Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

bymyprettyfloralbonnet:

tatterdemalionamberite:

words-writ-in-starlight:

elodieunderglass:

redcharade:

I guess I had so completely absorbed the prevailing wisdom that I expected people in bankruptcy to look scruffy or shifty or generally disreputable. But what struck me was that they looked so normal.

The people appearing before that judge came in all colors, sizes, and ages. A number of men wore ill-fitting suits, two or three of them with bolero ties, and nearly everyone dressed up for the day. They looked like they were on their way to church. An older couple held onto each other as they walked carefully down the aisle and found a seat. A young mother gently jiggled her keys for the baby in her lap. Everyone was quiet, speaking in hushed tones or not at all. Lawyers – at least I thought they were lawyers – seemed to herd people from one place to another.

I didn’t stay long. I felt as if I knew everyone in that courtroom, and I wanted out of there. It was like staring at a car crash, a car crash involving people you knew.

Later, our data would confirm what I had seen in San Antonio that day. The people seeking the judge’s decree were once solidly middle-class. They had gone to college, found good jobs, gotten married, and bought homes. Now they were flat busted, standing in front of that judge and all the world, ready to give up nearly everything they owned just to get some relief from the bill collectors.

As the data continued to come in, the story got scarier. San Antonio was no exception: all around the country, the overwhelming majority of people filing for bankruptcy were regular families who had hit hard times. Over time we learned that nearly 90 percent were declaring bankruptcy for one of three reasons: a job loss, a medical problem, or a family breakup (typically divorce, sometimes the death of a husband or wife). By the time these families arrived in the bankruptcy court, they had pretty much run out of options. Dad had lost his job or Mom had gotten cancer, and they had been battling for financial survival for a year or longer. They had no savings, no pension plan, and no homes or cars that weren’t already smothered by mortgages. Many owed at least a full year’s income in credit card debt alone. They owed so much that even if they never bought another thing – even if Dad got his job back tomorrow and Mom had a miraculous recovery – the mountain of debt would keep growing on its own, fueled by penalties and compounding interest rates that doubled their debts every few years. By the time they came before a bankruptcy judge, they were so deep in debt that being flat broke – owning nothing, but free from debt – looked like a huge step up and worth a deep personal embarrassment.

Worse yet, the number of bankrupt families was climbing. In the early 1980s, when my partners and I first started collecting data, the number of families annually filing for bankruptcy topped a quarter of a million. True, a recession had hobbled the nation’s economy and squeezed a lot of families, but as the 1980s wore on and the economy recovered, the number of bankruptcies unexpectedly doubled. Suddenly, there was a lot of talk about how Americans had lost their sense of right and wrong, how people were buying piles of stuff they didn’t actually need and then running away when the bills came due. Banks complained loudly about unpaid credit card bills. The word deadbeat got tossed around a lot. It seemed that people filing for bankruptcy weren’t just financial failures – they had also committed an unforgivable sin.

Part of me still wanted to buy the deadbeat story because it was so comforting. But somewhere along the way, while collecting all those bits of data, I came to know who these people were.

In one of our studies, we asked people to explain in their own words why they filed for bankruptcy. I figured that most of them would probably tell stories that made them look good or that relieved them of guilt.

I still remember sitting down with the first stack of questionnaires. As I started reading, I’m sure I wore my most jaded, squinty-eyed expression.

The comments hit me like a physical blow. They were filled with self-loathing. One man had written just three words to explain why he was in bankruptcy:

Stupid.
Stupid.
Stupid.

When writing about their lives, people blamed themselves for taking out a mortgage they didn’t understand. They blamed themselves for their failure to realize their jobs weren’t secure. They blamed themselves for their misplaced trust in no-good husbands and cheating wives. It was blindingly obvious to me that most people saw bankruptcy as a profound personal failure, a sign that they were losers through and through.

Some of the stories were detailed and sad, describing the death of a child or what it meant to be laid off after thirty-three years with the same company. Others stripped a world of pain down to the bare facts:

Wife died of cancer. Left $65,000 in medical bills after insurance.
Lack of full-time work – worked five part-time jobs to meet rent, utilities, phone, food, and insurance.

