who have suffered, to people who have to live their lives outside this virtual space in fear and in real danger, in abusive households and abusive communities and situations that do not foster kindness, empathy, or the extension of good faith toward strangers. Being able to lash out safely from behind a screen at people that are safe to lash out at and who feel like a source of your continuing oppression – that’s novel, at first. It’s invigorating. It’s freeing. The ability to be angry, to say angry things, to express your hurt and rage at any number of nameless or unnamable things is so fucking seductive it’s no wonder so many lgbt+ people have spent time in that place, have had periods of their lives where they engaged in this behavior and said what they wanted and lashed out without thought and allowed others so similar to them to enable their behavior.
It’s so easy to find lgbt+ people who are in pain. To take these people who are in pain and to give them targets. To mold young people and your peers and take advantage of their trauma (so like your own!) and whip it up, normalize it within your group, foster it on any number of available platforms. Focus it on whoever you deem deserving at any given time. Actions speak louder than words. Context is irrelevant. Dialogue is weak. Abusers are abusers are abusers, except when you’re the abuser, because the abuse you have suffered justifies your actions. Your abuse makes you relatable. Your abuse is more important, more valid, more meaningful, more deserving of the care and empathy of others regardless of your coping mechanisms.
It’s so damn fucking easy to just say whatever you want on the internet. It’s so easy to paint a group with whatever paintbrush you like, because no one fact checks, no one cares about context, no one concerns themselves with nuance, no one views the words on the screen in front of them as coming from another human being with an entirely separate lived history full of its own tragedy and triumph and biases and triggers and needs and understanding and hard fucking learned lessons.
We separate into teams and look for ways to score points against the other side. We make ourselves willfully ignorant so we don’t have to switch sides, or even better, remove ourselves from the game entirely. We busy ourselves with tearing our enemies down with unattainable standards, ignore our own hypocrisy, and look to our side to tell us we’re right, we’re right, this time we are right and we will not be silenced and we will not be bullied and we will not let them win.
Our actual abusers don’t see any of it. They don’t care. They go on living their lives. We take our rage and our pain and our frustration out in arenas we understand, in the places we feel safe, and the people we lash out at are the people who should be our friends, our allies, our brothers and sisters and nonbinary siblings who have suffered so much in a world that denies our sexuality, denies our gender, denies our expression, denies our right to exist.
We know our abusers won’t listen. We know our pain is nothing to them, a drop in a bucket. So we hurt the people that can’t help but listen, because our stories are so alike.
I went through an angry phase. I spent a few years screaming at people I felt deserved it, too. Some of them did and some of them didn’t, and doing so brought me short term satisfaction and a deep sense of power that I had not experienced anywhere else. A deep resonance with my own identity that I was powerless to exhibit anywhere in my real life, because family is complicated, friends are the choir and speaking up about microaggressions at work gets queer people fucking fired every fucking day, and you need that god damn money to eat. to live. to pay for your fucking brain pills.
So.
When you have a platform and a fandom and you feel that thrill of being heard, finally – I get it.
But here’s the thing.
Your abuse never justifies levying abuse on others, strangers, people whose context you do not know and whose stories you have not heard.
Your emotions are valid. You are free to feel however you like. If you need to vent in private, among friends and colleagues and people you feel safe with, by all means.
Your favorite characters and your favorite ships and your favorite relationships and your fanfiction and your fanart may be how you express yourself or vent or cope. Your Shit means different things to different people, and to some, it means nothing at all. Let it fucking go. Your shit is not the bar of lived experience other people in fandom must meet to be considered sufficiently oppressed to spare them your bullying.
Your trigger and your context and your trauma is your own. It does not belong to anyone else. It is your responsibility to understand your limits and respect the rights of other creators, just as it is the responsibility of creators to properly tag and label their work to spare those whom it might upset the indignity of reliving their trauma within a space that is supposed to be safe for them. A space that for some may be the only safe space they have. A space that for some may be the only escape available to them. A space that, for some, may be the only way they can begin to express themselves, furtively, in stolen moments in an oppressive environment.
Fandom is where so many of us found ourselves. It’s full of us, lgbt+ people in various life stages, expressing ourselves in communities dedicated to content that made us feel enough to find ourselves here in the first place. It’s where children currently are discovering labels for feelings they have never had the words to talk about before. It’s where adults go in the midst of their busy lives to contribute to a body of work motivated by nothing but emotion for the source, for the community, and/or for the hope of encouraging feedback from their peers, their fans, their heroes, all three. It’s where everyone goes and discovers there are people out there just like them, after all.
It’s where people are picking their teams and suiting up and getting in line and hurting people just like them, every day.
It’s where people are putting the feelings and wellbeing and sanctity and rights of fictional characters over those of actual human beings who committed the grave sin of enjoying a thing a different way, or for different reasons.
