#but this is a true story

[biblicalhorror]

Tw: suicide, gun violence, emotional abuse

My freshman year of college, a very close friend of mine was being emotionally abused by her high school boyfriend. He couldn't handle the fact that she had chosen to move away from their tiny hometown, and away from him, and he would call her every hour of the day to demand to know where she was, who she was with, why she hadn't texted him in the past hour, etc.

We all told her to break up with him, as she clearly wasn't happy. We figured, we're all 18 year olds, almost no one stays with their high school sweetheart forever. And eventually, when he started to also verbally abuse her, she did.

He didn't stop calling her, and it got worse. He started calling her late at night, drunk and wailing, wandering around their empty town and yelling at her for "abandoning" him. This became a near nightly occurrence, but my friend stood firm in her decision.

Then, one random Wednesday a couple of weeks later, she showed up at my dorm door sobbing. Her ex-boyfriend had stolen his father's gun, walked into her parents' backyard, and shot himself.

The entire town turned against my friend. She was berated and shunned by basically everyone she had grown up with, except her parents, directly blamed for "taking away" the future of a troubled young man who had repeatedly harmed her. She was called all sorts of vile things by her ex-boyfriends family, who decided she was the root of all of his troubles so that they wouldn't have to reflect on the environment they created and how it may have shaped this man's self image. No one even told her when they decided to have a funeral for him.

My friend is the sweetest, kindest person on the planet. She was beyond devastated. In order to paint her as an unfeeling monster, you would need to ignore how far she was pushed before she had the courage to break up with him. He was a troubled kid, but he knew what he was doing.

Grief is a complicated thing, especially grieving a human being because humans are complicated, and you can hold multiple perceptions of someone at the same time. But suicide is never, not EVER, anyone else's fault. Even if he had been the perfect boyfriend and she broke up with him for no reason, it still wouldn't have been her fault. If there is someone you're thinking about blaming, I would bet anything that they've already blamed themselves a million times over. There are so many ways that an abuser can ensure that they terrorize their victims for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, suicide is sometimes one of them. Have compassion for the people on the other side of this tragedy. You don't understand what they're going through and you hopefully never will.

[kawarikisaki]

So funny story here.

When my husband and I were getting married I told him that changing my last name seemed like a hassle, and that I liked my last name so I wouldn't change my last name unless he also changed his.

And he called my bluff, so we agreed to hyphenate, and signed the marriage documents that we would be married under the hyphenated version.

We looked things up and for the particular area in which we live it's unclear if the marriage documents officially do the name change or if you have to then legally get the name change separate. Sources were conflicting, and even the people at the courthouse didn't seem 100% sure.

So my husband and I are both not sure what our legal last names are.

And ya see, my husband and I are lazy. So if it is necessary to do a separate legal name change we haven't bothered. And we also haven't changed our names on our licenses or anything in the years we've been married; plus we've just been filing taxes jointly with our original names, which seems to be working just fine.

Which is interesting, because you'd think that if the old names work on the tax documents then it would mean that the hypenated names we signed the marriage certificate with are not valid... but then we wouldn't be able to file as married. Probably. I don't know, I'm not a tax expert.

So to answer the question, I'm married and my spouse and I are locked in a quantum state where we aren't sure if we kept our names or took each other's names.

[chongoblog]

Me, after forgetting to cut the top off an onion before dicing it: “Aw dammit”

The Gordon Ramsey that lives in my head: “Don’t worry there, this mistake isn’t going to ruin anything. No need to be too hard on yourself”

Me: “Wow, that’s…not what I was expecting”

Gordon: “Of course, you ought to know by now that I don’t shout at cooks just to do so. I do it because the people in hit television show Kitchen Nightmares are putting their services out into the public and claim to be good enough to have the title of head chef. You’re just some guy in your twenties making beef stroganoff for yourself and your roommate. I’m kind of a dick, yeah, but I’m not gonna scream at you for a minor mistake like this”

Me: “Oh….well…thanks”

Gordon: “You’re welcome…cunt…”

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

License to Kitty.

[wasabi-gumdrop]

local ladies man’s signature move totally useless against autistic monster enthusiast. more on Kabru’s fumble era at 6

[defilerwyrm]

There’s this guy in town who owns this little house, and a while back he rescued a street dog that was going to get put down. Turned out she was pregnant.

Problem is, he has mental health & drug issues and couldn’t afford to get them all spayed & neutered, so now there are 6 grown bitches with 15 puppies total, and they’ve dug under his fence in multiple places but he can’t afford to fix it so they go roaming all around town. (When I say can’t afford it, I mean his house is currently running on a generator because he can’t afford his electric bill.) He’s also a day laborer so he cannot take multiple full days off work to take them to the vet an hour away. He’s in a really rough spot.

