Conversation

Aella
@Aella_Girl
Treating something like a "big deal" can make you *experience* it like a big deal. If someone reacts with horror when you describe a neutral experience, this can make you remember the experience as more horrifying. I think the opposite is also true! 1/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
If you take something ppl perceive as terrible and act like it's no big deal, it can make them actually subjectively perceive it as less terrible. (u can err in both directions; ideally you neutrally inquire about the organic reaction, but usually society has gotten there first)
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
I think this describes some deep thing about my attitude towards the world. There's a way in which I feel all the bad things can be "okay" - if not painless, endured with peace and grace, without flinching away, without narrative. "It's okay, you're okay." 3/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
And so I have a constant drive to take terrible things and act like they're no big deal - as a kind of demonstration that *there's another way to be in relation to these things*, that we can look directly at them, that we can be okay with them. 4/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
And with this comes a lot of irreverence, humor, and inappropriateness - often about a lot of things I've personally experienced, too. Trauma is not sacred to me. To elevate pain into a trauma narrative locks it into a frame of "this is not okay", which can make it *worse*.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
This isn't a very conscious move most of the time for me, but it feels like an underlying ethos. It feels deeply, in a principled way, important for me to not respect - and thus reinforce - the lines we use to designate the areas we Must Not Go For Fear Of Hurting Someone.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
And as I've also said before, this doesn't mean pretending the pain doesn't exist, or acting like it shouldn't be there - I absolutely welcome it, but it's the *narratives around it* that burrow it in like poison on the tip of an arrow.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
A lot of the time people describe me as edgy or a troll, like I'm deliberately trying to upset people. And... squinting a certain way, this is kind of true? But it comes from a very different place; I want to demonstrate that it's *possible to be at peace with upsetting things*.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
(ps disclaimer: i do not mean that i *never* make tweets explicitly for the purpose of being controversial; just most of the time i get accused of it, it's in response to tweets i did not have significant controversy-motivation for)
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Sam
@sbow82
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
This reminds me of when Richard Dawkins got into trouble for discussing how the sexual abuse he was a victim of didn't have much impact on him. 'It's OK to not be ok' but it's also ok to be ok. One shouldn't be made feel cold or deviant if they are not impacted as severely
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Replying to
@sbow82
i was the victim of some molestey stuff as a kid and the impact it had on me was far outweighed by stuff like my parents punishing me by taking away my books
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Astrapaios
@astrapaios
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
The way I've heard it, memory is 'overwritten' with every recollection, with the context of the recollection itself leaving a fingerprint on the memory. So by remembering things in a different context you can gradually change how you remember something.
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Kim
@launch2growth
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
A lot of people misread or feel somewhat uncomfortable with expressive behavior. Strong expressive personalities can come across as unusual and abnormal. Rather they should be enjoyed and embraced. It would make the world more colorful and fun.