#i was incredibly depressed and most suicidal through out the peak of the blog

[thattimdrakeguy]

What I Mean By "I Hate This Character." or "I Think x Is A Terrible Character."

Also, so no one misunderstands me saying "I think Damian is a terrible character", I think every Bat-Family character is a terrible character at the moment.

I think they're all simply awful currently. That's why when I was more active I was a 90s Tim Drake & related characters blog. Not that it was perfect back then. Dixon had a lot of bad writing habits, and he definitely dominated the 90s Bat-Family (he's also an awful person I hear), but characterization had a lot more consistency that was enough for me to quite enjoy it.

Nowadays Batman is...to be honest I don't know what.

Tim is a bland character, most writers just project on. Which he was meant to be relatable, but he still had a specified personality that really worked. Tim wasn't a self-insert (People misunderstand what that means), just written to be extremely relatable to a lot of children. You used to be able to define him in a mostly consistent way. (Didn't stop Dixon from using his comics to impart some ol' projection sometimes. But it didn't always infect the entire character.)

Dick is a sitcom character who acts as everyone's fictional boyfriend nowadays.

Jason I've lost track of, but last time I saw him, he was treated like a silly anti-hero who's had their entire backstory retconned. And they felt very neutered. (Jason's a lot like my opinion on Damian. One good story, and a bunch of inconsistent character breaking shit since.)

Damian really depends on the writer so I couldn't tell you. I remember he was infantilized a lot, and now he's...I can't even tell really. Williamson treats his character extremely strangely. He gets some things right, it isn't as bad as it used to be, but he also clearly doesn't understand the character in a lot of other ways.

Batgirls I can combine into one thing, which is depressing, they're all just...quirky girls. Barbara just less so. (Their Batgirls series was cancelled last I saw and I haven't seen anything since.) Steph gets this the worst. She is unrecognizable. I guess with Cass they think as long as she doesn't talk a lot it's fine--She was quirky in her own way, but...not the way they write her now.

To me they're all horrible. Inconsistent, bland stories if not outright terrible, don't recognize them anymore.

But it's also been like this for well over a decade, like 15 years now maybe. For Tim even longer since Didio wanted DC Comics to be super dark, and besides one writer, he was totally different to me. Can hardly consider it the same character besides some minor things--also depending on the writer.

All these characters had their time as great characters. Bruce, Dick, and Tim especially (I don't know as much about Barbara, and know they de-aged her to date Dick, which is weird. But I think she was all right beside that? I'm not gonna claim to know a lot about her). Nice periods of consistency and good stories. Iconic stuff.

So when I say "I think they're a terrible character", it typically means "As they are now".

I am not a DC Comics fan. As i hate what they currently put out.

What made me start a blog was my love for DC Comics that mostly came out YEARS before I was born. It's odd, I realize that, it's just how it is for me.

[brightbeautifulthings]

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

"'What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love? What if the temple comes to Mohammed? What if you just love? without deciding? You just do: you see her and in that instant are lost to sober account-keeping and cannot choose but to love?'"

Year Read: 2014, 2020

Rating: 5/5

Context: It's hard to know where to begin writing a review for this book. I read it for the first time in graduate school in about five weeks (alongside everything else I had to do in grad school, so I don't recommend that), and it basically blew my mind. At the same time, it's hard to imagine tackling it any other way for the first time. Despite its difficulty, there are things obsessive and immersive and, appropriately, even addictive about it. Full immersion might be the only way to read it for the first time, and I obsessed about it for months afterward. Since I'm not on any deadlines, I took it more slowly this time (21 weeks) so I could enjoy the writing and the nuances without the pressure to finish. For my less coherent weekly updates in real time, see my blog posts. Trigger warnings: Everything, everything. Death (on-page), child death, animal death, suicide, suicidal ideation, rape, pedophilia, possible incest, child abuse/abusive households, graphic violence/gore, eye horror, severe injury, drug use, addiction, alcoholism, mental illness, depression, OCD, grief, racism, ableism, transphobia, sexism, inexplicable hostility toward Canadians.