They thought they were safe – safe in their jobs and their lives and their love – but they weren’t.

I ran my fingers over one of the papers, thinking about a woman who had tried to explain how her life had become such a disaster. A turn here, a turn there, and her life might have been very different.

Divorce, an unhappy second marriage, a serious illness, no job. A turn here, a turn there, and my life might have been very different, too.

– A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren, pg. 34 - pg. 36

(Bolding mine)

I don’t want to derail this too hard. And I am terrifyingly, shakingly conscious that I live in the UK, with its mildly-socialist leanings and socialised healthcare and council houses for homeless families, and I know in my head that even if the locusts come for everything I have, if I just stay on this particular piece of land, I will be able to keep the baby alive -

I don’t want to derail too hard, but when people ask “why aren’t young people getting houses and babies” and so on: look at this post, the raw terror of this post. The reality of the locusts. The facial markings on the face of the wolf at the door.

Young people today, like the people of the Great Depression and the World-Wars-In-The-Arena-Of-Combat, know that these things can be taken away. Just. Wiped off the map.

A turn here, a turn there, and your life is over and your game is done, and you have to stand there in your shame, having lost everything.

So the response to that is: have nothing, and you can’t lose everything.

I can see the appeal.

But I wonder how deep in our hearts this nihilism can get. What its impacts will be. How can we plan for the future of the planet, when our brains can only focus on the £300 on our credit card, and panic.

What did this do to us? The children of the bankruptcy. The kids raised in this religion. can we make ourselves okay.

The most lingering comment I ever heard someone make about Millennials was an older man I was talking to about the way we think about finances–when he dreamed about being a millionaire as a young man, he talked about yachts and mansions and trips to the Bahamas; when I did, I talked about living debt-free and being able to buy dinner out without looking at my monthly budget.  He heard me out, took me seriously.

And at the end of it all, he nodded and looked at me and asked, “Do you know who you remind me of?”

And I said no, no I didn’t, and he nodded some more.

“My mother.  She grew up just before the Depression hit, and she saw people lose everything left and right.  And whenever she talked about finances, she sounded just like you.”  He paused for a moment, and said, “I never really thought about what growing up like that would do to a generation.”

He still brings that conversation up, years later.  He hasn’t made a single derisive comment about Millennials since.

^ This hit me hard.

This is how I feel about my student loans, honestly.  I’m very fortunate to have a job that pays the bills and a partner so I don’t have to pay the bills on my own, but staring down that number makes me feel like there’s no point in even trying.  I don’t want to buy a house, because what if I have to move and the market crashes again?  I refuse to put anything on credit beyond what I can pay off in full each month, unless it’s a true emergency (like a “the cat needs medical treatment” kind of emergency).  It’s a good thing I don’t want kids, because I could never afford them.  My dad talks about saving for retirement and I laugh, because barring some kind of miracle, I’ll still be paying those loans off at that age. 

I was always told growing up that going to school was the way to a stable future.  And in some ways it has helped.

but

It’s a hell of a price.  Literally.  And I know very well that the stability I do have could evaporate in an instant, like those people in bankruptcy court.

(via thebibliosphere)

gooseweasel:

words-writ-in-starlight:

gooseweasel:

I think that one of the funniest things about the “Earth is a death planet and human’s are space orcs” posts and stuff is that that’s literally a major plot point in Animorphs. Like, the aliens in the series frequently comment on how there is just an extremely excessive amount animals with unique ways to kill or maim you on the planet, and that humans, despite looking fragile and weak in comparison, are scary as shit because they’re stubborn and ruthless and refuse to stop even when any sane species would have given up ages ago. Like there are aliens described as “walking salad shooters” with bladed spikes shooting out all over their bodies, and then you find out that all of that is just so they can harvest tree bark to eat and a whole army of them can be disabled by a single skunk. It is described in loving detail all the different ways a house cat can fuck you up, and don’t even get me started on actual predators and the damage they can do when a ridiculous stubborn, reckless, and creative human brain is what’s controlling them. The alien invaders comment about how they’re going to have to basically kill off 90% of earths species once they win the war because the planet is so damn excessive about this whole ‘murder animals’ thing, and sometimes they’re even like “you know, in hindsight, this is not nearly as easy as we assumed it would be”

The entire plot of Visser is “you know, in hindsight, this is not nearly as easy as we assumed it would be” and I live for it.

