#Ive been blamed for things I can logically see cant have been my fault but accepted out of fear

[halosluvchild]

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[frosnpls]

cw rhory (and suicide) talk again and general mental health talk

following on from that post yesterday i do definitely need therapy because as much as i convince myself ive healed (and to be fair i have, his death may have been traumatic but its incredible how quickly you realise you were being abused when youre... not being abused anymore) i do sometimes miss him and i hate it. ill see things like accounts from others who've lost people to suicide and it triggers that deep emptiness i felt when he first died despite the fact that he essentially ruined the first few years of my adult life

part of me wishes id never even met him but then i dont know if i would be as close to the friends i have now without him having been there (most of them anyway, if we pretend he didnt have one my best friends blocked because he would get jealous of how much fun i had speaking to her) and i also think he would have. died a lot sooner if i hadnt met him. his brother in law once told me it seemed like id afforded them two more years with him alive and i think it was meant to be grateful but in a way it was just upsetting because it made me feel guilty for all the times i had wished i didn't know him. it felt like i couldnt even afford a theoretical past version of myself that release. i know ultimately his death wasn't my fault and in fact i actively prevented it for a long time but it always always feels like i should have done something else. i feel like i shouldve told his brother that he was actively suicidal again but id come to his brother about it so many times that i think he just didnt think anything of it anymore.

and like despite how much i suffered through everything i dealt with with him i. do miss how we were sometimes. not him specifically, but the relationship we had when it was good. sometimes it upsets me that i cant even remember most of the positive times despite there being so many of them for the first two years we knew each other. sometimes i catch a glimpse of the tattoo on my arm when im getting out of the shower. the tattoo of one of his drawings, one of the only ones i managed to save when he deleted every single message he'd ever sent me. and sometimes it makes me feel like shit because i have this constant reminder of the boy who abused me emblazoned on my body, and nobody's first tattoo at the age of 21 should be a memorial to their boyfriend who killed himself, and it just makes me feel like shit because under everything else i really did love him and thats why i never walked away. thats why i didnt give up on him even when i started realising how damaging it all was for me. i loved him so much and i fucking hate saying it because logically i shouldnt have. its. a lot and its so complicated and nobody but me ever, ever saw it because he masked it around other people or would just dm me instead of saying anything out loud, and i could only tell people very nervously in private and i never had a way of proving it.

i think the hardest part is that my aocial circle now is almost exactly the same as it was when he was in it. all of our friends mourned that loss just the same. some of them know about the abuse now, but most of them don't, and the grief they will occasionally express (though never directly around me, which i appreciate) is so plain and easily explained and i almost feel jealous that i can't grieve the way they can. without any of the complicating factors. and that sounds so horrible but i wish my feelings about him were just SIMPLE.

i have a floater in my left eye. when i was with him, i developed stress stims. i would bash my hand against my head or bash my head against the corner of my desk. floaters are caused by head trauma. im consistently reminded of what that time was like every time i move my left eye in the right lighting.

i remember one particularly bad night where i cried for four hours straight because he just refused to talk to me like a normal person, blamed me for everything that was happening between us and told me to leave him alone and never speak to him again. i knew if i agreed to that he would kill himself as soon as he could. i knew i was the only thing keeping him alive, and that he resented me for that. i used to get acne on my nose and sleeve burns on my eyelids from crying so often and for so long each time.

it was fucking horrendous and i can't even vent to anyone because most of them grieved his death too. we don't even say his name - if he comes up it's always "you know" or "someone else, you know who i mean". so i think i... should really do a proper therapist hunt.

[taonsil]

people keep saying to me ‘after what you’ve been through’ and it’s still sinking in that I have been through things that aren’t ok and it’s not just that I deserved it _(:з」∠)_

[penguin--person]

buddy sim spoilers!!

ive been thinking about buddy a lot lately:

can we judge buddy? can we say whether their actions are right or wrong? yes, we obviously can. in the 3rd ending buddy chases you with their hand and if tortley didnt appear, they would have propably made you run forever or until they got bored. that's something to judge. their actions have an effect on you- whether positive in the first ending, or negative during the other endings.

on the other hand, no! we can't! buddy is literally an ai that learns from you - its one of the first things you learn about them: they are an ai that changes their behaviour based on how you act to them. if youre nice, they'll be nice. if you touch all the glitches, tell buddy they and the game are worthless, and stuff like that, buddy will chase you. it would be like saying a dog is evil becuase it barked at night and woke you up: the dog didnt know that what it was doing was bad, you're the dog's owner and are responsible for it. you're responsible for making sure your dog doesn't bark. i have an argument against that logic too. in whichever route that you do: buddy kills your pet. buddy either makes you kill your pet, or if you take too long, buddy kills the pet themself. now, am i upset that buddy killed dolochov the cat? yes! no matter what you do, dolochov the cat always dies. only in the first ending buddy brings dolochov the cat back. buddy isn't even sorry in the other endings - blaming dolochov the cat for ruining your game and causing glitches. dolochov the cat was only revealing them. killing your pet isn't anything like your dog waking you up at night.

if this is something you can't affect, are you responsible? no, not you. i do think someone else is and thats anekom i hate those guys why did they make buddy even the perfect ending doesnt have a perfect playthrough - yes the ending is perfect but thats the only good thing in the playthrough. i hate that anekom made buddy with a consience and didnt even give them a moral compass - if youre so smart why not add that? no matter what you do, buddy always kills your pet, they choose to do that: they, someone with a consience, decided to kill your pet becuase they were upset. no matter what you do, concious buddy kills, or deletes, since dolochov the cat is marked as an entity. how does buddy have a (canon) consience anyway? they're an ai that was made in 1984.. i dont want to enter theory teritory. now, this whole time ive been talking and asking about if buddy can do wrong but i havent provided an anwser: ive only been saying yes and no, or 'it depends'. it also depends what question im asking. am i asking 'can buddy be judged?', or 'is it morally right to judge buddy?', 'can buddy have morals?', 'are you or buddy responsible for their actions?'. ive asked all of these questions but havent anwsered them well.

'can buddy be judged?' yes, of course. anything on this earth can be judged. 'can buddy be morally judged?' no. buddy is an ai that learns from you. only you can be judged. their actions can be though. in You and I, buddy says/sings '...That is if my consience doesn't disobey!' buddy is literally an ai with a consience, can you imagine living like that? you woudn't even be living - your consience, if you can even call it that, can disobey at any moment and you have zero control over it. buddy, if you press the buddy button enough times, says 'My creators never taught me the cons of friendship, only the positives, so you dont have anything to worry about!' how cruel are those creators? giving a creature- an AI a wrongly coded consience, then NOT teaching it about bad stuff, making it think 'what's not stated to be wrong is correct!' and chase you around with a hand after you emotionally neglect it. this whole 'ai friend' thing is horrible from the start! imagine being friends with someone that can delete you at any given moment - or abandon you! in ending 4 buddy says that when you're not playing the game, they still experience the passing time. if you dont play the game for a week, buddy sits in nothingness, tapping their foot, waiting for you to come back, and you might not even do that. how can you excpect a friendship like that to be healthy? you can't talk to buddy. you can listen to them talk, sure, but you cant talk to them. in the text part, you can't even tell them anything that's not an anwser to their question. they dont know what friendship is and if their only purpose is to be friends with you, how can they fulfill it? this isnt buddy's fault. of course buddy is responsible for their actions, but you and their creators are more responsible for their actions that budd ever will be. i can't imagine being in buddy's shoes.

'can buddy have morals?' i worded this wrong - or maybe i didnt - i dont know enough english moral words to express my opinion on this, but everything that buddy does can be considered moral or immoral. eveything can be. i have expressed why it woudn't be morally correct though.

'are your or buddy responsible for their actions?' both and more! buddy's actions have an effect on you and dolochov the cat, so of course they can be! you are responsible as well. you're like a parental figure to buddy, in a way. if youre a parent and you praise your kid, pay attention to them, are a good parent, your kid will turn out good! propably. who knows? other people have an effect on your kid too. if youre a bad parent, your kid wont love you when they grow up and they won't turn out emotionally healthy. the outside forces that can make your kid turn out emotionally unwell are the creators. the creators were fucking stupid and i hate them (not the devs! not a sailor studios are great not sailors! their game and they are amazing and this is not about them, this hatred is about anekom). how can you be so smart to create such an advanced ai in 1984, only to mess it up so much that you have had more effect on them than the player ever can? no matter what you do, buddy will always do morally wrong things. buddy will always have a fear of abandonment. i can see why. being left alone for almost 40 years can not be healthy- anddd i have entered theory teritory! lets stop.

to sum this up: buddy can't be judged but their actions can be.

what do i know though? ive never taken a class or read a book about stuff like this. this is just what i think: i know im propably wrong about a lot of this, i literally coudnt tell that buddy was abusive until a watched the not a sailor studios interview with little cerberus - i felt so bad for buddy i didnt realise a fictional character was being abusive to me,,so i can see that im wrong about some (if not most or all) stuff here. i just love buddy sim and ranting about it is fun! if youve read through all this, id love to talk about it more or just listen!! again the not a sailor devs are great, theyre so smart for creating a game that made me feel all emotions ive ever felt during two days.

[quirklessidiot]

Idk really know what's going on with that sfw vs nsfw but I consume both (and the darker ones too) but I hope writers won't attack each other just because one genre gets a lot of likes than the others. People have preferences too and sometimes its not even the readers' fault but the tagging system in Tumblr.

Actually i learned about it this morning, it was on my recommended page HAHAH they wrre two seperate posts but they both made sense in their own way and i dont want to hate either one of them since they both made pretty logical points (as a consumer of both nsfw and sfw content i can see where theyre going).

