It's Okay If It's Not Okay

I said some of this stuff on twitter, and I'll say it here too:


The death of a friendship is emotionally and psychologically-devastating. It almost makes me glad that I'm incapable of making/maintaining those kinds of bonds with people. Making real human connections is so terrifying, precisely because of how easy it is to sever them.

I thought I would never get to talk to or see my favourite person again. I got a chance to reconnect. I'm grateful for that, and I take it seriously to sustain that connection. But until then, I lived in a hell of unknowing. For 12 years, I was stuck in the pit I dug for myself. Because I did some stupid shit in high school and I never forgave myself.

And that's platonic! I don't think I could survive losing something even more important than that! I am emotionally unequipped to deal with the fallout from a failed romantic or sexual relationship.


A lot of people in entertainment are being held accountable for their sins. A lot of them have done more for this world than I have. If they could fall so low, what chance do I have?


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I wanted to be a good person, somehow. But the cost of losing that, or failing to live up to that is worse than any potential benefit. To myself or anyone else. That's why I'm mean. That's why I'm not as charitable as I should be. That's why I don't put in the effort.

If I built up a good life, if I devoted myself to being better every day, I would still screw up eventually. And it would all come crashing down. You can't sit there, powerless to stop something from collapsing if you never build it up in the first place.

Failure is familiar to me. It'll always be there. But success? That can vanish in the blink of an eye, and leave you resenting that it was ever there to begin with.


The new Steven Universe episodes are out. That's what got me on this train of thought. They explore all of the themes mentioned in this post, and they absolutely wrecked me.

Some cartoons are Kid's Shows, and that's all they'll ever be. And that's... fine. But I've seen "prestige television" supposedly made for adults that didn't care about human beings as much as this cartoon. That didn't understand anything about being alive half as much as these drawings do.


The best stories aren't always happy, and aren't really what life can be, but they can show us who we SHOULD be.


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~A.H.