#the yeerks are out of their depth and six accident prone children are gonna prove it

that’s it. that’s my new favorite tag on this.

Anonymous asked: Okay so I see that Immortal Diana and Continuously Reincarnated Steve post you reblogged but if that were the case, she would have to watch him die every time.

words-writ-in-starlight:

*steeples my fingers and looks at you seriously*

Dearest darling heart, I think you have sorely mistaken my interest in this AU.

I live for the narrative of the immortal godlike being and the ongoing eternal tragedy of the deaths of their reincarnated beloved.  Like, yes, I want a lot of really cute scenes of Diana curled up in bed with a dozen different incarnations of Steve.  But what I really want is for her to find him in war after war (she doesn’t know if he’s drawn to her–she fights like breathing, she can’t give it up any more than she can cut her heart out of her chest–or if he’s drawn to the fight–he tried doing nothing, she remembers him telling her that) and sit at different veteran’s gravestones in each generation and fucking ache for him.

Like, yes, this is terrible.  I am interested in the terribleness.  I am interested in Diana who sees a golden head among the civilians as she bursts in to save Clark and Bruce’s asses–a man dressed in plain clothing who’s trying to hurry other away in front of him–and feels her heart stutter and decides that this, this will be the time they live happily together.

It’s an honest decision, at the moment she makes it.  It always is, the first time she sees him.

vixenofcourse:

robotmango:

darnianwayne:

words-writ-in-starlight:

robotmango:

i realize i’m maybe like, the Nichest of markets here, but i really really really desperately want to watch further adventures of Diana Prince, Curator of Antiquities™

…like, imagine the interdepartmental meetings

Diana: we have recently acquired several exquisite pieces of very early minoan kamares ware. i feel a refresh of the gallery might encourage our visitors to–

some marketing dipshit: look, we can’t get people in the door for pottery. we need another big show, like can you get a vermeer or–

Diana of Themiscrya, Amazon, God-Killer, Daughter of Hippolyta: pottery is important

some marketing dipshit, lightly pissing himself: i agree

Not only will I join you in the Nichest of Markets, but I am suddenly stricken by the dismay that can only come from a depressing awareness of how niche this market is.  Does anyone…like…have fic?

“Here you are, Ms. Prince,” says the mail currier. He grabs the tablet from his back pocket, presenting it to her. “If you’ll just sign right there…”

“Of course,” says Diana. She scrawls her name, and the currier dutifully passes over the package. It is reasonably sized, stocky, with the words FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE written along the edges of the Wayne Enterprises logo. “Same time next week?”

The currier laughs. “More than likely, I’d wager. Weird that Mr. Wayne has taken a sudden interest in supplementing the Louvre with his own private collection, but hey. Billionaires, right? Who knows what they’re thinking.”

Diana thinks of the museums in Gotham, filled to the brim with some of the world’s most beautiful antiquities and artifacts, and about Bruce Wayne who cares not a lick about any one them but takes ownership of them anyway for the sole purpose of having free exhibitions open to the general public five days a week. She smiles, agrees, and waves the currier off, until the next time. 

She is examining the dish (Uruk period, likely kiln production, as it is a strange almost-blue tint that suggests a high-temperature controlled oven), when Isabell in charge of Eastern Eurasian arts knocks lightly on her half-open door and lets herself in.

“New delivery?” she asks, nodding to the dish.

“Yes.” Carefully, Diana puts the dish back in its box. She makes a note to have one of her assistants come by later to pick it up and send it down to the lab for testing. “The meeting?”

“Oh, uh.” Isabell in charge of Eastern Eurasian arts clears her throat and looks briefly at the floor, embarrassed. Diana lets her have a moment, used to the reaction. “Yeah. Want to walk together?”

Diana is already walking around her, throwing her disposable gloves in the garbage as she passes. “Sure,” she says anyway and waits for Isabell by the door. Isabell jolts when she realizes Diana is already ahead of her. Diana politely chooses to ignore that. 

