Nurshable

08/28/2025

A friend without kids suggested that parents should use AI to get ideas for how to deal with parenting stuff.

It's a good idea in theory. And I hate it.

The internet has become full of AI generated recipes that will not work with AI pictures of amazing food.

It has also become full of AI generated posts about raising kids that remind me of AI food. If I didn't cook I wouldn't pick up on the fact that the recipe would be a problem. If I didn't bake I wouldn't pick up on the fact that the beautiful cake would not be the result of the recipe as it was written. Because I bake a lot and have made many mistakes and now am at the point where I improvise. I can look at the cake recipe and try to figure out how I could get the recipe to work.

AI can give some good advice.

It can also create bizarre stories and advice that may be harmful.

There's a story circulating about a child using the word "blueberry" to let her mother know something was wrong, and her mother calling the police.

Blueberry is a commonly used word and the post is obviously generative AI because it describes things that don't actually happen the way AI imagines they would happen and encourages us, as parents, to act on the hallucinations of AI in weird ways.

There are actual humans that write things on this topic that are valuable and useful and experience based.

But people that are looking to learn ... Don't have experience..and people that don't have experience aren't going to recognize that something is off. Just like someone that doesn't cook will probably recognize the AI cucumbers are AI because they're rectangles, but a lot of things are going to sound plausible. And when a novice cook "messes up" a recipe that was never meant to work.. they are going to blame themselves for being bad cooks.

Apply that to the parent child relationship.

It's everything I hate about "parenting experts" that tell you that if their method doesn't work you're just doing it wrong. (In reality kids are people and nothing is always going to work because sometimes kids are just going to insist on doing something that is awful.)

People at least have experiences to base things on. AI is generating fake experiences from its interpretation of real ones that it has read and it's re-combining things in ways that often make no sense.

08/28/2025

There will be no processing. Some stories aren't meant to be told after the fact. They were already told by others along the way and that is all that will ever be said.

And it's fine.

There are other stories that are all mine.

Hot summer days with toddlers and small kids. Long meandering wanderings to a playground a few blocks away with a bumpy bumpy bridge and an old pine forest where, if you wandered in at just the right spot, there were clearings and moss.

I was a character in a story being told.
While also existing in the day to day.

The story? I have permanent anger about the role I was assigned.

But the role I tried to find for myself? That is permanently precious and is what has become my job now, and hopefully a growing business.

I tried to be outside as much as possible when everyone was small. Outside was a yes zone with no dangerous furniture, fewer ways to make a mess, and a lot of ways to absorb sunshine and tire ourselves out.

I was a programmer and systems administrator for most of my 20's before kids. Children are deeply wonderfully fulfilling and lovely and days can be full of games and fun. But I have always needed intense physical activity and something to occupy my brain with.

That thing ended up being plants. When I was upset I would look at plants. I would try to describe the plants in my head. I would try to find out the names of them by going into local plant ID groups on the internet and sharing pictures. I'd plant things in the backyard and try to learn about growing them and would learn about all the ways plants can die in the process, too.

While going through the initial stages of divorce I felt completely worthless and incapable of getting a job other than possibly childcare jobs, but all of the childcare jobs would mean I wouldn't be there for my own kids.

I did not want to monetize Nurshable. It has always felt wrong. It exists to try to be helpful, not to "create content". I didn't want to be a "parenting coach" because I can talk about the tools that have helped me and my kids. But ultimately being a parent is just a relationship and it has always felt wrong to charge or earn from trying to figure out ways to solve problems there. Parenting approaches have also been a source of conflict in my life and.. lots of stuff there. But I was not going to turn Nurshable into a business.

A local farm posted a listing looking for someone to "feed the animals" in the morning. Obviously not something that was going to pay any major expenses. But I was hungry for any kind of autonomy and was currently sustaining myself on the thankfulness of my son's employer at his animal care job when I helped out and did more around his job to keep myself busy while he worked.

I mentioned my kids would need to be with me. At this point I was still homeschooling.

