there are more juggalos on earth than there are polar bears. if that isnt enough to make you care about global warming then i dont know what is
My eye caught a dark form lying on the river bottom. It took me a few moments to comprehend what I had stumbled upon. Lying peacefully in the shallow waters of the river, only a few meters from shore, was a full-grown cougar. The contrast between the serenity of the scene I was witnessing and what must have played out here in the cougar’s final moments made me shiver. It was the first shiver of many, as I stripped down and waded out into the icy water to get this shot. x
I’m so tired of coming home to an empty house
going to bed in an empty house
waking up in an empty house
because everyone in my life is busy and has places to be and things to do.
There is no place I’m needed, wanted, or expected. It would be nice, just once in awhile, to wake up and have someone be there. Someone who says, good morning, and hugs me and tells me to have a good day.
Weirdly enough, sex with you makes me feel put together. That’s the only way to explain it. After, all the fragments of me that seemed floating, escaping, disappearing: they are all back in the right places.
How strange is that? Afterward, I can eat and sleep like a normal person. I can take a deep breath and cease to recall all the shit that’s breaking me slowly, every day.
It makes sense though. I’ve always felt grounded by the physical. Body pain negates emotional pain and mental affliction. Body pain coupled with body pleasure, for me, is perfect. So it makes sense that the sex we have assists my ability to cope with stress.
It’s just funny. You smell amazing and kiss so well and every way you touch me is gorgeous and shivering and electric. I always thought I hated sex. And I really like it now. It’s nuts.
when you know something in your head, like:
“It wasn’t my fault”
“I’m not a weak person”
but your in your heart it’s still:
“Wasn’t it, though?”
“Aren’t I?”
And you’re always in this uphill battle to align what you know intellectually with what you know emotionally.
Sometimes I’m being facetious and sarcastic and tongue-in-cheek about things
like really messed up things
and people who know me really really well still can’t figure out if I’m being serious or not.
Sometimes I can’t either.
My motto is laugh now, cry later. Disarm shitty things with wisecracks and make everyone in the room really uncomfortable with their worldview. Draw questions and offer very few answers.
You know, jokingly.
I mean I’m just kidding guys.
What you went through has affected you deeply, but it is no mark upon your character. You are not 'damaged goods' or 'not good enough'. You are not the sum of your bad experience. It does not make you any less. You are you, an important, worthy person. Do not waste time or emotions on anyone that cannot see *you* instead of what you went through.
Exactly. And I don’t. I just have these moments of intense frustration. Because even someone who acts like they’ll accept me and my baggage and scars and neuroses, in my experience of the world, secretly believes they can somehow fix me and heal me.
Which is nobody’s job. Except mine. And there’s nothing fucking wrong with me, you know? I’m still a whole person. I don’t even need fixing or whatever.
And if someone’s willing to acknowledge my scars, they’re afraid or unsure of them and that’s equally shitty because then I feel like I’m being quarantined. Like I’m marked or something.
My post was an open appeal to everyone. To think about their language, the potential experiences of their audiences (you never know what someone in the room has gone through!), and consider all the subtext they’re inadvertently shoving in everyone’s faces.
Because you’re right. Not a single one of us is the sum of our experiences. I struggled for years to define myself outside of the abuse/PTSD/etc. only to be shoved back into that box by people who don’t get what they’re saying. And it hurts, you know?
It really hurts to hear terms like, “damaged goods.”
Every time anyone talks about how a romantic relationship with a survivor is undesirable, I shrink inside.
Even if they don’t know what I went through and they’re just speaking innocently.
I mean, it makes sense to be up front about your emotional unavailability. But phrasing? Instead of, “I don’t want to date a girl who’s gone through x things,” you could say, “I don’t think I’m capable of being there for a person who’s been through x things.”
Because I don’t think any of us need to be told, indirectly, that there’s something wrong with us or unappealing about us. I’m pretty sure we’ve got that whole making-ourselves-feel-like-shit thing on lock.
Even if the problem was our pasts, rather than your emotional ineptitude, we can’t fucking help that. When you say shit like that, you’re adding to the heavy, rippling effects of my traumatization and you’re reminding me that I am broken. And no good anymore.
You’re basically saying that I was good enough before it all happened to me, and now I’m not. Fuck, does anyone have any clue how that feels? Is anyone willing to think before they just say something like that?
I already know that. Thanks.
If you’ve never been mentally ill (pausing to acknowledge the argument that the term “mentally ill” is a misnomer) and you’ve ever wondered what it’s like: you feel like a broken machine whose body and short-term brain and long-term brain are like like three people with complicated sexual histories together and they’re having a very passive-aggressive argument at a dinner party and it’s making everyone else in the room uncomfortable and some part of you is just meeting everyone’s uncomfortable stare and mouthing “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” But even that is a very important stage of mental illness that you reach after a not-insignificant amount of practice in self-awareness.
“
| — | Carly is doing a track-by-track analysis of Transcendental Youth by the Mountain Goats and it’s so intelligent and beautifully written. Also, it’s occasionally painfully accurate in a way that simultaneously makes you a little uncomfortable that someone put your brain on display but also extremely comforted that you’re not the only one. (via slothgrrl) |
I feel numb and dumb, and unable to lay hands on any words.
“
| — | Sylvia Plath; “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath” (via 8h22) |
