I'm meaner than my demons

Also if you are from another country and you like the AfD, don't follow me.

“I’m a therapist and keep this poster in my waiting room, apparently it’s saved a few lives.”

I don’t like the phrase “a cry for help.” I just don’t like how it sounds. When somebody says to me, “I’m thinking about suicide. I have a plan: I just need a reason not to do it,” the last thing I see is helplessness.

I think your depression has been beating you up for years. It’s called you ugly, and stupid, and pathetic, and a failure, for so long that you’ve forgotten that it’s wrong. You don’t see any good in yourself, and you don’t have any hope.

But still here you are: you’ve come over to me, banged on my door and said, “HEY! Staying alive is REALLY HARD right now! Just give me something to fight with! I don’t care if it’s a stick! Give me a stick and I can stay alive!”

How is that helpless? I think that’s incredible. You’re like a marine: trapped for years behind enemy lines. Your gun has been taken away, you’re out of ammo, you’re malnourished, and you’ve probably caught some kind of jungle virus that’s making you hallucinate giant spiders.

And you’re still just going, “GIVE ME A STICK. I’M NOT DYING OUT HERE.” “A cry for help” makes it sound like I’m supposed to take pity on you, but you don’t need my pity. This isn’t pathetic. This is the will to survive. This is how humans lived long enough to become the dominant species.

With NO hope, running on NOTHING, you’re ready to cut through a hundred miles of hostile jungle with nothing but a stick, if that’s what it takes to get to safety.

All I’m doing is handing out sticks.

A bee: buzz

“[I]t is actually more expensive to be poor than not poor. If you can’t afford the first month’s rent and security deposit you need in order to rent an apartment, you may get stuck in an overpriced residential motel. If you don’t have a kitchen or even a refrigerator and microwave, you will find yourself falling back on convenience store food, which — in addition to its nutritional deficits — is also alarmingly overpriced. If you need a loan, as most poor people eventually do, you will end up paying an interest rate many times more than what a more affluent borrower would be charged. To be poor — especially with children to support and care for — is a perpetual high-wire act.”

slightly click-baity title but i’m getting really tired of ‘zero-waste’ shops and bloggers which advocate buying le parfait/mason/fancy new glass jars for storing your organic flour, couscous, oats, etc. 

those jars are fucking expensive (i don’t care if it’s a ‘one-off investment’ they are overpriced and not everyone can afford to invest in your bougie jars)

it sort of defeats the object of reducing your waste if you immediately go out and buy a whole set of brand new virgin glass jars to store stuff in. there is loads of glass packaging already in the world. USE IT. 

to replace this middle-class bullshit (this is zero-waste for the aesthetic first if ever i saw it) is simple and way cheaper:

go through your cupboards and find all your jams/pasta sauces/assorted nut butters.  use them (or chuck them out if they’re all old, no point hoarding ancient food), then wash very thoroughly and dry them (i’d recommend putting all your (glass only!) jars on a tray in the oven to dry as this will sterilise them too). then congratulations! you have a bunch of free reused jars to fill with rice/oats/organic chia and flaxseed muesli at the zero waste shop!

go on ebay/your local bring and buy facebook page/a charity shop and find ‘job lot glass jars’/’old jam jars’/similar. then rinse and repeat as before (literally). congratulations! you have sourced reused jars for a minimal cost to fill with your choice of obscure grains! (and potentially supported a fellow member of the proletariat trying to make a little extra money/a charity in the process!)

zero-waste shouldn’t be the new trend for the middle classes. it should be accessible to everyone because it matters.