I got the job and while it started out as just animal care, other tasks were quickly offered and I found myself planting and w**ding and it all felt familiar and wonderful and I found myself recognizing all the plants. And learning more about each of them.

My kids would come and set up a blanket in the shade and do their school work as I worked, at first. Skylark would come with me in a carrier and as she became more independent she would sit in a milk crate and play with toys. She learned about road safety at my job with all the private roads and golf carts and slow moving trucks and cars. She still finds ride-on lawnmowers absolutely terrifying because they break the rules of "when there is a car you run onto the grass because the cars cannot drive on the grass."

I adore that job, and still work there.

Along the way I realized that I can remove poison ivy without breaking out in a rash, and that it's a good side gig.

This ended up being a whole thing. An absolutely wonderful woman hired me to remove poison ivy and asked if I could also w**d. She had been battling thistle in her yard for many years. I was able to clean up all the w**ds in her yard while Skylark napped in a carrier and played.

Then a friend of a friend bought a sprawling horse farm with amazing gardens that were overgrown and they didn't know what was a plant and what was a w**d.

That was what led me to the absolutely amazing experience of enrolling my youngest child in preschool. She had been asking to go to school for a while because all her siblings had been in public school for as long as she could remember. Her experience of school was coming with me to hatch chicken eggs in an incubator in her sister's class. (This has become an annual thing for our district's first graders, now)

I had an income. A bank account and a job that had too much work and that paid well enough that I could afford childcare.

And I found a preschool, invited her dad to tour it, filled out the paperwork, paid, and enrolled her in preschool.

I absolutely adore my children. They're amazing. But being dependent after having worked since I was a teenager... Was incredibly difficult. Not having access to resources to make decisions like the one I was able to make. And not feeling like I could manage to do anything other than hemorrhage money was awful.

I felt like a useful thing.
A useful inconvenient bad at her job thing that had an always growing list of ways im which I should be doing better.

I have found that the ability to cope with complete overwhelm and wake up every day drowning.. has become the thing that allows me to work at the jobs that I work at.

Completely overgrown? Sure. I will jump in here.

Then during the winter and when it is raining I help people de-clutter and clean and move heavy things and unload moving trucks because of all of the times that I did all of those things on my own with kids and varying degrees of aches and pains and sometimes pregnancy.

It's funny how the things that I did for years for free while drowning and never being good enough are now the things that I can show up for, plan out, jump into, get done, and that people appreciate and pay for.

I get to hear words like "magic", "fairy", "things feel hopeful now and it's motivating" "the gardens are looking like they were meant to look again."

Everything we learn and do and grow into and become? It all has value.

It's nice. That is all. The whole story that needs telling.

07/04/2025

Since I'm deaf and am unable to overhear things, my partner frequently makes sure that I'm included in conversations. Even conversations that I don't necessarily need to be included in- such as random things that he overhears that aren't necessarily my business but that I would overhear if my ears were not dysfunctional.

It's one of the more precious aspects of our relationship. It feels protective and supportive and bolstering and it's just really... I want to say "kind" but that has certain connotations that I don't know if they necessarily fit.

Let me back up a bit.

When he and I are watching a movie and something doesn't make sense to him, he tends to ask me what's happening because for whatever reason I process plotlines and the intent of authors/directors and pick up on weird things that may not otherwise make sense. He's a mathy-sciency-concrete-troubleshooter. Different skillsets. When I summarize and explain it's not "kind".

It's a sharing back and forth of perspective and perceptions and it's adaptive, I guess? We just sort of share back and forth to move through situations as partners that have a roughly similar experience and roughly similar access to things

At the hospital he was obviously not doing this and so I made sure that everyone understood that I was deaf and lipread and I would make sure that I understood everything that was happening. I have had the experience of being an accessory to my own treatment since sometimes doctors don't bother to communicate with me due to assumptions about how my hearing impacts me.

As a result I'm a very interactive patient and a very interactive mother-of-patient and at all ages with my kids I try to help my kids understand and consent and participate in their care and form questions and voice concerns/worries.

