People talk about what they'd do if they were a horror movie protagonist, but you couldn't do that with horror games. Movies may be dictated by the writing, but in games, doing the sensible thing is almost always impossible. You can't just make your guy get back in the car and drive home instead of entering the scary abandoned mansion unless the developers included it as a fun easter egg early ending, and they probably didn't. If you were in a horror video game, you could walk up to your car, you could try to leave, but the prompt to open the door and put the keys back into the ignition will never come. Your hands will stay at your side until you finally realize there's truly nothing you can do than go through with the plot.
aorish-deactivated20251222
Recent discourse reminds me of that cult indoctrination trick that's often used to weed out more difficult marks early on, where they tell you all that you aren't allowed to eat rice on Tuesdays and then if you protest they go "wow SOMEBODY likes rice a little much huh" as if you're the fucking weirdo who cares too much about how much rice is consumed between Monday and Wednesday instead of them.
And this forces you to decide whether your autonomy matters to you more than the approval of the group - while they'll still act like you're on thin ice either way, if you give in at this point they know you're theirs forever, because now they've established a foothold, you've shown a moral weakness, which they will brand you with so it can be used against you in the future ("hey RICE-addict here doesn't want help break into the city records office") to force you to double-down and isolate you further.
And if instead you do decide to push back further, after your abrupt departure from the group ("You're seriously leaving us over RICE?!? Seriously?") and subsequent ostracism, you can then be used as a demonstration to the others who were more pliable, of how the outgroup is full of people like you who are obsessed with violating the No-Tuesday-Rice rule to the point where they'll abandon all their friends, who cared so much for them, so it clearly isn't an arbitrary restriction, you're the kind of monster these rules are intended to protect them from, thus all the other wise and esoteric precepts of the charismatic leader are implied to be equally justified.
This isn't just for cults either! Shitty partners, bosses, friends - they all do variants of this where if you kick back the first time they make an unreasonable request, it proves you weren't ever committed since you'd let such a small thing ruin everything. And of course, if it's the third or the tenth unreasonable thing they ask of you, it's SUCH A SMALL THING to be a deal-breaker at this late point in your relationship!
Lil Nas X gives a life update.
Honestly making new friends in my late 20s early 30s has in some ways been indistinguishable from dating except the courtship period is not romantic or sexual. I think people need to revisit the art of flirting in a friend way…like presenting your best self to a person and genuinely glowing when they return the gesture. And letting people influence and change you and getting excited when you have a chance to talk to them. That’s what makes getting to know someone fun in the first place…everyone in those advice threads about how to befriend people is basically describing how to have Coworkers not friends. “Go to a bar and hang out and start a conversation” you can do this but you have to follow up the first encounter with putting your best foot forward instead of just listlessly hoping for the social approval of the other party!!!!
The thing about radical kindness (or any kindness, for that matter) is that there are going to be times when someone or something makes you regret it. There are going to be times when you show someone empathy and grace that they don't "deserve". There are going to be times when someone takes that kindness and uses it against you. The world doesn't magically transform into a perfect place when you decide to choose kindness and people will take advantage of it. People will continue to be shitty.
But the thing is...that's not a flaw of kindness. That's not a you problem. That's a them problem. People who are happy with themselves and their lives don't go out of their way to misuse someone's kindness or grace. The "normal" response to kindness or empathy is not to find a way to exploit it. People who are happy with themselves don't look for ways to hurt people for no reason. Kindness will never be the problem. No matter what some shitty person decides to do with it. It should go without saying not to be a doormat, yes. Don't allow people to treat you badly just for the sake of being kind. But also don't let shitty people make you bitter because of how they treated you when you were kind.
sua53Reblogged creekfiendneurodivergentafFollowit's so wild when your parent changes when you become an adult. my dad is very cordial and non confrontational - he regularly helps me with adult stuff like changing the oil or providing insurance tips. he's always smiling when i call him on video and providing jokes when i complain about collegewhen i was a kid, i would have to tiptoe around his anger issues often, sometimes running quietly past his work table until he got his own place completely separate from our family, locked away for days. every so often he would start screaming in the car and trying to hit me or my brother for talking too loud while my mom attempted to calm him down as he swerved on the road. and now he, smiling, helps me with car insurance.like oh, this is just who you are when you have power over someone, and this is who you are when you dont have power over someone. no wonder you can have a normal life, friends, work while scaring the shit out of your kids and wife. i see it now. i see why no one would have believed me. that, i think, is one of the core fears of trauma - seeing the outside of it from the perspective of other adults that brushed you aside, and understanding. of course, that understanding gives the opposite of solace; it just gives you more grief with nowhere for it to go8613,74622,902
sua53RebloggedcreekfiendFollowtruly like. to have a successful mutually beneficial interpersonal relationship with someone its very important that you believe that they are a full real entire person just like you are, really believe that. and then you have to successfully communicate that to the other person. and they have to believe the same thing, AND successfully communicate it to the other person. and then you have to decide how you want your relationship with each other to be and you have to agree on most things, or else it doesn't make sense. and you have to actually believe it and not just want to believe it in order to be able to believe you yourself are a good person. you have to actually believe it. i think those are most of the. the ones you can't do without, if you want it to be relationally healing or whatever. people will be able to tell if you do not really think they are a person with interiority in the way they are. they will not like it. most of us flatten others to some degree and we do this bc we need psychologically to be able to justify the fact that our brains only have so much social categorization capacity. if you're doing it to the people directly around you, they'll notice. I didn't understand why people were reacting to me the way they were until I understood what my behavior had been saying to them! then it made perfect sense and I was like "oh shit that's not what I wanted to communicate to you at all, geez, I have to get better at understanding this language so I can make sure I'm showing the things I believe with my behavior in a way this person will understand and that will not instead harm them! i definitely do not want to be harming people but I was sort of unpersoning this person to justify how I was acting because I was making choices based on what I wanted and not what they wanted. if someone asked me straight up "do you want to have interpersonal relationships where you're always making choices based on what you need and discounting what the other person needs and wants?" i would say "no! i don't want to have those kind of relationships! i value not hurting people!" but in those individual instances I was ignoring behavioral communication that I was receiving to just go ahead with what I wanted. i don't think it's evil to say things like "look buddy I don't care if you're having a bad day, I really did NOT like being spoken to that way" to dismiss someone's feelings. but if someone you claim to care about is behaving in a way that YOU CAN READ as hesitant or reluctant to bring up what you are doing and how it is hurting them, then you better respond to that by saying "hey if you don't want the same things that I want, that's okay. i just want to know the real answer so we can be on the same page. i really value you and it is important to me that you be able to trust me. i have not behaved in a way that has made you feel that I am trustworthy. i will behave differently in order to communicate that to you better"like sometimes someone's answer is truly "well I don't really see you as a full human person with interiority" like for real for real. and boy howdy that can sure change your interactions if you can read it, right? like when a doctor has shown me that I can't trust them to believe I am a person who is accurately reporting what is going on with my health, that changes EVERYTHING about the interaction. And if someone i LIKE and who I VALUE tells me that they weren't considering me to be a real person, that's a whole different thing. I'm not saying everyone is always telling you exactly how human they see you as at all times. but like. its there subconsciously! some people are fine with this and some people grapple with it. i grapple with it a lot. its really hard right? sometimes not seeing yourself as uniquely different is hard. sometimes you know that it is important that you see others that way all the time because it's what is true; we are all human beings. no one can value every single other human the same as themselves or the people they love because we would go insane I think. sometimes it's easy to slot someone you like a whole lot into that grouping a little bit, sometimes, because you want something. sometimes you want that person to play a role in your life that they are not prepared and don't want to play. if people feel like their needs don't matter to you as much as your own, they will not feel fully safe in the relationship, and they'll be right. this can describe a lot of dynamics and obviously one end of the spectrum is abuse but stuff that isn't abuse can also involve an amount of doing this. its just that the amount and kind of harm it causes depends on the specific circumstances in each case. this is my most truest hottest deepest cptsd hack. all trauma is relational. you have to regain your own personhood not by denying the personhood of others, but by believing in the personhood of the people around you. and then include yourself. now maintain that. that's my ego death recipe! enjoy14356957
