If You Ignore Your Child's Mental Illness, You Have Zero Right To Complain About How They Act.

I want to address the white people who say nothing about being “part Indian” until you’re defending the racism and/or appropriation of your friends or fandom:

Fuck you.

"You didn't look at me for thirty seconds. I guess I'll just burn myself now." Caramel is the Overly Attched Girlfriend of the food world.

Letting Go of a Crush: a Haiku

My sweet, you and I Are like pineapple pizza We should never be.

"Do you need, like, a reason to talk to someone, or how does that work?"

-Trying to remember how to make friends after a particularly long and arduous bout of anxiety.

Most, if not everyone wants and enjoys relationships with others. For many who grew up being abused at the hands of those who were supposed to love them, however, the need for loving attention is both pathologically desperate, and needed for healing. The saddest part of this aftermath is that victims also often gravitate towards the abusers, who are more than happy to take advantage. The fervent need for the time, love, and respect of someone is even harder to attain for those who have been groomed to believe that neglect is normal, abuse is deserved, and basic decency is generous. In those relationships where a decent partner has been found, the formerly abused party is more likely to take the relationship quite seriously - why would their partner treat them with respect and be present unless they deeply loved them? Heartbreak ensues when their partner leaves, and they discover that, even though this person cared for them to some degree, that basic respect was not love, but simply the default behavior of a decent human being. Where it often ends is at the panic and self-loathing which dovetail with abandonment issues that come come crashing back in. We are worth more than this.

TERFs be like

this is either the dumbest thing I’ve ever made or the culmination

Eye contact = too much intimacy. Touching hair= ah, perfect.

When privileged people agree to not have conversations about oppression, or to drop the subject as soon as it gets awkward or heated, think about the fact that the common ground that has been reached by all involved is that helping the oppressed avoid ongoing harm is not as important as the privileged avoiding temporary discomfort.

It's Not Just You, Supporting Your Suicidal Loved Ones. They're Supporting You Too.

I'm going to toot my own horn here, indirectly remind others with depression how great their work is, and directly tell those who are not suicidal to appreciate the work we do. Conversations about the relationships between suicidal and non-suicidal people are almost always framed as what *you* are doing to support *us.* That's an important topic, but talking about it to the exclusion of what *we* do for *you* is detrimental. There's an important element that suicidal people are constantly attacked for non-adherence, but when we *do* adhere to this unofficial "rule," we don't get recognition, much less respect and appreciation for it. We work our asses off to keep the struggle going FOR YOU. We don't want the people we care about to be sad. So we continue to live a life that is bad enough to prefer death (or, for many, not prefer death per se, so much as we want something to end, and death is or seems like the only way to achieve ending it). We could be doing this for a single day or several years, and everywhere in between. It's exhausting, mentally and physically. I have never had a job that was as hard as staying alive when I have an illness that literally makes me want to die. It's WORK. I don't have to put that work in. None of us do. If you have an at-risk loved one still hanging on, odds are it's because of the intensely difficult labor they put in to make sure you don't have to deal with loss just yet. Treat them like who and what they are. Treat them like someone who is immensely considerate of you, who routinely sacrifices what they want for you. Treat them like someone who has a hard job with long hours. Treat them like someone who has a chronic illness that is more manageable at some times than others.