It’s only when she is seated besides Isabell in charge of Eastern Eurasian arts and Haruki in charge of philanthropic outreach that she remembers: Timothy in charge of corporate marketing is going to be at this meeting as well.

She nearly groans aloud, already anticipating his tirade on diminishing returns this financial quarter and his chart predicting a downward trend of attendance among younger visitors. 

Timothy in charge of corporate marketing does not disappoint. After the heads of every department say their piece and give the customary updates, Timothy in charge of corporate marketing has an assistant hold out a poster board detailing their declining revenue and inability to attract attention. For nearly half the appointed time for the meeting, he speaks, pointing back to his poster board at regular intervals with frothing enthusiasm.

“Well,” says Diana, when Timothy in charge of corporate marketing finally allows the department heads to speak. “We have recently acquired several exquisite pieces of Early Minoan Kamares ware. I feel a refresh of the gallery might encourage our visitors to—”

“Ms. Prince,” Timothy in charge of corporate marketing interrupts. He is smiling, not unkindly, in the way a headmaster might at a particularly rambunctious child. Diana feels her fist curl, despite herself. “We can’t get people in the door for pottery.” He laughs. “No, no, we’d need something bigger. Grander, you understand. Something that will hold our visitors’ attention. Perhaps if you could get a Vermeer, yes? I hear you’ve been receiving packages from Bruce Wayne himself, and he has a lovely piece, if I do remember correctly. Maybe try asking—” 

The way Timothy in charge of corporate marketing says asking, Diana knows that is far from what he actually means. She is about as likely to follow through with that as she is to ask Timothy for anything.

As calmly as she can, she places both hands atop the table and uncurls her fists. Below her fingers, a minuscule part of the grained wood chips. She extends her spine, sitting straight, and beside her, Isabell in charge of Eastern Eurasian arts swallows. 

“Tim,” she cuts in. “For how many quarters have our returns, as you keep reminding us, diminished?”

Timothy in charge of corporate marketing blinks. He squints. “Well, I would say for nearly six quarters now.”

“Hm. And remind me, how long have you been with us here?”

The room has the same quality of quiet that Diana is intimately familiar with, bordering on dangerous. 

“Nearly six quarters, if memory serves,” says Diana. 

“Now, Ms. Prince,” Timothy in charge of corporate marketing blusters, “if you are implying that somehow I am responsible for the state of our returns—” 

“I am not implying anything. Just perhaps that big shows and singular centerpieces are not the way for us to go. Isabell?”

Isabell in charge of Eastern Eurasian arts jolts and looks up at her, wide-eyed. “Yes?”

“Didn’t you recently acquire some newly discovered Jomon pieces?”

“Yes.”

“Of course, it’s a matter of opinion, but if we were to redesign the gallery to incorporate the different wares from different eras and locales, it might encourage our visitors to learn more about them and could even encourage repeat visits.”

“I suppose…” allows Timothy in charge of corporate marketing. 

Diana stares at him, the same way she might have once stared down her own mother to let her leave Themyscira or even looked down on Ares as he tried to tempt her to his side. She stares at him, and remembers with a certainty that has been granted to her after years in man’s world that he is but a man and like any man, he is fragile and breakable, when she is not. 

“Pottery is important, Tim,” she says.

Trembling, unable to meet her eye, Timothy in charge of corporate marketing agrees.

YOU DID THE THING
YOU WENT FORTH AND DID IT
I SALUTE YOU
!!!!!!!!!!!!!

pottery is important, tim

(via ifeelbetterer)

words-writ-in-starlight:

naamahdarling:

naamahdarling:

lireecrirerever:

8prometheus8:

feministingforchange:

apersnicketylemon:

anti-feminism-pro-cats:

apersnicketylemon:

The real irony of the people who make jokes about being triggered is that they tend to idolize the military/veterans as if combat related PTSD isn’t a real thing that also has triggers. Y’all make fun of the people you call hero’s when you’re making fun of the teenagers with PTSD from non-combat related issues, you can’t separate the two.

Most of the people making fun of triggers are making fun of all the bullshit “”“triggers”“”, as in the people calling a mild uncomfortable feelings triggers.