sua53RebloggedmikkenekoFollowSome years ago I simply decided that I was not going to base any reactions of mine on other people's "tone" or "attitude," and furthermore that I would no longer give credence to other people's accounts of other people's "tone." My lived experience has taught me that 1) people, even neurotypical people, are much much worse at secretly sussing out what the other person is REALLY thinking and feeling than they believe they are, and 2) it's almost never worth it to try to chase down Hidden Disrespect even if you are actually right.Who cares if the receptionist was Speaking In A Disdainful Tone. She said the appropriate words and did her job and I got what I needed and I don't care about what's Truly In Her Heart.2155488
sua53RebloggednorthstareclipseFollowI understand why optimization culture has boomed so hard in the past several years.Something big happened that most of us could do very little about. The world became openly unstable in ways people could no longer politely ignore. Institutions failed. Safety nets frayed. The future got harder to imagine. So a lot of people started reaching for control wherever they could find it: morning routines, dopamine detoxes, habit stacks, sleep scores, screen-time limits, supplement protocols, productivity systems, “nervous system regulation,” whatever the app-store priesthood was selling that week.I get it. I really do.But I’m going to pull a phrase people love to use when they want to sound emotionally mature: trauma explains behavior; it does not excuse it.Because at some point, “I am trying to regain a sense of agency in a chaotic world” turned into “everyone who doesn’t live like me is undisciplined, addicted, immature, morally weak, spiritually degraded, or secretly begging to be rescued from themselves.”And that’s where I get off the ride.I’m not saying optimization is bad for everyone. Some people genuinely benefit from tweaking parts of their lives. Some people like routines. Some people feel better with stricter sleep schedules or less social media or more deliberate habits. Great. Wonderful. I’m sincerely glad when people find something that makes their life easier.The problem is the culture around it.The culture is ableist because it treats “functioning” as a moral achievement and assumes everyone has the same body, brain, energy, pain level, sensory needs, executive function, and recovery capacity.It is classist because so much of it quietly depends on flexible schedules, disposable income, safe housing, nutritious food access, leisure time, privacy, and the ability to refuse exploitative work conditions without immediately risking survival.And it is Puritanical because underneath all the soft wellness language is the same old suspicion of pleasure: too much comfort will rot you, too much rest will weaken you, too much fun will corrupt you, too much convenience will make you less human. You are always supposed to be renouncing something. You are always supposed to be proving that you can suffer correctly.That’s the part that bothers me.Not “I tried changing this habit and it helped me.”Not “I personally feel better when I do less of that.”But the constant creep from personal preference into moral hierarchy. The assumption that a “better” life is always a more controlled life. The belief that every impulse must be interrogated, every pleasure audited, every habit optimized, every moment made legible to some invisible performance review.And honestly, I think a lot of people would rather accuse everyone else of being addicted, lazy, dysregulated, or broken than admit how scared they are of being alive in a world where control is often partial, fragile, and unevenly distributed.By all means, arrange your life in ways that help you. But the second your coping mechanism turns into a cudgel against people with different needs, different limits, different joys, different bodies, different schedules, different resources, or different definitions of a life worth living, it stops being self-improvement and starts being social pressure.18231,266
sua53Rebloggedcock-hollidayFollowThink it would do more people some good to understand that they are victims of bigotry because society is bigoted and not necessarily "because" they are the thing people are bigoted towards. Their victimhood is a portion of a larger animal that is not shy about "collateral damage", because the dissent from kyriarchy is always threatening to supremacist structures. Straight people are absolutely victims of homophobia. Girls too close friends with other girls. When a woman turns down a men and gets called a slur. Men doing anything perceived to be feminine. Years ago a cop tortured and killed his small child because he said the boy was gay. We will never know if that kid turned out to be gay because he wasn't killed for "being gay" but because his father's violent homophobia had him on the hunt for "signs" his child was queer.Cis people are constantly victims of transphobia. Cis people get transvestigated, gender nonconforming people are attacked in bathrooms, people who "look" or "seem" trans are followed by cops and attacked by security guards. Anyone presenting in a way that doesn't align with the most rigid ideas of male and female are potential deviants who need punished.White people are absolutely not victims of "reverse racism", but are still not necessarily "exempt" from being victimized by racism and antiblackness. The bar has shifted, and now more groups of white people enjoy being accepted into white supremacy who hadn't been previously--or were conditionally-- for example: Italians, Irish, and Jewish people. The entire concept of "race traitors" is a study on white people being brutalized by anti-Black racism. Racists hate Black folks so severely that white allies and partners are sometimes attacked and killed for it. None of these people are the main targets of these bigotries, but their privileges are conditional still. Nonconformity and association with the "other" can get those privileges revoked. But what we need to understand and understand well is that their victimhood in these scenarios is crucially not accidental. It is always a punishment for stepping out of line, either by potentially being the feared/hated category, or for "taking the side" of the feared/hated category. This is always intentional, and framing what happened to them as catching strays or that they aren't even really victims because they aren't the thing that they were hurt/killed over is extremely misguided and dangerous.Defining ourselves by the violence done to us supports the idea that to exist as we are means to suffer. That a world where we can be ourselves without pain for being ourselves is impossible. It traps us in a cycle of hopelessness. And when we define ourselves by what is done to us, then those who experience what we do must be infringing somehow, because they ARENT us, so they cannot be victims like us. It cheapens their suffering, especially those harmed for allying with us because if to be one of us is such a doomed reality, what does that make someone who chooses to stand with us?And it also cheapens our identities. It makes our identities and harm synonymous, creating a loop where violence is inevitable and a lack of violence is a lie. Anyone who isn't us is dangerous, and anyone who is us is only ever a victim like us.It creates insular community that is just as capable of harm as the outsiders, and it deprives us of loving community who actually do know a bit about what it's like to be us, even if they aren't exactly like us.We are not what has been done to us.391669
sua53RebloggedtuiskuhFollowAs a woman who is both gender non-conforming and who is planning a pregnancy in the near future AND who works with children, I am very invested in the conversation about the confines of femininity, the complexities of motherhood and the fascistic expectation of women to have children. I also often find it deeply frustrating. I do not think it should need to be said, but unfortunately it absolutely is, that nobody should ever be forced to become pregnant, be a parent or carry a pregnancy to term. Ever. This requires both complete and total abortion rights & access but also the dismantling of the gendered expectation of women to want and need children. Remaining child free should not only be possible for women, it should also be normal and completely accepted. Anything else is oppressive. However, I am deeply bothered by how many people who share these views talk about children. I have come across many posts describing children in cruel and dehumanizing ways, emphasizing how gross and terrible children are and how much of a burden they are to their parents. This, I think is also wrong. Children are a particularly vulnerable population. They often have very little rights and autonomy and are at the whims of adults around them, which makes then particularly vulnerable to abuse. Children are real, fully realized people who have very specific needs and considerations. Constantly discussing how disgusting and terrible children are, means attacking people who have no power and cannot defend themselves, legally or otherwise. These views cannot be separated from calls to remove children from public life, like parks and transportation, the practice of which is both dehumanizing and oppressive. This goes hand in hand with the gendered oppression of women who are unfortunately still often the primary caregivers of children. Forcing children out of the public sphere means forcing mothers out of it too. And the right to not have children needs to go hand in hand with the right to have children. Women need abortion rights and access but they also need the right and access to give birth for free. They need robust childcare and child & family friendly infrastructure. Otherwise the only people who can afford to have children are wealthy elites.The rights of women to not have children and the rights of children and mothers go hand in hand. They are not contradictory. Being a parent is a complex relationship, one wrought with a long history of violence and oppression of children and women. It is not easy to navigate, and nobody should be expected to do it. Simultaneously, the people who do decide to do it deserve help and support, not scorn or mockery. And most of all, children, all children, even the annoying, dirty and screaming ones deserve a safe loving world that sees their full humanity, respects their perspectives and their bodily autonomy. We are all a part of creating that world for them. Society should be about being good to each other, and that includes children too. 603,3274,601