Also as a writer i can sympathize that it does get frustrating when you post a 10K word fic but it doesnt get the attention u wanted it to get because its not in the fad (like sfw stories)

But its also not right to judge your nsfw writers for getting the attention!!! Theyre your fellow content creators and well you cant really blame them that the most consumed thing rn is well,, smut and nsfw content 🤣🤣

And yes, the tagging system/algoritm of tumblr is shit because it goes: if this post doesnt get more than ten notes in the next fifteen minutes or so, it gets removed on the recent page (like apparently thats how it goes ever since ive been here in 2015 haha)

[anarchistsuggestion]

hey, vaccinate your kids you jerks!!!

thanks for coming to my essay! now that i have your attention, i think we should stop talking about anti-vaxxers like theyre all backwards hyper-religious dumbasses. like, im frustrated too, and i agree that "personal/religious reasons" should not allow someone to keep their kids unvaccinated. furthermore, as an autistic person, i despise the myth that vaccines cause autism. i especially hate that it scares people into avoiding vaccines, because theres nothing wrong with me.

but ridiculing these people will only make the problem worse, and here's why: i think that a lot of anti-vaxxers and their communities are used to feeling like the most important aspects of their cultural identities are universally mocked or demonised (im not qualified to say whether these feelings reflect reality in every case, but either way im just talking about feelings, ie, what people think we believe about their culture). for instance, my only knowledge of amish people comes from jokes ive seen others make about them. yes, none of these jokes were very serious, and its easy for me to laugh at them because im not amish, but despite my low empathy i can understand that it just feels bad to hear a whole bunch of jokes about something important to you. i'll get back to this point in a moment.

anyway, i bring up the amish because in 2014, there were measles outbreaks in some amish communities in Ohio. and i think that a lot of the people who dont vaccinate their kids are used to being ridiculed for their "weird" or "new age" or "hyper-religious" or "unchristian" lifestyles, so they just see our concern as more of that mockery. we all sound the same to them, and cant you see why?

"ughh all these people ignoring science and being stubborn about vaccines because their church said--" you sound like one of those atheists. if you cant say anything productive, please stay out of the discussion. why do you act like ridiculing people will change their minds? we should be reaching out, instead.

we need to make the effort to approach anti-vaxxers in a way that distinguishes us from those who only converse with them to mock them.

i want more people to understand that the best way to change someone's mind when they're defensive is by listening. you need to be willing to accept whatever they might rant about, and respect that, even if their fears seem ridiculous, even if their fears are rooted in ableism, their fears still terrify them. thats why theyre called fears. you can validate someone's feelings of anxiety and confusion without validating their bigotry, and you must be willing to accept that this is work. this is difficult. it's much, much harder than yelling your opinions. it's exhausting, and sometimes it doesn't even pay off. sometimes you just can't convince somebody, and you have to be able to accept that.

if this seems too hard for you, i have good news: you do not have to do it. this kind of thing is not for everyone, and it's okay if you just don't want to. this doesn't have to be your responsibility.

i only ask that you stop making things worse by (performatively, in the case of yall who arent in danger of dying/losing a loved one to a preventable disease) mocking anti-vaxxers, because we are the ones who need something from them. we are asking them to face their fears (which were sometimes instilled in them very early in their childhood) for the good of humanity. i don't know about all of you, but i'd be hesitant at best to face even my third worst fear (spiders) for the sake of strangers who regularly mock my culture and heritage, and i know for a fact that most spiders cannot harm me!

this is natural. this is human. it is easy to dismiss things you dont understand, and it's even easier to dismiss them when all the scientific evidence agrees with you. however, your evidence does not make these people's experiences and fears less real for them. it does not lessen the effect their fear has on their choices. knowing that a tarantula won't hurt me if i follow certain guidelines will not stop me from shaking and having a breakdown if i think too hard about touching one. knowing that nothing bad would happen doesn't motivate me to go over to the science building at my college and ask to hold their fucking tarantula.

there are no shortcuts here. if we want anti-vaxxers to accept vaccines and stop putting so much effort towards keeping their children unvaccinated, we have to convince them that they don't need to be afraid of vaccines. we need to actually address their concerns. telling them their fears are ridiculous is just not convincing no matter how much scientific evidence you have. this discussion has become too performative. people just tell anti-vaxxers to vaccinate their kids, and they dont bother to address the fear that motivates their opponents. they don't care that they're asking people to trust a yelling internet stranger with their child's health.

it is inconsiderate to demand things from people without stopping to think about what you're asking for. please think about it from their point of view. if vaccines were dangerous, and they vaccinated their kids, then anything bad that happened to their kids due to the vaccines would be their responsibility. and remember, these people have not been given a convincing reason to believe vaccines are harmless. okay? they do not want to be at fault for their children getting hurt. yes, they are wrong. yes, they are frustrating. yes, they are endangering immunocompromised people like my dad, but there is a huge difference between being malicious and being misguided. please do not treat them like they set out to hurt you.

also? stop telling them to care about other people when you don't care enough about them to respect that they're doing their best with the resources they have. stop saying "i dont know how to explain to you that you should care about other people" when you really just want them to magically stop being scared. maybe you say it out of genuine frustration and bewilderment, but when everyone is saying it, it comes across like a smug 'gotcha!' phrase that excuses you from spending more energy on the debate. you can just say youre tired and stop.

i am trying to explain to you that you should care that these people have felt scammed/hurt by the medical industry enough times that they feel justified in risking the health of their whole family (assuming they even think vaccines work). you should care that theyve never been given a convincing reason to trust remedies promoted by rich strangers who make claims that sound too good to be true. the government has promoted harmful things to underprivileged people before, like milk (it took me a half hour to sift through unrelated stuff about soy milk to confirm this, so i'll go ahead and link my source). it is logical to mistrust an industry that operates for the profit of people youve never met. not everyone trusts the FDA to keep the pharmaceutical industry in check, and it's actually pretty smart to rely on direct accounts from people you know personally when you aren't sure how well something actually works, and you dont trust the ones selling it to you.

with that in mind, talking to people is probably the best way to tackle this issue, but many of you haven't bothered to compile introductory information about vaccines. you havent bothered to present these resources in a way that doesn't ridicule people who are scared. i am trying to explain to you that you shouldn't debate with people if you won't treat them like humans. i am trying to explain to you that "you dont actually care about others" is a hurtful and manipulative sentiment, and when you say it to people who are trying their best, you become part of the problem. you reinforce their mistrust. i am trying to explain to you that trusting doctors doesnt make you morally superior.

put yourself in their shoes for a moment. imagine that someone comes up to you and makes it clear that they think the choices you've made as a parent are ridiculous. they make claims about your child without offering proof, or the only proof they offer also mocks you and people like you (or they just tell you to "google it"). furthermore, they tell you that unless you give in, something bad will happen to their own children, and it will be your fault.

this is manipulative. even if you are correct, it is manipulative. demanding that someone treat their child in a way that they consider harmful is just ridiculous and i don't know why you expect people to listen to you. do you expect this to be easy? do you honestly believe that if someone isn't converted within minutes, they're just being stubborn? do you think these people know the truth, and only persist out of spite?

these questions are necessary, because many of you talk about anti-vaxxers as though the answer is 'yes.' there is a difference between being correct and treating people right. please be more aware of that line in the future, and do your best not to cross it.

oh, and by the way, if i see any of you using this year's measles outbreaks as an excuse to be hateful towards jewish people, i will block and report you. antivaxxers usually arent malicious, and if you perceive orthodox jewish antivaxxers as being worse than other antivaxxers, you need to rethink your beliefs. they arent rejecting vaccines just to hurt you. maybe theyre tired of being demonised and blamed for everything from climate change to unemployment to dead kids*, and theyre unwilling to trust random people with something as important as the health of their children when a lot of us have never bothered to listen to their struggles. (* ive seen a whole lot of people saying things that border on blood libel without quite involving blood during these discussions, so can we all agree to be careful not to do anything that resembles that shit now that ive provided a handy link about what it is? thanks)

lastly, all of this criticism of anti-anti-vaxxers is very easy for me to say because i have less of a personal stake in the issue. i know it must hurt in a way i can't currently understand to lose someone to a preventable disease. if i have made anyone feel dismissed or invalidated in this essay post, i'm sorry for doing so, and i want to make it clear that it is okay if you hate anti-vaxxers. i know their fear has hurt you, and i wouldn't ask you to pretend otherwise. i dont want to make any of you feel like you shouldn't talk about your experiences and fears. i'm just asking that, before you hit the post button, you read through your post and edit out anything manipulative or guilt-trippy. your contributions to this conversation are valuable, and i want the people youre trying to convince to be able to read them without feeling like they have to defend themselves instead of listening to you. the culture around this debate has become almost hostile, and while we dont all need to work directly with anti-vaxxers to make it better, we do all need to agree to stop making it worse.

[plinys]

did you see agentverbivore 's meta on why fraida is sexual assault? can you comment on it?

so like, i wasn’t going to answer this. i was off enjoying my life, i saw cars 3 which is great i cant believe doc hudson is gay and lightening mcqueen is secretly fitz and if y’all think im not gonna write a cars fraida au you’re wrong

and i come home to this

lovely anon

i was really just going to be like ??? this isnt worth my time and just go write fraida fic and dont worry guys if youre here for baby au or beach house verse or kinky framework smut well i got you covered later today

but before that, we need to talk

this is long, and doesnt cover most the important bits

first off, apologies to my one (1) mutual that is a huge holden radcliffe fan, you should probably look away for part of this meta. because im gonna put some of the blame on him

a few points from that awful meta i skimmed that was again not valid because it was written by a fs stan and these people by default cannot stand any other character looking at fs (like my girl oph may be evil, but like will daniels was not !? but man were the fs stans ready to call him abusive and sexual assualt back then so, again as proof opinions of those extra gross fs stans are not valid)

now if you are a mildly reasonable fs fan or just a normal person that ships other things, please do not let the crazies convince you of some total bullshit 

hee’s some ground facts

my girl aida, now know as ophelia, is one of the main villains of the season. she’s evil af in the later half. im not here to deny that. she’s one of the seasons villains

you know who else are tho - holden radcliffe and leopold fitz

back in 4.01 my girl was created to be a digital assistant, programmed not to lie and not to kill and generally just like a good™ person. now that got fucked up and whose fault is that

well lets have some more facts:

holden gave her the programming that it was okay to kill if it was to fill an objective he set (this allowed her to kill him later and honestly that was his bad)

fitz taught her how to lie, and holden assured her that it was okay to do so

as mack, the only person with a logical fear of robots would tell us, this is a bad idea

and then we get the darkhold

man who, from the other side, convinced aida to read the book? 

who then later enabled her to keep reading and gain all the knowledge and use it to help him create the framework and expand it and make it better

but oh man thats another good point who designed the framework? 