I developed a pattern of spaced out and frequently repeated questions:

1. Has anyone told you what is happening to you?
2. Would you like me to tell you what is happening to you?
3. Brief explanation. Slightly more details.
4. Do you have any questions about what is happening to you?
5. Do you understand why they want to do *test*?
6. Are you okay with this?
7. Can you tell me why you're not okay with this?
8. Would you like me to tell someone that you're not okay with this, or would you like to tell them?
9. After he told them I would reiterate with my understanding of what it was that was bothering him and I would go back and forth between him and them to try and find solutions.

He's a very very different person from me. And has a very very different way of interacting with the world. The decisions he would make are different from mine and the things that would bother him or that he would consent to are different from the things that I would choose for myself. The way he asserts himself is different. The way he expects and wants people to interact with him is different.

Anytime a person is receiving medical care they deserve to be fully involved in a way that respects them as a human being. There's no standardized way of approaching that.

It's a good idea to know that you can always ask to speak with the hospital social worker for questions about why things are done the way they are, or to ask for help arranging things. Or you can ask to speak to a patient's advocate if you need help advocating for yourself. Many hospitals have one available. I used to assume that the reason I didn't have great experiences with doctors or hospitals was because I couldn't hear the information that I needed to know in order to have a great experience. Apparently that information is not often communicated in the first place. Oops.

It's also important to know that patients have a right to sign out against medical advice, that "insurance may not cover things" is often not the case. (And that your insurance card has a handy dandy number on the back where you can call and ask if they have policies related to leaving against medical advice.) Not all of the reasons why someone leaves against medical advice are because the medical advice is wrong or bad. There are other aspects to care that a patient may not be happy with. And it's perfectly valid to leave against medical advice and go to a different hospital or use another care provider if someone is not happy.

It's a weird position to be in where I essentially end up helping someone advocate for something very different from what I would choose or want or what I feel is the good/right approach. But it's not my life, my body or my care.

Life is weird and lifey.

Helping someone be comfortable with something that is necessary is not the same as manipulating people. And even if I agree that a thing is necessary or beneficial, I'm not going to knowingly participate in the manipulation of anyone at all ever for any reason. It's a violation of consent.

"It's his intent to.."
"I understand that, and I personally agree with you. But he has a right to.."

"The reason why they want to do things this way is because... I do think it's necessary because... Are you okay with that?"

"I understand you want to... Unfortunately you need help to do.. They can't safely help you do that because... I can help you do that safely but.. How about we do this other thing that meets your needs in a different way?"

"Is it possible that part of what is happening is a side effect of.."

"I understand why this is necessary/policy, but..."

It was a weird role. It is a weird role.

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07/03/2025

What's to say?

Life is lifey. My partner and the dad of Skylar had a mystery case of encephalitis and is re-learning how to do things like walk without falling and speak clearly.

Skylar has been being aggressive with me and has been having outbursts of extreme upset. She's an angel at school. She's an angel when she's with my sweet sweet friends that have taken her into their homes and families and their beds while I needed to be at the hospital with her papa. (It's surreal loading all your children into the car in the dark of the night and driving down your friend's long dark driveway to her house at nearly midnight with a van full of your children and your partner buckled into the backseat like a child, so that he cannot open the door while you are driving. Your sweet sweet friend and her husband meeting you in the dark, and handing her your sleeping three year old while her husband takes all of the things your older kids have packed. It's strangely calm and almost ordinary. Then the drive to the hospital which is both nearby and so far when you're tired and worried.)

It's been a lot of "I know you are upset. You cannot hit me. You cannot break things. It's okay to be upset." and she cries and she hits me and she cries and she tries to break things and she cries and cries and screams in my face and tries to scratch me and tells me to put her down so she can go break things.

Then she slowly melts into my shoulder, a hiccuping sobbing lump of tension that slowly slowly melts. Then she kisses me and tells me she loves me and won't let me put her down.