sua53RebloggedsmsomahFollowScanned from the book Desert Eves: An Indian Paradise; Catherine Clement and photos by Hans Silvester; 20011865
sua53RebloggedfuneralFollowIn this age of big business, the independent entrepreneur is no longer typical. The ordinary man finds it harder and harder to plan for his heirs or even for his own remote future. The contemporary individual may have more opportunities than his ancestors had, but his concrete prospects have an increasingly shorter term. The future does not enter as precisely into his transactions. He simply feels that he will not be entirely lost if he preserves his skill and clings to his corporation, association, or union. Thus the individual subject of reason tends to become a shrunken ego, captive of an evanescent present, forgetting the use of the intellectual functions by which he was once able to transcend his actual position in reality. These functions are now taken over by the great economic and social forces of the era. The future of the individual depends less and less upon his own prudence and more and more upon the national and international struggles among the colossi of power. Individuality loses its economic basis.Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason1159
sua53Rebloggedbluering8Followlisten to me, this is so so important: you've gotta get used to really giving it your 60% as a default. like don't half-ass it necessarily but try not to go over 70% or so of an ass. you'll feel better and live a happier more fulfilled life, and on the rare occasions where you do need to lock the fuck in you'll be able to pull off bullshit that the sad miserable wretches giving it their 100% can never dream of, because they're busy draining themselves dry and you have energy reserves to spare.9322,94936,081
sua53Reblogged1000-life-hacksFollow1000lifehacks.com11931,69442,527
sua53RebloggedlastoneoutFollowI think part of the reason that I've grown a little exhausted with the idea that women must live in a constant state of terror is like...so I was in high school the first time someone catcalled me. I'd been walking down a busy street with my friend in broad daylight, and a car full of college guys drove past and yelled at us, and I immediately turned to look at them and shouted "FUCK OFF!!" which felt great! But my friend freaked out, and kept calling me an idiot, and telling me those guys were gonna turn around and come after us, that it's never okay to tell a dude to fuck off, and I was confused...but just nodded and I stopped doing that. Thing is, nothing happened to us. The dudes didn't turn around, they didn't come after us, it was a moment and then it was over and we were fine. It WAS okay to do that. We were fine. And I just have to wonder how much of this fear is rational and how much of it is self imposed and how much of it keeps us trapped under men, too petrified to fight back. Because I've been followed home multiple times by men, been catcalled, all that, and when my reaction has been open hostility most of the men get scared and fuck off. I had two guys start following me once when I was on a "I'm angry and need to blow off steam" walk at night after a fight with my roommates and they started after me going "hey babe where you going?" and again, I was having a bad night and was so angry I could barely think, so I just turned around and said "LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE" in the loudest, firmest voice I could and they both went "damn okay" and left. I was a cute, at the time fem woman who was 5'1" and 125lbs and I scared them off. Given all that...I just wonder, you know, why we're told we shouldn't make a scene or fight back, and I start to wonder how much of that is justified and how much of it exists to help men get away with being creeps. They want us afraid, that's why they do that, it's not about attraction, it's a power trip. So...why give them what they want? Why enable this nonsense? Acting meek and scared isn't going to stop them, it mostly emboldens them bcs it's what they want, so why act meek and scared? Why not claw and bite and scream? That actually might stop them, but you'll never know if you refuse to try. I know for a lot of us it's a reflex at this point, but it's not a reflex I or any of us were born with. It was taught to us by other women. And I'm starting to think that maybe...maybe we don't have to be scared...and maybe we aren't the ones who benefit from our fear. The men do. Because if we just sit there and cry while they hurt us and never try to fight back, they never have any incentive to stop. And it does embolden them, if they think women are all weak babies who will cry and freak out when they stand too close to us then they will do it more because there's nothing telling them they won't get away with it. A lot of radfems(and those buying into the ideology either intentionally or accidentally) claim to be mean feminists who don't care about men's feelings bcs men are all whiny little babies...but none of you ever seem to do anything other than claim that men are stronger than women in ever instance and that we should live in constant fear of every single man we encounter. Forgive me for wondering if maybe that's just what the men want us to be doing and thinking that there's a different, better way. Dealing with my OCD has also made me think about this a lot more, as I'm not really allowed to believe it's normal or okay for me to be afraid all the time, of anything. Indulging in my phobias makes them worse, so for me it is better to scream at these men to fuck off, to be rude, fight back. That's not going to reinforce my fears, so it's what I need to do. If I freak out every single time a man and I are alone together eventually I'm not gonna be able to leave my house, and that is not unique to OCD. We all have to stop thinking that our fear is mandatory, and it helps me at least that in my OCD therapy I have gotten over some of my phobias. I can stop letting my feelings control me. I do not have to be afraid, and being afraid won't stop bad things from happening, so fear is useless to me. Useless to me, but extremely beneficial to the powers that be. Fear even makes us less safe imo. If we convince ourselves that all men are dangerous monsters and women SHOULD be afraid of them because ANY of them could EASILY harm us if they wanted...aren't we convincing ourselves that trying to fight the patriarchy at all is useless? Aren't we depriving ourselves of the self-efficacy we were born with in favor of learned helplessness? Aren't we saying that women being trapped at home, never leaving alone, never existing near a man they don't know is somehow the way society must function and not a sign of profound oppression. Women have always had to fight to be where the men are because they want us too afraid to do that, when did we forget that? And really, who benefits from us thinking we can't fight back? Who benefits from our response to harassment and violence being cowering and sobbing and terror and avoidance? That's what they want, they want us to cower and sob and beg for them to stop or never exist in their spaces our of fear, that's why they're doing it! And given that in my experience if you're willing to try you can scare a man into leaving you the fuck alone, it really is extremely important for us as women to ask who benefits from our fear, our denial of the power we hold, both for our own sake and the sake of others(marginalized men, masculine women, ect.). Because I'm not convinced it's us. I don't blame anyone for instinctually reacting with fear, that's normal, but it's not a requirement. You can learn to not be scared of anything, even men! You can learn to not care when men say weird shit to you, you can learn to hurt men, fight back, scare them off, and then you can just live your life without it being ruled by terror. Back when I was a teenager we talked up women's self-defense classes, we fought to TAKE back the night, not ask nicely for it, not surrender it, but take it back from those who would deny it to us. Now most feminists think women going out at night at all is a death sentence when it isn't, it never has been, and it will never get any safer for us if we avoid it altogether. I really do think this radfem-adjacent idea that all women MUST live in terror of ALL men 100% of the time benefits the powers that be far more than it benefits us. Shitty men don't want us around, they don't want us to feel like we're free to live our lives as we please, they benefit from your being too scared to leave your house at night. From you not getting in that elevator. From you restricting your existence and twisting it in the hope of avoiding men forever while they just live. Again, we are not the ones who benefit from us being this scared, it doesn't protect us anyway! We also can just live, they want us to think we can't. Idk, I think I'd personally rather live my life not ruled by an irrational fear of men that does nothing to protect me and does everything to benefit shitty men. I want to be the kind of person who screams at catcallers to fuck off. I want to intimidate creeps who think women are easy targets. I don't want them to walk away satisfied that they scared me, I want them to walk away humiliated that the woman they thought was meek had her teeth at their throat the second they opened their fucking mouths. I want to be the last woman they fuck with, and I never want to come to accept the lie that men are always stronger than me, and that there is nothing I can do but run and cry when they decide to fuck with me for fun. Should I have a daughter I want her to know she does not have to sit back and let men creep her out bcs as a girl she's too weak to fight back. That used to be the stance of most women. I don't know what happened, but I know it's bad for us. I just wish people could see that. See what denying yourself your self-efficacy actually does to you, to your life. See that it's better for creeps to not get what they want. See that you do not have to be afraid. What they want is your fear, what they won't tell you is that you do not have to be afraid. Your fear makes you scared to fight back, and most of them aren't ready to actually get violent with a woman who will make a scene and fight back, so by reacting with fear they get what they want, but reacting with anger and aggression will usually scare them off. Maybe we could start telling ourselves that, instead of reinforcing the idea that we are powerless prey who must be terrified 24/7 until it becomes true. Worth thinking about, at least. For me, if they want me to be afraid I will make it my life's mission to never give them the satisfaction. Men don't get to control what I do, where I go, or the kind of person I am, and the only way to live like that that is to believe I hold more power than they want me to know. You wanna be the daughters of the witches they couldn't burn? The heirs of the mean lesbian title? Get up off the floor and use those boots to kick some teeth in. Fear ain't getting us anywhere, but I believe those men who followed me that I screamed at thought twice about trying that shit again. Let's start screaming. 35721,264