About: If it's difficult to know how to write a review, it's equally hard to describe what Infinite Jest is about. It's about so many things, tennis, addiction, communication (failures), and entertainment among them, but I'll do my best. Beneath all the numerous characters, timelines, and subplots, the main plot is about a film so entertaining that it kills anyone who watches it, robs them of all desire to do anything but watch it until they die, and what a faction of Canadian assassins will do to possess it. The auteur is James Incandenza, a suicide whose son, Hal, is a prodigy at Enfield Tennis Academy. Next door to E.T.A. is Ennet House, a drug rehabilitation center where Don Gately, former thief and Demerol addict, is taking it day by day to stay sober. Though they don't know it, Hal and Gately are connected, and the deadly Entertainment and those who seek it draw their paths closer and closer together.

Thoughts: It's rare to find a book that is actually as smart as it claims to be, but IJ is--certainly much smarter than I am, despite all my attempts to make sense of it. It starts off strong and doesn't let up for several hundred pages, which is a huge achievement all by itself. Wallace excels at writing extremely polished sections that could almost function alone as short stories, and the first chapter is one of my favorites in all fiction. It's reassuring, I think, to start the book off on a strong note, in case we worried we were in for a thousand pages of tedious slog. It can be both, but it's often heartfelt, insightful, and funny as well, and the payoff is well worth the effort. I don’t know how Wallace manages to pack every page with so much meaning. Anybody can put tedious lists in their books or make reading purposely difficult (and I have attitude about writers who do this for no reason), but there’s nothing haphazard about this book, despite its size and varied focus. Everything seems utterly intentional. The conversations are really top-tier; Wallace has a great ear for how people talk, and it's a fascinating look at how communication works and doesn't work.

Thematically, I think the book succeeds on more than any other level, including plot or structure. If we could say this book is "about" anything, we would almost certainly start with the themes and not the plot, which is often secondary to whatever point Wallace is trying to make at the moment. It takes an in-depth looks at things like addiction, depression, loneliness, failed communication, sincerity v. irony, critiques of postmodernism and metafiction (while being very meta itself, at times), and the very specific selfishness of an American culture that insists on freedom even to the point of self-destruction. At times, it feels a little heavy-handed or like it was yanked right out of an intro to philosophy course, but I suppose something in a thousand pages has to be obvious if we're ever going to pick up on it. A lot of these themes resurface in his other work, from "This is Water" and "E Unibus Pluram" to Orin Incandenza's Brief Interview style Q and A (and he would be a perfectly fitting character in that book).

The characters are some of my favorites in literary fiction as well, particularly the Incandenza family and Don Gately, and to a lesser extent Joelle Van Dyne (although Wallace typically doesn’t write female characters very well, and she comes with some issues). Hal and Gately couldn't be more different; Hal excels at everything he's ever done, and Gately has a record that includes accidental homicide on it. Hal is the hero of non-action, since little that happens in the book is engineered by him, while Gately is closer to the more typical hero of action, who defends the undeserving at great cost to himself. Yet their struggles with addiction are similar, and they both manage to be incredibly sympathetic characters. In my opinion, the book is always at its best when we’re with Hal or Gately, but I’m strongly driven by good characters. Despite being dead, James Incandenza's presence is also felt all over the book, from the Entertainment he created to his haunting ETA and sticking beds to the ceiling (probably the weirdest ghost I've ever seen in fiction). He's a tragic character in a book full of tragic characters. The others are too numerous to name, from the other tennis players at ETA and recovering addicts at Enfield, to the various bystanders populating Boston. We get brief glimpses into almost all of them, and while they may not all feel relevant at the time, most are memorable or heart-wrenching or slapstick funny, or all three. It's a book that contains multitudes.

That's not to say it's always on point though, and it isn't. There are a number of very serious problems with representation in this novel, and they're as bad as its detractors claim. A lot of the 90s humor aged very poorly, but that's not an excuse for some of the unabashedly racist depictions of African Americans, the uncharitable descriptions of Steeply's and Poor Tony's cross-dressing, or--however much I love him as a character--the fact that Mario Incandenza’s descriptions are ableist in just about every possible way. Wallace thinks he's capturing "voice" when he's really encouraging harmful stereotypes. The humor of the novel often doesn’t depend at all on these stereotypes and would in fact, be a lot more funny if I wasn’t spending so much energy cringing at it. So many of the little racist and ableist asides could have easily been edited out of the entire novel to make it less offensive. There are also sections where he seems at pains to be as gross as possible for its own sake. There are plenty of things grim or uncomfortable or flat out distasteful about this book, but sometimes the graphic violence kind of jumps out and stabs you in the eye, say, with a railroad spike.

