The kind of adult that sends a kid to a school like Tori's school is often fearful about adulthood itself, and convinces the kid that it's a big scary world out there that almost no one can succeed in at all.

The reason some kids see their whole outlook change is that even having a few normal roommates in an ugly apartment in a bad neighborhood will mean you can usually see that your roommate who's making a real effort gets ahead more than that one that keeps quitting jobs or not showing up on time. You end up seeing that while it's not always easy being an adult, it's also not nearly as hard as codependency-seeking parents make it seem.

Which is actually really freeing, when you think about it. Adulthood being easier than you thought it would be is a weird feeling and it can be hard to shake the idea that you're somehow cheating the system when you attain even marginal success, once your parents have convinced you that only people with money and connections can make a living wage (or similar aspiration-destroying myths).

But Tori's behind the 8 ball on all of this, because her queer milieu is now all about anti-self-improvement. Stay as fat as you are, don't get up until noon if you don't feel like it - that's just a sleep phase disorder, cancelling plans with your friends is self-care. And these kids are conditioned that only roommates or close friends who have already drunk the kool-aid are "safe," so they create a network of codependency that becomes more and more difficult to break free from. It's a cult that has worked by making people certain everyone outside the cult wants to kill them, and everyone in it reinforces that idea.

Breaking free from a neglectful parent is one thing. Breaking free from the queer hydra is another.

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recovered Jan 2021
idk who "tori" is, or this "cult" exactly.