i was wounded, not lost

If you are a socially anxious person, you have to socialize. Your panic/anxiety attacks will only get worse and trigger more frequently if you constantly avoid contact with The Public. Not saying that you need to be a social butterfly- but there is a genuine problem with not being able to order your own meal at a restaurant. And it cannot be solved by always having someone else do it for you.

this guy was often one of the first people on the scene following a suspected arson, once emergency services had done what they needed to do. at times, there were also civilians on the periphery. often, they were freaking out, and understandably so; their home or workplace had just, quite literally, gone up in smoke

this investigator wouldn’t try to calm them down. he wouldn’t comfort them or be a shoulder to cry on.

instead, he’d walk up to the person most visibly losing their shit, hand them a fire extinguisher, and say “hey, can you keep an eye out for any other fires, and if you see one, can you put it out with this?”

of course, there was no actual risk of another fire. he wouldn’t be on the scene investigating if there was even a chance that the fire wasn’t completely put out. but the bystander didn’t need to know that

because that person, without fail, would immediately pull it together, take the fire extinguisher, and stand guard. they were, at least temporarily, calm enough for this investigator to do this job

i am people. i am good

this post is for you specifically 

i know we all hate reading comprehension on tumblr dot hell, but this post is not about other people. it’s not about the people who have hurt you, or saved you, or the ones you’ve met or those who you’ve invented in your head

this post is about you

if you cannot find evidence of the goodness around you, if you are jaded and your existence is miserable and you truly believe no one has ever showed you kindness, then this post is for and about you

you can’t control the actions of other people. you can’t make people show you kindness in the ways you want to receive it. if you look for proof of your version of kindness in the people who surround you, and can’t find it, you can decide it doesn’t exist

or you can be your own proof of concept

you are not special

there are at least hundreds of thousands of people who are just like you

so if you can choose to show others kindness - if you can bite back your temper and hold the door open for others and overtip and compliment strangers - then that is proof that hundreds of thousands of people, who are just like you, are capable of doing the same and likely are doing the same

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again

And then I grew up and it turns out the world is going to shit and there’s a class war everywhere and my livelihood is under constant threat because I wasn’t lucky enough to be born into generational wealth and climate change is coming fast and god, the powerful are so selfish and and and- and yet, I do still dance in my kitchen. Sometimes my cat asks to be picked up and I sway around in a made up waltz with her tucked into my arms. (This is one of her favorite activities)

I play card games and gossip and watch movies with my friends every few Saturdays even though we’re all overworked and exhausted. i create things in the pockets of time between sleep and work and sometimes I create while I’m at work and I race home to finish it with a childlike sort of excitement. I’ve seen very little of the world but it’s still more than most of my family has. and these things are still just as wonderful as I dreamed they’d be, it’s just that they’re grounded firmly in a reality that’s harder to thrive in.

it makes me sad, because I feel like a lot of people are grappling with how much more difficult it is these days to create a life you survived for. And it can feel sometimes like it was all for nothing- all that stubborn determination to stay alive and keep trying, keep going got us to a world on fire, with all the folks who could do anything about it shrugging and saying no, nothing can be done, it’s too late, it’s just how things are.

Except it isn’t. There will always be dancing, there will always be companionship, there will always be room for hope. It’s never useless to hope for a better life. It’s never useless to believe it can be.

Women outperform men in many sports, and in many instances, the men's versions of these sports are rewritten into completely different versions so that they can't be compared.

And if your reaction to this is "well women don't outperform men in skills that we typically find impressive" I would implore you to think about why things women tend to be better at than men are valued less by society.

If your reaction is "well that's cherrypicking examples, its such a small handful of formalized sports" I'd implore you to think of why so many popular sports are structured around the specific set of skills men are better at.