If there are times when I was totally absorbed in the little tragedies of the Incandenza family or Gately's struggles, there are plenty more where it's like pushing something heavy up a hill. No lie, some of it is slogging through tedious minutiae and various experimental writing styles (some more successful and less offensive than others). Wallace has a gift for purposeful tedium; it’s at its peak in The Pale King, but he gives it a nice warm-up round here. The novel is difficult and meant to be, since Wallace maintained that some of the best pleasures are the ones we have to work for, and he's not totally off base. There's something very satisfying about living, for a time, in a book that spans a thousand pages, that demands focus and perseverance, and manages to give back (almost) as much as it takes. The book is always structurally interesting, but it starts to get more complicated toward the end as various characters and plots begin to almost slide into one another. I forgot how frustrating it was to near the end and realize--again--that it wasn't going to wrap up with any kind of satisfaction; the various plots slide, but they don’t meet. I thought if I paid closer attention on a second read that I would pick up more of the plot things I’d missed on my first, but I think the problem is that those answers simply aren’t to be found in the actual text. Of course, they can point us toward various conclusions, and the novel certainly encourages us to speculate and make connections, but I don’t think the actual answers are there.

That brings me to some of my final thoughts, for now. There's no doubt that this is a hugely successful book, and I believe it accomplished exactly what Wallace meant it to do. He jokingly referred to it as a failed entertainment, much the way Jim considered his lethal Entertainment a failure, but I have the sense that Wallace, unlike Jim, failed on purpose. The book purposely pays more attention to structure and theme than it does to plot or character, yet the plot and characters are hugely compelling for what we see of them. Imagine the book it could have been if he had paid equal attention to all of them. Wallace attempted to create a book that people wouldn't want to stop reading. Reaching the end certainly encourages us to begin again, as the first chapter is actually the last in chronology, but that trick only works the first time. By my second read, I realized that starting over wouldn't help me fill in any of those blanks or answer any of my questions, and I was content to let it go. On the one hand, IJ depends upon its structure to tell the story it's telling. On the other, think of the book it could have been if it spent more time telling a story and developing its characters and less time belaboring a point. It's one of the best books I've ever read, and the tragedy is that I think it could have been even better.

[noodlesforequality-blog]

Who cares about mental health?

 Let me start off by describing mental health. (I'm putting my knowledge as a psychology major to good use in this blog.) Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood. Factors that contribute to mental health issues are biology, past trauma and family history of mental health problems.

 Mental health is often overlooked in our society, for example did you know 56% of American adults with a mental illness do not receive treatment? Even though the access to insurance and treatment has increased over the years, the number of American's going without treatment is still incredibly high. Of course because of so many adults going about their lives without seeking treatment, often their kids go without treatment as well, causing the rates of youth with severe depression increase from 5.9% in 2012 to 8.2% in 2015. Even with severe depression, 76% of youth are left with no or insufficient treatment. 

If these numbers of people suffering from mental illnesses are so high why aren't more people seeking help? My theory to this is because of the stigma against mental health. I'm sure you've heard the stigmas such as, people with depression or mental illnesses being shunned, on crazy murdering sprees, placed in straitjackets, locked away in intuitions, and more.  

Sure there are some really messed up people who DO get put into institutions, I'm not gonna say that isn't true, but if you go to your local therapist for anxiety or depression issues then I promise you that you won't get put away for life or anything like that. The people put in intuitions are the ones who have quite literally lost their minds or hurt/murdered others. The point is so many Americans get so caught up in the stigma of mental health meaning you're crazy or something that they do not seek professional help for their mental illnesses.

 A common cause for youth not seeking help for mental illnesses is their parents.  76% of teens have admitted to asking parents for help with anxiety or stress and said they were brushed off and told it was a normal part of growing up. 

Later on those teens experienced breakdowns or issues in college due to not having the resources or support from parents to get help.

"The college years, developmentally, happen to coincide with the peak period of onset of all psychiatric illnesses. College presents … sort of a perfect storm. You not only have a young person entering the stage where they're most likely to develop a mental health issue, but you also have a significant amount of stress," says Pinder-Amaker, who's also a psychology instructor at Harvard Medical School.