She's experienced something incredibly traumatizing. Her papa who is her world and her most precious involved parent ever who is always bringing her to the library and to the grocery store and who sets up all her playdates and is always reading to her and getting her books that she points to on the backs of other books.. Suddenly didn't have enough energy to do much more than hug her the way someone might hug a stranger. And she was suddenly the youngest daughter in two other families for almost two weeks. She now has a bonus grandpa in Brazil because he was visiting when she was with my sweet sweet friend and her family. She has all these independent wonderful experiences that she probably misses and entirely new people she misses and her papa who is slowly slowly coming back to being the papa she knows and loves.

And there's me. Who is currently the constant. And it's where everything... Everything.. Everything comes out.

It's what they say about kids melting down with their safe person. She's been so good and so wonderful and so easy and so everything with everyone. She's been wonderful at the hospital, wonderful at her school.

And she has a ton of tension and upset and anger and emotion and feelings that are all coming out.

And I'm profoundly tired. So very very very very tired.

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05/01/2025

I plucked a line from a song ages ago, and made it into my motto. "love is a verb".

The other day while driving, I passed a Unitarian church and the sign out front said "hope is a verb".

These days I feel more like "everything is temporary". Things are until they aren't. Ephemeral.

It's a little bit familiar. I've always written about how fleeting things can be, and about trying to hold onto the tiny bits of joy that are mixed into even the most exhausting moments.

I think I thought that the end of it all we would all be like "wowza, what a ride that was." And we would all sit around and laugh.

These days the temporary thing feels more like a question mark of what the point even is to every moment and every interaction.

I try to make it the start of the sentence, though.

What if all of this is temporary?
Well, then. Isn't everything?

And I'll take stock of tiny little details the way I do when I am trying to learn a new plant.

Ferns are still a mystery to me. I can recognize a few, but the cinnamon, the Christmas, the Ostrich, the Male fern? Who knows. 😂

The crinkly paper husky, the fuzzy white and the delicate lettuce spirals. The little things that look like scales. The way the older ferns lay down on the ground or dry out standing up from a clump. Details that my brain is sorting out over time, studying without me diving in completely in a more academic way.

I have told myself I am learning about pain this way.

Plants all used to be green until I could see the details.

I used to think that sharing all my tender parts with the person I was to share my life with was a way to feel safe.

It never occurred to me that it was a roadmap, a treasure hunt. A way to.. what, exactly? I don't know.

Is it sadistic, is it a declaration of your own freedom from something, is it your pattern where you just have these things you do? Was it unmemorable when I sat criss-cross applesauce on our old bed and I stared at my knees and talked about the things that hurt and why they hurt?

The simplest explanation is that I am a fern, and you are your own person and are not sensitive to the same things that I am.

But then, I should be able to stick little markers into the things that hurt. Like orange flags along the irrigation line, or spray-painted lines that say where the utilities are buried.

Does it matter at this point, processing these things? Not really. But understanding exactly the shape of what the hurting is? It's a way to be free.

Because it's mine, I know where it hurts and when it hurts and how it hurts. I can feel the margins. And after a lifetime of people suggesting that they know what really bothers me...

I'm done.

It isn't gaslighting when I tell you what is inside of my own head.

It's gaslighting when you repeatedly tell me what my motivations are, what my real thoughts and feelings are, what really bothers me, and when I try to clarify.. I'm argumentative, guilt tripping and manipulative.

I can't gaslight you about what I feel. 😂 Yes, I could misrepresent what I feel. Sure. I guess people do that? The world is a weird place.

None of it was that complicated.

This hurt.

No, I am not *list of other people that would not be hurt*.

Yes, I am allowed to directly mention that something hurts.

No, I am not sharing this with you to manipulate you. I do not have a planned outcome for any of this.

When something hurts I lead with "ouch". Not necessarily a super well thought out research paper that uses references to demonstrate that some percentage of people that is greater than 50% would find this sort of pain rational.

(I did end up doing that eventually. And the more I tried, the worse everything was.)

I don't necessarily expect a change in behavior, even. I am able to understand and comprehend that not everyone is able to spontaneously change anything.