sua53RebloggedcaribbeanangelFollowToni Morrison. (2001)481651
sua53Rebloggedpersianmom-deactivated20260602carl jung girl you were so right about avoidance persianmom-deactivated20260602“if we don't accept our own destiny, a different kind of suffering takes its place: a neurosis develops, and I believe that that life which we have to live is not as bad as a neurosis. if I have to suffer, then let it be from my reality. a neurosis is a much greater curse! in general, a neurosis is a replacement for an evasion, an unconscious desire to cheat life, to avoid something. one cannot do more than live what one really is. and we are all made up of opposites and conflicting tendencies. after much reflection, I have come to the conclusion that it is better to live what one really is and accept the difficulties that arise as a result-because avoidance is much worse.”63,3597,357
sua53RebloggedplumslicesFollowI want enough stability for spontaneity 446778
sua53RebloggedcinnamonciannaFollowI know exactly the kind of life I want for myself but it’s just about getting there without being distracted by pointless self inflicted worries and ruminations or even by others4711,115
sua53Rebloggedmodelsof-colorFollowAkur Goi by Bohdan Bohdanov for L'officiel Italia Magazine November 2025162143
sua53RebloggedmastomysownerFollowLord of the Mysteries - The Seer Pathway13371,227
sua53Reblogged theindefinitearticleseven-winged-liarFollowit's cause you're always experiencing that damn emotion16,7158,500
sua53RebloggedwerenotreallystrangersFollowInstead of overthinking what you said focus on the fact that you were authentic 3554878
sua53RebloggeddjgloryFollowi honestly think there is nothing better than realizing & deciding214395
sua53RebloggeddyingenigmaFollowI just realized that everything a person hopes for and aspires to throughout their life is peace of mind, certainty, contentment, satisfaction—no more and no less.. And there is nothing more precious to a person than their satisfaction with themselves and their life, their peace of mind in their existence, their heart filled with a certainty untainted by doubt, their self-sufficiency with a simple life that embraces them. What could be more precious than this?12274
sua53RebloggedbyjoveFollowSo many Reddit relationship stories (where the relationship is not inherently fucked and the other person is not a threat to society) just come down to the person not realizing their feelings aren’t valid. Sometimes you think and feel things that are damaging to yourself and others and you have to learn to mitigate those bigggggg feelings. It is shit I thought we learned in kindergarten. Everybody is a little jealous of the birthday boy’s cool gifts but if you have a sobbing screaming jealous breakdown about it at the party, nobody is going to want to be your friend and it is not going to change anything in your favor. There will be posts like “I feel angry at my wife because she hasn’t been as affectionate towards me because she’s been taking care of her dying mom.” like, okay. Grow the fuck up. That’s an inside thought. It’s normal to miss your S/O when stressful life events keep you from spending quality time with each other. Absolutely not normal to behave like your point of view is the most important part of this situation and to continue to develop resentment towards your spouse who is experiencing one of the worst things that can happen to a person. Sometimes something someone does makes you uncomfortable and you realize it is your fault for feeling that way. Sometimes you will be jealous for no particular reason. Sometimes you’ll have an immature and selfish point of view on a situation. Sometimes you genuinely have to admit to yourself your feelings do not matter in a particular situation and swallow them. byjoveMaybe it’s the autism or the fact I’ve been severely mentally ill my entire life but I’m so used to thinking/feeling something and then being like “Actually, that is completely irrational. I need to work through that.” or “That’s wrong. Thinking like that does not benefit anyone.” that it is baffling to see people who completely refuse to admit their feelings are not always justified and valid. 466,49111,682
sua53Rebloggedradical-revolutionFollowYou shouldn't be dismayed if a sadness rises up in front of you, greater than any you have ever seen before; or if a disquiet plays over your hands and over all your doings like light and cloud-shadow. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why should you want to exclude from your life all unsettling, all pain, all depression of spirit, when you don't know what work it is these states are performing within you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where it all comes from and where it is leading? You well know you are in a period of transition and want nothing more than to be transformed. If there is something ailing in the way you go about things, then remember that sickness is the means by which an organism rids itself of something foreign to it. All one has to do is help it to be ill, to have its whole illness and let it break out, for that is how it mends itself...Do not watch yourself too closely. Do not draw over-rapid conclusions from what is happening to you. Simply let it happen.RAINER MARIA RILKE, LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET9311,771
sua53RebloggeddemonprincexFollowAnonymous asked:any thoughts on how to stop feeling deeply alienated through most social interactions?demonprincex answered:Lower your expectations, stop trying to make every brief interaction into some big symbol of how accepted you are, and try to have fun with it. Us socially anxious people tend to be real fucking dour about how we approach socializing even when we think we are trying to seem open and outgoing. The problem is the "trying to seem" part; it reeks of hesitation and discomfort and people respond to that. People do not care what you say or do but the energy with which you say it or do it. They can see when we are uncomfortable and they respect our discomfort by keeping a distance. To overcome this, you have to actually approach socializing with a bubbly detachment. Make jokes, say things no one understands but dont give a shit that they dont get it, be happy, be sad, allow your genuine emotions to flow through, be playful, experiment, and experience life rather than "try to be" something. i know this is very hard if you are used to making things hard for yourself. but what you have to do is let go and let it be easy. and meaningless. and light. and do it a million times. 5366859
sua53Rebloggedmanda-katFollowI think parents don't understand how punishing a child isn't for when they make you upset, it's for when they do something wrong. Like, you don't just punish them for stress relief, it's so they can learn right from wrong. So if your kid learns, for example, that helping mom make dinner = getting in the way, but not helping = being lazy, but asking if mom needs help = being annoying and asking stupid questions, then you have basically trained a person to see the only option that doesn't lead to scolding as 'hide and don't be thought of until dinner is done'. So now what relationship is your kid going to have with cooking or cleaning or chores in general? How is that going to affect them as an adult? If there is no right answer regarding the things that bother a parent, then your kid is going to associate those things with being punished no matter what they do. If talking during a car ride is bad and annoying, but being quiet and staring out the window is bad and disrespectful, then what are they going to do every time they're in the car with you but count every word they say? If texting is suspicious, but why don't they have friends, but going out with people is irresponsible, but why don't they ever leave their room, but their friends are all bad influences, but why did they stop hanging out with them, they were nice kids, then what are you even doing?If playing video games is lazy, going outside is unsafe, playing is ignoring chores and doing chores is being in the way, then YOU'VE CREATED A CHILD WHO'S LEARNED THE ONLY WAY TO AVOID BEING SCOLDED IS TO DISAPPEAR WHENEVER YOU'RE IN A BAD MOOD! You've created a person who is hardwired to feel guilty no matter what they choose to do. You turned them into a confrontation ninja, who can vanish as soon as a hard conversation enters the picture. You've trained a person to disregard why rules exist and instead focus on who they can placate and suck up to in order to make the rules change. Because to them, rules and punishments are just who gets on the bosses nerves at the wrong time. 10715,27821,757
sua53RebloggedallsadnshitFollowAccepting that maybe even the best version of you would be hated by some people can really set you free like life doesn't have to be making other people comfortable or being the most lovable and fair person in the universe like actually the satisfaction you seek is beyond judgment and lies within your own interests and desires fr 10,62416,394
sua53RebloggedfortuneadayFollowALT323515
sua53RebloggeddailyclassicartFollowVolodymyr Orlovsky - "Storm Clouds"25821,125
sua53Rebloggedrequiem-on-waterFollowtwopartstudio10,95114,897
sua53RebloggedcouthbbgFollowcan't today. busy.2124,52932,849
sua53RebloggedsoulofthedeepFollowSound on to hear the water running through pebblesrooftop-reveriesCould sit by the ocean all day and be happy 7027,08230,971
sua53RebloggeddailyclassicartFollowIvan Aivazovsky - "A Brig on the Open Sea (detail)" (1885)382143
sua53RebloggedkaijunoFollow11,83415,066
sua53RebloggedfortuneadayFollow291395