It's no lie that stress is a killer. Stress can brought on by dealing with a mental illness without professional help, can be worse in the sense that the longer you go without help, the longer the stress will remain and affect your physical health. According to the American Psychological Association, chronic stress is linked to the six leading causes of death: heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver and suicide.

Alright so you've read all my stats, get the point that mental illness is overlooked and understand how it is important for people to get help. Now you might be asking "How do I get help?" or "How do I help others get help." and I have the answers for you.

-Stop the stigma of mental illnesses. Learn to point out that if someone needs help that it is totally okay. If someone jokes about mental illnesses speak up and tell them it isn't a joke.

-If you need help do not be afraid to reach out. Psychologist's and Psychiatrist's are around for a reason, and that reason is to help people with mental illnesses. They won't judge you, lock you away or ignore your issues. They will entirely focus on you. Click here to find your local psychologist.  

-If you suspect someone you know might have a mental illness take time to talk to them one on one. Ask them what's going on and show them that you just want what is best for them. Support them to get the help they need and be there for them. Remind them that their problem can be treated and that they can get better. Click here for tips on what to do when someone you know has a mental illness.

-Need help but you are scared to tell a parent or actually go to therapy? That is totally okay and you can still get help. 7 Cups is a free online therapy where you can talk to others who suffer from the same issues or talk to a online counselor.  Getting help for your mental illness is important and it is the first step to becoming a better you.

Mental health is just as important as physical health and needs to not be overlooked any longer by society. Learn to end the stigmas to mental illnesses and speak up to let others know it is okay to get help. That's it for this weeks blog but make sure to subscribe and comment your opinions on mental health. 

[convndrums]

here the FAWK she ( the semi-finished masterlist of all my characters ) is ! took way too long but hopefully as you proceed to click on the linque below you’ll know why smh but yep ! i’ll be adding their pages on my account when i’m done with them soon i hope and maybe come back with a bunch of connections for each character but for now this is all i got & smash this like or im me for plots i’d love to get on those finally xx

reintroducing amanda wheeler;  intro & info page.

queen of irony. rich post- faux country gal who’s a loud homosexual and writes hetero fics/has an indie het smut for the absolute shits and giggles. dates a married woman she’s utterly in love with and will pull the life support cord for. said to be possessed by a possessed flapper. cute and knows it even though she looks like a republican. socially open & everywhere. morally grey.

reintroducing imogen yates; intro & info page. ( tw violence )

the grey area between your mom friend and your drunk aunt. happily vegan & owns a vegan restaurant called the fork, alt. the vegan cult’s lair. won’t kill you, but will convince you she really wants to. local brat tamer. minds her business via minding others. clashed head-first into nature’s very own reset button: amnesia. used to be satan and traumatized everyone. disgustingly active and accomplishing.

reintroducing ethan holland; intro & info page. ( tw suicide )

he is a sk8r boi, she said see ya later boy ( and meant it. they’re dating now. hey lourdes ! ) a nice person, so nice he doesn’t realize how fake he sounds/is. a certified headass. previously a bully/bully enabler, current guilty fuck. #torn. does the most for his loved ones. doesn’t remember his own birthday. googled foot fetishes once. trolls stan twitter with his fake selena gomez stan account when tumblr crashes. burned a sue of cide note with his name scribbled on it.

reintroducing sebastian miller; intro & info page ( tw violence )

kazimer sokolov whom. russian ex-cult member well-adjusted into a mundane life via lies, a fake canadian accent he’s ‘trying to get rid of’, being a twilight saga aficionado and a dickwad, a lame record store and a tumblr blog to keep himself sane by maintaining a general aesthetic and shitting on people and every discourse out there. knives/books sniffer. allegedly fucked a moose. probably kinkshames as a way to deal with his own “kinks” aka please keep the dead bodies away. ( im kidding i swear but [redacted] )

reintroducing prudence zima; intro & info page ( tw death )

parents died in a fire when she was two months old and it shows. idolizes avril lavigne & her favorite movie is lords of dogtown for aesthetics references. dude. social leech or effortless networker ? both. remains in her lane regardless. cry-types probably. here for a good time, not a long time. steals your stash and smokes you out with it. avid dick connoisseur. minimum effort lifestyle. either on her way to become a manager of some one hit wonder band that finds it’s demise in a freak accident, a drug dealer or god forbid, a guidance counselor; depends. mild cool girl syndrome. 

