Freax

interior designer · art · gaming · video editing // demisexual · demiwoman · she/they · intp · 5w4
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[Freax @Freaxxie]

It’s a strange kind of quiet that follows the loss of everyone who once loved you. Not just silence in the room, but in the soul, where once there was laughter, concern, voices that spoke your name with softness, with weight. Now, there’s no one left who says it that way.

[noor୨୧ @wottheberry]

my younger sister called me on a random tuesday afternoon just to ask how to make our mom’s traditional lentil soup recipe.

she sounded totally normal on the phone, laughing about her apartment smelling like cheap takeout and complaining about midterms.

she didn't ask for money. she didn't sound sick. she just kept asking how long the garlic was supposed to simmer.

after we hung up, i couldn't shake this weird feeling in my chest.

she hasn't cooked a real meal for herself since she moved out two years ago. she lives on iced coffee and energy bars.

why was she suddenly trying to recreate a comfort meal from our childhood home in the middle of a random week?

i didn't text her. i just got in my car on friday night and drove three hours to her campus.

when i knocked on her apartment door, her roommate opened it, took one look at me standing there with a bag of groceries, and immediately stepped back without saying a single word.

i walked into the kitchen and saw my sister sitting on the floor by the counter.

she had a pot of water boiling on the stove, but the kitchen table was completely buried under weeks of unwashed dishes, unfolded laundry, and final project printouts.

she looked up at me, and her eyes just flooded with tears.

she didn't fail a class. she didn't break up with anyone.

she was just entirely exhausted from the relentless pressure of working two jobs while maintaining a full course load, and her brain had literally reached its breaking point.

she was trying to cook that soup because she just wanted to smell home again.

i didn't give her a lecture on time management. i just put my jacket down, washed every single dish in her sink, and spent the weekend helping her clean her life back up.

there are some kinds of exhaustion that don’t make you ask for help directly.

they just make you start craving the smell of home.

[her.🎀 @luv1bun]

The women’s bathroom at work closed for construction, so I used the men’s room because biology doesn’t care about policy.
I warned the first guy who walked in. He shrugged. “No problem.”
By noon, half the office was sharing one bathroom. Women knocked. Men skipped the urinals. Everyone adapted in about five minutes.
No fights. No scandals. No trauma.
Turns out most “bathroom issues” disappear the moment grown adults start acting like grown adults.

[Kia 🧸ྀི @xevekiah]

hating cats is rooted in misogyny. ironic how dogs are “man’s best friend” but women who love cats are “crazy cat ladies.” Cats teach consent, boundaries, autonomy and love that is earned not entitled.

[Lazzyyyyyy @em_Lazzy]

The fact we are going to have our first trillionaire before everyone has access to clean drinking water is proof our current system is not for the greater good but for the greedy.

[blanc @dqveed]

It cracks me up that they try to sell us women on being a housewife as something super awesome, but when a man’s in that position, suddenly it’s bad xd

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

The actual research is wild. Every time you push down a feeling, your brain has to choose between suppressing that emotion and recording what’s happening around you. It picks the suppression. The memory doesn’t get saved.

A 2000 Stanford study confirmed this: people told to hide their emotions while watching a film remembered far fewer details than people who just reacted naturally. Suppressing emotions uses up mental energy, and that leaves less brain power for saving new memories.

Brain scans show why. A 2012 study found that suppression quiets the hippocampus (your brain’s memory-recording center) right when it should be saving information. The two brain regions that normally team up to lock in memories stop talking to each other.

Over time it gets worse. Suppression keeps cortisol (the stress hormone) elevated, and cortisol shrinks the hippocampus. Chronically stressed people can lose 10 to 15% of its volume. Just three weeks of high cortisol can shrink the tiny connection points between brain cells by about 20%. The good news: studies show this shrinkage can partially reverse once stress levels drop. Not necessarily permanent.

A Finnish study of 1,137 older adults tracked over roughly a decade found that habitual emotion suppressors had nearly 5x the risk of developing dementia, even after controlling for genetics, smoking, obesity, and education.

There’s a better way to handle emotions that doesn’t cost you your memory. It’s called cognitive reappraisal: instead of bottling the feeling, you reframe what’s causing it. (“This meeting isn’t a threat, it’s practice.”) A 2003 Stanford/UC Berkeley study found reappraisers had more positive emotion, better relationships, and higher wellbeing. Suppressors got the opposite on every measure. And reappraisal carries zero memory cost.

The difference comes down to timing. Suppression kicks in after the emotion has already fired, so your brain is fighting its own response while simultaneously trying to record the moment. Reappraisal changes how you interpret the situation before the emotion fully activates. Same event, same person, but your hippocampus stays free to do its actual job: recording your life.

[Echo 🔆 @TheEcho13]

A lot of girls learned early that the more feminine you are, the less you’re respected. It was never about pink. It was about the fear that being feminine meant being taken less seriously.

Healing is realizing you can be feminine and still be untouchable. The day you realize that, you stop running from the girly things you denied yourself and start enjoying them like they were always yours.

