before you know about women, you hear that you do not need to love the man, just that you need to love him through his manhood. which is to say you have seen the future painted in lamb's blood over your eyes - how your mother shoots you a look about your father's inability to cook right. how your aunt holds her wineglass and says i'm gonna kill em. men, right! how your best friend bickers with her boyfriend, how she says i can't help it. i come back to him.
you learn: men are gonna cheat. men aren't going to listen when you're talking, because you're nagging. men think emotions are stupid. they think your life is vapid and your hobbies are embarrassing. men will slam things, but that's because men are allowed to be angry. if you get loud, you're hysterical. if a man gets loud - well, men are animals, men are dogs, men can't control their hands or their eyes or their bodies. they're going to make a snide comment about you in the locker room, about your body, about how you're so fucking annoying. you're going to give him kids, and he will give you the money for the kids, and you're going to be running the house 24/7 - but he gets to relax after a long day, because his job is stressful. the man is on stage, and is a comedian, and says "women!"
and you are supposed to love that. you are supposed to love men through how horrible they are to you - because that's what women do. that's what good women do. wife material. your father even told you once - it'll make sense when you're older. it was like staring down a very lonely tunnel.
it feels like something's caught in your throat, but it's all you know, so. it's okay that you see sex as a necessary tool, a sort of okay-enough ritual to keep him happy, even though he doesn't seem to care about happiness as-applied-to you. it is relationship upkeep. it is kissing him and smiling even though he didn't brush his teeth. it is getting on your knees and looking up and holding back a sigh because he barely holds you as you panic through the night. it's not like the sex is bad and you do like feeling wanted. and besides! he's a man! like... they're another species. you'll never be able to actually communicate, right. he isn't listening.
you just don't get it. you don't feel that sense of i'm gonna climb him like a tree. mostly it just feels fucking exhausting. you play the part perfectly. you smile and nod and are "effortlessly" charming. and it's fine! it's alright! you even love him, if you're looking. you could have good life, and a good family, and perfectly happy.
in the late night you google: am i broken. you google i'm not attracted to my husband. you google i get turned on by books but not by him. you google how to get better in bed.
the first time he yells at you, it almost feels like blankness. like - of course this is happening. this is always how it was going to end up. men get angry, and they yell, and you sit there in silence.
you mention it to your friend - just the once - while you're drunk. she shrugs and says it's like that with me too, i just try to forget and move on. men are always gonna hear what they want to. pick your battles and say sorry even though he's in the wrong. you play solitaire online for a month. you go to your therapist appointment and preach about how you're both so in love.
after all, you have a future to want. nobody lied about it - how many instagram posts say marriage is hard. say real love takes work. say we fight like cats and dogs but the best part is that we always make up. how many of your friends say happy anniversary to the best and worst thing to ever happen to me. if you really loved him - loved yourself too - you'd accept that men are just different from you.
the first time she kisses you, it's on a dare at a party. something large and terrifying whips through your body. you wake up sweating from dreams where her mouth is encrusted with pearls and you pick them off one by one with your teeth. fuck. you sit at the computer and your almost-finished game of sim city. you think about your potential perfect life and your potential future family. you google am i gay quiz with your little hands shaking.
you delete each letter slowly. you don't need to love him. you just need to keep going.
2K notes
·
View notes
"IDF says it ‘completely rejects’ charge that its soldiers deliberately fired on any of the thousands of civilians killed in Israeli offensive
Dr Fozia Alvi was making her rounds of the intensive care unit on her final day at the battered European public hospital in southern Gaza when she stopped next to two young arrivals with facial injuries and breathing tubes in their windpipes.
“I asked the nurse, what’s the history? She said that they were brought in a couple of hours ago. They had sniper shots to the brain. They were seven or eight years old,” she said.
The Canadian doctor’s heart sank. These were not the first children treated by Alvi who she was told were targeted by Israeli soldiers, and she knew the damage a single high-calibre bullet could do to a fragile young body.
“They were not able to talk, paraplegic. They were literally lying down as vegetables on those beds. They were not the only ones. I saw even small children with direct sniper shot wounds to the head as well as in the chest. They were not combatants, they were small children,” said Alvi.
Children account for more than one in three of the more than 32,000 people killed in Israel’s months-long assault on Gaza, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Tens of thousands more young people have suffered severe injuries, including amputations.
Nine doctors gave the Guardian accounts of working in Gaza hospitals this year, all but one of them foreign volunteers. Their common assessment was that most of the dead and wounded children they treated were hit by shrapnel or burned during Israel’s extensive bombardment of residential neighbourhoods, in some cases wiping out entire families. Others were killed or injured by collapsing buildings with still more missing under the rubble.
But doctors also reported treating a steady stream of children, elderly people and others who were clearly not combatants with single bullet wounds to the head or chest.
Some of the physicians said that the types and locations of the wounds, and accounts of Palestinians who brought children to the hospital, led them to believe the victims were directly targeted by Israeli troops.