The problem with making fun of a trigger is you genuinely do not know whether they are ‘mildly uncomfortable’ or if that is a thing that is genuinely causing severe anxiety, depressive episodes, or stress responses. Most of the “““““bullshit”““““ triggers I’ve seen being made fun of are actual trauma survivors who have their trauma associated with something unusual or strange. Because the thing that triggers their PTSD or panic is odd, people, not unlike yourself, are writing them off as “whiny babies” or “triggered sjws” or call their trigger bullshit because they cannot understand the association.

For examples: Sirens are one of my triggers. When I hear sirens I get an immediate panic response. This was due to being in an active war zone as a child (The response is significantly worse if it is an air raid siren or sounds too similar to an air raid siren.). If you didn’t know I was in an active war zone though, it might seem silly to see an adult panic and attempt to get to a safe place because an ambulance, fire truck, or police car went past them.

I have a manager who is triggered by the presence of police. Specifically police, other uniforms are fine (i.e. security in the mall does not set off her panic response). Her trigger is severe, if a police officer talks to her, she starts panicking and sobbing and cannot control it. This is because when she was young, two police officers threatened her repeatedly and psychologically abused her for 6 hours while they tried to find out where her brother was (yes, this was illegal. Her parents were not home at the time, and were unaware she was alone as the brother in question was meant to be watching her). If you didn’t know that story though, it might seem silly to see an adult woman burst into tears and have a panic attack because a cop said ‘hi’ to her.

I have seen posts by an abuse survivor talking about how the sound of a garage door triggered them, due to abuse by a parent. They associated that sound with the abuser returning home and the abuse beginning. The sound became a trigger because their mind associated it to that. I saw another post by a rape survivor talking about how she was triggered by the sight of eggs because she made eggs for her rapist after he’d raped her. Her mind associated eggs with the trauma due to the two being connected at least in her mind.

Brains are weird. Trauma doesn’t make sense. The point is, YOU do not know if someone is ““““bullshitting”“““ or not. You do not know how someones trauma associated itself with something odd, which is something trauma really does all the time and making fun of trauma survivors because you don’t understand the association between their trauma and the item that triggers their ptsd or anxiety is absolutely wrong and absolutely hypocritical if you think any other form of trigger is acceptable or okay. You don’t get to decide other peoples trauma triggers. They didn’t even get to decide them, and to tell someone that you’re okay to make fun of them because what upsets them doesn’t make sense to you is absolutely not okay.

I should note too: Phobia’s are real triggers too. People have panic attacks when exposed to their phobia’s in the wrong way. I need certain pictures tagged because I am absolutely terrified of heights, which is a pretty common phobia. People can have serious phobia’s to everything and anything though, and there are things I am not afraid of that others are that may seem strange to me, but to them are very real and very frightening. Just because it seems odd to you, doesn’t mean it isn’t still real to the person experiencing it.

This post needs a zillion more notes. As a Complex PTSD sufferer I truly hope that people will someday stop policing others’ triggers and health problems as if they have a single clue. 

Just BACK OFF and let people LIVE.

And PTSD has ALWAYS had odd triggers, this isn’t just a modern thing. My grandmother couldn’t do anything with the reservoir on the back of a toilet because when she was nine, she was gangraped. When her attackers were in their stupor, she took all of their guns and put them in the reservoir of their toilet, and ran through the street naked until someone helped her. Having to put the weapons she KNEW they were going to use on her behind the toilet stuck in her mind, that was what became a trigger for her brain- along with being unable to go outside in her bare feet ever again. 

One of my closest friends is triggered by someone touching his hair, because one of his stepfathers swung him around by his hair and smashed him into things. Now any time someone touches his hair, he gets so badly panicked he just vomits on the spot. 

And then you have people with conventional ptsd triggers like me- it’s hard for me to see blood and violence in certain contexts. Oddly, it’s fine in video games, but in movies or TV shows- ESPECIALLY if it’s suicide- it triggers me. Because through my suicide prevention work, I’ve WITNESSED suicides, so as a result it triggers my ptsd. 

