In 2011, Dutch photographer Charlotte Dumas embarked on a quest to locate the last surviving 9/11 search and rescue dogs who had worked so tirelessly ten years earlier. Retrieved is a collection of their portraits, a moving tribute to these heroic dogs and their handlers.
So, I suffer from intense self loathing thoughts due to low self esteem, depression, anxiety—I’ve got PTSD, a mood disorder, the whole nine yards. I frequently tear myself apart with thoughts about how much I suck, how I shouldn’t try to be creative, or try to make friends, because I’m worthless. Sometimes I even tell myself that I shouldn’t exist.
But the fact is this is all bullshit.
Here’s what I’ve started doing: I think of all those depressive, hateful, cruel, self-loathing thoughts as anon hate. Yes. I imagine it as literally someone using the anonymous ask function to tear me down and I imagine myself responding to it with sass and a whole shit-ton of self confidence. If that’s hard to imagine sometimes, I think of someone I admire doing it.
Like so:
BURN.
Look at that shit. That is often what my thoughts sound like, and I’m sure many other people experience the same thing. Now look at the response. Doesn’t it feel fucking awesome to just flip off someone who degraded you for no reason? Isn’t it hilarious to think up sassy, fabulous responses to assholes? It’s such a great feeling to realize that your self-loathing thoughts are not any truer than cowardly, unnecessarily cruel anonymous hate.
How would you feel if someone said what you say about yourself to one of your friends? Man, I would fucking take them down. Or at the very least, I would make sure the victim of these awful attacks knows that these things are baseless and stupid.
Depression makes us question our own self worth. It makes us degrade ourselves and worst of all, it makes us believe all the shitty things we tell ourselves are true.
Please recognize that this is part of the disease. It is not your fault.
I hope this helps someone else out there, because it sure as hell as helps me. Please take care of yourselves, everyone. ♥
So, I’ve never reblogged anyone else’s words here before. But there’s something very special about this person, at least to me. This is my friend Yui, and she’s the reason I invented Boggle. I wanted to cheer her up when she was having a really bad day, so I drew her a worried owl, and gave him a name that I thought might make her smile. She is a wonderful person, and I think this is wonderful advice.
“Monster” is derived from the Latin noun monstrum, “divine portent,” itself formed on the root of the verb monere, “to warn.” It came to refer to living things of anomalous shape or structure, or to fabulous creatures like the sphinx who were composed of strikingly incongruous parts, because the ancients considered the appearance of such beings to be a sign of some impending supernatural event. Monsters, like angels, functioned as messengers and heralds of the extraordinary. They served to announce impending revelation, saying, in effect, “Pay attention; something of profound importance is happening.”
— My Words to Victor Frankenstein: by Susan Stryker (via whatmonstrosity)
This is not a tasty gummy sweet but a Jewel Caterpillar found in Amazon Rainforest. They are covered with sticky goo-like, gellatinous tubercles that provides protection from predators like ants until they metamorphosise into winged moths.
Does your brand of feminism remove barriers for women, or simply move them around? Does is expand options for women, or does it just shift them? You don’t liberate women by forcing them to choose option B instead of option A. What is comfortable for you might not be comfortable for someone else, and it’s entirely possible that what you see as oppressive, other women find comfortable or even downright liberating.
Before you think the girl in the middle is a strawman, let me tell you I used to be her, back in my misguided youth. I considered myself the standard to which other people should adhere. But that was stupid. It’s not up to me to tell people how to dress, and it’s much nicer to let everyone choose for themselves.
Some women would feel naked without a veil. Some women would find it restrictive. Some women would feel restricted by a bra. Some women would feel naked without one. Some women would feel restricted by a tight corset. Others love them. Some wear lots of clothes with a corset. Some only wear the corset and nothing else. What makes any article of clothing oppressive is someone forcing you to wear it. And it’s just as oppressive to force someone not to wear something that they want to wear.
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