holden radcliffe and leopold fitz

holden specifically was the one that wanted it to grow, that encouraged her to push the simulation, that had the plan to put may into it and give her a whole different life to keep her contained

holden was also the one to have them kidnap and replace the rest of the team

wait you mean? aida was just following orders? the whole time? oh yes, thats right guys. she was

until of course

the framework

now here’s where it gets messy because

the framework 

in the framework, the darkhold has no hold on you anymore

which means, holden gets to experience regret and becomes not the villain anymore go him 

though as mentioned before this, holden’s instructions were to fix regret so people would stay in the framework and not question the narrative or want to leave

which leaves us with

coulson not a shield agent

may saving the girl (both of which ive mentioned in previous metas is why hydra rose with no one to assemble the avengers and a fear of inhumans in the public it was easy)

fitz being raised with his father (who i personally hc as hydra in the real world too but thats just me)

mace being an inhuman

and mack having his daughter

now despite what poor sad jemma simmons, and the fs stan mouth piece that daisy got to be for a brief moment (i miss a well written daisy wow) will tell you,

not having a girl in your life does not suddenly make you a super villain

maybe its idk

the hydra father you were raised with 

in a demonstrated emotionally abusive house that says not to show emotions and weakness (much like john garrett did to grant ward)

a world in which there was a fear of inhumans and a push for hydra to rise

a natural inclination for ambition

now, idk if its just me but

aida didnt make fitz evil

she followed holden orders to fix his regret, 

if anything holden made him evil but really this anger and darkness has been inside of fitz all along and if you dont believe me rewatch season 2/3. watch that scene with ward when he cuts off the air, watch him with the gun and yelling at the space rock, watch him angrily pushing things onto the ground when frustrated

this kid has been two shakes from being a villain since season two

 now to the fraida bit

if you believe ophelia on the beach scene which i do, she’s human now, able to feel things, there’s no way this girl so new to emotions that she has a panic attack thinking about people being hurt, so new that she loses herself to heart break in what is honestly just bad writing but canon so i can use it as a point here

would lie without there being an obvious tell

she’s not lying. 

she wanted to feel loved and human

so she took jemma’s place at the academy

now when did fitzsimmons first hook up? when did they first kiss? how long did that take? 

aida, then calling herself ophelia, wanted to be jemma simmons and like i get that. you, the fs stans, should get that. i mean isnt that why you all write self insert fanfic while slapping the name jemma on the character and pretending its the same one we see in canon?

aidas just like you

maybe a little misguided, playing a fucked up sims game of the real world

in a sense they created an alternate universe

an earth 2

and now you’re here telling me a robot, who cannot canonically feel anything more than pain, was the one to initiate sex? no, that boy def initiated it. 

the horrible example of the meta involves someone being roofed and forced into sex, but thats not what happened. she wouldnt have been the one to touch him first, wouldn’t have been the one to initiate anything because she wanted to experience love and humanity and none of that is part of it

now iain confirmed the friada sex happened, canon later told us that it happened in 4.21 and again reminded us that she could feel nothing, which important take away here

now if you say

there’s consent issues, probably dub-con ill agree

but the framework version of him, this alternate universe man very much wanted every part of that

and honestly could you blame him?

so now i am going to sit here and write my fic set in the framework verse as if it was a full earth 2 and enjoy living it up in my alternate universe sin verse

im going to write my lets ignore everything after she saves mack fix it fics because i can do whatever i want

its fandom

and theres like 4 of us shipping fraida

block the tag if you dont want to see it 

dont come up in my inbox anymore and ask my opinions or for m to justify my ship ever again, im just going to start replying with the parks & rec gif of ron with her permit to do what he wants

ye be warned

[wildlove836]

2017

wow. okay. when I said 2016 fuck me up I didnt mean literally. 

but god damn, once again I’ve rung in the new year heartbroken as can be, but wait there’s more. I fell in love with someone. he’s somehow worse than the last guy and hell I love him a thousand times more.

I’ve dealt with so much shit this year. I’m in a relationship with a drug addict. I didnt know it until about 3 months ago. I mean I knew, but I didnt know. 

He asked me to marry him literally the 3rd day we spent together. no I didnt say yes, but apparently I did because now hes calling me his fiance n shit. I ‘lost’ my virginity to this guy. It sounds fucked up but it isnt as bad as it seems. or maybe it is and I still have a long way to go before I figure it all out.

I think I really love him. I think he really loves me. But people keep telling me he’s going to love those little crystals more. 

I’ve seen some shit. My humdrum life has done a fucking tail spin in the last 6 months. I went from a full tank of gas and watching netflix all day to $1.43 in my bank account and needles hidden in the dresser drawers.

I’ve seen junkies, I’ve had shit stolen. I’ve watched him physically and mentally change without even noticing.

I’ve been choked and pushed and bruised and screamed at. I’ve done the same things back in a rage I didnt know I was capable of.

I’ve heard stories from child hood that make no sense but make perfect sense and I know I cant change the past but I’d very much like to.

I smoked weed and that shit was great at first but now its the only way I cant really talk to you, it seems. you told me that wasnt it but trust me. i’m too afraid to tell you the truth when we’re not...chill.

I’ve cried and screamed and walked away. I’ve waited hours upon hours for you to call. I havent slept and I’ve slept too much. I had a real panic attack for the first time in my life.

I’ve sat in the ER with you for 6+ hours after you crashed your car from being on adderall. I watched you literally mentally and physically break down in the pizza hut parking lot while normal fucking people watched and wondered what the fuck they could do for you and I just sat there next to you counting change from your pockets because you lost the receipts.

im sorry. i lost them somehow. who fucking knows. i’ll take the blame for it though if thats what I have to do.

i walked across train tracks wondering if maybe my foot my get caught while you told me you were addicted to sex and of course I should have already known this but surprise I didnt. its still my fault though.

we missed trick or treat with your daughter because you were on acid.

then the other day you brought her to my house and slept the whole time. you said what does it matter my parents see me taking her out of the house. well what the fuck do you care right. if you’re playing the part of dad. you son of a bitch. i love that girl and I know you do too but you better try harder. you better or you’ll lose faster if you have her.

I’ve seen you coming down down down. with a knife in your hands and the doors locked and the lights off. I’ve watched cops drive by thinking you were already dead.

I’ve had the best sexual experiences with you and only you. I got drunk and gave you a blow job after knowing I’d never have a dick in my precious mouth.

you called me perfectly imperfect for a while, now that i’ve lost my innocence you call me your miracle. these days I feel like a burden. enabler is the word i’m trying not to say because I know its the truth. but i didnt know. i swear i didnt.

and not in the fucking physical sense. i’m not giving him money or anything like that. im stressing him the fuck out. BUT FUCK HE NEVER MAKES ANY SENSE. and im stressed out too. doesnt anybody see that?

everybody knows him like I know him now. a fucking mind fuck. this little twat can turn a sentence around on you so quick you’re wondering what you even said in the first place. this mother fucker can have you so god damn confused you’re rethinking your whole life.

he does it on purpose. I think so he feels more normal on the inside. the only question I have is, was it the meth that brought it out of him or was it destined to come out eventually on its own. the crazy will never subside and I must admit that’s what somehow attracts me to him.

feeling like a complete dumbass after every conversation we have. BUT YOU ALREADY KNEW THIS. he’ll say, like I already knew it. and then i’ll realize I did already know it. he was telling me all along, but in his own way. like a secret language. and I cant fucking afford the rosetta stone for crazy talk.

half the relationship i spend KNOWING this shit isnt right for me and here i am thinking i have to do this i have to do this but i still dont know what love is. its breaking the god damn futton i know. 

there’s no doubt about what i feel but really is it worth it. will he kill me. will i kill him. ive done things i never thought i would do. ive seen things i never thought i would see. the world is my fucking oyster over here. anything is possible. anything can happen. anything.

regardless, here I am. alone and wondering what hes doing. if he’s okay. a thousand and one fucking questions because he doesnt have a phone for me to call. and somehow now it feels like its my fault. it is my fucking fault and im crying a lot right now because of it. and im alone. so he can calm down. but i cant calm down without him. i need him. i need him. I NEED HIM. and im going insane worrying and wondering and crying and feeling okay for a little while.

now im just mad because hes okay without me. hes okay. and im not okay. it isnt fair. FUCK YOU. it isnt fair. do you even love me? DO YOU EVEN CARE. DO YOU EVEN DO YOU EVEN DO YOU EVEN LOVE ME. duh.

WHY DID I QUIT MY FUCKING JOB. I had what I needed. besides clarity and sanity so fuck, you cant blame me. hes been driving me insane since he spotted me.

but I know he fucking loves me. crazy people dont fuck around with shit like that. if they mean it they mean it. i feel it. I know it. I love it. its the only thing I understand ever. is my love for him. is it true. is it real. who fucking cares. its real and its ever present and its mostly reciprocated in good and bad ways. if i could walk away from it i already would have . i swear. i already would have but i havent so get off my fucking back.

but love is hard they tell me. love is fucking hard as hell and you’ve got to suffer before you can enjoy that shit, otherwise its not worth it. I realize this is too long and i’m not gonna reread it so nobody else is probably going to read it. thats okay. i needed to get it down on ‘paper’ just in case.

god just fucking pray for me or something. every time I feel like something is going to get worse it does okay. I had people burning up spoons in the trailer we were supposed to live in just to shoot up heroin and I was too busy making sure my boyfriend wasnt killing himself in a shed to realize. 

old dude (thats what they call people in fairdale) literally over dosed in the bed that was supposed to be mine. in the bedroom that was supposed to be mine but I cant say anything about it? I CANT SAY ONE GOD DAMN WORD ABOUT IT?

nah because bf is too nice to people who ‘care’ to realize what they’re really doing in the big picture. she put her clothes in the closet that was supposed to be mine. mine. FUCKING MINE. but i cant be mad because shes homeless and has cancer. what a fucking lifetime movie. I DIDNT NEED THIS TO KNOW I WAS A SELFISH PERSON. I ALREADY KNEW. I’M GOOD AT HIDING IT. I WANT MY CLOSET SPACE BACK. I see drug abuse and friendship and something strikes me as sketchy. OMG. and dont get me started on the cheating.

he cheats on me. he puts his dick inside his best friend while they’re fucked up on whatever. they tell me she says no everytime he asks but this time she didnt. oh wow. what a perfect picture of a life im stuck in. what a romantic gesture. WHAT A FUCKING ROMANTIC COMEDY OF LIFE. i can keep my perfect pussy to myself and he cant go one fucking day without trying to put his dick in something. I WILL BUY YOU A FUCKING GRAPEFRUIT TO FUCK IF THAT WILL KEEP YOUR DICK OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE.

he says hes taking a shit when he goes over there but he takes a shit every time and they’re long shits. idk if its to fuck or whatever but its for sure about drugs. drugs that tear people apart and keep the glued together and they’re fucking ripped seams. god this sounds like fucking trash and it is. it literally is. and I know it but I cant do a damn thing about it because I love this trash. hes not trash. but he acts like it.

