#trauma is not sacred

[kennymoonshoes]

trauma is not sacred

Written by Kai Cheng Thom

[skepwith]

trauma is not sacred

violence is not special pain is not holy suffering does not make angels abuse defines no one you are more than the things that hurt you you are more than the people you have hurt do not make an altar to your woundedness do not make a fetish out of mine a body belongs to no one a memory is not made to be eaten does it titillate you to hear about assault if i told you my story, would you swallow it whole if i confessed my sins would you feed me to the beasts to purge your own i will show you mine if you show me yours we have all seen the darkness now give us the dawn tell me about the joy you keep in the hollow spaces between your bones tell me again how you laughed when you realized that you were not wholly unlovable i’ll tell you again how i cried when my best friend told me that I was not a bad person remember how we used to count the lines on our palms when we were little how we used to try to read the future for its gifts how we used to make lists of the things we would dream of when finally we were free i will make you a list of the things i’m grateful for i will sing you a litany of reasons to be alive i want to know the songs you wake up for in the morning i want to marvel at the unbelievable graciousness of your being i know that i am capable of pouring love like lavender oil into your cupped palms there is forgiveness like honey pooled in the chambers of our hearts you are the thing i am most grateful for all bodies know how to heal themselves given enough time all demons carry a map of heaven and their scars beneath the skin of every history of trauma                 there is a love poem waiting deep below

Kai Cheng Thom, “trauma is not sacred” from a place called No Homeland. © 2017 by Kai Cheng Thom.

[serpentface]

Tigran: launching into a story about a time when he was 7 and watched a guy get eaten alive by dogs, completely unprompted and unnervingly blasé about the whole thing.

Etsushir: not listening, warming his hands over the nightly allotment of yams, smoking.

Palo: this is the tenth time he's heard this story, not listening, wondering whether Etsushir is smoking tobacco and where the hell he got it and can he have some?

[banishedchildofeve]

┊         ┊       ┊   ┊    ┊    . ˚ ₊⋆·

┊         ┊       ┊   ┊   ˚✩ ⋆｡˚

┊         ┊       ┊   ✫

┊         ┊       ✧ ₊ ⊹

┊ 𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✯ ⋆ 

⊹. ₊ ⊹

₊⋆·˚ a prayer to the Sacred Heart:

“O most holy heart of Jesus,

fountain of every blessing,

I adore you, I love you, and

with lively sorrow for my sins,

I offer you this poor heart of mine.

Make me humble, patient, pure

and wholly obedient to your will.

Grant, good Jesus,

that I may live in you and for you.

Protect me in the midst of danger.

Comfort me in my afflictions.

Give me health of body,

assistance in my temporal needs,

your blessing on all that I do,

and the grace of a holy death.

Amen.”

⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀⁀➴

[meimyr-dawn]

Marika shackling her two sons, Mohg and Morgott, is so much worse after this new DLC lore. It wasn’t a command from the two fingers, or a social norm that she was following, or even an emotionally detached rejection of children that weren’t “perfect”. It was a specific and personal hatred of what they were.

[zelda-the-sacred-realm]

"Oh boy, The Sacred Realm Updated!" That one panel with Twilight: 😃

This panel? 🥺

The new update has a bit of trauma, but I had to do it

I hope you enjoyed the new update! 💖

Thanks for your ask!

[dirafames]

[foxglove-and-foxfire-lover]

They’re brothers your honour

[stressfulsloth]

Disco Elysium// Two Fishermen on an Aspidochelone, Unknown// Our Wives Under the Sea, Armfield// Unknown// Disco Elysium// Gallathea, Lyly// Sharks Feeding, Crossley// From Bodily Fear to Cosmic Horror (and back again), Miller// Disco Elysium// Early Verse, Marx// The Road, McCarthy// A Sacred and Terrible Air, Kurvitz (team ibex translation)// Disco Elysium// Disco Elysium// Disco Elysium Art Book// A Sacred and Terrible Air, Kurvitz// Nona the Ninth, Muir// Sunrise With Sea Monsters, Turner// Nona the Ninth, Muir// Disco Elysium// The World's One Hope, Brecht// The Old Gentleman of Raahe// Disco Elysium// Disco Elysium// Disco Elysium// Engraved Shell. Unknown// Capitalism and the Sea// Disco Elysium// Capitalism and the Sea//

[garden-the-goblin]

Big fan of the reoccurring motif in fiction where god is just a little girl. Like I adore how writers came to the unanimous agreement that the most terrifying thing you could be is a little girl left to her own devices. That's good shit.