sua53RebloggedprokopetzFollowNot to be a technical writer on main, but I've been bumping into the idea lately that the only reason explaining yourself in more detail never seems to work is because neurotypical people are misunderstanding you on purpose, or because they have short attention spans, or because they just hate listening to you talk – and sure, occasionally that's even true, but most of the time the problem you're running into is more fundamental.Every time you add more detail, you're running the risk of tripping over a bad assumption on your part about the listener's prior knowledge, or hitting the tipping point where they become overwhelmed with new information (and remember that you don't know which parts of what you're saying will be new information for them), or making a leap of logic that isn't as self-evident as you think it is, or any of a dozen other potential snags which, by definition, you will not see coming until it's too late to correct course.Basically, every piece of information you add multiplies the odds of you getting blindsided by some vector of misunderstanding you didn't anticipate, even as it addresses the ones you did anticipate. The point of diminishing returns where continuing to elaborate increases the odds of unexpected miscommunication more than it decreases the odds of expected miscommunication is much nearer than you'd like.The most effective act of communication is not the one which contains the most possible information, but the one which contains the smallest amount of information it possibly can while still getting its point across. It sucks, but it's the reality of the situation. People far more autistic than you have been trying for hundreds of years to invent a way of communicating which doesn't work this way, without success.All of which is to say that "getting to the damn point" is legitimately a communication skill, not just an accommodation for people who aren't paying attention. If it's any consolation, it's something neurotypical people struggle with just as much as anyone else – if it was easy, technical writers wouldn't have jobs!446,0339,324
sua53Rebloggedangelofthemornings-deactivated2One thing I really like about Beverly Engel's book It Wasn't Your Fault, which is about PTSD-induced toxic shame, is that quite a bit of it deals with people who haven't broken The Cycle of Abuse (TM) and have gone on to hurt others. That's a really underserved and vulnerable patient population, and statistically, it's also MASSIVE. I don't think I've read a single other self-help type book on PTSD and self-loathing that confronts the possibility that you're exactly as bad as you think you are. 116,3109,150
sua53RebloggeddailyclassicartFollowAnna Vindront - "At Sunset" (2024)28351,290
sua53RebloggedphotoarchiveFollowMarcela Taboada, Haz de luz, 201311,2321,560
sua53Reblogged dailymannersletsmeetinourdreamsFollow“Some years ago, I was stuck on a crosstown bus in New York City during rush hour. Traffic was barely moving. The bus was filled with cold, tired people who were deeply irritated—with one another; with the rainy, sleety weather; with the world itself. Two men barked at each other about a shove that might or might not have been intentional. A pregnant woman got on, and nobody offered her a seat. Rage was in the air; no mercy would be found here. But as the bus approached Seventh Avenue, the driver got on the intercom. “Folks,” he said, “I know you’ve had a rough day and you’re frustrated. I can’t do anything about the weather or traffic, but here’s what I can do. As each one of you gets off the bus, I will reach out my hand to you. As you walk by, drop your troubles into the palm of my hand, okay? Don’t take your problems home to your families tonight—just leave ‘em with me. My route goes right by the Hudson River, and when I drive by there later, I’ll open the window and throw your troubles in the water. Sound good?” It was as if a spell had lifted. Everyone burst out laughing. Faces gleamed with surprised delight. People who’d been pretending for the past hour not to notice each other’s existence were suddenly grinning at each other like, is this guy serious? Oh, he was serious. At the next stop—just as promised—the driver reached out his hand, palm up, and waited. One by one, all the exiting commuters placed their hand just above his and mimed the gesture of dropping something into his palm. Some people laughed as they did this, some teared up—but everyone did it. The driver repeated the same lovely ritual at the next stop, too. And the next. All the way to the river. We live in a hard world, my friends. Sometimes it’s extra difficult to be a human being. Sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes you have a bad day that lasts for several years. You struggle and fail. You lose jobs, money, friends, faith, and love. You witness horrible events unfolding in the news, and you become fearful and withdrawn. There are times when everything seems cloaked in darkness. You long for the light but don’t know where to find it. But what if you are the light? What if you’re the very agent of illumination that a dark situation begs for? That’s what this bus driver taught me—that anyone can be the light, at any moment. This guy wasn’t some big power player. He wasn’t a spiritual leader. He wasn’t some media-savvy “influencer.” He was a bus driver—one of society’s most invisible workers. But he possessed real power, and he used it beautifully for our benefit. When life feels especially grim, or when I feel particularly powerless in the face of the world’s troubles, I think of this man and ask myself, What can I do, right now, to be the light? Of course, I can’t personally end all wars, or solve global warming, or transform vexing people into entirely different creatures. I definitely can’t control traffic. But I do have some influence on everyone I brush up against, even if we never speak or learn each other’s name. How we behave matters because within human society everything is contagious—sadness and anger, yes, but also patience and generosity. Which means we all have more influence than we realize. No matter who you are, or where you are, or how mundane or tough your situation may seem, I believe you can illuminate your world. In fact, I believe this is the only way the world will ever be illuminated—one bright act of grace at a time, all the way to the river.“–Elizabeth Gilbert5037,64940,674
sua53RebloggedlizardhoFollowI’ve been thinking a lot lately about some of the people I interact with. I have a coworker who I am pretty sure is a MAGA type, and she is also a lovely woman who is dreadfully overworked and so good at connecting to patients when they call. I can see the conflict on her face when she talks to me, a gigantic tranny dork who speaks Spanish and affirms the LGBT community, but can also talk to her about her cows and knows about guns and stuff. I can see the fear in the eyes of my former Young Men’s leader when he misgenders me and realizes that I’m not an ideology but a person he has known for a long time. I can see the way my extended family stop and stutter over political discussions when they realize they are talking about me. And I don’t know why but lately it’s just made me think about my neighbor as a kid. When we moved to Arizona, we moved next door to a lovely retired couple - John and Lucy. John was a veteran of WWII, he had an M.D. and a Ph.D. in radiology, and he LOVED us to pieces. His wife, Lucy, was a sharp and gifted woman - well spoken, very observant, and VERY clever. I just know that she used that cleverness as a mom to great effect, because with my and my siblings she always managed to find a way to send us home with candy and treats for a week despite my dad’s protests. We loved them, growing up, and even though they have long-since passed away I love them still, and I love what I learned from them. John was, as stated, a WWII veteran. He was enlisted as a rifleman, and later as a front line medic, starting at Point Du Hoc and moving inwards to France and towards the Rhine. He let me do a report on him in 6th grade where he shared war stories with me he had kept to himself his whole life - he said it was out of respect for his friends who didn’t get to come home and tell their stories. He said he told me because he knew I could respect the memories of his friends. He showed me his collection of medals, and which he’d kept hidden away in a sock in his attic because he’d feel an immense grief any time he saw them. He had wanted to be a doctor his whole life, prior to being drafted he was studying medicine and had taken the Hippocratic oath to Do No Harm. He saw his medals as a reminder that he had Done Harm. After telling me his stories he was able to convince himself that while he had Done Harm, it was only because his only other alternative was, to him, cowardice. He chose to be brave even if it meant acting against his Oath because he felt that if he didn’t do it someone else would have to go in his place and he would be responsible for the harm that befell them. I don’t think that’s true, but for him it was and that was something no being on earth could have ever dissuaded him from believing.He shared wild stories - melee combat on the beach, clearing artillery bunkers, receiving a Purple Heart for being injured in hand-to-hand combat with a Wehrmacht rifleman he said he felt pity for because they were the same age and he had to imagine the man he was fighting had been drafted just like him. He shared how he was awarded a Silver Star for charging a machine gun nest, but shared that he was most proud of not killing anyone in the process. He threw a grenade with the pin still in it and when the machine gunners jumped to avoid being blown up they were killed by someone else so he didn’t have to do it. He took the machine gun and shot the other machine gun in that French field to pieces so he didn’t have to kill the people operating it. He said they were giving out Silver Stars like candy but I knew he was being modest. He told me about being redesignated as a medic, about how he crawled for about 500 yards on his belly to rescue an injured tank driver, then threw him over his back and crawled the same 500 yards back (1000 yards total) to treat his injuries. He said he met the man in an Army hospital in England after his spine was broken by a high explosive panzer shell was fired through a hollowed out French farmhouse and landed about 20 feet away from him. He told me about all the people he helped and saved as a medic, he told me about his work in radiology and research after the war. He showed me a hallway that was quite literally wallpapered with academic honors he’d earned as a researcher. He told me about how his first Fourth of July back was a horror show for him because fireworks and German artillery make