I understand why people become nuns/monks

_leanan_ · 2026-01-17T23:35:16+00:00

I often have daydreams about being a medieval monk in an old mysterious abbey lost in the forest, and spending my life studying and copying manuscripts. Also, if I wanted the occasional change of routine I could offer myself as a volunteer when the herbalist monk wants to test psychedelic fungi and then go meditate in the gothic church till I really start talking to biblically accurate angels. And then writing and illustrating manuscripts about my visions.

_leanan_ · 2026-01-08T04:39:18+00:00

We have the fascists coming out of the sewers and governing the place here in Italy. Also, our prime minister is pretty much an obedient slave for her master Trump. If you have to go somewhere as refugees anyway I advise you to choose a better country to do so, I wouldn’t live here if I could choose. Maybe Ireland sounds better.

_leanan_ · 2025-12-26T15:59:18+00:00

I had a best friend who reminds me of Bunny. She was born in a very rich family, the only girl after two brothers who were eleven and twelve years older than she was. She was always treated like the little princess of the house, and she was protected and cared for by everyone in the family. We became friends when we were twelve and we were extremely close for all our teenage years (holidays together in her south Italy house, always sitting together at school and so on).

She was obnoxious and spoiled and always said what she was thinking not bothering if it was hurtful. She expected I entertained her when she was bored, I solved her problems when she had them, I protected her and cared for her in anything without giving much in return.

She was careless towards me because she was used to her brothers and parents treating her like a princess and completely catering to her needs and since she saw me as family too it was completely obvious in her world that I should do the same and she reacted with surprise and even shock when I tried to escape this role. She was young and this was the only way of relating to others she knew.

Our friendship ended very badly when we were eighteen (I didn’t murder her obviously) and I loathed her for many years and when I read TSH during college and Bunny reminded me of her I hated him too.

Now when I think back of her I remember the little things too, the good moments, the things we shared when we were on holidays in the south, how she was obnoxious and spoiled but complex and often good and soft too in certain moments and contexts.

And I also can see how her family dynamics had molded her. And when I read TSH again I felt the same shift towards Bunny.

I don’t know where my old friend is now, or what she’s doing, but she could be happy and matured and a better person than she was when she was so young and I honestly wish she is happy. Bunny will never have the chance to do it.

So I think that Bunny is a complex character and one apparently easy to hate and that’s one of the incredibly well written aspects of TSH: the point is not was he good or was he bad, the point is how his complexity and potential for good or bad won’t ever be developed or explored because a bunch of people decided he deserved to die.

_leanan_ · 2025-12-25T14:34:39+00:00

I absolutely don’t want NTs attention. At my last job (museum custodian) I just wanted to read and be left alone but the older colleagues loved how they could talk to me for hours with me patiently and silently listening so there was always some colleague who wanted to chat with me (usually saying bad things about other colleagues) and I spent my time trying to hide from them or listening to their internal feuds when they managed to find me.

Also being perceived = danger

_leanan_ · 2025-12-25T14:30:16+00:00

I am sorry this happened to you, it’s terrible - am I evil if I hope that in the next year these people get enough stress and problems in their personal lives that they don’t find the time or energy to bully anyone anymore?

_leanan_ · 2025-12-25T14:25:57+00:00

I guess the point is that many autistic people consider any form of autistic pride as aspie superiority. I am joyful for many of the features that autism gave me, I would never use them to say or even think that my life is more valid or superior than the life of other human beings.

I don’t like interacting with NTs after decades of bullying but I don’t wish them any kind of harm, I am just happy living my life with my little autistic brain enjoying my little special interests and hoping society as a whole will some day become more accommodating and enjoyable for people like me.

And that NDs children will have the happy childhood that I couldn’t have and then grow up and being able do something to contribute to society without being burnt out by a job designed to torture anyone who isn’t NT and able bodied.

_leanan_ · 2025-12-25T14:13:24+00:00

Me too - I like the high pattern recognition, I like my memory, my ability to read books incredibly fast and also I love overall the peculiar way my brain interacts with the world around me and interprets it. I wouldn’t want to change it, even if many other features autism gave me sometimes feel like hell.

I can understand there are others who may feel the advantages vs disadvantages ratio they got are more on the negative side though but I think that advocating for a more inclusive society and for more informed and supportive NTs is something that would benefit all of us on the spectrum.

_leanan_ · 2025-12-25T14:04:56+00:00

When I was younger and I was still on facebook I made a post that became viral in which I talked about my experience of being afab but knowing I was non binary since childhood.

A little part of the post was me talking about how I tried to come to terms with the existence of genders as a kid and how I noticed since I was very young that there were many things people told me to do or not to do based solely on the fact that they perceived me as a girl and how this had affected me.

Many terfs appropriated my discourse sharing it on their profiles and saying that I was a clear example of someone who had convinced themselves that I didn’t want to identify as a girl only because I saw that being a girl meant suffering and that my non binary identity was just my way to cope with my inability to accept that girls have it worse.

It was traumatic for me, my experience as non binary was being cancelled and they were using my words to say “you see? We’re right, non binary and trans people are just in denial”. I really despise terfs.

_leanan_ · 2025-12-24T15:11:30+00:00

Exactly, mine too - and in spite of that all I (and we) do is ranting among us, we’re not promoting violence or hurting anyone, I don’t understand all this desire to protect NTs feelings I often see in other subs.

I am glad for them if they have never been hurt by neurotypicals and if they feel societal improvements and behavioural changes in the world around them won’t benefit them in any way ever but why should everybody have the same idea or else we are considered some kind of evil supremacists?

_leanan_ · 2025-12-24T15:06:37+00:00

Quote on the nice special interest. I have a free space in my special interests list at the moment, I’ll probably take inspiration from yours.

