Burning So Brightly

If your ancestors owned people, they are inhumane and immoral by default.

If your ancestors participated in a system where they in any way owner another human being, they are inhumane and immoral by default.

If your ancestors robbed someone of their freedom and humanity by treating them like material property, by buying them or selling them, they are inhumane and immoral by default.

But they were nice to them! They gave them free food! Free housing! Free clothes!

Do you know what being a SLAVE means?

It means you are someone’s legal property.

It means you are required by law to obey EVERYTHING they command of you.

It means you have no freedom.

It means you have no choice.

It means you are forced to perform labor of ALL sorts with no compensation.

It means if your owner decides you live in a box you live in that fucking box.

It means you have no control of your own identity, destiny, or future.

It means your HUMANITY BELONGS TO ANOTHER PERSON.

Nice is an attitude that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that your ancestors willingly chose to partake in a system which completely robbed groups of people of their FREEDOM, their IDENTITIES, their CHOICE, and their HUMANITY.

The best way to self diagnose is to just look at all the symptoms for a disorder and try to see if they do and have shown up consistently throughout your life, or at least the past 6 months to a year. I would suggest making a list of the times you have expressed symptoms, and rating things like intensity, frequency, severity etc. (See symptom checklist below)

A good way to get an initial idea of what, if anything, that you may have (if you think it’s BPD or a personality disorder) is to look up tests online. SimilarMinds has a good one that gives you a percentage of how much you may have a certain disorder compared with how people without a personality disorder score. 4degreez is another good one that shows your scores on a range of “low” to “very high” probability for a PD. Keep in mind that there are a lot of overlapping symptoms which could mean that you score very high or at a high percent for a disorder that just has similar traits to another, though you may find that you’re comorbid instead/too. (I wouldn’t visit many other besides these 2 because a lot tend to just be “for fun” and already these tests are just meant to give you an overall idea and shouldn’t be used as the only resource to decide if you have a PD or not.)

before today, i hadn’t heard of “rough rides,” and there’s a good chance you haven’t either. basically, a “rough ride” is a horrifying process in which ‘a handcuffed man or woman is put into the back of a police van or paddy wagon, without being buckled in or secured. The vehicle then drives recklessly, making sharp, dangerous turns and sudden movements in ways that throw the passenger violently around the vehicle.’

as of today, we now know that this is exactly what happened to Freddie Gray before he died. 

here’s the evidence: rather than take Freddie Gray the short 2 minute drive from the arrest site to the police station (see left), he was deliberately driven recklessly for over 40 minutes (see right) around Baltimore, handcuffed and in the back of a police van, with no seatbelt, until his spine broke.

the terrifying thing is that this seems to happen a lot. earlier today, two more people came forward to testify that they were put through rough rides at the hands of the Baltimore PD. a 43-year-old man was charged with ‘public urination’ and given a rough ride that resulted in a spine fracture that rendered him quadriplegic for the rest of his life. five years ago, a former Baltimore police officer admitted that rough rides are an “unsanctioned technique” in which police vans are driven to cause “injury or pain” to unbuckled, handcuffed detainees. rough rides are very much a Real Thing.