you were raised in comparison.
it wasn't always obvious (well. except for the times that it was), but you internalized it young. you had to eat what you didn't like, other people are going hungry, and you should be grateful. you had to suck it up and walk on the twisted ankle, it wasn't broken, you were just being a baby. you were never actually suffering, people obviously had it worse than you did.
you had a roof over your head - imagine! with the way you behaved, with how you talked back to your parents? you're lucky they didn't kick you out on your ass. they had friends who had to deal with that. hell, you have friends who had to deal with that. and how dare you imply your father isn't there for you - just because he doesn't ever actually talk to you and just because he's completely emotionally checked out of your life doesn't mean you're not fucking lucky. think about your cousins, who don't even get to speak to their dad. so what if yours has a mean streak; is aggressive and rude. at least you have a father to be rude to you.
you really think you're hurting? you were raised in a home! you had access to clean water! you never so much as came close to experiencing a real problem. sure, okay. you have this "mental illness" thing, but teenagers are always depressed, right. it's a phase, you'll move on with your life.
what do you mean you feel burnt out at work. what do you mean you mean you never "formed healthy coping mechanisms?" we raised you better than that. you were supposed to just shoulder through things. to hold yourself to high expectations. "burning out" is for people with real jobs and real stress. burnout is for people who have sick kids and people who have high-paying jobs and people who are actually experiencing something difficult. recently you almost cried because you couldn't find your fucking car keys. you just have lost your sense of gratitude, and honestly, we're kind of hurt. we tell you we love you, isn't that enough? if you want us to stick around, you need to be better about proving it. you need to shut up about how your mental health is ruined.
it could be worse! what if you were actually experiencing executive dysfunction. if you were really actually sick, would you even be able to look at things on the internet about it? you just spend too much time on webMD. you just like to freak yourself out and feel like you belong to something. you just like playing the victim. this is always how you have been - you've always been so fucking dramatic. you have no idea how good you have it - you're too fucking sensitive.
you were like, maybe too good of a kid. unwilling to make a real fuss. and the whole time - the little points, the little validations - they went unnoticed. it isn't that you were looking for love, specifically - more like you'd just wanted any one person to actually listen. that was all you'd really need. you just needed to be witnessed. it wasn't that you couldn't withstand the burden, but you did want to know that anyone was watching. these days, you are so accustomed to the idea of comparison - you don't even think you belong in your own communities. someone always fits better than you do. you're always the outlier. they made these places safe, and then you go in, and you are just not... quite the same way that would actually-fit.
you watch the little white ocean of your numbness lap at your ankles. the tide has been coming in for a while, you need to do something about it. what you want to do is take a nap. what you want to do is develop some kind of time machine - it's not like you want your life to stop, not completely, but it would really nice if you could just get everything to freeze, just for a little while, just until you're finished resting. but at least you're not the worst you've been. at least you have anything. you're so fucking lucky. do you have any concept of the amount of global suffering?
a little ant dies at the side of your kitchen sink. you look at its strange chitinous body and think - if you could just somehow convince yourself it is enough, it will finally be enough and you can be happy. no changes will have to be made. you just need to remember what you could lose. what is still precious to you.
you can't stop staring at the ant. you could be an ant instead of a person, that is how lucky you are. it's just - you didn't know the name of the ant, did you. it's just - ants spend their whole life working, and never complain. never pull the car over to weep.
it's just - when it died, it curled up into a tight little ball.
something kind of uncomfortable: you do that when you sleep.
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Prompt 293
Jason takes a deep breath. He takes a deep breath, in for ten seconds, out for eight, and just takes a minute before looking again. Nope, there’s still the strange quartet of orbs in the box of what should be stolen weapons (What, the government had enough, honestly) that gave his workers the heebie-jeebies.
Which is not the vibe he gets from them. In fact, he’s actually kind of concerned with how much he has to beat the Pit back with how quickly it lurches to latch onto the… Well they’re not gems, and he’s a little wary about touching them at first, but the Pit does seem to settle when he does.
Alright, he can deal with this. It’s not like he has several heads in a duffel bag that needs to be delivered or a tiny assassin child back in his safehouse (Seriously Talia, why was he the preferred babysitter?) or an entire gang in Crime Alley to deal with. It’ll be fine.
…
He would like to curse out his past self, because there’s now four babies in his safehouse that appeared to have fucking hatched from the orbs. Goddamnit.
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the way Edwin's immediate reaction upon seeing the misery wraith in the Devlin house is to grab Crystal and cover her mouth, even while he's explaining (apparently calmly) that it hunts by sensing negativity and pain - presumably instead of using sight or sound
and the way that he does the exact same thing to Charles when they're reunited in Hell, but here he urges him specifically to be quiet (in what must be the most barely audible line of dialogue in the whole show) because he's found that's the only way he can get a short reprieve between bouts of torture from the spider thing (to the point that when he ran into Simon earlier he - rather nonsensically - believed the sound of tearing paper behind a closed door was also a big risk)
All I'm saying is, it doesn't look like it was actually all that important he stop Crystal from making noise in the Devlin house, and as much as that scene originally read as Edwin kinda having his shit together while Charles & Crystal were both more affected & then literally incapacitated, his head couldn't have been half as clear as it first seemed if his immediate reaction was reverting to Surviving Hell Tactics even when they weren't really helpful or applicable here
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Man I feel like a lot of leftist activists would do a lot better to just use common fucking language to talk about things rather than dense academic shit that's only understandable to people with PhDs and people who spend 95% of their waking life on Leftist Twitter lmao
Like, you're talking with other academics? Great, use academic language. You're a social media account trying to interact with the general public? Don't say "decarcerate", say "find alternatives to imprisonment". Don't say "collective liberation", say "freedom for all". By GOD don't say "bodymind autonomy", say "the ability to have control over our own minds and bodies".
Yes it takes a little more effort to explain shit in common language but I promise you people will stop looking at you like you have two heads and dismissing everything you say as Woke Bullshit if you like, actually get on their level, goddamn it. Not everyone has the privilege to have a graduate-school level understanding of this type of language or spend so much time reading leftist theory that they can perfectly understand this stuff.
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