the kind of cycle

where if you do X I wouldn't tell you you made me feel bad, because doing so would make you feel bad

and therefore you won't do X just to be sure

wastes so much damn happiness compared to "you do X, I tell you if I mind X and want you to stop"

please, *please* do not take people's emotions into account too much before you do shit. if people ask you to act differently around them, that's when you can think about doing so; but please first just be yourself.

"but what if people wouldn't tell me if I were making them feel bad"

as someone who finds it hard to tell people when they make me feel bad: please fucking risk making me feel bad. it's my responsibility to tell you, not yours to assume I'd feel bad.

I'll learn to do this better. It is on *me* to learn to do this. In the meantime, I'd much rather I got to know *you* instead of some amputated, lobotomized, neutered version of who you are.

(disclaimer: this doesn't hold for everyone. but it holds for some people; and I'd much rather have a world where we all felt free to be ourselves and some got hurt, than one where we all pre-emptively repressed ourselves so as not to hurt anyone else.)

(disclaimer disclaimer: when it comes to small things, though -- and most of these things are very small -- I really do think you should take my requests here seriously. Duncan Sabien wrote about this eloquently in his essay which you might like to read https://medium.com/@ThingMaker/in-defense-of-punch-bug-68fcec56cd6b)