Reposting this ahead of the Atlanta Pride Parade I’m going to on Sunday! If you’re also going and are interested in hanging out there please message me!

Hello there, my name is Laura :) I’m a sub-leaning switch, both a Momma and a little, and I identify a lot with opossums and raccoons for being misunderstood, maligned, anarchist icons. I’m looking to make more empathetic, stable, calm, non-judgmental, forgiving, emotionally intelligent, open, communicative Caregiver and little friends who understand what it’s like to have a littlespace, and who are tired of dealing with detached social connections that leave them feeling empty.

I find that it’s very easy for me to slip into a platonic caregiver role for friends, read them like a book, and make them feel very seen and heard, but that I rarely receive it back. I think my friends are good people who care a lot about me, but emotionally supporting traumatized littles seems to be out of their wheelhouse. Maybe you know what this feels like?

I’ve seen many therapists over the years, and have made a lot of progress with my current therapist for a little over a year now. We’ve identified that a core issue of mine is the unequal give and take between myself and my friendships. I find that my friends, and most people outside of me in general, are usually content to distract themselves from their issues and bury them, and they seem to struggle with understanding how I communicate and how I get after having an autistic meltdown. By that I mean that, when triggered, I speak indirectly because it feels safe, and I involuntarily mask heavily as having my shit together as a survival mechanism, to the point I fool myself. I’m working on being more direct and identifying what I actually feel and need, but the gist of it is that I don’t seem to work well with people who take things at face value, or people who give light or passive reassurance. I’m a fixer, and similarly, I generally need my own emotional support to be in the form of a sustainable level of reassurance and gentle pushing to respect and validate my own feelings and open up. Most of all, what I need is someone who understands what it’s like to be plagued with constant doubts and to perpetually feel like a burden, and who has the patience to firmly and directly quiet those doubts and help with my anxiety spirals.

After having a meltdown I also have a hard time with basic functioning, and greatly benefit from having someone check in and ask if I need to drink water/eat/do anything else specific to help take care of myself.

Outside of emotionally supporting each other, I’d love nothing more than to play co-op video games, laugh at our inside jokes and be stupid chaos gremlins over lunch, have heartfelt conversations when we’re having tough times, go on hikes, discuss philosophical concepts while stargazing, go to concerts and munches and get piercings together, create art and cosplay together, and if you’re femme, watch trashy reality TV while doing our skincare and makeup. Especially if you’re femme I desperately need more help to feel comfortable in feminine clothing lmao. I grew up a tomboy and I still feel like I raided my mom’s closet whenever I wear dresses, skirts, or anything that isn’t black and gray, and my makeup skills are lacking.

If you have any pets I would love to meet them and spoil them silly! Please show me photos!

I jokingly refer to myself as a “cultural peasant” because there’s a metric shitload of new media that I haven’t seen. If you’re a weeb and/or film and TV buff, and can be patient with gently introducing me to new things so I don’t get overloaded, I’d love to have a guide! Similarly, I can’t dance for shit, am a total baby with rollercoasters, and have a fear of riding bikes and rollerskating. Maybe we can do these things together so I can learn to be less afraid? 👉🏼👈🏼

Unfortunately, I don't think I'm able to be close friends with people who are at all prone to pulling away and becoming emotionally unavailable and distant, whether due to severe depression and its accompanying guilt and shame, or any other mental health issue or avoidant tendency. I'm really sorry to have to create a boundary around this, as I'm naturally drawn towards those who need love most, but I'm at a point in my life where I need to care about my needs as well, and I know I need to feel persistently chosen, wanted, and needed, even just as a friend. I seem to attract a disproportionate amount of people who have issues with deflecting from discussing their problems in a way that doesn’t make sense to my autism because they’re not communicating with me directly, and I’ve learned to have to pull away and detach a bit when this happens or else it’s really distressing.

To be clear, I’m not interested at all in any kind of front you feel you need to put up, or any misrepresentations of how much time or effort you’re able to give. Once we feel like we can trust each other, I am solely interested in the real, raw, vulnerable you. I’m not a “good vibes only” person. I want all the messy vibes, the doubts, the insecurities, and the dark secrets. I pride myself on always trying to be emotionally available and always being a source of firm reassurance for everyone I hold close that they are not a burden or “too much.” I would thrive on being your safe place, someone you can turn to when you have no one else. I definitely have a savior complex of sorts lol. I don’t deal well with being treated differently or given the silent treatment while someone is processing their emotions. Similarly, likely due to my autism, I’m very sensitive to instability and things changing between myself and someone else. Once I trust you and fully open up to you, what you see from me is what you can rely on to always expect, and I need that in return. Though, I’m also not the kind of friend who absolutely has to talk every single day, and I can definitely have days of needing to isolate from friends when my spoons are low. What I look for most of all is consistent stability and dependability, a reliable framework and structure of the other person’s boundaries and needs with upfront 100% transparent communication at all times, for me to be able to ground any of my anxieties so that I can feel more relaxed about being direct with my own.

While I’m open to being friends with any kind of person as long as you feel you fit what I’m talking about here, as a general rule I tend to click best with my fellow neurodivergent leftist queers.

