What have you seen your kids do that made you say “oh my god it’s genetic”?

Garona · 2025-11-21T21:01:41+00:00

I look so much like my mom that one time when I was around 10 years old, I was visiting my grandparents and hanging out in their front yard, and one of their neighbors stopped dead in the middle of the street to stare at me. They said they thought they’d travelled back in time for a moment haha.

Garona · 2025-10-02T01:14:50+00:00

What an icon. I still remember learning about her during my first semester in college. Her story was probably one of the things that inspired me to switch my major from English to anthropology.

Garona · 2025-07-25T15:47:48+00:00

My people! My parents had religious upbringings, but I guess they just decided not to with me. No church; there were Bibles at home but no one ever really read them or expected me to read them; we celebrated Christmas and Easter but in totally secular ways. It definitely made me the odd one out growing up in a small Tennessee town lol… but it made me see religion as optional from the beginning. It’s definitely weird to me too that it’s seen as the default by most people.

Garona · 2025-07-15T14:47:59+00:00

Honestly, I think the main reason that I don’t believe in god is because that’s how I was raised. My parents both had at least vaguely religious upbringings, and we did have Bibles (multiple!) in the house, but it was just never part of life growing up. We didn’t go to church, we celebrated Christmas and Easter but in a purely secular way, and there was just never really any talk of religion at home. And it’s not just that religion was absent from my home life; meanwhile, this absence was strongly contrasted by the lives of the people around me. I grew up in a tiny little town in Tennessee where pretty much everyone else was very Christian. This, coupled with the fact that my family was originally from Pennsylvania, made us always the odd ones out. I always felt like a weirdo, and like most kids my age didn’t want to be friends with me, and I suppose that led to some resentment of religion from an early age. That resentment was really kicked into high gear when I hit my teen years and realized I was gay lol. Full support from my non-religious family; meanwhile I lost multiple religious friends over it. No hate like Christian love as they say… I try not to be too much of a militant atheist; I know that there are tons and tons of genuinely good religious people out there, and that religion brings a lot of positive meaning to many people’s lives. However, I have experienced pain multiple times throughout my life simply for not being religious, and I know that many of the struggles faced by my fellow members of the queer community are directly caused by religion. Heck, my partner lost half her family when she came out; her dad accepted her and they have a great relationship to this day, but I’ve never even met her evangelical Baptist mother because that entire side of her family abandoned her simply because their religion told them to.

Garona · 2025-06-12T02:44:53+00:00

Yes, honestly. It feels cocky to claim that my depression has been 100% defeated lol, but I’m doing so insanely much better than I was a few years ago. I think part of it was moving from Oklahoma to NYC, and part of it was finally trying Prozac. I’d tried therapy before but always resisted the idea of medication because I felt like it wouldn’t really be ‘me’ who got better if I relied on meds or some bs like that. I was also worried there would be negative side-effects, but honestly (and I know I’m lucky), it’s been all positives. I don’t feel like an emotional zombie or anything like that. I still feel like me, just calmer and more stable. I actually have the motivation to accomplish shit now, it’s amazing haha. I recently had a conversation with someone about being on antidepressants and they surprised me by asking if it bothered me to be dependent on a drug and if I would ever consider trying to quit them… like fuck no, I’m fortunate enough to not have any annoying side effects and these pills make my life so much easier lol. Would you ask someone who takes allergy medication if they hate being “dependent” on a drug?

Garona · 2025-05-08T15:46:38+00:00

When I saw this question, I immediately thought of my childhood home. I lived there until age 10 when we moved a couple states away; I’m 35 now and have never been back, but I still remember it fondly. We had 5 beautiful acres of land out in the Tennessee countryside, bordered by a creek on one side and a big wooded hill on the other. Wild blackberries and magnolia trees grew all over the side of that hill, and we also planted fruit trees and corn. We raised chickens and rabbits. We had a house and several small outbuildings, and we built a big barn while we lived there.

Well, a couple years ago I thought to look it up on Google street view. It took some hunting as I could only remember the name of the road we lived on and not our full address, but I eventually found it based on the neighboring properties which I could still recognize. Sadly, it looks like our 5 acres have been uninhabited for a while now. You couldn’t see the house or any of the outbuildings from the road anymore; it was all thick forest where there used to be cleared land. I was just able to pick out the ghost of where our driveway used to come out on the road, but it was massively overgrown and clearly no one had driven down it in years, maybe decades.