Fandom is full of amazing connection and moments I wouldn’t trade for the world. I wouldn’t be married to my amazing wife right now without it. But it’s also a battlefield in a bubble where I watch oppressed people tear each other apart every single day, while of course, in the meantime, outside the filmy fucking boundary between this world and the real one, the same privileged sorts continue to dominate every aspect of mainstream media, the white house is full of incompetent, hateful people, some of whom are literal nazis, white nationalists feel safe enough to wear swastikas on public transit in liberal epicenters, gay men in russia are being sent to death camps, the police are murdering people of color indiscriminately without fear of personal or professional consequence, the supreme court is one death or retirement away from setting back civil rights in the united states a century, trans people have to watch a nation of frightened pissbabies scream about the sanctity of public bathrooms while they themselves suffer from an increased rate of being literally fucking murdered simply for existing, gay teenagers ostracized from conservative families sleep homeless in the street with winter fast approaching, hurricanes devastate a dozen nations because this century has paved a political landscape where corporate profits prevail over basic human rights – and you know what, fuck it, let’s make it a little personal –
half my family has never acknowledged the fact that I have been married for a year because they don’t believe it is a legitimate marriage because I and my wife are both women, my wife and I went to the hairdresser the other day and when we checked in with the same last name we were asked if we were sisters (and upon clarifying, the woman who was to cut our hair loudly and incredulously gasped, “is that legal here?”), one of my best friends, a woman I have known since high school (that’s 17 years ago, for those keeping count) was told she would have to undergo a thorough and lengthy process via working with HR, her boss and the owner of her company before she could represent herself as her correct gender at work – and even after she jumped through all those hoops, she was told she was absolutely not allowed to use the women’s restroom under any circumstances – When I told my father about my engagement, he tearfully turned to me and said “but you’re supposed to marry a guy, and have babies” – and because this was my father, who I have always had a good relationship with despite remaining closeted most of my life, who I have always and still deeply love despite the shit that comes out of his mouth sometimes, who worked 12 hour days in construction to support me after divorcing my mother when he was nineteen years old – I actually fucking felt guilty.
The memory of how I felt in that moment will follow me until I fucking die, and when I log on to this website at the end of the day and just want to fucking relax and spend time yammering about things I like with people who like those same things, when I just want to spend time in this space that makes me feel good, when I just want to create content for the joy of creating it and the joy of seeing others enjoy the thing I created – the fucking last thing I want is to see myself, my wife, my close friends and fandom friends alike being put on blast by petty people leveraging a nebulous, ever-changing definition of purity, backed by a group of people I know have suffered and hurt and feel justified hurting others because of it.
Fandom is where we go to escape the hellish fucking bullshit that is reality, for fuck’s sake.
I don’t fucking care who hurt you. Visiting pain upon others in the aftermath is your choice. Bullying others because a group of impressionable, hurting people looking for a leader will follow you into the trenches here on a battlefield where we should all fucking know better is your choice.
Your feelings aren’t always your choice. That’s fair.
The way you choose to express and react to and process and deal with those feelings IS your choice.
Your actions are your choice.
So try to be kind. Try to be empathetic. Understand your feelings and understand when you are being manipulated and for god’s sake, when other queer people come out in droves to tell their stories, try to think critically, even if they are on the other “team.” Block content that upsets you. Use tools available to you to keep yourself safe! Blacklist tags. Blacklist URLs. Block people. Be frank about your triggers if you are able and try to give people the benefit of the doubt – and if you can’t, put space between you and them, and then use the myriad of tools available to you to put a wall in that space.
I know all about the kind of catharsis that comes from being a “mean gay.” I know all about constructing a set of rules within a group and then judging others outside that group by that context and punishing them when they fail purity tests they knew nothing about. I know all about fighting disrespect with disrespect and anger with anger and logging out at the end of the day to go cry – not because I was sad, but because I was so fucking angry I couldn’t process the emotion any other way.
I also know all about walking away from that life, that toxicity. I know about taking a break. I know about reading, a lot, for months and years, about experiences both like and very much unlike my own. I know about resolving to be better. I know about cutting out the people who made me worse, and keeping the people who encouraged me to be better.
I know how much my life improved when I endeavored to keep my venting and negativity among friends who could actually support me, in places where I couldn’t hurt anyone, and present a positive force to the public, instead. To lift up the things I like and to block and move on with the things I don’t. To let creators have their space and their platform here in this one place where we can each carve out some small part for ourselves and feel like we are in control for once in our fucking lives. I know I stopped crying so much. I know my hobbies stopped making me so angry, all the time. I know that the only times I have been truly, deeply upset in my time in this fandom have been when I have been targeted or those I care about have been targeted.
I know how fucking hard it is to tear yourself away.
I know how fucking worth it it is.
Take care of yourselves.
Whenever I watch anime I’m basically always on guard for bullshit fan service no matter how far i’m in because anime was a mistake. So when the always suitably dressed train technician/driver said she was “releasing pressure limits” and began to take her coat off i was like oh god here comes the poor excuse to show her boobs…
BUT I WAS WRONG HERE COMES AN EXCUSE TO SHOW OFF HER RIPPLING MUSCLES HOLY SMOKES
😍👌👌👌🙏
edit: this is kabaneri of the iron fortress. please stop tagging “what is this” just spend 10 seconds clicking the source and reading my tags omg..