[a-couple-of-notes]

There's something so special about how Agatha All Along positions Lorna's version of the ballad. We're introduced to it as "the most popular version of the ballad," and I think--as with any popular thing, especially pop music--the instinct is that it has somehow degraded over time, twisting away from its original roots. They've taken something sacred (the literal "sacred chant" version) and commercialized it, and the story will peel back that artificial popularity to reveal what the true meaning of the ballad is. You know, take us back to when they wrote real music.

But then the show reveals: no. That sacred chant version, for all its spooky harmonies and medieval-sounding traditionalism, that was the scam. And this popular song written centuries later, the one that connected with so many people, that this Gen Z teenager especially likes, that was the version closest to the original form of the ballad. It's not a degradation over time; it's an unknowing healing, a kind of quiet reconstruction--just like Agatha is being pushed into her own healing journey.

And I don't know, I just love that this is the version of the song the show chooses to embrace--it's Lorna's version that Japanese Breakfast sings over the closing credits. Maybe in a Doylist sense, that's because the Lopezes wrote Lorna's version first. But in the Watsonian sense, it's really cool. Not everything in the past is sacred. And as we move into the future, we can reach for better, truer, more earnest things.

[sacra-meretrix]

[desengelein]

Sacred heart

[666candies]

idk how to name this aesthetic but I love it

[dirafames]

biblically accurate girl dinner

[septembersghost]

my queue was supposed to run out tonight (11/19) - i'm nothing if not someone who clings to dates and anniversaries, and exactly a month ago, i realized i had enough posts stowed in it to last until today. of all the days. kismet. you know when it's time to go. but i ended up adding some posts from my (still copious) drafts, and no matter how i finagled it, it was impossible to make them all fit by the time today ended. so it gets a little bit of extra time. maybe, in honor of this blog's existence, that's fitting.

you all know this, i've said it, typically in gratitude, many times already. this blog was never meant to last. i came back in november 2020 expecting a couple of months, maybe to be here until the new year. i told very few people, anticipating the goodbye, not wanting to cause anyone undue anguish when i had to vanish again. something i didn't expect was the sheer (admittedly devasting) emotion that would tie itself to those two weeks when i started interacting again, nor that it would have any outreach or impact, but somehow it did. then time kept spinning on, extending itself, gossamer threads unfurling each day. my following kept growing, far beyond what i could have anticipated, greater than i'd ever established on any of my previous blogs. moving around is unfortunately a pattern at this point, every time for reasons that felt quietly catastrophic. not being able to pay bills for a while. angel's death and the ensuing difficult circumstances. so here, i kept anxiously imagining why i'd eventually have to leave, how to plan for it. poverty issues. the homelessness we were facing through the entirety of a couple of years until last august (and my dad having to be the saving grace). worsening health issues. i never knew, i couldn't predict it, i just worried about it. often tried to brace for it. maybe i got too comfortable this year, because this was when i started to think it wouldn't happen, that i really could stay. little did i know. and the reasons...are not reasons i ever fathomed, why would i have? how could i have? i wish it weren't so. (i wish a lot of things.)

i thought sometimes about the words i would leave you with, none of which are suitable now. i almost wrote nothing, yet found that feeling wrong, couldn't leave without something about parting.