Brains are strange and unpredictable in what they associate a situation to, and what becomes a symbol of trauma. But it’s not anyone’s job to gatekeep the subject, because it does absolutely no one any good. When someone says something triggers them, you need to respect it. And you also need to respect that triggers can generate different responses. My grandmother would get quiet and skittish when triggers. My friend vomits when triggered. I get enraged and frustrated when triggered- an unconventional response to a conventional trigger.

Some people cope so well that they only get ‘uncomfortable’. I’ve even seen one person who would get a ‘high’ because their body would try to release a shitload of dopamine in response to it, and then they’d crash. Shit’s weird, and all you can do is respect what someone says about their own boundaries.

Also, there’s a common misconception that trigger warnings are always about avoiding the trigger. That’s just not the case. A lot of times, a person is able to view a trigger and be perfectly fine if they were warned beforehand and allowed to mentally prepare. I’ve heard it compared to the fact that people can get used to and tune out a noise like a smoke detector beeping if it happens in a regular and predictable way. But random, unpredictable beeps cause immense psychological distress to almost anyone if you are forced to listen to them long enough. Letting people know a trigger is coming often helps mitigate the reaction.

This is such excellent commentary.

Two things to add.  Perhaps @anti-feminism-pro-cats might appreciate this specific thing.

I was once asked to please tag cats.  And I was like “Oookay, bud, I’ll try, but like, ¾ of my life IS cats, so I can’t promise anything…?”  Because that just seemed really weird to me.

And then, even though they didn’t have to, they actually wrote back and said, basically, “Hey, the reason I’m asking is because I had to witness people torturing cats in a situation I couldn’t escape, and now I just … can’t.” 

Oh shit.

So I said “Hey, holy fuck, I’m sorry. Do you need me to tag all cats, or just housecats? What about cartoon cats?  I just want to help you out, friend.”

And again, even though they didn’t have to, they came back and said “Cartoon cats aren’t too bad, but what I really can’t handle is seeing kittens.”

Fucking … fuck.

And I’m not gonna lie, that fucking hurt and chilled me to read.  Just … the story there.  I don’t want to know it.  It makes me sick just imagining it.  So I now tag for cats.

It’d be easy to say “It’s stupid to be triggered by kittens.”

But, uhh, I really don’t think that situation is “stupid” at all.  I think it’s fucking tragic.  And that person had the guts to ask, knowing that they might get made fun of for it, and then they were even kind enough to explain, and I’m grateful to them because it taught me something I intellectually but did not yet viscerally understand.

A healthy person, or even just someone with different triggers, can’t understand the significance behind triggers.  And triggers can be really fucking weird or even seemingly inappropriate.

So I got to make a choice.  I could say “If you can’t handle cats, seriously, I’m not the blog for you.”  Understandable, I suppose.  Or I could say “JFC that sucks, and the rest of the goddamn internet is flooded with untagged cats.  Maybe … maybe I can do this one thing so that they will feel safe reading my blog? Maybe I have the power to actually … help a little?”

And obviously, I made the latter choice.

Here’s another thing.

Recovery is a process, and eventually a lot of people move away from needing trigger warnings.  They are a helpful tool to protect yourself during a certain stage of healing.  That healing might take a really long time, and it might never be complete … or … it might only be necessary for a few months or years.

So you aren’t “coddling” people by tagging for [x thing you think shouldn’t be a trigger], you’re enabling them to engage on their terms.  Engaging on your own terms is literally the only way to make progress, therapeutically, so asserting that trigger warnings hinder progress is just not factually a correct statement at all.

You personally may choose not to tag for anything, and that’s fine.  You are absolutely allowed to run your personal space however you want, and people shouldn’t bug you about it.

But what you don’t get to do is decide what a “stupid” trigger is (hint: there isn’t one, there’s only fucked up situations that leave fucked up scars) and whether or not someone is experiencing severe or mild discomfort.  You can’t know that.  Their reaction isn’t even a good guide to how they are feeling inside.  They may seem only mildly uncomfortable.  You don’t see them losing their shit later because something hit them way worse than they thought it would, and they thought they were okay at the time but … hahaha, nope.

