At a family dinner, my uncle started complaining that menstrual products were a waste of wood because pads contain cellulose, which comes from trees. He kept insisting women in the old days survived without them anyway. My little sister looked at him and said, “Actually, your birth certificate was a waste of paper.” The table went completely silent.
when i'm mad from my perspective but i can also see their perspective so now i’m carrying double the emotional weight and being eaten away by my anger and empathy
the disappointment i feel after being vulnerable is not rooted in the act of opening up but in the realization that sincerity is often received with far less care than it takes to offer it. there is something profoundly disorienting about exposing the most fragile parts of yourself only to discover that the person listening did not hold them with the same gravity you carried them with.