listening to music with headphones is so awesome especially when it shoots straight into your brain and you can pick out all its little layers like sandwich ingredients
A long text about my dating experiences, body positivity/perception and my current state of mind. Skip if these things disturb you (press J on keyboard if you’re using tumblr on desktop). Also, feel free to message me if you want to chat about this topic :)
I’ve spent YEARS being convinced by others that I’m not an attractive person. I had a photo of me uploaded to someone’s Facebook account (and that someone had never met me in real life), and there were comments from that person, as well as others (who went to school with me), about how I’m annoying etc. and how no one is going to want to fuck me (in precisely those words). I was about 13-14 at that time, and I didn’t find out about the photo until later on (long story).
That completely ruined my confidence for years to come. When I was in high school, I had a crush on a few guys, but I was always too afraid to do anything about it. I was too nervous to even think that someone may like me. So much so, that I was completely oblivious to the fact that a couple of boys did like me (and everyone knew about it but me). Now, I didn’t have the same feelings towards those boys but we remain friendly towards each other now, and even then I didn’t mind hanging out with them.
When I got to college and started dating this one guy, I was completely baffled at the fact that he liked me that I got myself into some uncomfortable situations. Nothing dangerous really, I just wish I didn’t do or change certain things about myself for a boy whose lousy ass couldn’t even bother to tell his friends he had a girlfriend. That experience just completely threw me off and it took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I’m better on my own than with him.
After that guy, I had two more boyfriends. The second one was such a pure soul and I wish I could tell you more about him, but I can’t for privacy reasons. Then came the third boyfriend, another complicated story, but yeah.
Last week I met someone new, we probably won’t be together for long (because reasons), but he told me two things when we went on a date. One of them was that when he first saw me (at an event where I was volunteering and he was attending), he thought that I was 1) an extrovert and a bubbly person and 2) a model. I straight up LAUGHED to his face thinking that he must’ve been joking.
I had to explain it to him that the only reason I was talking a lot there was because I knew one girl from the organization part and I ended up meeting another girl who happens to study at my faculty and know some of my friends, and that while I was talking a lot (the topic was socio-political situation in Croatia and not to toot my own horn here, but I can safely say I have a good knowledge of English and I think I kind of impressed him by that, using complicated sentence structures etc on purpose), I kept thinking that I need to shut up and that everyone probably thinks I’m annoying.
He replied “Why would you need to shut up?”, confused. I then proceeded to explain to him that I’m very shy and reserved, and that generally speaking, I don’t really engage in discussions unless I’m familiar with the crowd.
As for the model thing, I told him I did do modeling (like runway stuff) for about a year when I was a kid (10-11 y.o.), but that I’m absolutely terrified of the industry and would never want to do that. My mind also switched to like 10 more reasons why I couldn’t be a model, but I didn’t tell him that.
Here’s the thing though - this guy is really good looking. Tall, dark hair, dark eyes, defined muscles and all that. When I first saw him, I noticed that he was hot, but I looked around myself and saw a few other girls (who were, in my opinion, WAY more good looking than me), so I thought I stood no chance. For the rest of that evening where we met, I did talk to him, but we were all in a group together and it was a friendly conversation.
My point here is - do not let others convince you that you’re not beautiful. I know I’m not attractive to some people, and that’s okay!! But I cannot imagine how many things I’ve missed out on because I thought I was ugly. Not just relationships, fun stuff with my friends too. When I was on vacation with my friends one year, I straight up had a panic attack before we went out because I thought I looked ugly so I faked being sick (although, having a panic attack does make you sick so I wasn’t completely lying, I guess) and stayed in the apartment.
I always thought I had to be VERY careful about the way I look in order to meet someone that may like me, but you know what? I met all of the guys I’ve dated randomly, and never wore any makeup to any of the dates (mainly because I sweat when I’m nervous and I didn’t want the makeup to be ruined. Also kissing :’)).
When things got more serious with those exes, I thought they’d notice every unshaved and unplucked hair but… they didn’t. They mainly just commented about how nice my eyes look and that I have soft skin (hint: they don’t use lotions).
I’m sorry if the text isn’t very coherent, and there’s also a lot of hidden misogyny to unpack here BUT!!!! Just stop caring about it. It’s difficult, I know, but I didn’t SMILE at photos and even avoided smiling and laughing in social situations because my mouth is shaped a certain way and when I laugh, you can see a lot of my gums. People have made fun of me for it before and I completely took that to heart and hated myself FOR YEARS because of it. I was sad and continued to make myself even sadder all the damn time because of something that a handful of people made me believe.
I continue to be insecure because of many other reasons. But I’m doing so much better than I was before (feel free to ask people like @ravenclawstark@aliyamustafina and @guillaumecizeron on my progress). And I hope that all of you reading this will also learn to stop caring about those stupid things and just enjoy the moment. There’s always going to be people who don’t like you (appearance or otherwise) and you can’t change that. But what you can do is try your best to just enjoy life and love your body for what it was made (to get you places, to help you see, smell, hear, touch and speak), not as a piece of furniture made to look pretty and for others to sit on and destroy.
Hello friends, I was thinking of some of the experiences I wrote in this post four years ago, logged in after a long time, and saw that somebody liked this post and just teared up at the coincidence of it all since I forgot I even posted this (or that there was I time I gave you all a rundown of every second of my life lol) :’)
As a small update, the guy I was dating here was from a different country, we went on a few dates only but we stayed in touch and are really good friends still to this day.
Also, in those four years I finally got my anxiety in check, as well as my disordered eating (for the most part) so yeah. I’m doing so much better than I ever was and I hope all of you are too!
CGI animators should unionize next. normally, their jobs would be too precarious to strike, since studios would replace them without a second thought, but if it’s part of this larger general film strike, they might finally have meaningful power to better their working conditions
if CGI animators unionized, it would kill the MCU. straight up. the the entire business model is built on exploiting CGI animators