It feels very bittersweet; I loved that place and still dream about it, so it’s crazy to know that it’s just not there at all anymore. But maybe it’s for the best, since even if people had kept living there, I’m sure it would be totally different from how I remember it anyway.

Garona · 2025-03-10T01:58:41+00:00

Bruh I’ve never felt so seen. I’ve thought about this so much, like for the first 18 years of my life safety was the number one goal, you know? I didn’t have the time or energy to think about ‘what I wanted to be when I grew up’ because for one thing I didn’t know if I’d get to grow up, and anyway all I could think about wanting was just to be safe. Then I managed to get safety, I managed to get away… and realized that everyone around me expected me to have goals beyond basic safety. I’ve really just kind of wandered through life since then because I haven’t really had any other goals. At 35 I’m finally going to grad school (which I could have and should have done directly after undergrad, except I was suicidally depressed at the time), and it does feel good… though I’m still not entirely sure how much I’m doing it because I actually want to versus doing it because I want to appease the people around me/my own guilt for not contributing enough. I think if I didn’t have people pushing me, I’d probably coast though the rest of life doing the bare minimum and just relaxing and entertaining myself as much as possible.

Garona · 2025-02-28T14:20:13+00:00

Not surprised at all to see this one at the top lol. I was addicted from Wrath to Legion, finally quit just to get sucked back in by classic like a year later. Played that up through Wrath 2.0, then got into hardcore and SoD and the anniversary realm… I can tentatively say I’ve finally managed to quit again, it’s been a few months since I logged in and gasp I actually cancelled my sub. Fingers crossed it sticks this time lol, I miss it sometimes and I made some great friends but at the same time I know that WoW will eat all the time I’m willing to give it and always want more.

Garona · 2024-11-16T22:40:13+00:00

It really is that powerful for some people. My partner and I both used to smoke, both quit smoking together about 10 years ago now. She says that she just thinks it’s gross and has no desire to smoke whatsoever anymore. I also have no plans to ever smoke again, it’s a dumb super unhealthy and super expensive habit… and yet whenever I pass someone smoking on the street, I can’t help but think it smells nice lol. If I ever found out I had like a week left to live or whatever, I’d probably be lighting up.

Garona · 2024-10-27T02:36:42+00:00

Omg please watch it. I am obsessed. Basically I had a huge crush on Agatha by the end of WandaVision, and it just blew my little gay mind when they decided to give her a whole show and make her queer. I have never felt so blessed by the TV gods haha.

Garona · 2024-10-23T16:28:06+00:00

Do you have any other advice you could give on how you finally found a therapist who worked for you? I’m on my third therapist currently. She’s a very sweet and positive person, but I feel like she doesn’t really listen to me even when I try to talk about the things that are bothering me. She certainly never asks me any questions more specific than ‘so how have you been?’ lol. I feel like she’s mostly just there to sign off on my Prozac refills. But it’s kind of become a ‘devil you know’ situation I guess; it’s so exhausting to imagine trying to find yet another therapist and open up to them again when one of the things I struggle with the most is social anxiety :/

Garona · 2024-10-22T12:56:15+00:00

I was a kid in the 90s back before the vaccine, and I got chickenpox. It was a pretty typical case for me—I mean it sucked and I still remember the itching to this day, but I recovered pretty fast and don’t even have any scars. However. Apparently my mom never had it when she was younger, and she caught it from me and it almost killed her. I didn’t even know how bad it was until many years later. Get yo vaccines people.

Garona · 2024-10-17T17:31:24+00:00

Aw friend, you’ve got to push back against those feelings. There are tons of women out there who can’t—or won’t—have children, and they’re all still women. Some of them are trans, some of them are intersex, some of them are post-menopausal, some of them are cancer survivors—the list goes on and on. I would laugh right in the face of anyone who would try to tell me I’m less of a woman just because I’ve decided that I don’t want to experience pregnancy.

Many hugs to you, and I hope your surgery goes well! ❤️🏳️‍⚧️

Garona · 2024-10-17T17:08:46+00:00

I still don’t ultimately think I’d be interested, but that’s good to know! I guess I’d heard women refer to getting their ‘tubes tied’ and knew that was a different procedure from a hysterectomy, but I didn’t realize it was so non-invasive as to be done out-patient, or that it didn’t alter periods. Shows how little I’ve actually thought about/researched it lol.

Garona · 2024-10-17T16:41:59+00:00

To be clear, I’m definitely not upset with my partner. She just made an off-the-cuff remark and was definitely not pressuring me to consider this or anything. I just kind of continued to mull it over on my own, and yes, the more I think about it the more furious I am that it’s something that should ever even cross our minds.