Having this internal conversation and processing things has been really helpful.

I quite simply need to be taken at face value and for a person to be honest.

"Assuming the information you have provided me is true and accurate, here is true and accurate information in return."

😂

"Assuming this actually hurt you and you're not just a manipulative overly sensitive control freak.. I am personally not willing or able to avoid doing this thing. So with that in mind, how do we move forward?" Is a much much cleaner conversation than "You're wrong about what you're thinking, feeling, what bothers you and let's keep doing exactly what we are doing and never talk about it and I will talk to other people about you and they will helpfully try to intervene and you will lose your mind slowly and have a nervous breakdown".

Anyway.

Here's a fern. I do not know what type of fern this is. I do not need to know what type of fern it is, because I do not plan to eat it.

I have a hurt. I do not need to deep dive into psychology and try to talk myself out of my ouch anymore.

That is all.

I am currently working on just saying "ouch" without feeling like I need to justify ouch.

It's strange how simple ouch actually is. 😂

I went on a sideways tangent there, didn't I?

04/28/2025

I'm still alive.

I'm trying to figure some stuff out.

Children as content, for one. I have been trying to figure out if I feel I have crossed lines there. (Even with good intentions) And what and why and all of those things.

I can say that I am happy that I never monetized my content. It was suggested a lot of times and I was always uncomfortable because I was sharing out of a desire to help others.

I've been visiting my mom as often as I can, since she has some health issues that she asked everyone to not talk about.

She used to write a weekly article that was roughly based on the reality of raising all of us as kids.

She always asked us what we were okay with her sharing, and I always loved reading what she wrote.

She has all of her old articles saved. Yellowing newspaper in stacks of boxes.

And they're unspeakably precious to us now.

I have watched videos that parents share of their children with a slice of ham on their faces, or wailing at a practical joke gone wrong.

I.. don't know.

I think that going through a divorce has broken me in a lot of ways. It has stripped a lot of the insulation off my internal wires and it's shorted me out.

I'm still here, but I'm processing a lot of things.

The idea of manipulation and assuming positive intent with kids and teaching them about life without accusing them of being manipulative.

It's hard when the idea of manipulation is one that is frequently thrown around by people, society, partners, ex partners. It's hard when you feel manipulated and try to assume the best of intentions and are told that you are manipulating. There's this age-old rumble beneath my skin, this "I can only know for sure that I am not manipulative if I just never share myself with anyone".

It's a lot of sitting in silence and isolation trying to figure out what the end game of any of the "manipulation" would even be. And what is allowed to be shared or reacted to as part of being a genuine real live human being without ulterior motives or an end game.

The thing about manipulation and a hyper-focus on it, is that everything suddenly feels manipulative and false and everyone feels fake and I quite simply don't want to be around people anymore or be responsive or spend time with anyone.

I'd rather be manipulated. 😂😂😭 It feels like it would have less of a negative impact on my life and I would like myself a lot more.

Then there's love. I used to feel like I understood the word really well and deeply. That love was this unconditional devotion to action.

But then there's limits and boundaries and learning that love does have conditions.

Anyway. I'm still here.

I'm just tired and often want to puke when I think too much, so I go play with plants and take pictures of them instead.

Here's a pretty flowering barberry. An invasive ornamental that harbors ticks but that has almost as many pretty little flowers as it has horrible thorns.

01/23/2025

I've been feeling blah about not doing all the things I used to do with my kids with this littlest Skylark.

So I decided to make Playdough.

The top recipe on Google was a link to a Good Housekeeping article about the Play-Doh recipe that Parenting Experts recommend. Complete with instructions on how to make it with your toddler.

I was a little bit skeptical when I read the recipe calling for 2 cups of flour, one cup of salt and two cups of water. (And a tablespoon of cream of tartar and some oil)

But it's been a while since I made Play-Doh.

Apparently the recipe is for homemade paste. Or at least that was what it made. 🤣

I think the Internet and parenting experts are all AI at this point.