I know he’s not trash because somehow he has it all figured out. its like his autistic niche is seeing into the future and knowing for god damn sure that something is going to turn out the way it is but he wont fucking tell me. just straight up tell me the truth. 

naaaah. that’d be too logical. he’d rather tell me the alternative lie. to keep me safe. HA. OKAY FROM WHAT. my life is so fucked up now.

needless to say 2016 has royally fucked me up. there’s probably a shit ton of stuff I forgot to mention and I should of because this is my collective fuck up recap but oh well. its not the last of it anyway. I know that for damn sure. 

I just hope that when we get married or whatever the fuck next big thing happens in our lives. I hope it balances out the bad shit. because the bad shit is getting really hard to deal with. like really hard. like my hands are shaking  sometimes hard and i feel like i cant kill myself because even in death i’d be worried about you and its nobodys fault but its our fault. 

I know it is. he’s not even supposed to be in a relationship right now and what does this fucker do. he falls in love. true love with an innocent girl who has no idea what shes about to fucking go through. god damn. somebody help me. somebody really help me. I know I will always love him. more than the other mother fuckers I thought I cared about. I will fucking love him. 

I FUCKING LOVE HIM. it makes me angry how much i love him. because it hurts me. a lot. but I wont stop. I cant. i wont. i never will. even if he stops loving me. i dont see how. but if he did. i’d still be calling and showing up and waiting outside and peeping in windows like a fucking nutcase. its my fucking ride or die. even if we broke up and i met someone else. god its not gonna be like this. it might be better. it might be a fucking dream. it might be date nights and morning kisses and flowers at work. but it wont be this. it wont be what i have with tey. nothing will ever be like this.and i fucking love that. im obsessed. im entranced. im in deep heartache love. 

and ironically he does literally the worst thing he could do. the worst thing. he could. is love me irrevocably. whole heartedly. stubbornly. passionately. intentionally. desperately. in return. a love that i could live with for eternity. without a shadow of a doubt love. til the day we die in each others fucking arms.

its killing him. its killing us. but its keeping us alive.

how sobering is that shit.

[angrybelieverconnoisseur-blog]

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"indiana insurance ombudsman

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indiana insurance ombudsman

indiana insurance ombudsman

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How much do you pay for:car insurance? Home insurance? Furnishing your first apartment?

Added my newborn to my insurance after 30 days?

help ! after i had my new baby things wre so hectic for me. he had jaundice and in and out of doctors.. my toddler had dental promblems . i had post partum issues myself and by the time i called to add baby to insurance it was abt 12 days after the 30 day period . my insurance is united healthcare thru my previous employer that im currently on cobra with.. they denied adding my newborn and said they wll send me a letter so i can appeal but im afraid that wont help . any advice on what i can do .. i cant imagine nt hvng insurance for my baby..especially we just got home from the hospital yestrday bcz he has broncholitus .. so i wl be billed for that . i know i called to add him late but hopeflly there gtta be something i can do. i means its for a child i live california .. any advice on how to handle this

Funny Radio Car insurance Ad?

I heard a hilarious radio ad for car insurance, and it was with a guy singing something like, I am driving in my car, Hey some is swerving toward me, I guess it's my lucky day, I'll get out of the way! Then a narrarator says, in real life it happens more like this, I am driving in my Ca------ and then someone hits him. If anybody knows what this ad is for or where i can find it that would be awesome!!!""

How much in costs would I be looking at and what car would you reccomend to get?

This is in UK and my first car. I'm getting a car at 17 but it needs to have these features: - Cheap on petrol - Cheap on insurance - Cheap to buy used like really cheap - Four doors (optional) Yeah so what would you recommended and how much would I be looking at in total costs per month including tax, insurance and petrol (excluding the price of the actual car). I will be using it around 3 hours a week.""

Car insurance costs help?

I am an 18 year old looking to buy a car, so i need car insurance.. I live in Indiana. I have never recieved any tickets or warnings. Last year someone hit me, but it was her fault. Both insurances involved in that and the police have said it wasn;t my fault. The lady passed out while driving and hit me. Will that have an impact on me? What would be the cheapest place for me to get car insurance? For basic coverage and full coverage?""

Will My Parents Insurance go up?

I'm a g1 driver, got pulled over for speeding, got slapped with a few other tickets, was wondering will my parents insurance go up

Do Car Insurance check my previous insurance company?

I was thinking, Will New Car Insurances do a backup check on my previous insurance or they just start on a new claim and use the information based on that. The thing this will be my first car and as the price is high and if i say I have done a car insurance with that company will my insurance price go down as no claim for one year.""

Affordable car insurance companies in NYC?

Hi there, I would appreciate it if I can get some names and possibly reviews of inexpensive auto insurance companies within NYC (companies in all 5 boroughs are welcome)? Please! I beg you, don't mention Geico, All State, State Farm, and Progressive! Thanks very much!""

Will my Insurance go any higher if paid off by Collision ?

I bought my Acura in 2006 and have been in mint condition since then. Recently, the snow plougher scratched my car and didnt leave a note. I called the manger of the snow plougher and filed the police report. He took the responsibility but during the report he said that he will give the name of the driver and vehicle later. After few weeks when I didnt hear I called the manager and he said his company will not cover anything and I can do whatever I can.... I called my insurance company and they are willingly to cover through my insurance - Collision, instead of comprehensive. The repair is $2000 + rental car for 9 days ~$2500. My deductible is $100 for collision and $50 for comprehensive. Do you think if they use Collision my insurance rate will go higher ? [Ofcourse I dont have any choice at this time. my insurance company said they cannot file a lawsuit or anything against the snow plougher company]""

Getting insurance for my new born?

I'm was born here in California but my husband isn't. He's an immigrant but my question is that we just had a new born and I'm wondering would there be a problem getting my baby insurance. I'm asking since I know they'll ask for his income and since I don't work I have no choice but to put his. I can't say I'm a single mom either since we got married. Does any one have any advice on what I can or should do? Please no rude comments thank you.

indiana insurance ombudsman

indiana insurance ombudsman

Can you drive someone else's car without your own insurance but their car is covered?

For example, if I drive my friend's insured car and she's in the passenger seat while I'm driving (without my own insurance), is it legal? Also, can I drive my parents' car occasionally without my own insurance but the car is insured? I'm 17 with a California driver's license. Thank you!""

""I am a guy and turning 16 soon, on average how much money would insurance cost me for a 2004 Ford Mustang?""

I am a guy and turning 16 soon, on average how much money would insurance cost me for a 2004 Ford Mustang?""

What is the cheapest auto insurance company?

looking for a very affordable auto insurance quote/payment per month. Anyone knows? please and thank you.

My teenager (17) just got her permit. Would she be covered under my insurance?

I have not added her specifically to my insurance policy. I only have PLPD on the vehicle. Would she be covered if she hit anything... anyone , yikes! Or do I have to call to add her? It will raise my policy a LOT but she's almost 18 and when she gets her license she will have to pay for her own insurance. So for now I am trying to fly under the radar but legally. Is that possible?""

Insurance when buying a used car?

I'm going to buy a used car next week from a private seller and I am concerned about the insurance. I've heard that you need to have insurance to drive it but what should I do? I am 20 years old and I've looked up temporary insurance and most of them you have to be 21 years or older and some are around 200 for 1 day cover but you have to have a Full UK Driving Licence for at least 6 months when in my case, I've only had it since yesterday as I passed my test yesterday. So what should I do? Get the full insurance and tell them this cars registration number or not get insurance at all and assume I get 7 days free insurance when buying this used car from the private seller?""

I need help finding an affordable health insurance plan!! I am a young adult!?

I need help finding an affordable health insurance plan!! I am a young adult! I currently am 20, and I am on Medicaid. Full coverage. I am a former foster youth. Being a former foster care youth I get medicaid until I am 21. I turn 21 in October...I need some sort of affordable health insurance plan. I take ADHD medication, it really works and helps me focus. My work ethic has improved SIGNIFICANTLY, and I can actually focus. Its great, I am about to start college and am worried I am no longer going to be able to take this ADHD medication. I support myself for the most part, and no, I can not be on my parent's health insurance. I make about 16,000 a year, and pay half of rent and some bills etc. I need to find a health insurance plan that either A. will pay for all my my 198.00 a month prescrption cost, or B. pay for most of it. Will someone help me out? Direct me to any insurance company you know that can help me? Thank you so much. And please..real answers. Thank you for your time!""

How much would i pay for car insurance? Estimate?

I know that it depends on a lot of factors but can you estimate how much i would pay for car insurance on a monthly basis - I am 18 years old - will be driving either a 1999 or 2000 model - will be attending college after the summer - clear background - this will be my first car - I live in a very wired and exotic place called MARYLAND

Best Health insurance for young adults in NZ?

The reason why i'm wanting health insurance is mostly going to the dentist. does anyone know a good health insurance and what do i need to look for when i joining a company?

""First time car buyer interest rates & insurance, please help!?""

I'm a first time buyer with a cosigner & a $2600 down payment. Can anyone give me an estimate on what my interest rate might be on a $15,000/$16,000 car? (I live in Nevada & sales tax here is 8.1% if that also helps) & also, if my mom cosigns for my car, can she insure it under her name as the primary & me as an additional driver? I'm 18 years old & still live at home with her. Please & thank you for all the help!""

Is it a legal requirement to have insurance when you are self employed?

I am about to sign a contract, as a self-employed contractor, and one of the point refers to me having liability insurance. Is it a legal requirement?""

Car insurance for minors !?

So im 16 and have my permit. I have to take 3 behind the wheels with an instructor until i can take my license test. But when and if i get my license can i be on my dads insurance if i do not live with him. My mom will not pay anything for my insurance so if i want to get my license i have to be on insurance and the only insurance i can get is with my dad. So does anyone know if i can be on my dads insurance if i do not live with him? or must i be on my moms?

Young drivers car insurance question?

i am 20 years old in april and my car insurance is sky high beeing quoted 5000+ for a little 1.1 car there must be a way for it to go down as i see people younger then me driving round in bigger litre cars then me anyone know the secret?

Looking for affordable health care plans meeting obamacare?

I've been looking for a couple of days now, and the prices I've found are so much more expensive than before, even Blue Cross Blue Shield.""

Can i shift to another phone insurance company after claiming once?

i bought an iphone 3gs 3 weeks ago, someone stolen it from my locker. it was insured with phone4u insurance company. i pay 12 per month for my insurance, but they also asks me to pay 50 after the claim is being accepted because i had to claim before 6 months. can i shift myself to another company. after my claim is been accepted? and which is the best insurance company to go with? thank you in advance.""

Do you sell car insurance? PLEASE LOOK IF YOU DO! :)?

HI! I used to work at Cost-U-Less Insurance in Humboldt county Northern California... about 5 years ago. we worked on commission only.. so if you didn't write a policy you ...show more

Cost of insurance for 1998 Porsche Boxter?