He’s not a bad person. He’s just overwhelmed.

And this little conservative town with 6 churches for 300 people, have they tried to help their neighbor? Have they adopted the puppies he’s been trying to give away? Have they offered resources?

NOPE! All they wanna do is talk shit about him and complain about the dogs but never lift a finger of their own. And they come to his house to yell at him and cuss him out about the dogs, which does not exactly engender in him a cooperative attitude, as you might imagine.

So after a while of this going on, my mom gets fed up with all the NIMBY bullshit and starts talking to the guy, because she’s done animal rescue for 20-odd years and has Connections. He’s resistant at first, but when he realizes she’s not being an asshole to him on account of his addiction or the dogs, he decides to let her help.

She gets to work organizing and networking. Finds a non-profit that will cover vaccinations, spay/neuter, and flea treatments for all the dogs. Talks the next-door neighbor into paying for materials to fix the fence, since this guy can do the work of it himself. Gets him in touch with another non-profit that will adopt out the adult dogs.

Less than 2 weeks after she decided to do something, all puppies have been to the vet, 10 puppies and 4 adult dogs have been adopted out, and the second non-profit is coming by next week to pick up the remaining 7 dogs to ship them out for adoption.

I’ve learned a lot of things from my mom—some good, some bad—but I think the most important positive message she lives as an example of is this: sometimes, when something needs done and no one else is willing, you gotta stand up and say “I’ll do it.”

[aesethewitch]

When I was a kid, we moved into a house that had a huge lilac tree out front. It was mostly rotten, and it needed to be taken down before it fell. It took a while, but eventually, it was gone.

Mostly. A couple years later, little lilac babies popped out of the ground in its place. My mom was determined to get rid of them, because she'd planted a beautiful flower garden there, and the lilac trees would overshadow and kill the whole garden. I insisted on saving at least a few saplings. She said fine, but I had to dig them out and put them in pots myself.

So, I did. I spent days digging little lilac bushes out of the ground and putting them into pots. Some couldn't be saved, but some could. When all was said and done, I had five brand-new lilac saplings. Seven or eight years old, and it was my absolute pride and joy.

Three died due to sun scorching, severe drought that no amount of watering could save, and perhaps just being moved from their place in the ground. But two survived, and I was awfully proud of them! I'd go out and talk to them every single day. I watered them by hand and made sure they were fertilized properly. I learned all about their favored environments, and I was determined to make sure they lived.

One of my mom's friends saw what I was doing with the lilacs. She asked if she could have one to put in her backyard, and I agreed on the condition that she take very, very good care of it.

It's now fucking enormous. I'm talking ten feet tall and bursting with beautiful purple flowers every spring. My mom still gets updates each year as they start to bloom, which she forwards to me. And all I can think is, "That's my friend! Thriving some twenty years on, there it is."

The other tree nearly died, too. It lived in a pot for far, far too long. I wanted to plant it somewhere in my parents' yard, but my mom was reluctant. Eventually, we agreed to put it in the far back garden. It grew okay for many years, despite the shade, but in all these years, it's never bloomed.

Last year, the massive tree casting massive shadows over the lilac and the garden cracked in half and fell. It tumbled into the garden, crushing part of the nearby shed and destroying a few plants beneath it.

It missed my lilac by inches.

The clean-up is long done. The rest of the tree has been cut down, and my lilac has full sunlight for the first time in fifteen years. It won't bloom this year, I know. But it's got new shoots up. It's taller than ever. I spent half an hour a few weeks ago praising it for surviving all this time, dreaming about its future and telling it how I believe it'll become the tall beauty it's always been meant to be.

I think next year, I'll see flowers.

[filiseverus]

The Barbie movie reminded me about how when I was little my parents were upset that I kept making my Barbie dolls kiss, so they bought me a Ken doll. The next day they found me having a funeral for poor Ken in the garden, he had died of tuberculosis. All the Barbies were in attendance and I buried him under our rose bush. The Barbies were too poor to afford a headstone (it was 1875) so I didn’t mark where the grave was and I never could find him again. He’s probably still there.

[lexosaurus]

Me: Okay, it's time for bed. Tumblr: Wait don't go. You can hit people for free.

[meanbossart]

Gale.

[pinkpuffballdude]

as far as I'm aware Joel Smallishbeans has always been a PG family friendly youtuber, but he talks like a sailor barely restraining himself from telling everyone to fuck themselves

[petrichor-moss-and-lightning]

being a lesbian is so dumb. this girl once sent me a photo of a rat she found in a dumpster and i imagined kissing her in a botanical garden

[iwillwringyourneck]

[mournfulroses]

Margaret Atwood, from True Stories: Poems; "Postcard," originally published in 1981

[notherpuppet]

📻 🍎