Duchesstopaz - Essence

Don’t mind me, just sitting here thinking about…..stuff. Mind boggling stuff.

ITS PRIDE MONTH FUCKERS PAY UP 💵🤲

I love them

Let's be real for a moment here. Forcing every human being everywhere to convert and conform to one belief, aka your belief, is a form of colonization and cultural genocide, no matter if it's a religion or atheism.

Some of y'all are basically repackaging colonial conservative Christian hegemony with a progressive bow wrapped around it.

i really like how the little mermaid (2023) took ariel's longing in the original and intensified it, but for the entire film. there's such a wistful undertone to it, even though eric and ariel's desires are clearly mapped out. the cinematography, the score—everything's drenched in melancholy, and i just think it brilliantly encapsulates the idea of hiraeth ("homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was").

*Trigger Warnings: Descriptions of physical abuse, mental abuse, emotional abuse, parental abuse, verbal abuse, child neglect, threats, anxiety, panic attacks, violence towards children.* Monday, June 19th, 2023 Part 4 6:32pm

When I was 15, I was forced to get a job to pay for all of my school fees. I had to convince my future manager to give me the position illegally because I would eventually turn 16 in 3 months, which was the legal age to work at the time. After I got the job, you told my mom to force me to give her all of my paychecks to help her with the bills and groceries, and confiscated my money to use as an allowance for me. So, when I continued to be your perfect little pawn, then, I would slowly get the money I needed for my school activities. You used that opportunity to stop helping my mother with the bills, even though she made half as much as you, and a little after I was 16, you had 2 new cars and started your impulsive Amazon shopping habit that turned the extra bedroom into the “workout room” that it is today. I wasn’t even allowed to save for a car because I didn’t have my permit, which is because you and mom decided not to teach me until a year later because I wasn’t “making enough to get a car in the first place”. How does that make sense?

I decided to take inspiration from my father and turn vegan during my sophomore year. I had to learn how to grocery shop on my own for my diet, and cook for myself because he didn’t need “his wife” taking extra time to focus on my “unnecessary needs”, which was fine, I learned so much from that time. But, he also asked me questions everyday about the benefits of veganism and the recipes I was making and how much things costs because he wanted to “cut down from 330lbs to 260lbs”. He tried to make me feel antagonized for being vegan and that I was a burden on my mother for it, but also showed interest in it, then all these years later, he’s vegetarian now because he was inspired by me.

When I was 17 and a senior in high school, I didn’t have the motivation to truly apply for scholarships and to college due to my severe depression. No one ever asked or checked in on how that process was going, because it was assumed that I was doing great in school and would go to college, true, but still. I received no assistance searching for schools and scholarships, and it was because of my teachers that I received my full-ride scholarship to an almost Ivy League-level school. I wasn’t even excited when I received it because I was anxious to tell you all. And, I was right to, because you both weren’t even excited when I told you, the interaction lasted 2 seconds. Yet, you both turned around and gushed to everyone who would listen and on social media of how proud you were of me and how hard I worked. You wouldn’t even tell me that yourself.

I told my counselor about some of the trauma that you put us through because I wrote about it in my essays. I also wrote about how I found out that you were beating my mom, after she told me that she wanted to divorce you. I made the counselor promise me that she wouldn’t report it because the abuse stopped years ago, but while I was house-sitting for my mom’s boss, CPS came to the house. I admitted that I talked to the counselor about some things that happened at home, and my mom told me that she was glad that I was staying at that house because you were threatening to kill me.

I was part of the ever-controversial class of 2020. So, before the COVID lockdowns started, I was already planning for prom and graduation. I asked my “parents” for assistance paying for some of the costs needed to have the prom and graduation that I deserved, I guess I should have expected that you would say no. And, it was a slap in the face when you both told me to research how to make my graduation invitations and find a photographer, to not only pay for by myself, but to send to all of my and my mom’s family and to yours. And after the lockdown, and all those plans were canceled, you only threw me a party after my Nana told me she was making me a cake.

James decided to “gift” me his second pickup truck for graduating. Not mentioning all of the functional issues the truck had, and directing me to pay the $3,000 dollars worth of work that needed to be done to it. Then, after asking him if the truck would survive the 3-hour trip to Atlanta, he told me that he didn’t know and that I should continue fixing it. 2 weeks of me starting college, the truck was out of commission and he refused to help me figure out what to do. And a year later, after paying $1,500 of parking fees for a broken truck, he finally came down and scraped the truck, but kept all the money from it. It’s no surprise though, since through my 2 and a half years of college before this “gap year”, I never received any financial support from my adults.

I spent every break trying to avoid coming home. I took advantage of the fact that my college offered to house students who have abusive households over the break. Especially after my first Christmas break, where mom and I had our fight about literally all the trauma that I have endured from my supposed “father-figures”, that she continues to ignore, excuse, defend, and support. When my school denied me the opportunity to stay on campus the summer after my sophomore year, I thought I was going to be homeless. I wasn’t allowed back home after the fight, and I had no where else to go. But, after talking to my dad’s side of the family, I went back to where I grew up to stay with them. Of course, only to endure more abuse and more “conversations” of them defending my dad, because apparently, my whole family is fucked all the way up!

After I returned for my junior year, I thought things were going to be great. I was finally moving on from all the shit that you and everyone else did to me. But of course, scary men still exist, and after experiencing yet another triggering, traumatic event, I was done with this life that I’ve been dealt. Hence, the medical leave, or as most people refer to it, “a gap year”, and moving to New York with my sister, and then, having no choice but to move back home when everything fell apart.

Part 1 -- Part 2 -- Part 3 Part 5

BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER CAST ━ Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Dominique Thorne and Letitia Wright for EBONY Magazine (November/December 2022)

*Trigger Warnings: Mentions of emotional and verbal abuse, su*c*d*l thoughts, self-deprecating thoughts, anxiety, and depression.*

Monday, Nov. 7th, 2022

4:37pm

Dear Me,

I’m struggling so much to control my anxiety and stress since my birthday 2 days ago. Deadass, I am so confused to the point where I don’t know where to begin, but I know that I am feeling so depressed and tired and empty and numb and exhausted. Gem’s extreme levels of vulnerability and the amount of breakdowns she has, is triggering and makes me upset for her, but also myself, because I don’t know what to do with myself and I feel out of place. 

Then with Angel, the way she speaks to me just gets to me. It comes off as if she is SO upset with me each time, or is looking for something to berate me over. It’s as though she’s projecting her frustrations onto me, but then, painting it over by saying that she is trying to have an honest conversation or teaching/advising me. It makes me so anxious and sick to my stomach when she talks to me because it’s like she’s going to be aggressive or “attack me” every single time. 

There’s no question of how I’m doing, or a thought of what I’m going through. She just wants to release whatever she wants to without any pushback. She’s controlling the situation to her own benefit without any regard. It’s like she forgets that I’m fighting my hardest to stay alive afloat, and only telling me what’s wrong with me(?).  It reminds me of our dad and how he used to talk to me and how I used to feel. She’s trying to “help” me “learn” by “advising” me to do certain things. But, it’s all a nice way of saying that she’s controlling me. But, some things are true and things that I truly need to work on, yet the consistent way that she delivers them is so awful. I just feel helpless.

Part 2

Chapter 7-20

Confessions

Read on Tapas / Read on Webtoon

More info/buy the books: https://aliceoseman.com/

Heartstopper updates three times a month, on the 1st, 11th, and 21st at 11am UK time.