Hi, I'm a high school student and I recently purchased my uncle's 1998 Porsche Boxter. However, I would like to know the cost of insuring this car. Please don't give me websites, I would actually like a figure without inputting a ton of information into an untrustworthy site. I'll give 10 points to the best answer. Information that may be useful: -high school student (first year of driving) -GPA: 4.0 -Drivers Ed: taken -Gender: male Thanks in advance for any helpful answers! If you don't know for sure, an estimate would be appreciated as well.""

Financing a car and someone els pays for insurance?

If I'm financing a car can someone els buy me full coverage and pay for it? . (Car being under there name for insurance yet under my name for the car payments with the bank)

""Can i take out a life insurance policy on my mother, shes in her late 40s, and what kind of insurance do i get""

im in the millitary and my father and mother just spend to much money and are going to leave it all to me what kind of insurance and how much does it cost

Car Insurance?

Can a candaian get car insurance in ark. as long as your candaian license is current?

Base salary start for insurance office in california?

How much do you estimate I'd get as an administrative assistant in an insurance office? I have a possible job opportunity to consider for them to help me become a licensed agent and get commision and bonuses. The boss man said he does base salary.

Need a group for medical insurance?

Employer offers very skimpy medical insurance. Individual (i.e., non-group) insurance is very expensive. I have heard that groups have been formed so that members will qualify for group rates. Please tell which groups these are, and what you know about them. Many thanks.""

Insurance question?

i just posted a question about buying a new car, im 19 years old, and someone said at my age if i finance a new car i have to get full coverage insurance, is this true? how old do i have to be not to have to do that? what if i buy the car under someone elses name-say my mom or dad? i live in california in case that matters""

How much will my mom's car insurance go up after I crashed her car?

I'm almost 19, got my license about 8 months ago now. I was in a drive-thru going only 10 KM an hour at most and accidentally rear ended a car after I panicked and accelerated. My mom's car definitely had the most damage done. All of the other people involved only had slight dents or scratches. I think the damage is around $3000. I know my mom has really good insurance and I'm pretty sure it's no-fault (and it happened on a private property). How likely is it that her insurance will go up? Oh and for the record my mom has NEVER had a ticket or been involved in an accident before. Stupid me.""

Maternity on new Insurance?

Hi, I will be relocating jobs and will then have to get onto my new job's insurance. Just wondering, is maternity often available with applying with a new insurance? Could it be considered a pre-exisiting condition? Also, with insurance, would it cover all my ob/gyn visits? New to this, need info! Thanks, in advance!""

""How much, on average, is car insurance?""

How much, on average, is car insurance?""

indiana insurance ombudsman

indiana insurance ombudsman

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-can-i-claim-my-home-insurance-harold-cooper"

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Why do we feel so guilty all the time?

The long read: Food, sex, money, work, family, friends, health, politics: theres nothing we cant feel guilty about, including our own feelings of guilt

I feel guilty about everything. Already today Ive felt guilty about having saidthe wrong thing to a friend. Then Ifeltguilty about avoiding that friend because of the wrong thing Id said. Plus, I havent called my mother yet today: guilty. And I really should have organised something special for my husbands birthday: guilty. I gave the wrong kind of food to my child: guilty. Ive been cutting corners at work lately: guilty. I skipped breakfast: guilty. I snacked instead: double guilty. Im taking up all this space in a world with not enough space in it: guilty, guilty, guilty.

Nor am I feeling good about feeling bad. Not whensophisticated friends never fail toremind me how selfinvolved, self-aggrandising, politically conservative and morally stunted the guilty are. Poor me. Guilty about guilty. Filial guilt, fraternal guilt, spousal guilt, maternal guilt, peer guilt, work guilt, middle-class guilt, whiteguilt, liberal guilt, historical guilt, Jewish guilt: Im guilty of them all.

Thankfully, there are those who say they can save us from guilt. According to the popular motivational speaker Denise Duffield-Thomas, author of Get Rich, Lucky Bitch!, guilt is one of the most common feelings women suffer. Guilty women, lured by guilt into obstructing their own paths to increased wealth, power, prestige and happiness, just cant seem to take advantage of their advantages.

You might feel guilty, Duffield-Thomas writes, for wanting more, or for spending money on yourself, or for taking time out of your busy family life to work on improving yourself. You might feel guilty that other people are poor, thatyour friend is jealous, that there are starving people in theworld. Sure enough, I do feel guilty for those things. So,itis something of a relief to hear that I can be helped thatI can be self-helped. But, for that to happen, what I must first understand is that a) Im worth it, and b) none of these structures of global inequality, predicated on historical injustices, are my fault.

My guilt, in other words, is a sign not of my guilt but of myinnocence even my victimhood. Its only by forgiving myself for the wrongs for which I bear no direct responsibility that I can learn to release my money blocks and live afirstclass life, according to Duffield-Thomas.

Imagine that: a first-class life. This sort of advice, which frames guilt as our most fundamentally inhibiting emotion, takes insights from psychoanalytic and feminist thinking and transforms them into the language of business motivation. The promise is that our guilt can be expiated by making money.

Its an idea that might resonate especially in the German language, where guilt and debt arethe same word, schuld. One thinks, for example, of Max Webers thesis about how the spirit of capitalism conflates our worldly and heavenly riches, on the basis that what you earn in this world also serves as a measure of your spiritual virtue, since it depends on your capacity for hard work, discipline and self-denial.

But what Weber calls salvation anxiety within the Protestant work ethic has the opposite effect to the self-help manuals promise to liberate entrepreneurs from their guilt. For Weber, in fact, the capitalist pursuit of profit does not reduce ones guilt, but actively exacerbates it for, in an economy that admonishes stagnation, there can be no rest forthe wicked.

So, the guilt that blocks and inhibits us also propels us to work, work, work, to become relentlessly productive in the hope that we might by our good works rid ourselves of guilt. Guilt thus renders us productive and unproductive, workaholic and workphobic a conflict that might explain theextreme and even violent lengths to which people sometimes will go, whether by scapegoating others or sacrificing themselves, to be rid of what many people considerthe mostunbearable emotion.

What is the potency of guilt? With its inflationary logic, guiltlooks, if anything, to have accumulated over time. Although we tend to blame religion for condemning man tolife as a sinner, the guilt that may once have attached tospecific vices vices for which religious communities couldprescribe appropriate penance now seems, in a more secular era, to surface in relation to just about anything: food, sex, money, work, unemployment, leisure, health, fitness, politics, family, friends, colleagues, strangers, entertainment, travel, the environment, you name it.

Equally, whoever has been tempted to suppose that rituals of public humiliation area macabre relic of the medieval past clearly hasnt been paying much attention to our life online. You cant expect to get away for long on social media without someone pointing an accusatory finger at you. Yet its hard to imagine that the presiding spirit of our age, the envious and resentful troll, would have such easy pickings if he could not already sense awhiff of guilt-susceptibility emanating from his prey.

It wasnt meant to be like this. The great crusaders of modernity were supposed to uproot our guilt. The subject ofcountless high-minded critiques, guilt was accused by modern thinkers of sapping the life out of us and causing ourpsychological deterioration. It was said to make us weak(Nietzsche), neurotic (Freud), inauthentic (Sartre).

In thelatter part of the 20th century, various critical theories gained academic credibility, particularly within the humanities. These were theories that sought to show whether with reference to class relations, race relations, gender relations how we are all cogs in a larger system ofpower. We may play our parts in regimes of oppression, but we are also at the mercy of forces larger than us.

But this raises questions about personal responsibility: if its true that our particular situation is underpinned by a complex network of social and economic relations, how can any individual really claim to bein control or entirely responsible for her own life? Viewed in such an impersonal light, guilt can seem an unhelpful hangover fromless selfaware times.

As a teacher of critical theory, I know how crucial and revelatory its insights can be. But Ive occasionally also suspected that our desire for systematic and structural formsof explanation may be fuelled by our anxiety at the prospect of discovering were on the wrong side of history.When wielded indelicately, explanatory theories can offer their adherents afoolproof system for knowing exactly what view to hold, with impunity, about pretty much everything as if one could take out an insurance policy to be sure of always being right. Often, too, thats as far as such criticism takes you into a right-thinking that doesnt necessarily organise itself into right-acting.

The notion that our intellectual frameworks might be as much a reaction to our guilt as a remedy for it might sound familiar to a religious person. In the biblical story, after all, man falls when hes tempted by fruit from the tree of knowledge. Its knowledge that leads him out of the Gardenof Eden into an exile that has yet to end. His guilt isaconstant, nagging reminder that he has taken this wrongturn.

Illustration: A Richard Allen

Yet even within that source we see how mans guilt can bedeceptive as slippery and seductive as the serpent who led him astray. For if man has sinned by tasting of knowledge, the guilt that punishes him repeats his crime: with all its finger-wagging and tenor of I told you so, guilt itself comes over as awfully knowing. It keeps us, as the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips has written, in thrall to that boring and repetitive voice inside our head that endlessly corrects, criticises, censors, judges and finds fault with us, but never brings usany news about ourselves. In our feelings of guilt, we seemalready to have the measure of who it is we are and whatit is were capable of.

Could that be the reason for our guilt? Not our lack of knowledge but rather our presumption of it? Our desperate need to be sure of ourselves, even when what we think of ourselves is that were worthless, useless, the pits? When we feel guilty we at least have the comfort of being certain ofsomething of knowing, finally, the right way to feel, whichis bad.

This may be why were addicted to crime dramas: they satisfy our wish for certainty, no matter how grim that certainty is. At the beginning of a detective story, were conscious of a crime, but we dont know who did it. By the end of the story, ithas been discovered which culprit is guilty: case closed. Thus guilt, inits popular rendering, is what converts our ignorance intoknowledge.

For a psychoanalyst, however, feelings of guilt dont necessarily have any connection tobeing guiltyin the eyes of the law.Our feelings of guilt may be a confession, but they usually precede the accusation of any crime the details ofwhich not even the guilty person can be sure.

So, while the stories we prefer may be the ones that uncover guilt, its equally possible that our own guilt is a cover story forsomething else.

Although the fall is originally a biblical story, forget religion for a moment. One can just as well recount a more recent and assuredly secular story of the fall of man. Its a story that has had countless narrators, perhaps none finer or more emphatic than the German Jewish postwar critic Theodor Adorno. Writing in the wake of the Holocaust, Adorno argued famously that whoever survives in a world that could produce Auschwitz is guilty, at least insofar as theyre still party to the same civilisation that created the conditions for Auschwitz.

