stuff

My therapist said this:

So there’s a known thing in the study of human psychology/sociology/what-have-you where men are known to, on average, rely entirely on their female romantic partner for emotional support. Bonding with other men is done at a more superficial level involving fun group activities and conversations about general subjects but rarely involves actually leaning on other men or being really honest about emotional problems. Men use alcohol to be able to lower their inhibitions enough to expose themselves emotionally to other men, but if you can’t get emotional support unless you’re drunk, you have a problem.

So men need to have a woman in their lives to have anyone they can share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities with. However, since women are not socialized to fear sharing these things, women’s friendships with other women are heavily based on emotional support. If you can’t lean on her when you’re weak, she’s not your friend. To women, what friendship is is someone who listens to all your problems and keeps you company.

So this disconnect men are suffering from is that they think that only a person who is having sex with you will share their emotions and expect support. That’s what a romantic partner does. But women think that’s what a friend does. So women do it for their romantic partners and their friends and expect a male friend to do it for them the same as a female friend would. This fools the male friend into thinking there must be something romantic there when there is not.

This here is an example of patriarchy hurting everyone. Women have a much healthier approach to emotional support – they don’t die when widowed at nearly the rate that widowers die and they don’t suffer emotionally from divorce nearly as much even though they suffer much more financially, and this is because women don’t put all their emotional needs on one person. Women have a support network of other women. But men are trained to never share their emotions except with their wife or girlfriend, because that isn’t manly. So when she dies or leaves them, they have no one to turn to to help with the grief, causing higher rates of death, depression, alcoholism and general awfulness upon losing a romantic partner. 

So men suffer terribly from being trained in this way. But women suffer in that they can’t reach out to male friends for basic friendship. I am not sure any man can comprehend how heartbreaking it is to realize that a guy you thought was your friend was really just trying to get into your pants. Friendship is real. It’s emotional, it’s important to us. We lean on our friends. Knowing that your friend was secretly seething with resentment when you were opening up to him and sharing your problems because he felt like he shouldn’t have to do that kind of emotional work for anyone not having sex with him, and he felt used by you for that reason, is horrible. And the fact that men can’t share emotional needs with other men means that lots of men who can’t get a girlfriend end up turning into horrible misogynistic people who think the world owes them the love of a woman, like it’s a commodity… because no one will die without sex. Masturbation exists. But people will die or suffer deep emotional trauma from having no one they can lean on emotionally. And men who are suffering deep emotional trauma, and have been trained to channel their personal trauma into rage because they can’t share it, become mass shooters, or rapists, or simply horrible misogynists.

but somehow we’ve come full circle and there are people who legit defend their right to be anti-recovery there are people who don’t want to get better and spread the idea that you can’t get better as if it’s gospel and it’s fucking frightening to me bc nobody seems to want to say “hey? this is toxic and untrue and is your disease speaking, and it’s not something you should accept.”

and i feel like every recovery post gets about 500 of these people saying “this isn’t something that will work” “cool karen i’m depressed” “maybe it worked for you but it won’t work for other people” and that’s… just… im so sorry if you’re 15. i’m sorry if you’re in high school and watching grown adults tell you it doesn’t get better. that nobody says that with time and help and patience the world stops being so heavy, that accepting your illness as a fact is one thing but accepting it as the only way to be is just wrong, that you can learn to live with it and still find some degree of “happy”…. if i had seen this shit back when i was … oh god starting at 12 when i was already self-harming …. i think i’d have actually honest-to-god killed myself. not a joke, not a funny tumblr punchline, i would have actually just killed myself. 

i’m saying this right here and right now to the adults on this site. if you for any reason shoot down positivity that’s causing no harm - you might have indirectly worsened someone else’s condition, and you should try and do better in the future. if you find it necessary to tell people “recovery is a lie”, you need to do better. i know everyone has different circumstances, but i also know that mental illness behaves in such a way that everyone thinks they can’t recover.  if you feel like you should be spreading the Word Of Relapse, you are causing toxic language to be normalized and you need to do better. 

im team “cool karen ive got depression and that means i’m going to try this because i’ve got to try something” i’m team “romanticize recovery” i’m team “it isn’t working now but it might in the future and it’s worth staying to find out” im team “hey this didn’t work for me but it might help somebody else out”

I bring in a graduated cylinder of it and we talk about how it’s used in nuclear power plants and gmo crops. How inhaling even the small amount I’m holding can lead to suffocation or even death. It’s found in vaccines and cancer cells, but also in infant formula and pet food. It is a huge component of acid rain, can cause severe burns, and has been found in places that were thought to be the most pristine and unpolluted locations on earth.

We talk about how there are little to no regulations on this chemical. No bans, no warning labels, and most manufacturers don’t even have to disclose their use of it in their products.

My students are outraged. We talk about what we can do. Create posters and flyers to spread awareness. Contact our senators with petitions to ban DHMO. Spread this information all over social media.

Then I explain that the real problem with dihydrogen monoxide is that….when I am thirsty…there is just nothing else as refreshing, and then I watch their looks of absolute shock and horror as I drink the entire vial down.

Astronaut readjusts to life back on Earth

IT’S NOT FUNNY IT’S VERY LOGICAL THAT HE WOULD HAVE ADJUSTED TO LIVING LIFE WHILE HE WAS IN SPACE BECAUSE IT’S DIFFERENT FROM EARTH BUT I CAN’T FUCKING BREATHE