reintroducing jennifer meade; intro & info page ( tw death, violence and abuse )

bi/pussy muncher and proud misandrist, first and foremost. remembers killing her brother very fondly. the one girl in a room to call when you want to kill a bug and you’re relieved until she kills it with her bare hand. tops. unstable & chaotic evil, respectively. the ginger devil. biased and has her minion whom she invests a great deal of her time in brain washing and obsessing over. supposedly here to make amends but that’s not happening any time soon.

reintroducing margot williams; intro & info page ( tw mental illness )

deserves better. very gay. all her friends are heathens xtra, take it slow. corrects typos in the gc. a nerdy editorial assistant daydreaming about publishing houses instead of the magazine she works for. lowkey shy and she’s angry about it. goes off if she must. jacks off to #knowledge and yuri anime. helps with homework and essays and takes the kids out. deadpan because we’re original but she swears it’s just the face & unresolved trauma. stans her therapist. unofficial older sister.

reintroducing chandler accardi; intro ( re-written ) & info page

needs to do better. dropped out of college for culinary school then dropped out of that too. was engaged to an absolute goddess he ultimately wronged ( with her damn best friend, bitch disgostin* ) and got kicked out to the curb. currently residing in the couch of his sister until things are resolved. thot-by-default & annoying. has like three ( 3 ) redeeming qualities. has never been told to shut up and it shows. works at buzzfeed.

reintroducing abel gautier; intro & info page

french and “confused”. lives a minimalist n’ expensive life. if american psycho & french kiss were the same movie. wine sniffer. the devil bakes croissants. will watch you die. takes grudges to the afterlife. gets attached but either ruins it or ruins it to spare everyone, himself included. falls in love a lot but knows how to calm the fuck down. very giving, fortunately. manipulative but isn’t too wild about bending everything to his will. 

reintroducing simini gale; intro & info page ( tw abuse, violence & mental illness )

token white actress & character in rosie’s show. [ britney vc ] its me.... against dissociation. a loud mess with an intense mental state and anger issues dulled out by her prescribed meds and whatever pill she got in the bottom of her manager’s purse. dependent and distraught about it. grocery shopping for garbage food and attending comedy stand up shows half drunk as a hobby. stable ? where. very nice and super flighty. heels are hot. wishes she could fight someone without feeling the urge to actually fight someone. 

reintroducing calvin o’shea; intro & info page ( tw mental illness )

it’s not just the depression more than the incredible self hatred. walks into rooms with his bad energy, grumpy mood and cunty attitude. graduated college just to shut his dad up. wants to die harder than edward cullen. just doesn’t give a shit. has a baby named freddie mercury ( also known as the antichrist, with alanis, his mortal literal enemy whom he absolutely despises and will not hesitate to put his dick back in again lbr ) who will probably grow up to talk shit about his parents whom he also mentioned in his tell-all book on ellen. works at his family’s bookstore that sucks the life energy out of college students nearing a mental breakdown.

reintroducing isabel pavia; intro & info page ( tw drug use )

contemporary dances her feelings away. too ambitious for her own good but knows what she’s doing. in a goth ass secret society ( here ) a.k.a her new found purpose. knows everything eventually. oddly trustworthy. doesn’t know what speaking loudly is, let alone yelling. loves the moon & has that moon app. had to take painkillers when she twisted her ankle very badly and would take them for a while for stress and performance reasons, but has stopped. a quiet angel. 

reintroducing anastasia zeller; intro & info page

ambitious/multi-talented asshole. horror trash & an emotional/mental maze which translates well into her weird works on no sleep reddit and current horror comedy podcast. ( click here for info ). needs a therapist according to a friend, whom she dropped for saying that. will bite your head off. obsessed with her works to an unhealthy point. would love to establish a company and stuff out of it and is working on that. healthy relationships are a semi-foreign concept.

reintroducing morgan booker; intro & info page ( tw death )

vape-curious and takes photos of ghost towns and abandoned-everythings because #vision. had a roadtrip phase like the fake deep idiot he is. morally grey. genuinely here for a good laugh and spreading joy in the form of hover-friendships and taking lit candids of his friends. knows shit and comes off as a creep sometimes but does he really care. knows your mom’s name. lives in a disused hospital bc he’s marinating on that aesthetic. 