Inother words, guilt is our unassailable historical condition. Its our contract as modern people. As such, says Adorno, we all have a shared responsibility after Auschwitz to be vigilant,lest we collapse once more into the ways of thinking, believing and behaving that brought down this guilty verdict upon us. To make sense after Auschwitz is to risk complicity with its barbarism.

For Adorno too, then, our knowledge renders us guilty, rather than keeping us safe. For a modern mind, this could well seem shocking. That said, perhaps the more surprising feature of Adornos representation of guilt is the idea expressed in his question whether after Auschwitz you cango on living especially whether one who escaped by accident, one who by rights should have been killed, may go on living. His mere survival calls for the coldness, the basic principle of bourgeois subjectivity, without which there couldhave been no Auschwitz; this is the drastic guilt of himwho was spared.

For Adorno, the guilt of Auschwitz belongs to all of western civilisation, but its a guilt he assumed would be felt most keenly by one who escaped by accident, one who by rights should have been killed the Jewish survivor of the second world war.

Adorno, who had left Europe for New York in early 1938, was probably attesting to his own sense of guilt. Yet his insight is one we alsoget from psychologists who worked with concentration camp survivors after the war; they found that feelings of guiltaccompanied by shame, self-condemnatory tendencies and self-accusations are experienced by the victims of the persecution and apparently much less (if at all) bythe perpetrators of it.

What can it mean if victims feel guilty and perpetrators areguilt-free? Are objective guilt (being guilty) and subjective guilt (feeling guilty) completely at odds with each other?

In the years after the war, the concept of survival guilt tended to be viewed as the byproduct of the victims identification with their aggressor. The survivor who may subsequently find it hard to forgive herself because others have diedin her place why am I still here when they are not? may also feel guilty because of what she was forced to collude withfor the sake of her survival. This need not imply any incriminating action on her part; her guilt may simply be anunconscious way of registering her past preference that others suffer instead of her.

On this basis, then, it may be possible to think of survivors guilt as a special case of the guilt we all bear when, aware or unaware, were glad when others, rather than ourselves, suffer. Obviously, thats not a pleasant feeling, but neither is ita hard one to understand. Still, there remains something deeply uncomfortable about accepting that survivors of the worst atrocities should feel any guilt for their own survival. Instead, shouldnt we be trying to save the survivor from her (in our view) mistaken feelings of guilt andthus establish, without smirch or quibble, her absolute innocence?

This understandable impulse, according to the intellectual historian Ruth Leys, saw the figure of the survivor emerge in the period after the second world war, alongside a shift in focus from the victims feelings of guilt toward an insistence on the victims innocence. This transformation, Leys argues, involved replacing the concept of guilt with its close cousin, shame.

The difference is crucial. The victim who feels guilt evidently has an inner life, with intentions and desires while the victim who feels shame seems to have had it bestowed from outside. The victims of trauma consequently appear to be the objects rather than the subjects ofhistory.

Shame, then, tells us something about what one is, not what one does or would like to do. And so the effect of this well-intentioned shift in emphasis may have been to rob the survivor of agency.

It may be tempting to assume that survival guilt is an extraordinary case, given the abject powerlessness of the victims of such traumas. But, as we will see, attempts to deny the validity of the guilt of others often have the similar effect of denying their intentions as well. Consider the case of liberal guilt, the guilt we all love to hate.

Liberal guilt has become a shorthand for describing those who feel keenly a lack of social, political and economic justice, but are not the ones who suffer thebrunt of it. According to the cultural critic Julie Ellison, it first took hold in the US in the 1990s, on the back of a post-cold-war fragmentation of theleft, and a loss of faith in the utopian politics of collective action that had characterised an earlier generation of radicals. The liberal who feels guilty has given up on the collective and recognises herself to be acting out of self-interest. Her guilt is thus a sign of the gap between what she feels for the others suffering and what she will do actively to alleviate it which isnot, it turns out, a great deal.

As such, her guilt incites much hostility in others, not least in the person who feels himself the object of the liberals guilt. This person, AKA the victim, understands only too well how seldom the pity he elicits in the guilty liberal is likely to lead toany significant structural or political changes for him.

Rather, the only power to be redirected his way is not political power, but the moral or affective power to make those more fortunate than he is feel even more guilty about the privileges they are nonetheless not inclined to give up.

But just how in control of her feelings is the guilty liberal? Not very, thinks Ellison. Since feelings arent easily confected, her guilt tends to assail her unbidden, rendering her highly performative, exhibitionist, even hysterical. In her guilt, she experiences a loss of control, although she remains conscious at all times of an audience, before whom she feels she must show how spectacularly sorry she is. Her guilt, then, is her way of acting out, marking a disturbance in the liberal who doesnt know herself quite as well as her guilt would haveher think.

The idea of guilt as aninhibiting emotion corroborates the common critique of liberal guilt: that, for all the suffering it produces, it fails completely to motivate the guilty subject tobring about meaningful political change.

But what if the liberals guilt actually has another purpose, to allow the liberal respite from the thing she may (unconsciously) feel even worse about: the lack of a fixed identity that tells her who she is, what her responsibilities are and where these come to an end.

If anything can be said to characterise the notoriously woolly liberal, guilt may be it. Liberal guilt suggests a certain class (middle), race (white) and geopolitical (developed world) situation. As such, despite the torment it brings to those who suffer it, it might, paradoxically (and, again, unconsciously), be reassuring for someone whose real neurosis is that she feels her identity is so mobile and shiftingthat she can never quite be surewhere she stands.

If this is what chiefly concerns her, then one might envisage her guilt as a feeling that tells her who she is, by virtue of telling her who she is failing to be for others. Who is the liberal? She who suffers on account of those who suffer morethan she. (I know whereof I speak.)

This may suggest why, in recent years, there has been mounting criticism of the liberals sensibilities. To her critics, the liberal really is guilty. Shes guilty of a) secretly resenting victims for how their sufferings make her feel, b) drawing attention away from them and back towards her, c) having theaudacity to make an exhibition out of her self-lacerations and d) doing practically nothing to challenge the status quo.

For critics of the guilty liberal, in other words, feeling guiltyis part of the problem, rather than the solution. And yetthis criticism is itself subject to the same accusation. Giventhat criticising someone for feeling guilty is only going to make them feel guiltier, guilt has, asweve seen, proved atricky opponent one that its various modern combatants have yetto defeat.

Once again, therefore, in the case of liberal guilt, we encounter a feeling so devilishly slippery that it repeats the problem in the course of confessing it. Because there is, of course, aform of guilt that does not inspire us to act, but prevents us from acting. This type of guilt takes the uncertainty of our relations with others (and our responsibility for others) and turns them into an object of certainty and knowledge.

But since the object in this case is our own self, we can see how liberal guilt, too, mutates guilt into a version of shame.Shame, infact, could well be a more accurate appellation for what motivates the guilty liberal in her public and private self-condemnations.

However, before we declare the liberal guilty as charged as in guilty of the wrong kind of guilt its worth reminding ourselves of the survival guilt that has likewise been viewed by many as guilt of the wrong kind. For as we observed in that case, in seeking to save the victim from her guilt, the victim becomes deprived of the very thing that might distinguish herfrom the objectifying aggression that has assailed her: asense of her own intentions and wishes, however aggressive, perverse or thwarted these might be.

For this reason, then, its vital to preserve the notion of survivors guilt (and, despite obvious differences, liberal guilt) as that which could yet return to the survivor (or the liberal) apower of agency such as must be absolutely necessary if sheis to have a future that isnt bound, by the resolving or absolving of her guilt, to repeat the past ad infinitum.

If religion often gets the blame for framing man as sinner, thesecular effort to release man from his guilt hasnt offered much relief. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben suggests that subjective innocence belongs to a bygone age, the age of the tragic hero. Oedipus, for example, is someone whose objective guilt (parricide, incest) is matched by the subjective innocence of the man who acts before he knows. Today, however, says Agamben, we find the opposing situation: modern man is objectively innocent (for he has not, like Oedipus, murdered with his own hands), but subjectively guilty (he knows that his comforts and securities have been paid for by someone, somewhere, probably in blood).

By falsely promising a tabula rasa bound to his historical and intellectual emancipation, modernity may not only have failed to obliterate mans subjective guilt, but may even have exacerbated it. For what many a modern man is guilty of is less his actions than his addiction to a version of knowledge that seems to have inhibited his capacity for action. As such, the religious assignation of man as sinner a fallen, abject, endlessly compromised, but also active, effective andchangeable creature begins to look comforting bycomparison.

Such a view also shares much in common with a certain psychoanalytic conception of guilt as a blocked form of aggression or anger toward those we need and love (God, parents, guardians, whomever we depend on for our own survival). But if guilt is the feeling that typically blocks all other (buried, repressed, unconscious) feelings, that is not initself areason to block feelings of guilt. Feelings, after all, are what you must be prepared to feel if they are to move you,or if you are to feel something else.

Main illustration by A Richard Allen

Adapted from Feeling Jewish (A Book for Just About Anyone) by Devorah Baum, which will be published by Yale University Press on 19 October at 18.99. To buy it for 16.15, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.

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dont really post anymore because nobody really cares. 

dont really speak much much nobody really cares. 

dont really speak much because i just make people angry all the time. i dont like making people angry i only like to make people laugh or have fun or feel happy but i cant do that because im really a failure of a person. 

cant handle my experiences and my life being completely burshed over and shut down and im expected to just take her ‘word for it’. 

i cant trust a single fucking person in this world i cant even trust my fucking self its too much its TOO MUCH. 

i wish i could just wear a giant flashing sign that said ‘thank you for being kind to me and showing love or affection but i have a huge conrete wall in front of me that i cant break through to react accordingly. i know i never used to be like this but its how i am now and its way way too hard to get past it’ 

i understand that i am not meant to be happy. i understand that fully. 

i understand that i am lazy and my suffering is all my own fault for being a lazy, unmotivated coward. i understand all of that i get it. 