thus it turns out i'm leaving before it's strictly necessary, before it's the fear of personal catastrophe coming to fruition, not knowing what i'll do or where i'll metaphorically go, as that is the downside of chronic illness and isolation narrowing this to my sole outlet. (lyrics keep running through my mind, there are always lyrics stuck in my head. no matter where i go, there'll be memories that tug at my sleeve, but there will also be more to question, yet more to believe...teach me to be more adaptive...help me say goodbye). my body is in such a fragile state right now (my mind not far behind) that maybe what i need to do is rest. just rest for a while.

this blog was never meant to grow the way it did, to take asks and have conversations like i did, that was a somewhat new (sometimes scary! often fun) experience for me. it's one that will never be replicated. to my loyal and lovely anons, i'm so sorry that i had to cut you off unexpectedly and couldn't reinstate communication - i know that you weren't able to reach out to me as soon as i did that, and that certainly wasn't your fault, it was a response to the tenor of this website. i apologize for the hundreds of messages i never had the chance to answer. i'm appreciative of the things you shared with me and all the times we got to talk.

i sincerely hope some of you learn to be kinder and wiser and less reactionary and more willing to learn and to listen rather than to attack those who have never wronged you and who do not deserve that. i'm being too nice, but i hope you learn that misusing your supposed social justice to do harm and foment hatred and stew in ignorant cruelty makes any principles you purport to have utterly void. my hope for that is low at the moment, but it's still got to be there. waiting to be found.

to those of you who have never been anything but kind, you are true treasures, the lights in the darkness, the loving and compassionate embodiment of human spirit. some of you have (quite literally) helped keep my mom and me alive, and i can never repay that or do enough in this life to quantify it. some of you have been here for me every single day, to listen and laugh and cry and understand. i don't think i would've bothered to fight through these past three years had i not had your presences in my life. i wouldn't have had as much of a reason. there are times when i still haven't felt like i had a reason, i struggle through so many varied griefs, but then i continued to wake up, and would come on here and find something joyful or beautiful or affirming that someone had sent or posted, and it gave me an anchor. there are passions and interests i shared or discovered here that were so uplifting and enlightening, and i will carry them in my heart always. being here to find those was such a blessing. being here with you to indulge in them was such a blessing. thank you. i pray your continued paths have more of that ahead. look at all the things you've done for me. there are certain things that once you have no time can wear away.

you know that line from the wizard of oz?: hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable. maybe that isn't true, maybe our hearts being broken is proof of something. there are people who hurt me on such a profound level who i know weren't affected by it at all, but i refuse to define my sensitivity as a negative. my softness (too soft for all of it, indeed) does not quite provide me with a weapon, but it doesn't crumple. hearts can be broken repeatedly and still beat, which i've thought about a lot lately. shattered souls just make a new mosaic. it's a different picture than it was before, but the color and light persists. and in the remains of that, a handful of people have shown me depths of caring and resilience that i wouldn't have gotten to hold onto otherwise, which is an extraordinary thing. the precious rarities have to mean something more, don't they? i would think so. i believe it. or i'm trying. i keep trying with all my might.

maybe i stayed too long at the fair. maybe this is a consequence of overplaying my hand, gambling a little too much with time to where it had to teach me something. maybe i needed the reminder that sometimes we have to fight to retain our spirits, and other times we have to retreat. maybe i needed a reminder that all that extra time was a miracle. i don't take it for granted.

whether we've spoken directly, be that consistently or in scattered flurries, whether we've interacted in very personal ways or simply in liked hearts on the dash, i hope there was goodness and light in it. i hope there's a memory i leave here that's sweet. (as long as i'm borrowing phrases, i hope you'll think of me fondly sometimes.) i hope there was something warm and enriching here. i hope you know what you've been and meant to me. i said so many times that this blog was my cozy haunted house - the ghosts will linger here forever, and i know they'll never mind if you want to step in and visit.

with all my heart, i love so many of you so dearly. i am so lucky to have your friendships. please move gently through life. please hold onto the things that illuminate it for you, and provide that where you can. please do your best to repair even the smallest of tears in the world. you are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

there must be lights burning brighter somewhere.

something yet remains. i remain. and i do my best to be brave.