I upped the amount of flour to almost 4.5 cups and made workable Play-Doh. Which was necessary since the AI experts were adamant I involve my toddler in making this doughy abomination. 🤣 Failure was not an option.

And how are you doing?

01/01/2025

Happy New Year!

There's nothing objectively different between yesterday and today. No pressure to make any resolutions. No magic.

But. I would like for this year to be a useful thing for me. A tool. An opportunity for me to shed what has been and to look at what remains and what is new.

To say my goodbyes to the things that have been. To shed old anger while maintaining new boundaries. To commit daily to love, to curiosity and growth.

I have two feet. I feel them as I plant them on the ground, lean in to what is pushing me. I feel them as I dance, as I jump, as I crouch and they flex and fold beneath me. I feel them as I run, as I play a game of hopscotch, as I flex and bend my toes as I work and as I write. I am here. I am present, I am grounded.

This is my portion of space in this life. Squared out. Shoulders broad and feet planted. I would like to throw my arms up in the air and take account of each finger, toe, the tip of my nose and the surface area of my lungs, fully expanded.

Then I would like to gather each of you into my arms and tell you that I am very very glad that you are here sharing this space and this life with me.

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12/30/2024

A notebook, stitched-seam with black paper binding. Dark blue with a floral pattern on the cover. Just slightly larger than my hands, with a nice weight to it.

On the cover it has a little area for writing the title or name or topic of the notebook.

My handwriting, slightly stilted, reads: "Sarah is a people, too."

The notebook is empty.

I didn't know what to write inside of it.

There's a fallacy called "Heaven's Reward" which is a cognitive distortion that says if you sacrifice enough, work hard enough or struggle enough, there will be a reward at the end. I've never quite believed this.

The truth is, a person can try very very hard and do their very very best and people can look at them with contempt, view them as lazy, and view everything about them as floofish nonsense.

A perfectly ordinary human being can show up needing comfort and reassurance that all of the complicated, weirdness that we experience as people.. All the emotions, the attractions, the thoughts, feelings, overwhelm, the questions we have, the horrible mistakes we have made in the past.. All of it.. Is valid. And it all is.

And then that person can absolutely dismantle another person who is also perfectly ordinary and a squishy human being with their own insecurities and faults and things they struggle with and their preferences and the things they need in order to feel safe and human.

There is a list of people that I regret providing support to. Not because they were undeserving of support. Not because anything was an awful horrible flaw with them. But because at the end of the day there was nothing reciprocal. I was not also a people. I was a means to an end. A validation of everything in them while being a contemptible nonsense within myself.

It feels weird and recursive, like it's triggered a mental script traversing backwards and chipping away at a problem. If this thing about me is true, then I'm afraid I've misled you and all of these things that I have reassured you about are false. Not because I believe you to be invalid, but because you believe me to be invalid and if that is true then it applies to you within your world view.

I can't provide you with validation if I am invalid. I cannot reassure you that this particular thing about you is perfectly normal if it's not also normal in me. I can't accept you if I'm unacceptable to you.

I'm sorry.

It's so odd. To have questioned myself for so long, because of those people that questioned me while seeking out my reassurance. To have learned to reassure, to accept, to understand that everyone has faults and flaws and breaking points and that everyone is human... Because people I loved needed that from me.

But then that couldn't apply to me for some reason.

But it does. Within how I view people and humanity.

I don't need to write anything in that notebook because me being a people too... Is a coherent part of my world view. The only reason I needed to think about that and reassure myself is because some of the people that I was reassuring... were doing the opposite with me.

It's weird trying to explain to another human being that it's not that I view video games or alcohol or anything with contempt.

It's that if I view those things the way I view them, I can't accept that silly little things about myself and about other people are worthy of contempt.

I cannot agree with you logically that video games are a perfectly adult wonderful beautiful hobby when you have shared with me the opinion that women that like bouquets of flowers are somehow dumb. I don't even particularly like cut flowers myself. I like to cut flowers and give them to people that like them. Because other peoples likes are beautiful wonderful things. And if you think back on my interactions with you, you'll see all the ways in which I viewed you in this way, too. In the gifts I gave. You will see no contempt there. You will see amusement and love and all of those things that people deserve.

