Unhinged One

07/21/2026

mine: "i'm not saying anything, BUT" 😭

07/21/2026

new country, same "you" 😭 what's your duo's record for staying on one person?

07/20/2026

mine: saying "because i said so" and meaning it 😭

07/20/2026

my friend pointed at a shelf in my flat on saturday and said one sentence that made me sit down on the floor 🔨
so i don't yell. i have never yelled. people describe me as "the calm one" and they say it like it's a compliment and i have accepted it like one for thirty years.
here's what my father does, for context. my dad has never had an argument in his life. not one. when something goes wrong in that house he does not raise his voice, he does not slam anything, he just gets up and goes and does a JOB.
and you can read the man like a barometer, because the job tells you the size of the problem. mildly irritated, he tidies the shed. properly annoyed, he washes a car that is already clean. and if something is genuinely, seriously wrong, he starts a PROJECT. he disappears into the garage for six hours and comes back out and now there's decking.
nobody ever says anything about it. we just quietly note what he's building and adjust accordingly.
so. march. something went badly wrong for me, doesn't matter what. and i did not cry and i did not shout. i reorganised an entire kitchen cupboard at 10pm on a tuesday. by size. and when my flatmate came in and asked if i was okay i said, and i want you to hear the exact words, "yeah i'm fine, this has needed doing for ages."
then in may i painted my hallway. on a wednesday. for no reason. i'm fine.
and then two weeks ago i was up at 2am with a drill in my hand building a shelf that nobody on this earth asked for. and i was FINE. i was so fine.
then saturday my friend Nour is over and she points at it and goes "that's new."
and i said yeah.
and she goes, "you know there's one of these for every bad thing that's happened to you this year, right?"
and i just stood in the middle of my own living room and counted them.
there are six.
so i sat on the floor and looked it up like a lunatic, and there's this whole thing about how men tend to regulate emotion through action instead of words. there's a blacksmith who wrote about processing his entire emotional life through hammering metal, without saying a single word about his feelings to anybody, ever. he called it the secret alchemy. and the thing that got me is that it's not that they don't feel it. they feel all of it. they just answer it with their hands.
and then i remembered the conservatory.
my father built the conservatory the year my grandmother died. i have always thought that was a strange coincidence, that he picked that year, of all years, to take on something that big.
it wasn't a coincidence. it was a eulogy. he stood in a garden for four months and said the whole thing, and not one of us could read it.
so my flat isn't decorated. it's a diary. six entries this year, every one of them a conversation i didn't have, and i've been living inside it and calling it a nice flat.
and i know exactly how this is about to split, so go on. half of you are already typing that this is textbook suppression and i need therapy and my father needed it thirty years ago. the other half are quietly furious about that, because you know a man who says it with his hands and you're tired of being told that isn't real. both of you, in the comments, immediately.
but do this first. look around wherever you're sitting. find the thing you made or bought or reorganised during a week you told everyone you were fine.
name it. just the object. no story, no explanation. i want the full inventory 🔨