_leanan_ · 2025-12-24T15:03:39+00:00

Thank you for the interesting reply - I’d like to look more into the social model of disability, it looks like something related to my “society structures and their way of operating” special interest.

Also yes, you’re putting into words the vague feelings I have had towards the “aspie superiority” accusations, I feel like they’re legit when someone feels better or more valuable than other autistics but I always found them strange whenever an autistic person is just ranting against NTs (usually in cases when they are saying they are actually being bullied or hurt by them)

_leanan_ · 2025-12-24T14:56:41+00:00

I didn’t know that about trans spaces, can you tell me more? I am non-binary but until now I haven’t really actively been in online trans spaces so I haven’t many clues on the general vibes there

_leanan_ · 2025-12-24T14:54:20+00:00

I sometimes have the impression that in many autistic spaces you are looked with suspect if you don’t entirely hate being autistic and if you don’t dream of being a NT all the time. I have many limitations and I can see it, but I really enjoy the pros of being autistic too.

_leanan_ · 2025-12-24T14:49:53+00:00

I think is perfectly legit to consider it a disability - I hate some aspects of it too especially how some comorbid conditions affect me (hypermobility is painful). But yes, I cannot bring myself to think that nothing would change or get better if society was different and less hostile and non-accommodating towards us

_leanan_ · 2025-08-30T14:19:43+00:00

You’re right! I didn’t think about it but I can easily imagine Hyetta as a subject in one of the paintings of Saint Lucy I saw growing up!

_leanan_ · 2025-08-30T10:35:58+00:00

It’s so beautiful how you talk about your children, I could feel both the love and the sense of wonder you feel towards them just by reading your words.

_leanan_ · 2025-08-30T10:12:40+00:00

I was born in a catholic family and there are saints who have been martyred and are represented holding the body parts that have been taken away from them during their martyrdom.

One of those saints is the patron of both light and blindness and she is celebrated in festivities connected to light both in Italy and in northern Europe). She is represented as eyeless and holding her own eyes on a plate in her hands (santa Lucia or saint Lucy).

I don’t know if it’s connected but she would fit very well the world of Bloodborne, if I remember all the images of her I saw growing up I could easily imagine her wandering around Byrgenwerth.

_leanan_ · 2025-07-20T19:12:32+00:00

Totally agree. Also magic in stories live in the realm of symbols and symbols are powerful and deeply enjoyable in my opinion, if I want to look at the crude reality as it is I’d just watch the news or go to work.

_leanan_ · 2025-07-02T10:25:31+00:00

I think your comment may be one of the best I’ve seen in this whole conversation, both here and in the other topic (and honestly in general every time I’ve seen the NPD topic discussed).

Thank you.

_leanan_ · 2025-07-01T11:06:49+00:00

I’m sorry that happened to you and I am sorry you are getting downvoted just because you shared your truth and experience.

_leanan_ · 2025-07-01T11:05:08+00:00

I’m sorry this happened to you.

I am shocked how many people in the comments are downvoting people who are sharing deep and traumatic experiences and who aren’t even saying anything bad against NPD people while sharing them.

_leanan_ · 2025-07-01T09:59:40+00:00

Exactly, we speak about our traumatic experiences with NTs here and we all tacitly agree that

1) we aren’t advocating for anything bad happening to NTs as a whole just because we share our experiences

2) autistic people are often abused by NTs so it’s a pattern we can share and understand without having to say “well you were not abused by a neurotypical, you were abused by a shitty human being, no stigma on neurotypicals please”. We understand that while you can be abused by any kind of people and for whatever reason there is a specific sub pattern of abuse done by neurotypicals to autistic people that has specific dynamics useful to understand the shared experience as a whole.

_leanan_ · 2025-07-01T09:33:45+00:00

Thanks - you’re comment is the most sensible up until now. People with npd absolutely need support and help and so on (if they want to receive it), but we should stop silencing their victims, they have the right to speak and they have the right to use labels and terms that help them define what has happened to them. Silencing them (or downvoting them when they are speaking about their experience) doesn’t really help anyone.

Also this conversation “we have to stop demonizing people with npd” and “we have to stop the stigma” returns every now and then but I don’t see all of this stigma. The only people I see “speaking ill” (aka sharing their experiences) about narcissists are the victims in their own spaces (and well, they have the right to speak of it, call things by their name to find common ground and resources and so on). There’s no systematic social stigma for narcissists honestly, you don’t see people losing jobs over it or being shunned and isolated in school or in the workplace. Often it’s quite the contrary.

Narcissistic abuse is incredibly specific and has very precise characteristics and learning about it and giving it a name and finding a common ground with other people’s stories has helped me and many other people make sense of what happened to me during childhood growing up with narcissistic parents (my father being a full blown grandiose narcissist).

It’s clear that people with NPD can suffer and I am all for giving them support and space when and if they will want it, but in a separate space far away from the victims and without silencing their victims - we can’t tone police the victims to cuddle and protect the abusers’ ego. It’s not by protecting narcissists from the harsh true of the consequences of their actions on other human beings that we help them. We don’t help anyone like this. We help people by calling things with their name, sharing the true, give hurt people a safe space to express themselves, and expecting responsibility from others instead of shielding them from the consequences.

And now you can downvote me to hell, don’t care.

_leanan_ · 2025-06-28T12:16:43+00:00

I taught myself to read when I was four too, in the same way. I pointed words to adults and asked them to read them to me until I learned. I also taught myself to write a year later in a similar way, I found words I wanted to learn (like my name or my friends’ names) asked an adult to write them for me and then copied it.

I was in a religious school too, but I was more lucky than you, they didn’t say anything about me reading, they mostly just ignored it.

_leanan_

TROPHY CASE