About Me

Big/dominant me is into punk/goth/alt culture; muscle cars; driving fast; guns; weightlifting; fast, intense, or political rap/hip-hop/electronica/hard rock and metal; and being a tomboy. Little me is around 12 and is content with plushies; animals; Pokémon; coloring books; cozy games; soft lights; anything shiny, squishy, heart-shaped, and/or kawaii; rainbow or pastel colors; Bingus; cutesy clothing; and Painting Daddy, AKA Bob Ross.

I’m overall a very sensitive person, which has its perks and drawbacks. I’m quite empathetic, forgiving, and patient, and have a bleeding heart for anyone in need (I have a huge soft spot for animals, especially). Nothing makes me more mad than witnessing something unjust. It’s important to me to do my best to truly empathize with the struggles of others and to be as non-judgmental as possible. I worry a lot about those who are close to me, to the point of overprotectiveness, and I always want to keep them safe. I won’t hesitate to verbally or physically defend those I love if necessary. I’m very much a momma bear on steroids if someone’s picking on someone I care about.

That being said, I can be shy, and I’m very soft and fragile. In fact, I don't know if I've ever met someone more sensitive than me. Please be very gentle with me and don’t tease me or be sarcastic or brusque towards me. I curl up like a dead spider around anyone cold or aloof.

I also like to make self-deprecating humor about my own privilege. I can be something of a real-life Daria sometimes, and being able to be snarky with my loved ones about hateful assholes is a huge way for me to bond.

I often describe myself as a nervous homeless animal who needs to be coaxed over with the proverbial bowl of food. My innate tendency is to always give a huge benefit of the doubt and be rather oblivious and naive, so I have had to learn to be more cautious and take things slow so I don’t keep getting taken advantage of. Similarly, I’m looking for someone who has integrity and is always honest and accountable, even when it’s difficult.

I place an extremely high priority on never breaking promises, commitment, and loyalty. I’m excellent at compromise and always try my best to see the other person’s point of view.

If I feel as though the other person is being spiteful/punishing me, emotionally abandoning me, or in some other way I suddenly feel like everything’s changing and I don’t know what’s going on, I then feel betrayed. In the past this has often happened when miscommunication cropped up and I accidentally misspoke or was triggered, upset the other person, and they didn’t give me the benefit of the doubt and tried to talk things out, but got defensive. When this happens, I can fawn as a trauma response, and focus all of my energies on the other person and making everything okay. It’s deeply painful for me to feel like the process of sorting out issues isn’t collaborative, that I’m being pitted against the other person, and I would like to avoid this in the future.

When I can fully trust that someone will always have my best interests in mind and look out for me, I would do literally almost anything for them short of murder.

Other things about me:

• I do WFH tech support as a team lead and am currently looking to study programming and/or technical writing to further specialize in the field.
• I have a pretty deep voice for a woman that I’ve been told sounds soothing.
• I’m an INFJ, and would love to be “adopted” by an extrovert :D

Interests and Hobbies

Some of these I have more experience in and some I’ve only dabbled in or researched, but all of them I’d love to know more about and can contribute to a conversation about them :)

My dream life would be on a homestead in some kind of commune or somewhat rural village as off-grid as possible, in a subterranean or earth-sheltered home, set up in a way to produce more energy than it consumes.

I love video games, game development, and collecting retro games. I like to watch others play and I get super pumped and really into it, like how people watching sports do.

I like tabletop RPG’s, the Pokémon TCG, board games, other card games, cooking, horror, fantasy, historical, and period films, and animation (my love of old cartoons connects to my love of anything nostalgic). I like documentaries, the paranormal/supernatural, LEGO, collecting nostalgic things, origami, photography, journaling, singing (I sang as a contralto in a choir for five years), playing instruments, reading, and writing.

I also like kayaking, interior decorating, traveling, sewing, tattoos, corseting, plants, wilderness survival, camping, geocaching, prepping, learning languages, astrology, stand-up comedy, dry and absurdist humor, slam poetry, skateboarding & streetboarding, volunteering, feline nutrition, environmentalism, veganism, anything vintage, vaporwave, pin-ups, personal finance, and data privacy.

Next Steps

Please be within a couple hours’ driving distance of the northwest Atlanta metro area, enough for us to feasibly meet up in person every now and then without needing to book a plane ticket. And while I am single and any romantic interest is flattering and appreciated, I promise you don’t want to date me right now. I’m still recuperating from some pretty cataclysmic breakdowns recently, and in general I’m in a very tender state at the moment.

If we hit it off over Reddit chat I’d like to take this to Discord and eventually phone calls. I work nights and am mostly nocturnal besides my diurnal days off, so most of our interaction would have to be during that time or before/after work for me, unless you’re also a Nightwalker™.

In your initial message please include whatever pertinent information you’d like about yourself and what parts of my ad resonated with you, and, more importantly, which parts didn’t, if any. Photos aren’t required immediately or anything, though anything SFW you feel like sharing is appreciated, and I have no problem sharing some of my own :)