I guess … a lot of people seem to think that there’s this whole category of “special snowflake” people wandering around saying “I know how to get sympathy and validation: I’ll ask a total stranger to tag for cookware because I’m ‘triggered’ by spatulas!”  Just as if that’s liable to elicit the kind of validation truly lonely and desperate people need.

Or maybe … maybe they think there’s all these people who are so unacquainted with “real” pain or fear that they think their mildly uncomfortable feelings about Furbys compare to, and this is so often the example used and I think that is so wrong, combat vets who can’t handle fireworks.

What it comes down to, it seems like, is trying to extrapolate a story from the trigger so that you can say “Stop crying, you don’t have it that bad!”  Which is ridiculous.  As someone above pointed out, triggers can seem nonsensical even within the context of the instigating trauma. I remember the eggs post.  The things that stick with you about trauma are not always just the things you expect.  You can’t actually guess anything about a trauma from a seemingly inexplicable trigger beyond “Wow, fear of paintbrushes, plastic cups, and raisins … I bet that’s a story.”

And if that story that they imagine doesn’t match what they think is a “valid” trauma narrative, then they feel justified in dismissing it.  Completely missing the fact that there’s no such thing as a “valid” or “invalid” trauma narrative, because trauma is a really strange and subjective thing.  Also completely missing the fact that it’s not okay to try to make that judgment to begin with.

A lot of people seem unwilling, for some reason totally alien to me, to make that empathetic leap and say “Okay.  I don’t need to know more.  I believe you.”  They want to police other people’s experiences.  And that’s just one of the worst impulses of humanity.  It’s really nasty, and it gets applied in so many horrible ways to mental illness of all kinds.  It needs to stop.

Ultimately, it costs you nothing to be cool about it.  It costs you nothing to take what people say at face value, or to believe strangers and not comment on their mental health issues.  It costs you nothing to say nothing, even if you don’t believe them.  Because you are inevitably going to be wrong, and why risk making yourself look like a clueless, deliberately oafish asshole?

I’m really confused as to why this is an issue, except certain segments of the online community take great pleasure in being critical of other people’s attempts to cope, because they have invested a lot of their self-image in being “smart” and “discerning” and “no-nonsense” and “not gonna be fooled” … and they really enjoy tearing down people who are saying “these things are unfair” or “these things are hard for me.”

“You aren’t really hurt/traumatized/oppressed!” is a truly unpleasantly common thing to hear these people say.  Often they will even say it outright.  Other times, it comes across indirectly.

It’s not at all surprising for anti-feminists to also be anti-trigger-warning, and I think this is probably why.  I know it was the case for me for a very long time.  Then I kind of … grew up, I guess?  Enough bad shit happened to me and to people I know that I acquired sympathy.  And realized that, actually, my own traumas have left me with some pretty weird issues, things that make me uncomfortable but which other people are unlikely to consider inherently threatening.  So I had no room to judge.

It’s sad, because it’s actually a whole lot less effort to believe people when they talk about their experiences than it is to sit there, smoldering with disdain and resentment over the person who really can’t abide milk, of all things, and asks that it be tagged for.

If you’re angry about trigger warnings and are lashing out about it, just … go ask a mutual friend for a hug or something.  Go do something self-affirming.  Because the trigger warning thing is not about you or for you.  You might as well spend your energy doing something nice for yourself.  You’re lucky not to have to wrestle with a fear you very well know is ridiculous.  Enjoy that and move on.  Don’t waste your time thinking about how many people are wrong to feel the way they feel.  Just let it go.

I also want to emphasize something said above:

A lot of times, a person is able to view a trigger and be perfectly fine if they were warned beforehand and allowed to mentally prepare.

This is huge.

I can engage with my triggers.

I can do it voluntarily on my own terms, and the effects can, depending on circumstance, be pretty minimal.

I can do it with warning on someone else’s terms, and depending on circumstance I can be mostly okay to messed up but still mostly functional.

Or I can do it without warning at all, and depending on circumstance, fall apart a little, or a lot.

If given control of the situation, I can get away with a “yuck” feeling and then move on.  If not, I may need medication to bring me down.  It can fuck me up for a couple of days if I was not allowed to choose when/how/whether to engage.  If I am, hey, wow, look at that, I’m mostly all right.