[Maryam @hell_line0]

Sometimes male anger at ‘women getting special treatment’ reminds me of a gorilla experiment.
One gorilla gets a banana every hour. The females next to him get one every four hours. Then someone decides to be ‘fairer’ and gives the females a banana every two hours instead. The original gorilla? He flips out. He’s still getting his banana every hour, but it feels like a loss because his advantage shrank.
That’s how a lot of men react to basic fairness for women: not as justice, but as theft.

[àdúrà @AduratheArtist]

Because nobody wants to pay for it anymore.

Michelangelo was paid today's equivalent of roughly $650,000 – $750,000 USD for the Sistine Chapel ceiling, which took over 4 years to complete.

Leonardo da Vinci was paid today's equivalent of $110,000–$120,000 USD per year and given housing and full funding by the Duke to paint The Last Supper.

To bring back the beauty and intricacies of art, our society needs to see the value in it and be ready to pay for it. Art is not dead.

[Freax @Freaxxie]

@Swindyyyy No

[goma @soigomaa]

Out of ten men, one makes a sexual joke at a woman, two laugh, three fake a chuckle to fit in, and four stay silent. None of them speak up. Later, nine of them still believe they're the "good guys." But from the woman's perspective, the laughter, the silence, the looking away, it all creates the same environment. So when women say"most men are the same," this is what they mean: not that every man harasses women, but that most men help protect the system that does.

[Dumb Bitch Capital, LLC @dumbbitchcap]

There is a common fallacy the internet is exposing where lucky people mistake themselves for being enlightened and righteous. But really they’re just blessed, and when they run their mouth you realize they’re just dumb. Very cool and good for you if you meet the love of your life in your early 20’s or teens. You won the lottery and now you should enjoy your prize money & shut up. Because for most of us who didn’t, it wasn’t because we were “sleeping around” and “partying” instead. Single people put up with a tremendous amount of pain not finding their person. If most of us married and had kids with the person we were dating at 23, we’d be alcoholics by 33. If you are still in love with the person you were in love with at 23, you were lucky enough to have grown in both the same rate & direction as your spouse. Or you are a simpleton midwit who never experienced mental growth or change from 23-33 which is fine too but either way you have no business shilling life advice and judging others

[Nisha Patel, MD MS, Dipl of ABOM, CCMS @DrPlantel]

“Just eat whole foods. Avoid anything in a package. Eat more fruits and vegetables.”

No shit, Sherlock. Most of us would benefit from eating more fruits and veggies. But advice like this skips the most important question: who is actually doing the work?

Who is planning the meals?
Who is grocery shopping, often multiple times a week because produce spoils?
Who is budgeting for foods that cost more and don’t last as long?
Who is washing, chopping, cooking, packing, and cleaning,
on top of paid work, childcare, caregiving, and everything else?

Because a raw bell pepper isn’t a meal.

“Just eat better” ignores the very real time, cost, access, skills, and invisible labor required to make that happen. And let’s be honest, this labor disproportionately falls on women.

Nutrition advice that ignores mental load, time scarcity, food environments, and gendered labor isn’t just unhelpful. It’s lazy.

Health isn’t just about what you eat. It’s also about who is expected to make it happen.

[Zoya🕊️ @Zoya_ki_batein]

Erika Kirk holds multiple degrees & runs businesses, got married at 34, & had her first child at 35. However she wants YOU to abandon scholarship, get married & have babies in your early 20s and trust your husband to care for you.
None of the trad-wife spokeswomen are trad wives

[susa @prinkasusa]

your SPOUSE is the one who’ll sit beside you when your PARENTS DIE. who’ll hold your hand through CHILDBIRTH. who might have to BATHE YOU if you’re ever too sick to stand. this isn’t just about BUTTERFLIES or DATE NIGHTS. it’s about choosing someone who SHOWS UP... in GRIEF, in MESS, in UNCERTAINTY. so no, LOVE ALONE isn’t enough. COMMITMENT, MATURITY, and the ability to ENDURE life’s ugly parts... that’s what sustains a MARRIAGE. because when life gets PAINFULLY REAL, ROMANCE won’t carry you... CHARACTER will. and the truth is, FOREVER is only possible with someone who knows how to STAY when it’s HARD TO LOVE

[susa @prinkasusa]

if you choose A WORKING WOMAN, you must accept that she CANNOT manage a house full time by herself. if you choose A HOUSEWIFE who can take care of and manage the household completely, you need to accept that she DOES NOT MAKE MONEY and you will have to provide for everything. if you choose a SUBMISSIVE WOMAN, you should accept that she DEPENDS on you to lead. if you choose to be with a STRONG WOMAN, you should accept that she is STUBBORN and has her own thoughts and ways

[JOY @_AshJOY]

Accessible language surrounding aromantic, asexual, and aspec identities is essential for creating visibility. When people are told they’re broken before having the ability to understand themselves, words become a lifeline that shows their experiences are real, valid, and shared

[Freax @Freaxxie]

My boyfriend is the best boyfriend

[Maryam @hell_line0]

“Girls mature faster”

No — girls get punished earlier, blamed earlier, sexualized earlier, and expected to cope earlier.