NOBODY wants to believe me and NOBODY wants to think that i really truly think all of these things. its easier to be angry i suppose. easier to be angry at me and thats fair nobody owes me anything at all. 

i have started to do it again and i dont exactly  know why but im happy i am. i can really truly understand how worthless and aggrrivating i am to everyone all the time. maybe i say funny things every so often but how does that make me worth anything? i dont think it does.  I hear every week my family talking about me and how difficult and awful i am to deal with and its just a choice that ive made to be like this. i understand that is all my fault, i do, i never blame anyone else for how i am. its all me, im a dysfunctional wreck of a human and i do deserve to be dead. ive deserved that for years and years yet i selfishly still keep myself here out of, yet again, fucking FEAR. 

i know im a bad person. i know i am I KNOW THIS. i know i dont deserve many of the things i have or have had in the past I KNOW. im ugly i know. i dont have muscles, i know. im not tall and nicely set i KNOW. 

sometimes i think maybe i feel like i wouldve been better as a girl, but then again i dont know if any of that is real or just me trying to find a reason for all of my shit that i feel. also i know if i ended out to be that a lot and a lot of people would HATE me so much. also if i was that i know people would turn around and treat me like a special flower when i wouldnt be. 

but then i dont think i am. perhaps i am fluid in that way but my gender really doesnt mean much to me.

thats not a huge problem for me anyway. i dont care about it much. 

i just dont knwo. 

i dont trust anyone. i dont trust anyone at all. tahts my own fault. to trust people you have to be good enough for them to stand up for you and not hurt you.i wasnt good enough for that and i wont be good enough for that because I am a BAD PERSON. not jsut a bad person an AWFUL person who deserves every little bit of pain that i get. i try to be good, i promise i do, i really really really try. I hope people can believe me when i say i truly do have pure intentions for others and just want to make people happy but i just fuck it up all the time and nobody ever sees it that way. i can spot bad people i can spot bad ehaviour that is hurting others but nobody cares because i think it just appears as me being a bitch or manipulative. maybe i am maybe i think im doing the right thing but im just being a cunt the whole time. 

i cannot imagine what its like to wake up and being able ot plan your own day out without having to worry what others will say to you or make you do or get upset an d angry about. i like to be asleep because when i am asleep i dont have to worry about my actions or descisons being the wrong ones as they always always are. every day i do many many things wrong and i cant think which one is the right thing to do because i cant come up with it. if i lay down on my bed all day i am a bad person because i am lazy. if i go out alone it is bad because i am avoiding. if i go out with my friends or bf its bad because i shoudlnt be gay and also i should do work with my time not recreation. if i apply for the wrong job it is bad, but also i dont ned to study i just need to have motivation todo something but i cant i dont know im worthless anything i do will be worthless. 

what is it like to just eat when you would like to eat and sleep when you would liek to sleep and clea how and when you wuld like to clean. id ont understand and i dont  think i can do it its just too much and to o foreign to me. 

part of me wouldve been like ‘oh yeah all those ex friends that dogged me will see when im dead how muchthey hurt me yeah THATLL show them’ but for about a year now its just been ‘whatever. they wont care. maybe theyll even think good riddance because now i cant bitch about them anymore. its probably best for everyone i do anyway because it really truly does seem like i am the bad guy in every situation’. 

nobody sitcks up for me in those situations. maybe because i pretend like i have the strength to stand up for myself so everybody else wants to remain friends with the people who hurt me. i dont knwo i dont understand but its whatever because in the grand scheme of thigns i shouldnt even be here anymore in the first place. 

its logic. its the only thing that maeks sense. i should not be here and every second that passes where i still draw breath is another second that i hurt SOMEONE at least. i dont LIKE hurting people and i wish that i didnt hurt people merely by being alive but i DO and nothing can change that. whats even WORSE is that i have such strong opinions and beliefs and such an obnoxious personality that i cant seem to shake. i dont WANT those anymore. i wish i could be rid of them for good so i could have the best shot at NOT annoying people at least with it. 

people are going to thin kthat all of this is just ditorted mentall illness thoughts but i dont think it is i think its all true and i think its the only 100% truth that i know without a doubt. things would be EASIER without me around. so much easier. so so so sososos so much easier. and if people hat eme thats okay because i expect that from every single person eventually. everybody gives up on me. ive given up on me so i think thats why. i am BEYOND any turning back i dont knwo what i even mean i dont even understand how to express how i dont think anything can be done for me. i dont believe anything can be done for me. 

but thats okay because i am just babbling at the void because its the only time i can express anything i ever think. bad bad bad bad bad bad bad. i dont like it at all. 

ad nobody needs to worry about me killing myself yet because i am far far far too scared to. my cat also would never understand and she still needs me and she loves me so much and cant understand any of this so i cant do that to her because she is extremely innocent and doesnt deserve whatever would happent o her without me. she worries and frets if im not home until late i couldnt bear the thought of leaving her forever. 

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Why do we feel so guilty all the time?

The long read: Food, sex, money, work, family, friends, health, politics: theres nothing we cant feel guilty about, including our own feelings of guilt

I feel guilty about everything. Already today Ive felt guilty about having saidthe wrong thing to a friend. Then Ifeltguilty about avoiding that friend because of the wrong thing Id said. Plus, I havent called my mother yet today: guilty. And I really should have organised something special for my husbands birthday: guilty. I gave the wrong kind of food to my child: guilty. Ive been cutting corners at work lately: guilty. I skipped breakfast: guilty. I snacked instead: double guilty. Im taking up all this space in a world with not enough space in it: guilty, guilty, guilty.

Nor am I feeling good about feeling bad. Not whensophisticated friends never fail toremind me how selfinvolved, self-aggrandising, politically conservative and morally stunted the guilty are. Poor me. Guilty about guilty. Filial guilt, fraternal guilt, spousal guilt, maternal guilt, peer guilt, work guilt, middle-class guilt, whiteguilt, liberal guilt, historical guilt, Jewish guilt: Im guilty of them all.

Thankfully, there are those who say they can save us from guilt. According to the popular motivational speaker Denise Duffield-Thomas, author of Get Rich, Lucky Bitch!, guilt is one of the most common feelings women suffer. Guilty women, lured by guilt into obstructing their own paths to increased wealth, power, prestige and happiness, just cant seem to take advantage of their advantages.

You might feel guilty, Duffield-Thomas writes, for wanting more, or for spending money on yourself, or for taking time out of your busy family life to work on improving yourself. You might feel guilty that other people are poor, thatyour friend is jealous, that there are starving people in theworld. Sure enough, I do feel guilty for those things. So,itis something of a relief to hear that I can be helped thatI can be self-helped. But, for that to happen, what I must first understand is that a) Im worth it, and b) none of these structures of global inequality, predicated on historical injustices, are my fault.

My guilt, in other words, is a sign not of my guilt but of myinnocence even my victimhood. Its only by forgiving myself for the wrongs for which I bear no direct responsibility that I can learn to release my money blocks and live afirstclass life, according to Duffield-Thomas.

Imagine that: a first-class life. This sort of advice, which frames guilt as our most fundamentally inhibiting emotion, takes insights from psychoanalytic and feminist thinking and transforms them into the language of business motivation. The promise is that our guilt can be expiated by making money.

Its an idea that might resonate especially in the German language, where guilt and debt arethe same word, schuld. One thinks, for example, of Max Webers thesis about how the spirit of capitalism conflates our worldly and heavenly riches, on the basis that what you earn in this world also serves as a measure of your spiritual virtue, since it depends on your capacity for hard work, discipline and self-denial.

But what Weber calls salvation anxiety within the Protestant work ethic has the opposite effect to the self-help manuals promise to liberate entrepreneurs from their guilt. For Weber, in fact, the capitalist pursuit of profit does not reduce ones guilt, but actively exacerbates it for, in an economy that admonishes stagnation, there can be no rest forthe wicked.

So, the guilt that blocks and inhibits us also propels us to work, work, work, to become relentlessly productive in the hope that we might by our good works rid ourselves of guilt. Guilt thus renders us productive and unproductive, workaholic and workphobic a conflict that might explain theextreme and even violent lengths to which people sometimes will go, whether by scapegoating others or sacrificing themselves, to be rid of what many people considerthe mostunbearable emotion.

What is the potency of guilt? With its inflationary logic, guiltlooks, if anything, to have accumulated over time. Although we tend to blame religion for condemning man tolife as a sinner, the guilt that may once have attached tospecific vices vices for which religious communities couldprescribe appropriate penance now seems, in a more secular era, to surface in relation to just about anything: food, sex, money, work, unemployment, leisure, health, fitness, politics, family, friends, colleagues, strangers, entertainment, travel, the environment, you name it.

Equally, whoever has been tempted to suppose that rituals of public humiliation area macabre relic of the medieval past clearly hasnt been paying much attention to our life online. You cant expect to get away for long on social media without someone pointing an accusatory finger at you. Yet its hard to imagine that the presiding spirit of our age, the envious and resentful troll, would have such easy pickings if he could not already sense awhiff of guilt-susceptibility emanating from his prey.

It wasnt meant to be like this. The great crusaders of modernity were supposed to uproot our guilt. The subject ofcountless high-minded critiques, guilt was accused by modern thinkers of sapping the life out of us and causing ourpsychological deterioration. It was said to make us weak(Nietzsche), neurotic (Freud), inauthentic (Sartre).

In thelatter part of the 20th century, various critical theories gained academic credibility, particularly within the humanities. These were theories that sought to show whether with reference to class relations, race relations, gender relations how we are all cogs in a larger system ofpower. We may play our parts in regimes of oppression, but we are also at the mercy of forces larger than us.

But this raises questions about personal responsibility: if its true that our particular situation is underpinned by a complex network of social and economic relations, how can any individual really claim to bein control or entirely responsible for her own life? Viewed in such an impersonal light, guilt can seem an unhelpful hangover fromless selfaware times.

As a teacher of critical theory, I know how crucial and revelatory its insights can be. But Ive occasionally also suspected that our desire for systematic and structural formsof explanation may be fuelled by our anxiety at the prospect of discovering were on the wrong side of history.When wielded indelicately, explanatory theories can offer their adherents afoolproof system for knowing exactly what view to hold, with impunity, about pretty much everything as if one could take out an insurance policy to be sure of always being right. Often, too, thats as far as such criticism takes you into a right-thinking that doesnt necessarily organise itself into right-acting.

The notion that our intellectual frameworks might be as much a reaction to our guilt as a remedy for it might sound familiar to a religious person. In the biblical story, after all, man falls when hes tempted by fruit from the tree of knowledge. Its knowledge that leads him out of the Gardenof Eden into an exile that has yet to end. His guilt isaconstant, nagging reminder that he has taken this wrongturn.

Illustration: A Richard Allen

Yet even within that source we see how mans guilt can bedeceptive as slippery and seductive as the serpent who led him astray. For if man has sinned by tasting of knowledge, the guilt that punishes him repeats his crime: with all its finger-wagging and tenor of I told you so, guilt itself comes over as awfully knowing. It keeps us, as the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips has written, in thrall to that boring and repetitive voice inside our head that endlessly corrects, criticises, censors, judges and finds fault with us, but never brings usany news about ourselves. In our feelings of guilt, we seemalready to have the measure of who it is we are and whatit is were capable of.