Other doctors said they did not know the circumstances of the shootings but that they were deeply troubled by the number of children who were severely wounded or killed by single gunshots, sometimes by high-calibre bullets causing extensive damage to young bodies.
In mid-February, a group of UN experts accused the Israeli military of targeting Palestinian civilians who are evidently not combatants, including children, as they sought shelter.
“We are shocked by reports of the deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing of Palestinian women and children in places where they sought refuge, or while fleeing. Some of them were reportedly holding white pieces of cloth when they were killed by the Israeli army or affiliated forces,” the group said.
The Guardian shared descriptions and images of gunshot wounds suffered by eight children with military experts and forensic pathologists. They said it was difficult to conclusively determine the circumstances of the shootings based on the descriptions and photos alone, although in some of the cases they were able to identify ammunition used by the Israeli military.
Eyewitness accounts and video recordings appear to back up claims that Israeli soldiers have fired on civilians, including children, outside of combat with Hamas or other armed groups. In some cases, witnesses describe coming under fire while waving white flags. Haaretz reported on Saturday that Israel routinely fires on civilians in areas its military has declared a “combat zone”.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) deploy snipers – or sharpshooters, as the military calls them – during combat operations, often as part of elite units. They are trained to “target and eliminate particularly difficult terrorist threats”, according to the military’s own definition.
Israeli and foreign human rights groups have documented a long history of snipers firing on unarmed Palestinians, including children, in Gaza and the West Bank.
Palestinians in Gaza also report a terrifying new development in the latest Gaza war – armed drones able to hover over streets and pick off individuals. Called quadcopters, some of these drones are used as remote-control snipers that Palestinians say have been used to shoot civilians.
The IDF said it “completely rejects” allegations that its snipers deliberately fire on civilians. It said it cannot address individual shootings “without coordinates of the incidents”.
“The IDF only targets terrorists and military targets. In stark contrast to Hamas’s deliberate attacks on Israeli civilians, including men, women and children, the IDF follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm,” it said.
Doctors say otherwise.
Dr Vanita Gupta, an intensive care doctor at a New York City hospital, volunteered at Gaza’s European hospital in January. One morning, three badly wounded children arrived in quick succession. Their families told Gupta that the children had been together in the street when they came under fire and that there had been no other shooting in the area. She said no wounded adults were brought in to the hospital at the same time and from the same place.
“One child, I could see there was a shot to the head. They were doing CPR on this five- or six-year-old girl who obviously died,” said Gupta.
“There was another little girl about the same age. I saw a bullet entry wound on her head. Her father was there, crying and asking me, ‘Can you save her? She’s my only child.’”
Gupta said that a third young child also had a shot to the head and was sent for a CT scan.
“The neurosurgeon looked and said, ‘There’s no hope.’ You could see the bullet had gone through the head. I don’t know how old he was, but young,” she said.
Family members told Gupta that the Israeli army had withdrawn from the area about four kilometres from the hospital.
“They said people started returning to their homes because the army was gone. But the snipers stayed on. The families said they opened fire at the children,” she said.
Doctors who worked at the Nasser hospital in southern Gaza said what appeared to be targeted Israeli fire killed more than two dozen people, including children, as they entered or left the hospital in the first weeks of this year.
Among the casualties was 14-year-old Ruwa Qdeih. Doctors say she was shot dead outside the hospital in Khan Younis as she went to collect water. They said there was no fighting in the area at the time and that she was killed by a single shot and then men who went to recover her body were also shot at.
In Gaza City, three-year-old Emad Abu al-Qura was shot outside his home as he went to buy fruit with his cousin, Hadeel, a 20-year-old medical student, who was also killed. The family said they were targeted by an Israeli sniper.
A video of the pair lying together in the street shows Emad still alive after he is first hit and trying to lift his head. More shots hit the ground close by including one that strikes a plank next to Emad. The boy’s mother said he was then hit again and this time killed.
Hadeel’s father, Haroon, saw the shooting.
“The targeting of civilians is very clear. It is a deliberate direct targeting aimed at killing civilians without reason, without there being any events, without there being any resistance. They deliberately killed Hadeel and Emad,” he told Al Jazeera.
Other young victims include 14-year-old Nahedh Barbakh, who was hit by sniper fire alongside his 20-year-old brother, Ramez, as they followed Israeli military orders to evacuate an area west of Khan Younis in late January, according to the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. [...]
In October, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, described the IDF as “the most moral army in the world”. The Israeli military claims to be guided by a “purity of arms” doctrine that precludes soldiers from harming “uninvolved civilians”.
But Israeli and international human rights groups have long said that the military’s failure to enforce its own standards – and its willingness to cover up breaches – has contributed to a climate of impunity for soldiers who target civilians.
The groups say it is extremely difficult at this stage to quantify the scale of such shootings in Gaza, not least because their own staff are often displaced and under attack. But Miranda Cleland of Defense for Children International Palestine said that over the years there had been a “clear pattern of Israeli forces targeting Palestinian children with deadly force in situations where the children posed no threat to soldiers”.