reintroducing bowie harmon; intro & info page ( tw drug use & abuse )

part of a duo in a web series as the anxious n’ cackling mess. showcases her depressión & anxieté by her colorful wigs n’ new hair dyes. painful receptionist at a tattoo parlor. recovering addict who advocates for drug use. thinks tattooing a ruler on someone’s dick one day would be the peak of her accomplishments as a tattoo artist. daily bad decisions. “ it’s complicated. ” when asked about literally any relationship she has with anyone in her life. traumas include her failed singing career. an ex viner-by-association.

reintroducing shaheen bin baz; intro & info page ( tw violence & mental illness )

the physical deception of going through hell in a short amount of time with zero mental durability to begin with during midterms. trigger-anxious. will shoot your toes off your foot if caught off guard. aided in criminal operations with the brilliance of his mind in codes. would not mind dying. seasons your food. waters his crops in his balcony garden. the grey area between a super laidback dude and a crackhead with violent tendencies. nearing a mental breakdown probably. 

reintroducing minka abbott-santos; intro & info page ( tw abuse )

defeats the evil stepmom stereotype one breath at a time. the human embodiment of a deer. gothic angel. alarmingly gets black swan. type to wake up to her staring at you from an armchair across the room, but lovingly, with a book she was reading in hand and two hot cups of tea; she was waiting to start the day with you. spooky until you get to know her and even more spookier when she’s ( note: calmly ) pissed but that’s extremely rare. gentle voice, soul and everything.

reintroducing reuben faulkner; intro & info page ( tw abuse & violence  )

rekt hell prince. lived in an amish community with his family until he got kidnapped away from home when he was seven into an awful living situation. doesn’t remember if the gas leak that happened five years later and killed everyone was his doing or not. knows where his real family is after months of tracking them down but. blood kink under investigation. shady bouncer at a shady club. has issues he has no care or time to diminish. fights for the shits and giggles. leaves texts at read. leaves you alone for your own good and his own sanity. 

reintroducing alexandra turunen;  info page

wants to do everything and be everything and doesn’t know what to do with herself ( read: post-graduation identity crisis ) currently investing in a motorcycle for no reason. essentially jobless. a “retired” kathryn merteuil who “outgrew” her cunning ways since highschool but really only found new socially destructive interests. appears to be self-possessed but she’s #shaken. doesn’t care about how well she presents herself anymore after getting rejected by four universities and refusing to accept her father’s offer to pull some strings to get her in one. sleeps a lot. 

reintroducing giuseppe del vecchio;  info page ( tw death & drug use  )

goes by pepe because well. son of italian oil peeps & is extra. said to be in a cult when all he’s in is this extra ass dining club that does the most for initiation ceremonies. ready to fall in love with you. goes to the king’s college in london and studies business & changes his minor way too often for everyone’s liking. into everything and will be down to do whatever. faux deep. mischievous shit. incredibly unbiased. had his rawrk n’ roll phase that died along with someone in a club literally. still has it but he knows god now & less drugs.

reintroducing kelian scott;  info page ( tw death & drug use  )

a father/father figure who tries™. runs a mechanic shop/chop shop because bad decisions and dire needs ( had his son to send to school and his daughter who passed away due to a disease he couldn’t afford to treat even after turning his shop into a chop shop. his wife then left him ). stares into the distance. wants the best for the kids but one of them is a junkie ( he doesn’t know yet ) and the other -- his niece -- is an orphan he’s worried about. thinks ahead 24/7. needs to pull out of this dull n’ depressing daily routine he has fallen into like the basic ass divorced dad he is. 

reintroducing sal presley;  info page

smexy trace & fingerprint detective. talks. the perfect illusion to bring home to your parents and friends. gets shit done which is both a good thing and a bad thing. looks calm, collected n’ well-rested but isn’t. his actual name is salvatore but no. knows how to mix drinks and more; used to showcase his multi-talented ass to make his ( currently ex ) fiancée look good now just himself. was engaged three times; two of those times with the same person. obsessive; gets into his job a little too intensely for no reason but #justice and maybe something else whom knows. loses sleep at least two nights a week as a habit at this point. has an extended family back home he misses occasionally. wishes he could calm down truly. 

