UNDEAD UNDEAD UNDEAD

Hello, hope all of you are safe and doing well.

You may have heard of what happened in Lebanon today and if not, basically, there was a big explosion in Beirut that affected many cities, destroyed shops, homes, cars, caused many injuries and deaths. The cause is uncertain.

As a fellow lebanese myself (that also lives there), today was absolutely terrifying, probably the scariest moments of my life. We heard a deafening sound as the floors were shaking. Some of us thought it was an attack, others thought it was an earthquake. As soon as it ended many expected a second one, which luckily never happened.

Here's a video of what happened that was sent to me, there are also many others that you can find online.

Windows were broken, doors wrecked, cars flipped over, buildings collapsed, people hit by flying or falling objects, and unfortunately, many didn't make it out alive.

We were one of the lucky ones, our families and friends were all safe and our homes were fine.

Some people couldn't even get out of the crumbling builings, so we saw corpses being pulled out, although some people survived the crash. But wherever we looked, there was blood, poeple were half covered in it, their shirts, pants, hair, everything. And that sight was traumatizing.

We watched the news with elders severely injured, children with blood-spattered shirts and people in pain that couldn't get in the hospitals because they were full.

Some people are missing. Just try to imagine the pain and fear their families and friends are feeling.

Articles about what happened, there are a lot more

Not only are we in the middle of a pandemic, but Lebanon is also going through a very serious economical crisis. To give you an example, before, $1 equaled 1 500 lebanese pounds. Nowadays, $1 equals more than 7 000 lebanese pounds. Not to mention that we obviously don't have any dollars at disposition, so yeah we're fucked.

People are hungry, homeless, unemployed. And even if they are getting paid, it'll be useless since the prices of everything went up because they were affected by the economical fiasco.

Important additional information

Today, I heard my 7 year old cousins scream in fear that they were going to die. I saw my aunt shaking, worried that her children won't survive. I saw my dad freak out while trying to reassure us when we both knew that we were uncertain about the next minutes of our lives. I heard the panic in the trembling voices of my family and friends as they couldn't believe what had just happened. I thought my loved ones and I were going to die in the next seconds.

I'm never forgetting those moments and feelings.

I don't think signing petitions will help, i don't even know if the following links will help either, I just know Lebanon and it's people are desperate for anything because the future of this country is extremely uncertain.

https://helplebanonnow.carrd.co/

https://lebanoncrisis.carrd.co/

https://www.gofundme.com/f/lebanonneedsorg?utm_source=customer&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link

https://helplebanon.carrd.co/

http://redcross.org.lb/SubPage.aspx?pageid=1370&PID=158

http://www.caritas.org.lb/get_involved/donate

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/lebanon-relief?utm_term=PYp7gXzyD

I think donating to the red cross would be the most helpful, so if you are considering it, it'd be great.

Colder tones!!!

It’s “normal” as in “many people experience pain, loneliness, anxiety, self-hatred, and other symptoms of mental illness that feel like they ‘don’t count’ because there’s no real Thing they can point to to explain it, but their pain and suffering are real and ought to be taken seriously.”

One basic test of massive internal pain is a depression test. Here’s one such questionnaire, the PHQ-9. It lists nine symptoms of depression and asks people how much they have experienced them over the last few weeks. Among them are symptoms like, “Feeling down, depressed, or hopeless,” “Feeling bad about yourself – or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down,” and “Thoughts that you would be better off dead or of hurting yourself in some way.”

It’s scored by asking people to rate if they’ve experienced the thing: 0, not at all, 1, several days, 2, more than half the days, or 3, nearly every day. Then you get a total score by adding up the ranking of each of the nine symptoms listed. So the lowest possible score is 0 (never experienced any of the symptoms) and the highest possible is 27 (all the symptoms nearly every day). The PHQ-9 considers scores above 5 to indicate mild depression, above 10, moderate, and above 15, moderate to severe depression.

When you run thousands of people through the PHQ-9–for example, if you ask doctor’s offices to ask everyone seeing their doctor for any reason to take it–this is what the score distribution looks like: 

Far and away, the most common score is 0. The vast majority of people experience no symptoms of depression in their daily lives. The vast majority of people do not feel hopeless, do not feel like failures, and do not think they would be better off if they were dead in their day-to-day lives.