very similar sounds. He told me about how he woke up in a cold sweat well over half a century later hearing the screams of German artillery men being burned alive with flamethrowers, or hearing his own voice apologizing to the young German soldier he stabbed in the heart at Point Du Hoc. He told me that when he was asked to present at a medical conference in Germany 25 years after the war ended that he was so scared he couldn’t step off the plane, and that his wife had to hold his hand and lead/pull him with her. He said he was not scared because he was worried about being triggered, but because he knew that someone somewhere outside of that plane had the course of their life irreparably altered by his military service. That to someone out there he was the cause of immense suffering and harm. That some unwitting waiter could be the son of the Nazi Officer he stabbed in the heart with a 12-inch hunting knife. That some woman asking questions in the audience would be the daughter or widow of a man he sent to judgement with a .30-06. He was scared that they would hate him. He knew what the Nazi’s had done, he knew better than anyone I’d ever met. He’d watched the documentaries, he’s seen the PoWs returning from camps, he’d seen the civilians massacred and tortured by their regime, but he also knew that among the monsters were people like him - idealistic 20-somethings who only wanted to make the world better and were ripped away from that life by the Nazi war machine. And he spent his whole life mourning the loss of innocence and peace that was forced on so many people by such a corrupt power. To be honest I don’t know if I could do that, but he could. He told me he could still feel the dead and lost with him, both when he slept and when he woke. He told me he thought he’d go to his grave never having told a word of this to anyone. That the stories of him and his friends and allies would disappear silently with him and those like him. That he had wanted that until he realized that he didn’t have to sell out to share the stories - that he could give the stories away for free to someone who would love the people in them, and not just the content of them. He didn’t want his stories to be used as Patriotic Pornography by some TV network or magazine. He wanted the people he knew to be respected, he wanted their memories to be honored and loved, and he entrusted me, a 12-year-old “boy” to do that. He told me for years afterwards that after telling me these stories that he slept better than he ever had. That by sharing the stories with someone who could hear Him over the din of victory and glory and honor and revisionistic history. Someone who could see the man in the story and not just see the plot of a battle being won. He wanted to be human, and he wanted the people he saw die to be human too - everyone, not just the people on his side. He wanted someone to see and to know the anguish of having to look someone in the eye as heartblood muddies the ground beneath them and hope that they understand that this was not an act of love or hatred but an act of desperation. To hope that you had just taken out One Of The Bad Ones instead of a medical student or a poet who had been drafted. He wanted me to see how hard he had worked since then to build a world without scarcity, to build a world of peace. He wanted me to know SO badly that the cost of violence, any violence, even necessary violence, is always ALWAYS paid by both parties involved. I think about the rise of the new right wing - the new Nazi movement’s traction in politics, and I feel sad and scared - the world that Johnathan J Yobaggy, my neighbor, my friend, and my hero, worked SO hard to build is being done away with by people who do not understand the cost of the path they are entering. I can see brief moments of recognition in the eyes of some of the people I mentioned - The former young men’s president who immediately regrets misgendering me and hen he makes eye contact with me and sees Me staring back at him and not a faceless “ideology.” I can hear it in the voice of my uncle who quietly comes up to me to apologize for some homophobic comment he made absentmindedly. I can see it in the eyes of racists and sexists being interviewed on TV when they realize that they didn’t vote for a concept, they voted for a real thing. And honestly, I have mixed emotions about it. Because while I understand frustration with the status quo, the importance of basic human needs like affordable good and rent, and I know the fear that comes with feeling powerless, I also can’t help but grieve the endless wheel of history bringing us back to this God Damned Fucking Place again. I hope we can avoid this fate, not just for our sake but for the sake of everyone who has ever tried to make the world safer. For everyone who has ever tried to make up for human nature, for everyone who has ever placed themselves on the offering plate to protect others from the cruelty they know lies just under the surface of mankind’s tenuous grip on progress. I want SO badly for there to be a solution to this, for the people who idolize the Nazi party and the impact of fascism to see that the price of this path is paid in more than just blood but in soul. That they’re allowing themselves to be devoured too. I want for the centrists and the fence sitters and the idealists who want to “change it from the inside” to see how dangerous our politics have become. I want them to see that they’re losing the things that make them great in exchange for a security blanket that’s now become far far far too small to ever work for them again. Safety found in the past is already gone, and safety found in the future is only as real as a daydream. That any ideology that promises that by “joining us now we’ll make things rough so we can make things safe in a decade” is a promise made by those who will not have to fight the battles they send you to. I don’t know if America was ever really great, but as long as John was alive it felt great to me. There is no ideology that can replace a neighbor. No tax plan that can replace a friend. No grocery bill that can replace community and connection. No amount of budget cuts that can replace kindness. No amount of suffering from people I hate that will ever make more love. I don’t know how to make America great, but I know how to make my America great and it is not by selling out integrity and compassion and community and fucking humanity to make eggs and gas cheaper. It is by seeing and hearing the people around me. I’m not Mormon anymore, but I still know the value of mourning with those that mourn and comforting those that stand in need of comfort. I’m not Christian anymore but I still have Eyes That Can See and Ears That Can Hear. I want to make this all stop but I can’t stop the collective power of tens of millions of people so instead I listen to my MAGA coworker tell me about how sick her kid was last week. I make jokes with my Young Men’s leader. I hug my uncle. I let them see me fully, as a human and not an ideology. As a woman and not the concept of gender. As a whole person and not someone who can be easily summarized or boiled down into something short and quippy. And I let them know I can see them fully too, and I can see all their humanity as easily as they can see mine. I just have to hope that this works - that enough people can See and Hear the people in their lives who matter to them to bring them out of their personal world of forms and into the real world. I am probably, honestly, just spiraling a little bit. I took my ADHD meds today and in addition to helping me focus they make me a little anxious so I doubt things are as bad right now as they seem. But just in case there’s any truth to the way things seem to be going, remember, and I mean this seriously: Be kinder to each other, be gayer, and read more Terry Pratchett. And for the love of god day hello to your neighbor. lizardhoJohnathan J Yobaggy’s oldest son is, I believe, also a radiologist. I may have written this about your grandpa. If that is the case, I just hope you know how loved he is. If not, I still wish good things for you and your family because radiology is fresh to death. 9011,39117,000
sua53RebloggedenchantedbookFollow'The Angel of Power' by Anelia Pavlova41,4442,728
sua53Rebloggedmartineden666FollowLandscape embroidery by Carolina Torres35,3535,501
sua53RebloggedasoftspotforangelsFollowsome of my favorite woven tapestries, by Cecilia Blomberg:Point Defiance StepsMatesRising TidesVashon Steps229102,370112,681
sua53Rebloggedcosmos-daughterFollow Hunter's Dream ⟡꙳⊹˖656818
sua53Reblogged ladyteldrapowerhousearenaFollowThe Last Words Of 25 Famous Dead WritersWhen you’ve dedicated your life to words, it’s important to go out eloquently.Ernest Hemingway: “Goodnight my kitten.” Spoken to his wife before he killed himself. Jane Austen: “I want nothing but death.” In response to her sister, Cassandra, who was asking her if she wanted anything. J.M Barrie: “I can’t sleep.”L. Frank Baum: “Now I can cross the shifting sands.”Edgar Allan Poe: “Lord help my poor soul.”Thomas Hobbes: “I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap into the dark,”Alfred Jarry: “I am dying…please, bring me a toothpick.”Hunter S. Thompson: “Relax — this won’t hurt.”Henrik Ibsen: “On the contrary!”Anton Chekhov: “I haven’t had champagne for a long time.”Mark Twain: “Good bye. If we meet—” Spoken to his daughter Clara.Louisa May Alcott: “Is it not meningitis?” Alcott did not have meningitis, though she believed it to be so. She died from mercury poison. Jean Cocteau: “Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking towards me, without hurrying.”Washington Irving: “I have to set my pillows one more night, when will this end already?”Leo Tolstoy: “But the peasants…how do the peasants die?”Hans Christian Andersen: “Don’t ask me how I am! I understand nothing more.”Charles Dickens: “On the ground!” He suffered a stroke outside his home and was asking to be laid on the ground. H.G. Wells: “Go away! I’m all right.” He didn’t know he was dying. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “More light.” W.C. Fields: “Goddamn the whole fucking world and everyone in it except you, Carlotta!” “Carlotta” was Carlotta Monti, actress and his mistress. Voltaire: “Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies.” When asked by a priest to renounce Satan. Dylan Thomas: “I’ve had 18 straight whiskies…I think that’s the record.”George Bernard Shaw: “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”Henry David Thoreau: “Moose…Indian.”James Joyce: “Does nobody understand?”matt-the-blind-cinnamon-roll26. Oscar Wilde: “Either the wallpaper goes, or I do.”