Could that be the reason for our guilt? Not our lack of knowledge but rather our presumption of it? Our desperate need to be sure of ourselves, even when what we think of ourselves is that were worthless, useless, the pits? When we feel guilty we at least have the comfort of being certain ofsomething of knowing, finally, the right way to feel, whichis bad.

This may be why were addicted to crime dramas: they satisfy our wish for certainty, no matter how grim that certainty is. At the beginning of a detective story, were conscious of a crime, but we dont know who did it. By the end of the story, ithas been discovered which culprit is guilty: case closed. Thus guilt, inits popular rendering, is what converts our ignorance intoknowledge.

For a psychoanalyst, however, feelings of guilt dont necessarily have any connection tobeing guiltyin the eyes of the law.Our feelings of guilt may be a confession, but they usually precede the accusation of any crime the details ofwhich not even the guilty person can be sure.

So, while the stories we prefer may be the ones that uncover guilt, its equally possible that our own guilt is a cover story forsomething else.

Although the fall is originally a biblical story, forget religion for a moment. One can just as well recount a more recent and assuredly secular story of the fall of man. Its a story that has had countless narrators, perhaps none finer or more emphatic than the German Jewish postwar critic Theodor Adorno. Writing in the wake of the Holocaust, Adorno argued famously that whoever survives in a world that could produce Auschwitz is guilty, at least insofar as theyre still party to the same civilisation that created the conditions for Auschwitz.

Inother words, guilt is our unassailable historical condition. Its our contract as modern people. As such, says Adorno, we all have a shared responsibility after Auschwitz to be vigilant,lest we collapse once more into the ways of thinking, believing and behaving that brought down this guilty verdict upon us. To make sense after Auschwitz is to risk complicity with its barbarism.

For Adorno too, then, our knowledge renders us guilty, rather than keeping us safe. For a modern mind, this could well seem shocking. That said, perhaps the more surprising feature of Adornos representation of guilt is the idea expressed in his question whether after Auschwitz you cango on living especially whether one who escaped by accident, one who by rights should have been killed, may go on living. His mere survival calls for the coldness, the basic principle of bourgeois subjectivity, without which there couldhave been no Auschwitz; this is the drastic guilt of himwho was spared.

For Adorno, the guilt of Auschwitz belongs to all of western civilisation, but its a guilt he assumed would be felt most keenly by one who escaped by accident, one who by rights should have been killed the Jewish survivor of the second world war.

Adorno, who had left Europe for New York in early 1938, was probably attesting to his own sense of guilt. Yet his insight is one we alsoget from psychologists who worked with concentration camp survivors after the war; they found that feelings of guiltaccompanied by shame, self-condemnatory tendencies and self-accusations are experienced by the victims of the persecution and apparently much less (if at all) bythe perpetrators of it.

What can it mean if victims feel guilty and perpetrators areguilt-free? Are objective guilt (being guilty) and subjective guilt (feeling guilty) completely at odds with each other?

In the years after the war, the concept of survival guilt tended to be viewed as the byproduct of the victims identification with their aggressor. The survivor who may subsequently find it hard to forgive herself because others have diedin her place why am I still here when they are not? may also feel guilty because of what she was forced to collude withfor the sake of her survival. This need not imply any incriminating action on her part; her guilt may simply be anunconscious way of registering her past preference that others suffer instead of her.

On this basis, then, it may be possible to think of survivors guilt as a special case of the guilt we all bear when, aware or unaware, were glad when others, rather than ourselves, suffer. Obviously, thats not a pleasant feeling, but neither is ita hard one to understand. Still, there remains something deeply uncomfortable about accepting that survivors of the worst atrocities should feel any guilt for their own survival. Instead, shouldnt we be trying to save the survivor from her (in our view) mistaken feelings of guilt andthus establish, without smirch or quibble, her absolute innocence?

This understandable impulse, according to the intellectual historian Ruth Leys, saw the figure of the survivor emerge in the period after the second world war, alongside a shift in focus from the victims feelings of guilt toward an insistence on the victims innocence. This transformation, Leys argues, involved replacing the concept of guilt with its close cousin, shame.

The difference is crucial. The victim who feels guilt evidently has an inner life, with intentions and desires while the victim who feels shame seems to have had it bestowed from outside. The victims of trauma consequently appear to be the objects rather than the subjects ofhistory.

Shame, then, tells us something about what one is, not what one does or would like to do. And so the effect of this well-intentioned shift in emphasis may have been to rob the survivor of agency.

It may be tempting to assume that survival guilt is an extraordinary case, given the abject powerlessness of the victims of such traumas. But, as we will see, attempts to deny the validity of the guilt of others often have the similar effect of denying their intentions as well. Consider the case of liberal guilt, the guilt we all love to hate.

Liberal guilt has become a shorthand for describing those who feel keenly a lack of social, political and economic justice, but are not the ones who suffer thebrunt of it. According to the cultural critic Julie Ellison, it first took hold in the US in the 1990s, on the back of a post-cold-war fragmentation of theleft, and a loss of faith in the utopian politics of collective action that had characterised an earlier generation of radicals. The liberal who feels guilty has given up on the collective and recognises herself to be acting out of self-interest. Her guilt is thus a sign of the gap between what she feels for the others suffering and what she will do actively to alleviate it which isnot, it turns out, a great deal.

As such, her guilt incites much hostility in others, not least in the person who feels himself the object of the liberals guilt. This person, AKA the victim, understands only too well how seldom the pity he elicits in the guilty liberal is likely to lead toany significant structural or political changes for him.

Rather, the only power to be redirected his way is not political power, but the moral or affective power to make those more fortunate than he is feel even more guilty about the privileges they are nonetheless not inclined to give up.

But just how in control of her feelings is the guilty liberal? Not very, thinks Ellison. Since feelings arent easily confected, her guilt tends to assail her unbidden, rendering her highly performative, exhibitionist, even hysterical. In her guilt, she experiences a loss of control, although she remains conscious at all times of an audience, before whom she feels she must show how spectacularly sorry she is. Her guilt, then, is her way of acting out, marking a disturbance in the liberal who doesnt know herself quite as well as her guilt would haveher think.

The idea of guilt as aninhibiting emotion corroborates the common critique of liberal guilt: that, for all the suffering it produces, it fails completely to motivate the guilty subject tobring about meaningful political change.

But what if the liberals guilt actually has another purpose, to allow the liberal respite from the thing she may (unconsciously) feel even worse about: the lack of a fixed identity that tells her who she is, what her responsibilities are and where these come to an end.

If anything can be said to characterise the notoriously woolly liberal, guilt may be it. Liberal guilt suggests a certain class (middle), race (white) and geopolitical (developed world) situation. As such, despite the torment it brings to those who suffer it, it might, paradoxically (and, again, unconsciously), be reassuring for someone whose real neurosis is that she feels her identity is so mobile and shiftingthat she can never quite be surewhere she stands.

If this is what chiefly concerns her, then one might envisage her guilt as a feeling that tells her who she is, by virtue of telling her who she is failing to be for others. Who is the liberal? She who suffers on account of those who suffer morethan she. (I know whereof I speak.)

This may suggest why, in recent years, there has been mounting criticism of the liberals sensibilities. To her critics, the liberal really is guilty. Shes guilty of a) secretly resenting victims for how their sufferings make her feel, b) drawing attention away from them and back towards her, c) having theaudacity to make an exhibition out of her self-lacerations and d) doing practically nothing to challenge the status quo.

For critics of the guilty liberal, in other words, feeling guiltyis part of the problem, rather than the solution. And yetthis criticism is itself subject to the same accusation. Giventhat criticising someone for feeling guilty is only going to make them feel guiltier, guilt has, asweve seen, proved atricky opponent one that its various modern combatants have yetto defeat.

Once again, therefore, in the case of liberal guilt, we encounter a feeling so devilishly slippery that it repeats the problem in the course of confessing it. Because there is, of course, aform of guilt that does not inspire us to act, but prevents us from acting. This type of guilt takes the uncertainty of our relations with others (and our responsibility for others) and turns them into an object of certainty and knowledge.

But since the object in this case is our own self, we can see how liberal guilt, too, mutates guilt into a version of shame.Shame, infact, could well be a more accurate appellation for what motivates the guilty liberal in her public and private self-condemnations.

However, before we declare the liberal guilty as charged as in guilty of the wrong kind of guilt its worth reminding ourselves of the survival guilt that has likewise been viewed by many as guilt of the wrong kind. For as we observed in that case, in seeking to save the victim from her guilt, the victim becomes deprived of the very thing that might distinguish herfrom the objectifying aggression that has assailed her: asense of her own intentions and wishes, however aggressive, perverse or thwarted these might be.

For this reason, then, its vital to preserve the notion of survivors guilt (and, despite obvious differences, liberal guilt) as that which could yet return to the survivor (or the liberal) apower of agency such as must be absolutely necessary if sheis to have a future that isnt bound, by the resolving or absolving of her guilt, to repeat the past ad infinitum.

If religion often gets the blame for framing man as sinner, thesecular effort to release man from his guilt hasnt offered much relief. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben suggests that subjective innocence belongs to a bygone age, the age of the tragic hero. Oedipus, for example, is someone whose objective guilt (parricide, incest) is matched by the subjective innocence of the man who acts before he knows. Today, however, says Agamben, we find the opposing situation: modern man is objectively innocent (for he has not, like Oedipus, murdered with his own hands), but subjectively guilty (he knows that his comforts and securities have been paid for by someone, somewhere, probably in blood).

By falsely promising a tabula rasa bound to his historical and intellectual emancipation, modernity may not only have failed to obliterate mans subjective guilt, but may even have exacerbated it. For what many a modern man is guilty of is less his actions than his addiction to a version of knowledge that seems to have inhibited his capacity for action. As such, the religious assignation of man as sinner a fallen, abject, endlessly compromised, but also active, effective andchangeable creature begins to look comforting bycomparison.

Such a view also shares much in common with a certain psychoanalytic conception of guilt as a blocked form of aggression or anger toward those we need and love (God, parents, guardians, whomever we depend on for our own survival). But if guilt is the feeling that typically blocks all other (buried, repressed, unconscious) feelings, that is not initself areason to block feelings of guilt. Feelings, after all, are what you must be prepared to feel if they are to move you,or if you are to feel something else.

Main illustration by A Richard Allen

Adapted from Feeling Jewish (A Book for Just About Anyone) by Devorah Baum, which will be published by Yale University Press on 19 October at 18.99. To buy it for 16.15, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.

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