#Your Mental Health

[chronically-izzzzle]

[stil-lindigo]

lead balloon (the tumblr post that saved me)

if this comic resonated with you, it would mean the world to me if you donated to this palestinian family's escape fund.

--

no creative notes because this isn't that kind of comic.

I know I don’t owe any of you anything but I still felt compelled to write about my long term absence. And I feel far enough away from the dangerous spot I was in to be able to make this comic. I have a therapist now, and she agreed that making this could be a very cathartic gesture, and the start of properly leaving these thoughts behind me. I am still, at seemingly random times, blindsided by fleeting desires to kill myself. They’re always passing urges, but it’s disarming, and uncomfortable. I worry sometimes that my brain’s spent so long thinking only about suicide that it’s forgotten how to think about anything else. Like, now that I've opened that door for myself, I'll never be able to fully shut it again. But I’m trying my best to encourage my mind in other directions. We'll see how that goes.

I am still donating all proceeds from my store to Palestinian causes. So far, I've donated over $15K, not including donations coming from my own pocket or the fundraising streams which jointly raised around $10K. In the time since I made my initial post about where this money would be going, the focus has shifted from aid organisations to directly donating to escape funds.

If you'd like to do the same, you can look at Operation Olive Branch, which hosts hundreds of Palestinian escape funds or donate to Safebow, which has helped facilitate the safe crossing and securing of important medical procedures for over 150 at-risk palestinians since the beginning of the genocide.

[stayuntilthefoglifts]

No one will ever fully be able to understand the internal battles you had to endure just to heal, just to grow, just to make it here today. Be proud of the way you fought to save yourself. Be proud of the way you survived.

Bianca Sparacino

[schizopositivity]

Things I'd love for the Internet to leave in 2023:

• misusing the word "delusional" or saying "delulu"

• public freakout videos that are just someone displaying psychotic symptoms

• "I'm in your walls" and other paranoia triggering "jokes"

• schizoposting

• misusing the word "psychotic"

• baiting and triggering people online who are openly psychotic or displaying psychotic symptoms

• excluding schizo-spec and psychotic people from any neurodiversity/mental illness awareness

Let's just all try to be better to schizo-spec and psychotic people. And hold others accountable as well.

[thepeacefulgarden]

[slothmonth]

I agree that "in Germany your boss legally has to provide you with work while you're at your job" is a bit funny considering the German stereotype. But I am really annoyed at people who act like this is some horrible hypercapitalist thing on that post about pushing people out of their jobs by just not giving them anything to do. When really it's very basic worker protection (within the context of German emplyment law.) Because under most circumstances you can't just be fired from your job. Your employer has to provide a reason for firing you if they want to get rid of you. You also have a right to specifially the work you were hired to do.

So your boss having to give you appropriate work makes illegal any of the following:

a) Making you clean toilets instead of (or in addition to) the clearly defined office job you agreed to do

b) Not giving you work and then firing you for not doing your work

c) Waiting for you to crack under the intense boredom of having to stay on one place with absolutely nothing to do for eight hours a day while your coworkers are roped into it to shun you (or hate you because for some reason you're the only one who doesn't have to do any work) until you quit "voluntarily"

or d) waiting for you to crack under the aformentioned pressure until you do what the people in the notes said they'd do, like watching movies or doing a second job instead which is something you then can be reprimanded and fired for

[eggsdoodz]

eggsdoodz draws eggs?! 🍳

[san-sebastienne]

With truly all the love and empathy in my heart: crying daily over the sexual assault allegations against Gaiman isn’t healthy. I’ve seen multiple people –especially fans of GO – saying this since they came out, and it’s really fucking concerning me.

I wonder if it has to do with the insidious ideas that 1) people are either Bad or Good, 2) Bad people can only do Bad things, and 3) liking Bad things or Bad people makes you Bad.

None of these things are true.

People are mixed up and incredibly complicated. Someone can be an incredible artist/friend/chef/ally against racism/drag queen and still be predatory/homophobic/antisemitic/never tips their wait staff. People do things that harm others in big and small ways all the time. You do too. I promise.

(Also the idea of anyone, even people who do genuinely insurmountable harm, becoming somehow less than human is an inherently fascist ideology)

The fact that you (yes, you!!) do harmful things doesn’t immediately make you Bad. There are certainly things that someone might do that causes more harm (say, assault) versus less, but that doesn’t somehow infect all the things they’ve done in the past with their Badness. Gaiman helped write Good Omens. There’s no way now to say “I was wrong and this book was Bad all along” or even “oh, all the parts I like were written by Pratchett, the Bad parts must have been Gaiman.” You didn’t miss an inherent evil by liking the book in the past. It doesn’t make you Bad for liking it now.

(It also doesn’t mean that people associated with Gaiman, like David Tennant, are also Tainted by inherent Badness. Tennant isn’t, you aren’t. Saying otherwise is also a slippery slope argument into dehumanization and fascist ideas)

By all means: if it feels right, stop giving Gaiman your money. Stop tagging him in your Azi/Crowley fanart. But do this as a way to disentangle yourself from parasocial relationships that are actively causing you grief and to vote with your wallet, not because unlinking yourself from Bad Art and Bad People will somehow absolve you and make you Good again. If you already have a copy of Good Omens or Sandman, whether you reread it is between you and your gods. Interacting with a text you find important doesn’t make you Bad or Good. It’s just reading. What you do with the stories is what matters (ironically, that’s the message of a lot of both Gaiman and Pratchett’s work).

Maybe take a peek at Good Omens and re familiarize yourself with its other core message: People are not Bad or Good. People do bad and good things.

Then maybe drink a cup of tea. You need to rehydrate.

[selfhealingmoments]

[chittychittyyangyang]

Listen, you should never film strangers in public without their consent, but I swear there need to be fines or something for people who do that shit in some spaces. For example: I had to go to the ER last night, and some jerk filmed a woman who just came in and was clearly having an asthma attack. She immediately got to go back, and he was unhappy about that. Believe me, I get that it sucks having to wait when you're in pain, but you don't get to pick who deserves care when. The medical system in the US is a nightmare, and the ER could be the worst moment of someone's life. No one deserves to be recorded because some jack ass believes someone doesn't look like they need care.

This is fine to reblog. People who film strangers should be shamed if nothing else.

[chronically-izzzzle]

[endlessmidnights]

I hate when people say suicide is the easy way out, they have no idea the pain you must be in to want to end your own life

[free-my-mindd]

[nexus-nebulae]

shoutout to people who don't have a "before" the trauma.

shoutout to people who don't have any sweet or nostalgic childhood memories. to people who don't remember enough of their childhood to know what the before was like. to people who lost their innocence before they ever learned the word for it. to people whose pasts were too painful to keep around in any form. to people who only knew trauma, and don't have an idea of what life would be like without it. to people who can't long for "the better days" because there weren't any.

you deserve a good future. i hope it's there for you soon.

[giantkillerjack]

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

[plain-text version of this post can be found under the cut]

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

Plain-text version:

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

P.S. Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

[soyochii]

Quick doodles before I evaporate.