27. Bob Hope: “Surprise me.” He was responding to his wife asking where he wanted to be buried. ellejelloreblogging because of Voltaire thoughswearysunflower“Please, bring me a toothpick”phantityI’m quite disappointed that my absolute favourite has been missed off here:
28. Roald Dahl’s last words are commonly believed to be “you know, I’m not frightened. It’s just that I will miss you all so much!” which are the perfect last words. But, after he appeared to fall unconscious, a nurse injected him with morphine to ease his passing. His actual last words were a whispered “ow, fuck”lira-mira-deactivated20180126Oscar Wilde: “Either the wallpaper goes or I do”Evidently, the wallpaper stayed108,08194,453
sua53Rebloggedadultswim-nostalgiaFollow6,0266,695
sua53RebloggedwesternsunriseFollowthe fundamental problem on this website is that if a homeless person tried to talk to most of y’all you’d be scared out of your mindswesternsunrisesee because people are actually seeing this i feel like i need to make it abundantly clear what i mean by this: in the united states context, the majority of social problems are just disappeared. the mentally ill are often relegated to their homes, to asylums (these still exist), to hospitals. the disabled, fat, and disfigured likewise. people called “criminal” disappear into the criminal punishment system and often never emerge. if you live in any city in america, however, there are homeless people. they are the social problem that cannot be disappeared so easily. drive along a freeway outbound from the urban center to the suburbs and look into the trees. you’ll see tents, tarps, evidence of human habitation. walk through a downtown, even in coldest winter, and you’ll see bottles that weren’t there yesterday and clothes inexplicably abandoned. people tend to either not look at these things or to look at them and name them garbage. eyesore. they don’t consider what it would be like to carry everything you own on your back. how little energy you would have for recycling or cleaning up after yourself if you had been kicked out of your shelter at 7am that morning and now had to find a nook to hide out in to escape a -5F windchill. maybe you can go to a local public library, but maybe you can’t because you twitch or smell bad or talk to yourself and people only look at you out of the corner of their eye so they know what description to give the armed security guard at the front desk. when i’m talking about looking at your unhoused neighbor, i’m talking about looking at them first. i’m talking about smiling and waving and maybe striking up a conversation. i’m talking about offering to grab lunch. i’m talking about indulging them even when they make you uncomfortable.on memory care floors in hospitals you often encounter the problem of nurses who have been taught how to engage patients with memory issues but who do not give proper patient care because it makes them uncomfortable. they don’t want to lie or play pretend or do anything that takes them out of their very rigidly defined reality. an old man wakes up and tries to get out of bed because it’s time to feed the cows. he wonders where his wife is. it would make his nurse uncomfortable to tell him that his wife knew he needed some rest so she went out to feed the cows, so they tell him that his wife died five years ago and he doesn’t have his farm anymore. they break his heart rather than allow him to live in a better time for a little while longer. back in december a man sat across from me on the train who was clearly struggling. i started a conversation with him about his art he was holding, which he told me were illustrated children’s books in a language he had always known. it was a syllabary i certainly didn’t recognize, and the illustrations weren’t anything i’ve seen in children’s literature, but we were suddenly both artists on the train. i showed him my journal and he complimented the pasting job on some of my collages. then he started to talk about angels. about his angel specifically, who had died and left him behind on earth. he missed his angel so much that he planned to commit suicide before christmas. i talked to him about his angel, and about love and grief and pain, all of which we could share. he began to call me jesus. i could have told him he was wrong, that i wasn’t even into the abrahamic religions, etc., and it would have broken his heart. instead i walked with him up from the train station—and got him through the armed transit cops who tried to stop him because he didn’t have a ticket—and gave him a picture of a loving savior, and a world that would be better for having him in it. instead of hugging some faggot, he ended up hugging a jesus that loved him. it was an odd situation. it made me a little uncomfortable. it may have been one of the few instances of kindness that he got that day. it may have been the first time in a while that someone who wasn’t unhoused or working the bread line actually started a conversation with him. imagine if no one ever looked at you. don’t say some cute shit about “oh, i wish no one ever perceived me.” no you don’t. you wish you could control people’s perception of you. but what if people weren’t only not looking at you, but they already thought they knew you. you’re twitching so you’re on something. you’re staring at nothing so you’re dumb. you’re asking for money or food so you’re a leech on society. you’re talking to yourself so you’re dangerous. they don’t look at you but they know you. so they don’t speak to you bc they already know what they’re gonna find.two and a half weeks ago my mom was found dead on the streets of san antonio. she’d been homeless there for about 12 years. i’d only just gotten stable enough to reach out to her. the woman i contacted at the day home she went to every month to get a haircut, her nails done, and to wash her clothes said she was doing well, that she was clean, that she was very polite, that she was smart. she had two dogs that she’d cared enough about to have microchipped. their names are fin and sophia. having those dogs probably made it so she couldn’t get permanent housing, because most housing programs for the homeless don’t allow them to bring pets. a lot of people choose to keep their pets rather than give them up as a condition of securing housing. in denver, colorado i once met an unhoused man who had a master’s degree in geophysics. his thesis was on magnetic wells and their affects of satellite orbits. he was a birdwatcher. when you refuse to look at homeless people, or the things they leave behind (often are forced to leave behind by cops), you are actively participating in the disappearance of a population. do you think you wouldn’t lose part of yourself if safety concerns made you nocturnal? if every time you got enough stuff to set up a good camp some suburbanite called the cops on your tent? would you not talk to yourself if no one else was speaking to you? a lot of talk goes into the problem how easy it is to become homeless. one medical bill, one missed paycheck and your life is imperiled. well, there are a lot of people who are stepped over every day who already live your worst case scenario, and the simple fact is that the majority of people in the u.s. are too scared of having an uncomfortable or even perhaps scary interaction with an unhoused person to look at them. but i need y’all to know that you are not special. it isn’t just the dirtiest, most addicted, most mentally ill homeless people who are left to die on the streets alone. it is all homeless people. people who won’t leave behind beloved pets, people who couldn’t survive in academia, people who think they’re being gangstalked, people who have jobs, people who have families. if you are one missed paycheck from homelessness, you’re also one catastrophic tragedy, one spark that catches in the apartment on the other side of your building, one chance encounter with the drug that just won’t let you go. not one goddamn person on this earth is better than the unhoused person they step over on the way to get their morning coffee, and i hope to fuck y’all figure that out before you find yourselves disappeared too. if you actually want to change the fucking world, maybe start with looking your neighbors in the eye. 16617,11719,857
sua53RebloggedgallusrostromegalusFollowA thing that has been helpful for me is realizing that Temperance shares a root with the verb "to temper" as in "to temper steel", and that Temperance is not masochistic denial of pleasure, but instead taking the time to develop the wherewithal to go "well what the fuck am I gonna do with this?" You can temper eggs into a nice omelette, or lemons into lemonade. You can temper emotions into something useful that, if it can't make you happy, at least doesn't hurt as much. Anger, for instance, can be tempered into compassion. You're angry at the current administration's fuckery? Why? Probably because you, and everyone else, does not deserve this shit. In fact, it'd be great to go stop that shit, and prevent it from happening again, because you have compassion for yourself and others, and therefore do not want this shit to happen tonthem. Boom. Hammer out the impurities of self-righteousness and learned helplessness and turn that anger into a tempered steel tool to go fix things. This goes for all of them. Anger tempers into compassion, disgust into respect, fear into knowledge, surprise into curiosity, joy into peace, and sadness into love. Temperance is a virtue, but the virtue is in using that big human brain of yours to work with what you have instead of just flinging the shit you're in around like an ape.It's helpful for me to see Temperance as agency in that I remember that I always do have at least an inch of agency inside my own head that nobody can ever take from me, and the remember that the false Temperance of unthinking denial serves no purpose save as an excuse to get out of the work of improving myself.51,3772,162
