Pretty shit i like

i tried to draw pokemon from memory

what would have to go wrong in your life, and how wrong would it have to go, for you to stop bathing? to stop eating? to let the garbage pile around you until you can no longer see the floor?

how bad would you have to feel, and for how long, before you would stand on the street screaming at anyone & anything? beating your fists on your head and crying? how bad would it need to be?

hot weather

high temperatures

heat

"what do I do if I shouldn't call 911?"

well "I'm sorry I'm in a rush" is a pretty good option or "I can't talk right now, sorry" and then move on.

psychotic people, ultimately, are people. they are just as human as you are and the vast vast vast majority of the time they're not interested in hurting you.

when you're approached by a psychotic person ranting about delusions or hallucinations (and possibly speaking with disorganized speech) they are just looking for human connection, that's all. they might not have many people around to talk to and it gets lonely. when someone talks to you about a secret society of mind readers out to kill them they are just trying to connect with people and sometimes process the fear they're experiencing (because a secret society of mind readers out to kill you is rather scary!)

things like mania can also make you very talkative and very social.

someone coming up to you to talk about being the second coming of Jesus isn't trying to hurt you. they just want to talk. if you have time then have a conversation, most of the time you don't even need to say much. you can politely nod and go "wow that's crazy" and "that's so scary" and it might be one of the kindest things someone does for them that day. if you don't have time just say you're in a rush and leave.

“He might be your brother.”

They've both been crushed by societal forces, forced to take desperate measures to keep their family alive, and are subsequently saved by selfless people. I'm rereading Les Mis currently and it struck me this time that the timing of Fantine's plight shows Jean Valjean that he's not infallible even after his reformation, which is why it's so especially crushing for him and can explain why he commits to an all-out response of personally raising Cosette himself; although so much has changed, even now he is culpable in "robbing" another person and failing someone he was responsible for. Fantine teaches Valjean this, and I love how they're thrown together by fate and end up parenting Cosette together, separated by time, linked through a unique relationship that isn't romantic but is characterized by deep kinship. Victor Hugo traces Fantine's mental journey after Valjean's intervention in a way that echoes Valjean's, especially "Valjean's Soliloquy" in the musical: "He had saved her after she had most outrageously insulted him! Could she have been wrong? Must she now change her very heart?" Earlier, she also says, "I had Cosette to think of, so I was forced to become a bad woman." Switch out a few key words and you get a perfect line for Valjean. Hugo goes so far as to explicitly link them together through sheer proximity of words; another paragraph goes, "What is the true story of Fantine? It is the story of society's purchase of a slave. A slave purchased from poverty, hunger, cold, loneliness, defenselessness, destitution. A squalid bargain: a human soul for a hunk of bread..."