I can't agree with you that anything about you is valid when you think that other peoples preferences are objectively inferior and that you use logic and reason to approach all of your problems. It would be illogical and unreasonable for me to do so. Cut flowers are dumb because they just die. Video games are dumb because they were never alive to begin with. See? Problem sorted. Romance novels are just dumb. But action flicks are amazing entertainment as terrible actors pretend to be karate experts? You kidding me, bro? Logic is a broad application, not a "I like this, therefore it is true". People like what they like. You like what you like. And it's awesome. Your likes are valid. Unless you crap all over someone else's likes, then your likes are equally nonsensical crap. And yes, this is where you proclaim me abusive because I'm saying your likes aren't valid. Which... Is not an actual thing.

It's not that I judge you or your hobbies.

It's that I am not a reassurance provision machine and I no longer want to reassure or validate people that look at ordinary squishy humanity and human preferences with contempt. If other people deserve your road rage, your contempt, your proclamations of ridiculousness, your insistence that they are illogical and emotional and you hold the one true valid state of ultimate authority and intellect where you can look down on them for everything they are...

I'm allowed to view you with contempt. I'm not obligated to provide you with something that I view as a beautiful wonderful basic life-giving part of society while you hold these contemptuous negative views of other peoples perfectly squishy human ordinary normalness.

I can't both listen to and agree with you that other drivers are insufferable idiots while also reassuring you that you are not an insufferable idiot and that everyone makes mistakes.

And I cannot... Will not.. Never again.. Ever look at myself and try to see all the things you hold contempt for and try to fix them for you.

I don't need to write in that notebook. I'm a human. I'm a people. And I am allowed to give myself the same grace that people and humans deserve.

I don't have to give you that grace. I am allowed to take every item of judgment that you have ever shared with me and plop it down upon your head.

I cannot simultaneously accept that I am lazy and worthless while accepting that you playing video games next to a bowl full of rotting food and mouse droppings and a box full of fleas is valid. I can accept that the task is overwhelming and that you need help. I can give you all the grace in the world and accept you the way I accept other people. But not while you're projecting everything you're failing at onto me and onto other people. I can't choke down the words that I have "never grown up" and "may need therapy" while you... are who you are. What is that, even?

I don't want to. It's not who I am as a person. You know what you say about other people. Turn it inwards. Swallow your own contempt. It's harsh and you will probably choke on it. No one likes the flavor. It's like a lump of burning hot broken glass-coal and it tastes like p**p.

And yeah. No one deserves it. Even you.

Within my world-view you are a perfectly ordinary and beautiful person and I have a lot of love and appreciation and respect for you. Within my world-view you are just doing what you have learned and seen and heard and you're just doing your best and it's hard to adopt new patterns as an adult.

But you were incredibly incredibly cruel to someone who had only ever tried to be kind to you.

And that is not okay.

(This is not about a single person, unfortunately. It's about a life-long experience of the paradox of tolerance and about realizing why my notebook is empty. It's not because I'm not a people. It's because I don't need to prove that to myself because I have spent my life making sure that I understand that about everyone around me.)

Unless you are a child, I will not give you what you insist others do not deserve.

You have made a very logical and unemotional decision about who deserves contempt. It is a very logical and unemotional fact that a lot of your actions are well under that threshold. I'm not saying that I have contempt for you.

I'm asking you why you don't recognize that you should have contempt for yourself within the framework that you have established and the approach you take to judging things and people around you.

I'm not saying you "should" have contempt for yourself. I don't think it's a useful thing for people to feel for themselves or others. I believe that contempt is cruel and awful. What I'm saying that if you're internally consistent with your plotline and beliefs, you and others should feel contempt for who and what you are. Why are you coming to me for reassurance when you view me as worthy of your contempt? My opinion is already emotional, invalid, and I'm just providing you with what you need to be an awful person, no?

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