07/20/2026

they need to know this mom😂

07/20/2026

i have been timing my father for two months and the number is now so consistent that i could genuinely set a watch by it ⏱️
first, a clarification, because everyone gets this wrong. my dad is not mean. he has never once said anything cruel to me in my life. that's not what this is.
what he does is ASK A QUESTION.
you tell him something good and he does not say "that's great." he runs a threat assessment. every time. you got a job, "what's the pension like." you bought a car, "how much did they see you coming for." you're going away, "what's the airport parking, they rob you at that airport." he has never in his life been happy first and practical second. the order is not available to him.
so in may i started logging it. notes app. i am not proud of this.
the job. i told him about the job. fourteen seconds, and then, "and what are they doing about your pension?" fourteen. i wrote it down at the kitchen table like a woman collecting evidence.
the trip. eleven seconds. "have you looked at what the excess is on that insurance."
then two weeks ago i told him i'd got the flat. and i heard him breathe in, and i started counting without deciding to.
nine seconds. "is it damp?"
and before my brain caught up, i said it out loud. "nine seconds."
and he goes, "what?"
and so i had to explain. all of it. the notes app. the two months. the average. i'm sat there confessing to surveilling my own father and i am fully braced for it.
and there's this pause.
and then he goes: "...what was the fastest?"
he wanted his TIME. he wasn't offended, he wasn't hurt, he wanted his STATS. i said nine. today was nine. that's the record.
and he was quiet for a second. and then he said:
"my father would have done it in four."
and that was it. that was the whole conversation. we talked about the boiler after that.
so he's not oblivious. he has never been oblivious. he's the SECOND generation of this. he's been running against a benchmark his entire life set by a man who died in 2011 and who i barely remember, and he has improved on it by five whole seconds, and not one person has ever once congratulated him for it.
nine seconds. he's nine seconds better than his dad was. by his own metric, my father is winning, and he's never told anybody.
and i know exactly how this comment section is about to go. half of you are typing that this isn't cute, it's emotional unavailability, and i shouldn't be making a bit out of it. the other half already know that the question IS the affection, and that "is it damp" is the closest thing to i love you that man has ever been issued. you're both right and you're about to be extremely unpleasant to each other.
so go and tell your father something good today. and time him. and come back and post the number, just the number, i want a proper leaderboard by tonight.
current record is four seconds and it belongs to a dead man ⏱️

07/20/2026

don't deny it

Link in bio ❤️

POV:Wear what you are thinking

unhingedone™
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07/20/2026

my mother just called to thank my brother for a trip that i planned, booked and paid for, and i am currently sitting inside it 🎟️
so. this trip took me six months. i found the fixture. i got the flights when they dropped. i booked the hotel with the good breakfast because he doesn't function without one. i picked these seats specifically because you can see the whole pitch from here. i booked the restaurant for after. i made a document.
my brother's total contribution to this trip was one text message, sent in march, which read, in full: "what time's the game"
that's it. that's his input. that is the entire recorded history of his involvement.
and it started at the airport. the woman at check in goes "ooh, big trip, who's the organiser then?" and my brother, without hesitating, without even LOOKING at me, goes "ah, we're a good team." WE. A TEAM. sir. name one thing.
then at the hotel he started telling the story. and he'd added things. he had DETAILS now. he told the guy on reception about "finding" the flights. found them. like they were on the floor.
but mom called at half time and i put her on speaker because i'm an idiot.
and she goes, "oh it's just so LOVELY of your brother to take you to the football. isn't he good."
and he heard it. he was sitting right there. in the seat i bought. and he looked at me, and he had this little moment where a better man might have done something, and then he leaned toward my phone and said:
"ah, it's nothing mum."
IT'S NOTHING MUM.
so i sat there in the 62nd minute of a game i paid for and i googled "do parents give sons and daughters different chores," which is a normal thing to do at the Bernabéu.
and it starts at EIGHT. by age eight, 58% of girls are doing chores and 37% of boys are. boys get paid more often for it. and in one study boys made 48 dollars for two hours of work and girls made 45 for nearly three. more money. less work. at nine years old.
and this is the one that finished me. teenage boys are more likely to be paid for personal hygiene. for BRUSHING THEIR TEETH. somewhere in this world a boy is being paid to shower while his sister does the dishes for free and everyone calls him a good lad.
so no. mom didn't raise a bitch.
she ran two completely different training programmes out of the same house. she raised one of us to be capable and one of us to be LOVED. she raised a manager and she raised a guest. and thirty one years later she's still calling to thank the guest.
and i already know how this splits. half of you are typing that my brother didn't actually do anything wrong and i'm aiming at the wrong person, and honestly you're not wrong. the other half are typing "just stop doing it then," and to those people i say: if i stop, nothing happens, nobody picks it up, and somehow it becomes MY fault that mum's birthday got missed. that's the trap. that's the whole trap.
so give me your sibling's actual job title in your family. not what they do. what they ARE. i'm operations. he's talent. go 🎟️

07/20/2026

I am gonna show this to my sister

Link in bio ❤️

POV:Wear what you are thinking

unhingedone™
Premium oversized shirts for you.🤗

07/20/2026