[shekeepsthebees]

A single honey bee will only produce about one teaspoon of honey in their whole lifetime. Bees also manage to fly, despite the fact that their wings are technically too small to carry their weight. I really, really love bees. I mean, this blog’s name includes bees. I want to keep bees when I’m older. I just feel very strongly about bees, and I feel very deeply for those little bees without many words to explain it.

I mention this because yesterday, I had to drive up to DFW for an interview with the TSA and stopped by the Botanical Gardens of Fort Worth afterwards. I was walking around the grounds of the gardens (saw some amazing things, and will definitely be going back in the future) and passed this huge bush of winter honeysuckle (I did not know it was a thing, but yes, it smells as incredible as regular honeysuckle) and it was being visited by dozens of honeybees.

I stopped and managed to get a picture on my phone (lol) because I wanted to capture the moment. In that moment, I was just so thankful to be there. I kept telling the clerk in the gift shop that I was so overwhelmed by all the beauty and plants there (I also really, really love plants). 

I don’t know how much I’ve shared on this blog, in the past or ever, but I used to struggle with my mental health to the point of suicidal thoughts. These thoughts frequented my mind sometime starting my junior year in high school (I think, my mental health has given me a bit of difficulty remembering a lot of time). I share this not for pity or to broadcast my issues, but I share it to help reduce stigma. One of the most common responses I hear to suicide when it is brought up in conversation is that people think it is so incredibly selfish, or a slap to God. And there are cases where that may be entirely true. I’m not going to make excuses for other people’s suicides. But I want to explain my own thoughts: they came from a place where I wanted to make things easier on people by not being there, not necessarily from a place where I simply wanted to give up. I watched my mom’s heart ache for me for three years as I struggled with anorexia, anxiety, and depression. When I say I struggled, I was mostly losing the battle. There were a lot of days when I did not know how I would continue moving, or even breathing. This sounds so dramatic, and I really don’t intend for it to be that way. I’m just trying to explain myself here. I was a shell of a girl held together by the buttons on her school uniform and her desire to please her parents, just trying to make them happy and show them that I could survive, if not be happy or successful.

I share this to reduce stigma, explain myself, and explain why I introduced this post with bees. I relate to a honey bee because I often feel like I’m just not supposed to be thriving. I do not think all of my tireless efforts will produce much in life. I’m not sure what God’s plans for my life are, but I’m just not convinced it will be anything big and glamorous, and I’m alright with that. If God’s plan for me is simple to survive, then I’m going to do my best to accomplish that.

You see, today marks the three year anniversary of when an old friend took his own life. And tomorrow will mark three years of another friend leaving this world in the same manner. And time is drawing in on one full year of life without one of my best friends from high school, who accidentally overdosed. I have known an unusual amount of loss for someone my age, I believe. And I remember at the vigil three years ago for those boys turning to one of the few people I trusted at the time and, unable to muster up tears given my depression, squeaked out the words, “It should’ve been me,” to her. I genuinely thought that for some reason, if I had done it sooner or first, that maybe they would still be there.

So today, I am thankful that my heart is still beating, my lungs still breathing, and my eyes still seeing. I look at flowering bushes buzzing with bees and try find a little joy in how God works--how God can produce some amazing insects and plants and nature. I watch the sun peak through leaves and branches of old trees, the blossoms on my plants fan out and the pollen swirl up in the air when I open my window. I read about DNA and the architecture of the Pantheon and I am so glad to exist. I know that among the bees, trees, flowers, sciences, and architecture, God thought of me. God wanted to create me as magnificent as He made the sunsets, the ocean, and even love. 

These days, when life gets hard, I don’t let myself get to that point mentally. My heart may be heavy, the circles around my eyes dark, and my ribs might feel as though they are between bricks, but I know that I still have purpose. God put me here for a reason. It might be only to make a little teaspoon of honey in someone’s life, but I’m okay with that. I don’t question why I’m still around, I don’t question why I was made. I fight and know I have to push through it, and work hard like those little bees just to get around and through my day. I am here for a reason, just as you are (if you’ve made it this far). When it gets hard, try to push through for those who didn’t, or those who couldn’t. God will not ever leave or forsake us. He will carry us through, always.