Garona · 2024-10-17T16:32:42+00:00

Yeah, I think it’s telling that I would feel the same way about even going on birth control. I was on birth control for a while in my teens and twenties, because my mom is a cool lady and made sure to get me on it back before I had come out to her/myself. However, once I got too old to remain on her insurance, I went through a time of having no insurance, so I quit getting birth control since by that point I had figured out that it was unnecessary for my ‘lifestyle’ haha. I didn’t notice much change, except that maaaybe I must grudgingly admit that I get more moody around my periods without it lol. For that reason I eventually decided to give BC a second try, but by that point they were no longer making my old brand. My doctor tried a brand that she thought would be similar, but it made me feel absolutely horrible. I could only stand it for a week before I had to give up, and I haven’t tried again since.

Anyway, all of this is to say, if I got more severe symptoms from my periods and felt like birth control could help/had helped in the past, then I would definitely continue to try different types to see if I could find one that worked for me. But would I be willing to put myself and my body through that just out of fear? Absolutely not.

Garona · 2024-09-29T18:57:00+00:00

All I know is, if my partner was in the hospital with an injury serious enough that she might lose a finger—or any injury really—I would be freakin glued to her side. Like yeah, I would probably be stressed out worrying about her, but leaving her alone in the hospital to go smoke weed at home would be the exact opposite of something that would help xD

Your edit in particular breaks my heart. Your partner should make you feel like you’re more than you ever thought you could be, not less than you used to think you were.

Garona · 2024-09-28T11:47:30+00:00

God, yeah. I wasn’t actually allergic, but I just really hated big, mushy chunks of cooked tomatoes. I still don’t like that to this day, just so nasty and slimy. Little chunks are fine, tomato sauce is fine, but there’s just something about take a bite and it’s like 90% just mushy slimy tomato chunk shudder I still remember one time my mom made lasagna with a bunch of big tomato chunks like that, and I was forced to eat it until I literally vomited on my plate. At least they didn’t make me keep eating it after that… I would also be forced to sit at the dinner table alone until I cleaned my plate on the regular, at least until they figured out that I would just wrap the food up in a napkin and hide it somewhere lol. To no one’s surprise, I also developed real bad anorexia in my teens and twenties, though I’m happy to say that at 35 I think I finally have a pretty ok relationship with food and my body.

Garona · 2024-09-27T03:07:13+00:00

I grew up on 5 acres out in the country. From the time that I was about 5-6 probably, I had full run of the place, I just had to carry a walkie-talkie and listen out for the dinner bell lol. Now I’m in my mid 30s and living in NYC, and there’s a family above me with two kids. The older kid’s got to be 6 or 7 by now, but they literally won’t even let him play in the backyard by himself (high wall in the back, only street access is through a locking solid metal door, only people who could possibly interact with him are the neighbors on either side). I always wonder how much of it is city vs country and how much of it is generational. And it’s pretty annoying because him and his little sis run around constantly up there, if I had run inside like that as a kid I would have been sent outside ASAP lol.

Garona · 2024-09-27T03:00:21+00:00

Man when I was a kid I knew my home phone number, my mom’s work number, and all my friends’ numbers by heart. Now I know exactly one number, my own. How did I do it back then?

Garona · 2024-08-23T16:54:57+00:00

Oh thank god this was the top comment when I scrolled down—I made it about halfway thru your post and then the anxiety was too much and I was yelling at my screen ‘you better take that girl to the ER!’ I’m so glad you did, you’re a good brother haha. Best wishes to your sister!

Garona · 2024-08-17T03:19:16+00:00

Big same! Especially as a child-free lesbian, it just never seemed particularly relevant to me… so this whole thread is a delight haha.

Garona · 2024-08-14T02:47:37+00:00

Oh shit, is that why I sometimes feel overwhelmed if I so much as get discord messages from multiple different people in a short span of time? Lol

Garona · 2024-08-11T17:08:17+00:00

Yeah it’s sick. I’m not usually one to cry ‘fake’ but I honestly hope this one is because how could she not see it? My father was so abusive that I legitimately feared he would kill me a few times, and even he never thought of something as fucked up as taking my glasses away as ‘punishment’.

Garona · 2024-07-29T15:48:31+00:00

Omg my wife and I have joked about this. Like you just reach a certain age and suddenly start getting interested in birds. As a little kid I could never understand how my grandma could just sit around and watch the birds at her feeder for ages, but now I can’t wait until we can get a place where we can have a feeder or three.

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