“In the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers routinely shoot children in the head, chest or abdomen, all areas from which a child will quickly bleed out if they aren’t killed instantly. Many of these children are shot by Israeli forces from great distances, sometimes upwards of 500ft, which is something only a trained military sniper would be capable of,” she said.
An Israeli group, Breaking the Silence, collected testimonies from IDF soldiers in earlier conflicts who said they shot Palestinian civilians merely because they were where they were not supposed to be even though it was evident they were not combatants.
IDF snipers boasted about shooting unarmed Palestinian protesters, including young people, in the knees during nearly two years of demonstrations at the Gaza border fence from the spring of 2018."
36 notes
·
View notes
I just realized now that if S7 air and Yorishima make his anime debut the number of people believing him being Natsume's grandpa will increase too .... hmmmm ...
I don't know why alot of people believe this tbh .. this idea is funny to me and wrong on many front ...
I'm not denying those people or their ideas and theories .. none know the truth yet so it fun to have many ideas and such ,, it just this is my personal take is all .. actually, I'm opened to hear those people's line of reasoning since this idea never crossed my mind nor am I ever gonna consider it ..
personally, I do believe he play an important different role be it to Reiko or Natsume's real grandfather .. but him being the one is just funny xDD
to say it simply why it felt wrong to me ...
Dose Yorishima appear the type to have ever considered loving someone in his life or be happy ?? we're talking about the same person who always draw a line between him and other people .. he's the Natsume of the past ... even when he got injured, he fully cut all ties with humans so as not worry them or cause trouble to anyone .. hide the truth from his only friend.
I bet making a family of his own never crossed his mind out of not wanting to cause his future wife/kids any grief or pain because he's that kind. plus, he feels he doesn't deserve any kind of happiness.
I think he did talk about this subject with his friend in the past about loving someone and making a family ? I'm not in a state to check said chapter but I don't think my memory fails me ?
Yorishima is a shut-in .. the idea of him going in and out to meet Reiko who's that far away is an amusing idea lol
Yorishima is the type that Reiko would bully for her to fall in love with him or him winning over Reiko, the least type of person he would wanna interact with ever .. the idea of them falling in love and being married is funny sorry xDD >>> now you had me wanting to see these two interact together that badly ugh
if we do assume they were in love and had a daughter .. does Yorishima sound like the type of person to dumb his wife behind when she's pregnant ?? on top of that .. does he look like the type of person to let his wife get killed and leave his daughter left alone???
I'LL DEFEND YORISHIMA AGAINST ANYONE SAYING HE IS !!!
that only to list a few :)
30 notes
·
View notes
in recent years, there's been a push in therapeutic circles to shift the language from "attention-seeking" to "connection-seeking" behavior.
i was an attention-seeker. i was the textbook example of an attention-seeker. i was a troublemaker. i would self-harm. i destroyed my own relationships. i was uncontrolled, dramatic, sensitive. i took everything personally. i had "nothing" to be depressed "about," but made a big show of how sad i was nonetheless. i was really unsafe about myself in a lot of ways.
the strange thing about that is: it meant others could ignore me. the prevailing wisdom behind knowing something is "attention seeking" is to say: well, since you want it that bad, you're not getting any. it meant i was lower-on-the-list of concern. it meant an eye-roll.
the belief was that: since i was obviously doing these things on purpose, it would be bad behavioral training if i was "rewarded" for it. it would "teach me" that i simply had to make enough fuss, and i'd finally get all that missing attention and love. no, it was better to ignore that stuff.
i was suffering. and it felt like - oh, it doesn't matter how loudly i am in pain, nobody gives a shit about if i'm living or dying.
awhile ago, i went through my journals from that time. a lot of them read the same thing. in them, i am convinced i am invisible. that nobody wants to hear me, to see me. that i could die or vanish and nobody would even notice. i didn't even want attention - not really - because it was always dismissive, mocking. nothing i ever did would be good enough to get someone to actually-worry about me.
that's a terrifying thing for me to read as an adult. that is a child who fully has no problem committing. that is a child who has no concept of feeling loved. the most basic human instinct is missing from her life.
i needed help. i didn't know how to ask for it. i was a kid. i was a kid in a bad home, and whenever i thought things couldn't get worse there - they almost always did.
and the ways i showed that - the ways i tried to deal with that - they made others dismiss me. i wasn't suffering prettily. after all, if i was really in trouble, why wouldn't i just march into the first counselor's office and ask someone to help me? i had the opportunities, right? what did i think would happen, exactly? that someone would finally stand up and do something? who even wants that kind of responsibility?
i heard connection-seeking for the first time about three months ago. my therapist mentioned it when we were talking about my history. it rang some kind of horrible bell, deep inside me. i don't know what she said in the rest of her sentence. i just started... crying.
"oh no", i said to her. "i think i just realized: i have no idea how to forgive them for minimizing the ways i was hurting."
how many other kids, though. how many other kids were out there drowning, snatching around for a lifevest, some kind of rope - how many were straight-up ignored.
how many of those kids aren't gonna get old.
9K notes
·
View notes