Hi Sarah! Do you have any advice on freshman in uni, first time moving out of a house with my own bedroom and lots of privacy, to an apartment that I’m going to share with 5 other girls, and a bedroom I’m sharing with 1 girl and her dog?? I’m at a complete loss at what to bring and what to expect
10 Things To Think About When Moving In To A New Apartment With New Roommates, A List I Just Made Up And Is Not At All Inspired By The Horror Story of My Personal Experiences.
1) holy cannoli that is a lot of bodies to share a space with. Be aware that that is…a lot of bodies to share a space with, and you might have to carve out a cubicle in he library, or a practice room in the Music Building, or somewhere else where you can go to be alone. This is not a moral failing, just know that option is open to you.
2) be really really up front with what you need. Notice I did not say “exactly how you want your life to look”—I mean the things you absolutely cannot give up. For instance, if you know that Roommate B’s habit of listening to music without headphones in the kitchen will make you go insane axe-murderer on her, that’s something you need to talk about with Roommate B.
This is especially important if you’re crammed into a 8×10 space with someone. Clarifying with your Bedroommate that you need quiet after 10pm—or you’re not helping walk the dog—or you sometimes need time to yourself & it’s not a reflection on her—is something to talk about now rather than later, when you’re more likely to have an argument than a discussion.
3) Chances are, you will have to compromise on what you need anyway. Communication just makes it more likely to reach a genuine compromise, where everybody isn’t tearing their hair out or suppressing anger.
4) Have a chore wheel, or at least agree on a system for taking care of the mess. It’s the dorkiest thing in the entire world, but a chore wheel where you guys are explicit about when everybody needs to do their stuff, is the easiest way to head 50% of fights at the pass. If possible, spell out what each task means: “clean the bathroom” = “wiping down the shower, windexing the mirror, cleaning the toilet bowl, and sweeping the floor”
Someone is still not going to do their job and you’re going to have a repeat of the cold war over a stack of dishes in the sink. But at least if you can point to the chore wheel it’ll be resolved much more easily.
5) Be very clear on what each roommate is paying for. Are you guys going to share groceries? Split only basics like toilet paper, spices, milk and eggs? Is the stuff in common areas (dishes, pots, tables, books, tvs) communal? Do you owe anyone for using it?
6) I recommend a monthly roommate meeting. We used to have ours at 10pm on Sunday, because everyone was generally in the apartment then. We used the Roommate Meetings to pay bills (rent and utilities) but also to talk about any issues we felt pertinent.
And I only had 2 roommates. With 5, you probably definitely need a time to circle up and get shit in order.
7) There is never going to be enough counter space, table space, general-flat-surface space for all your junk. Never. I live alone with a kitchen island and tabletop cart and there isn’t. It’s some sort of law of the universe.
8) Be reasonable. You can hate how loud Roommate C’s friends are all you like, but she is entitled to have them over Friday night for board games. If she cleared it with you beforehand, Roommate D’s boyfriend can come stay for the week even if you’re sick of seeing his face over your oatmeal. Flexibility and understanding from you means you’ll get the same in return.
9) But also, be prepared to enforce your boundaries. If Roommate D’s boyfriend decides not to leave after a week, and actually looks like he might be de facto moving in, you’re well within your rights to approach D and your other roommates and talk to them about how that isn’t what you signed up for.
10) WHAT TO BRING (on top of the typical stuff that I imagine you’re already bringing, like a bed, sheets, towels, clothes, etc.)
- Cleaning products.
- You will need them. Probably immediately after showing up when you realize the previous tenants didn’t do an A+ job.
- 1 pot, 1 skillet, 1 pan, a knife and a wooden spoon
- (I don’t know if you’re planning on cooking much, but you can cook pretty much everything in the entire universe of food if you have these five things.)
- Command strips.
- The best part of command strips is now not only can you hang that cool poster, but they come in hooks too. I hang practically everything from command hooks—all my cooking spoons, towels, necklaces, keys. The easiest way to organize stuff.
- A couple rubbermaid or general storage boxes, of a size that will fit under your bed or in the back of your closet.
- You are 100% going to have stuff that you need, but not right now: your stash of winter clothes, extra pads or tampons (if necessary), spare cleaning products, the iron, shoes you really only wear with this one outfit, etc. Stick all that stuff in a box to keep the mess from sprawling everywhere.
- Tape and scissors.
- Do not ask me why you (or your roommates) will end up needing tape and scissors, I don’t know. But you will.
- At least 1 of your favorite things.
- Look, it’s not always the first night, or even the second. But there’s going to be a night when you’re finished unpacking and the excitement of a new place has worn off, when you lay in bed and your heart finally realizes you aren’t home anymore. That you are in a strange place, and everything is going to be weird and different for a while until you settle into it. And you are going to feel an awful, niggling panic and misery rise up from the center of you like a cold tide.
- And then, you’re really going to want your favorite book, or Nutella, or that comic you’ve been promising yourself, or whatever it is that won’t…really make anything better, but might make you feel better about it
just moving along like everyone else 