sua53RebloggedecoharborFollow📍Tellaro, Liguria, Italy 🇮🇹 4211,34518,901
sua53RebloggedmothprincessFollowassume that things will go well. don't let people be rude to you. maintain good habits. do things that you don't feel like doing. you can always take a moment to think before acting. on the other hand, you don't have to think about everything. everyone doesn't have to agree but we can treat each other decently. small talk can be pleasant and is often nonjudgemental. find interesting recipes. take out the time for pleasure. if you're tired of fiction, you can read nonfiction and vice-versa. no one is better than another for being louder, looking a certain way, or having done certain things—we're all people. you don't have to react or 'win.' look up cleaning videos, if needed. make lists and use calendars. a lot of things are not personal. it helps to not try to actively read people and to, instead, just meet people where they are. you learn a lot about others just by being present for them and listening.7791,597
sua53Reblogged forgetme-eternally-blissfullysoupexperttFollowI really like this russian edition of classic books. Letting famous artists do the covers in YA style was such a simple but clever decision. According to the recent study the number of teenage readers increased, possibly thanks to these covers. I own traditional classics with blank covers but if I ever see one of these in the wild, it’ll probably make me go feral.Here are some of my favs:Dracula (art by Renibet)2.Jane Eyre (art by Ulunii)3. Little women (art by чаки чаки)4. The Idiot (the hedgehog-omg-) (art by Xinshi)5. Pride and Prejudice (art by Cactusute)6. War and Peace (art by Xinshi)7. Wuthering Heights (art by Renibet)8. The Great Gatsby (art by NIKEL)9. Frankenstein (art by Iren Horrors)10. Crime and Punishment (art by REDwood)11. Anna Karenina (art by Ulunii)12. The Cherry Orchard (art by lewisite)13. The Master and Margarita (art by Renibet)6610,58619,457
sua53RebloggedlamignonetteFollow82,0114,112
sua53RebloggedartthatgivesmefeelingsFollowEugène Bidau (French, 1839-1899)
Le Printemps, 18969501,529
sua53Rebloggedheadspace-hotelFollowThis year has, so far, been for me a series of rapid realizations of what I have been unlearning. I went to the library. This was a couple weeks ago. I knew I needed to read a book, fiction. I hadn't done so in over a year and it was the longest period of time I had ever gone without doing so. I made a rule: I would only pick books I had never heard of, by authors I had never heard of, and I would not do any preliminary research or even bother to look at what the book was about. I would make my decision on whether to read or not purely on my impression of the title, cover and opening lines. The book was The Connoisseur by Evan S. Connell. It was kind of a random selection. I sat down with it in a corner of the library and straight up devoured it. I tore through the book within a few hours, without taking a single break. I was captivated. I couldn't put it down. It is a book about a guy who buys a Mayan figurine in a knickknack shop while he's on a business trip. and becomes obsessed with pre-Columbian sculptural art. There isn't really much of a plot apart from this. He goes to sketchy antique shows, has conversations with museum curators, wealthy art dealers and forgers, and seeks to learn how to distinguish a genuine pre-Columbian piece from a fake one. It was written in the 1970's, so the views on Native Americans are antiquated and sometimes offensive, and there is the troubling thread of the very concept of looting another culture's treasures and treating them as collectibles, though the book is not without commentary on this. All the same, it was a completely intoxicating read. The vicarious experience of becoming fascinated with a topic and having it unfold a whole world for you was ferociously gripping, and so was the intrigue of the art collecting world itself. The frauds, forgeries, smuggling, museums, academics, aristocrats, auctions and seedy flea markets. Will he ever be able to tell if a piece is "real?" Does it matter if it's "real?" Why does he want to own and possess a piece of art, and how does its "realness" affect that desire? The book leaves you not knowing what to think. It is a book about curiosity, portrayed in the narrative as a totally unreasonable lightning bolt that strikes a man who has never been fascinated by anything and changes him forever. Why? Why does a Mayan figurine, in particular, speak to him? Why does any piece of art, or any fascinating thing in the world, speak to anyone? It is unknowable. I went to the library again. I picked a new book using the same rules. This book was Fragile Beasts by Tawni O'Dell. Just like the last time, I was totally captivated. I couldn't put it down. Did I have a couple major problems with the portrayal of some important aspects of the story? Yes. (It would make the post much longer to discuss.) Was I completely captured by and invested in the story for the time I was reading it? Also yes. The book braids together several very different strands-- the story of a legendary Spanish bullfighter and a wealthy American woman that he loved, two brothers stuck in an ugly family situation after their father's death in a car accident, and a rich old heir to a Pennsylvania coal mining fortune and to the sinister underbelly of her family's business. There was a lot about baseball, which I know nothing about, and bullfighting, which I know nothing about, and I certainly don't know anything about being a teenaged boy who resents and mistrusts his estranged mother, or an aristocratic old lady who lives in a mansion and eats fancy Spanish food. It was fun to experience so much unfamiliar stuff and to care about things I wouldn't normally care about. Once again I couldn't stop reading until I had finished it. I don't know that either book was "good," though I thought they were both well written; I just know that reading them was like being hooked up to an IV of something essential and life-giving and feeling it reanimating my body. It had been a year since I had read any fiction, but it had been much, much longer since I had loved to read. As I became an adult I had become picky and critical about books, and developed a highly sophisticated sense of my taste and the books I considered good- which were very rare. My taste in books became so sophisticated, eventually, that I didn't like books at all anymore. I had almost withered away from deficiency of that essential nutrient known as STORY. I'd almost crumbled myself into dust from pretentiousness! I may have been terribly wrong about the kinds of things I liked to read, on top of it. And I certainly hadn't realized that story was such an essential nutrient. "Just entertainment" the pretentious sorts of people might say of a book they think is useless-- but what is entertainment but to absorb your mind in something, and what is absorbing your mind in a book but to experience things you would never have experienced? It expands you and makes you more complicated. It is the study of human existence itself. Now all I have been able to think about today is finishing my work and going to the library again...5450993
sua53RebloggediphigeniacomplexFolloweveryone in the world is either a democrat or a republican. everyone in the whole wide world is a democrat and a republican and america is the largest and most populous country in the world and america is easily the most culturally diverse country in the world because the middle class white people in my state (like a little country) are very different than the middle class white people over there (another little country, once more called a "state") and you could never understand how bad it is in america, the main country in the world. where are you from again? it's bad in america and america is bad but the way that america is run is the only way a country could possibly be run unfortunately. i don't like it but it's the only right way for a country to be run and you don't get it because the main victims of the main country are all here and you aren't. where are you from again? they never told me about that place. i don't think you get that real people live in america. probably because you're a republican. real people live in america and real people are hurt by america but what can you do? god said america has to be like this. god said this because god is real so god is american. you don't get it because you're over there and we're all here in america, the realest country in the world. where are you from again? how can you talk like this with what's happening in america? you're a democrat, right? where are you from again? my country is so large it stretches over yours and presses down hard. it's not my fault that they never told me about that place. my country covers the world. you don't understand how bad this will be for real people in the real world, the first world, the only world. they never told me—where in america are you from again?13810,63013,317
sua53RebloggedelegantpersoncreationToaster from the 1920s...616,44912,734
sua53Reblogged abarerobigandlongIf you see this on your dashboard, reblog this, NO MATTER WHAT and all your dreams and wishes will come true.jae-felidaeOh hey! Haven’t seen this in forever! Didn’t reblog it when it came across me before, not gonna skip it this time, I need some good vibes.184,747102,783