This is not evidence that it’s not that bad.  Like with a lot of illness, disability, and mental health stuff, just because I can do it sometimes doesn’t mean it’s okay all the time.

This is how these things work. Period.  This is actually what recovery from trauma looks like, this is how it works, this is what you have to accept if you want to accept that any trauma at all is valid.

It really is a useless endeavor to try to draw conclusions about someone’s trauma from whether or not they ask for, use, or need trigger warnings.

And tbh, even if they come right out and say “I don’t have PTSD, I just hate seeing pictures of dogs, I’m so triggered lol”, that’s them being horrendously disrespectful of mentally ill people.  It’s not an excuse to then be even more disrespectful by using that to draw conclusions that allow you to dismiss the very concept of trigger warnings as stupid.

There are people who fake entire illnesses, okay?  Who lie about having cancer or whatever.  But we don’t take those people as evidence that people who have, you know, actual cancer must be lying and pretending to be special snowflakes.

And, just for the record, sometimes people can’t move past a trigger.

I have fairly bad PTSD about dentists. Nothing helps. I don’t look to get trigger warnings because it doesn’t help. I can barely walk into a dentist’s office–I’m 19 and my mom still has to hold my hand and probably always will. I never make my own appointments, someone else has to do it. I can barely speak in a dentist’s chair, and I get flashbacks from the lights.

I’ve been working on getting past this for 12 years, I’ve tried every technique in the book to get through an appointment without this stuff including all available forms of sedation, and I’ve literally reached the point where my therapist went “Yeah, you might want to just get drunk afterward” when I told her that’s what I was going to do.

So… barring a miracle, this is as good as it’s going to get. That’s a trigger I’m never going to get rid of. If trigger warnings helped, I’d need them for the rest of my life. And it’s not because I or anyone else in that position is weak. It’s just because some wounds heal, and others still leave you limping.

(via slyrider)

Anonymous asked: Imagine Palpatine giving Anakin a clone of Padme. On the surface Palpatine claims he is rewarding Vader for exemplary service, but really he's rubbing Vader's face in it over Padme's death.

suzukiblu:

words-writ-in-starlight:

suzukiblu:

Holy shit, that clone better be the goddamn FASTEST TALKER in the galaxy, man, because I cannot imagine her surviving five minutes alone with Vader otherwise, “reward” from Palpatine or NOT. Unless, like, sheer spite spared her, maybe, maybe just sheer spite. Of course she is not a reward, of COURSE not, Vader KNOWS she’s not, he–he–

Force, she looks just LIKE her. She doesn’t have the memories, obviously, but the Force signature and the lilt of her accent and the particular tilt to her head and the spark in the back of her eyes are all so, so similar, so very nearly PERFECT, so very nearly … so very nearly … 

“Angel”. That’s the name the Emperor gave her. 

It’s actually almost sad how here for the Vader/Padme pain I am.  

@words-writ-in-starlight: the fastest talker in the galaxy NO FUCKING KIDDING vader is NOT A STABLE CREATURE OKAY EVEN ODDS ON TWO VERY DIFFERENT BREAKDOWNS THERE the first: murder of course because (vader thinks to himself) he’s already killed her once why shouldn’t he do it again? and she looks so like padme she does down to the stern line of her lips when she looks at him and she knows what he is and what he does and what her odds are of survival so she raises her chin proudly because she is nothing but a clone but she will die with pride and it’s…so much like padme (this is how liberty dies) he can’t let this galaxy destroy her twice he’s doing a mercy he’s SAVING her in the only way vader can save anyone anymore (he tells himself this) (it’s swift he can at least take comfort in that)(palpatine comes back to find her broken at vader’s feet and oh he is so angry that vader threw away this gift of his) (vader pays dearly for this as he knew he would) (but padme–not padme but almost padme–is safe at least he cannot hurt her again) the second: well…can the suit cry? and if so how would this girl this angel respond to the attack dog of the empire going to pieces in front of her who was her base structure to break him like this what does she do now?

@suzukiblu: #’are you an angel?’ #*flips table* #WHY DO YOUR TAGS ALWAYS RUIN MY LIFE FRIEND #WHY

Awww, you’re makin’ me blush.