while I choose to hope this was posted here as a joke, I am willing to consider that the OP felt it genuinely—like, how much is your health worth to you? unfortunately for OP and maybe the reposters involved, since idk you (and fortunately for anyone else who sees this bc that’s on you for how you curated your dash), I’m a worrywart-nerd with an opinion (worth maybe two cents to all but me) and this tunglr blog.
I joined tumblr for memes and fandom, and I stayed this long because I nested here, and maybe the nest has some glaring flaws, but it’s my nest, and I’ve checked out some other sites for nests and they give me some ick or another, or they’re just not my cup of tea. I stayed long enough to say that the special interests i daydreamed about in middle school are somehow, actually, the focus of my day-job (tough, but there’s actually not a whole lot I’d want to trade it for, I think). Right now, I’m a graduate student in medical science, in neuroscience.
I am both extremely, morbidly fascinated by mental and neurological health and disease, and the ways we might eek out a better quality of life from intervening in that in some way, and also keenly, utterly aware of and heartbroken by the ways in which not having the interventions I dream about results in unpleasant experiences that don’t necessarily even have any meaning in them. Like, we can keep looking toward a bright side and maybe glimpsing a silver lining, but sometimes, bad things happen to people who are good.
More importantly, more relevantly, bad things happen to people who always try to be so good, so very avoidant of bad, that they never risk a little health issue for a little relief or maybe even pleasure. I’m not sure where the line for balance is, and I suspect it’s different for everyone at any given moment. Good health does not indicate moral superiority, and I think that lesson is especially critical when considering the conditions I study—because it’s behind pointless, it’s probably harmful to keep asking, “could I have done things differently? If I’d done things differently—if I’d been more careful or if I’d taken more risk—would I still be here, experiencing this?” when the things you’re experiencing are happening in that moment, either way. The things I’m thinking about are like, concussions and twisted ankles, but also fetal alcohol syndrome and dementia—maybe you knew what the risk could be, but you didn’t think it’d happen to you (or you had no idea—why didn’t you know?), so you risked it, and now you’re looking at or feeling something that isn’t pleasant and wondering, “was this somehow my fault? can I honestly blame someone—something—else? does it matter who gets blamed, or even who’s responsible, if I’m still experiencing this and no amount of trying to make up for it will actually undo it?” How much control do you have? How much can you even hope to have, if you want it?
And on the flip side, it really, genuinely, could have happened to anyone. Maybe your choices led you there, but so did other people’s choices, and random chance, and how the universe happened to shake out across infinitely accumulating moments. It could happen, even if you were as cautious as you could be and avoided every risk you sensed. And so it goes. At that point—and as I said, I spend far too much of my time and energy worrying for no good reason—maybe you do need to risk some potentially unpleasant outcomes. You do a risk-assessment, when you can—here’s how terrible things could be, but also, here’s how wonderful they could be, and here’s what I have at stake and might lose if I do it—and then, let’s circle back to what I have to lose if I avoid it and opt to do nothing. I’m trying to solve a matrix for my own well-being and idk how I tutored (how I was allowed to—I was volunteering, but still, someone let me risk messing that up) other kids in algebra back in high school but: bestie, moot, fellow tunglerina, I am very out of practice with solving math problems and I’m left relying on vague, abstract estimates when it comes to solutions.
so, yeah, I’ll sell my soul for 1 corn chip, if I have a rough idea of what I need my soul for (if I am a future version of me after my soul is removed, if I can still sense and experience and interact with the world and other people in some way, whatever, what do I need or want a soul for?) and that corn chip seems worth that gamble (if I’ve never had a corn chip like this one, maybe it’s worth fucking around to find out and answer that question). Maybe I’ll miss my soul when it’s gone, but then, maybe I won’t notice it, or maybe I will simply not sense anything and the extinction of my soul and I will be a problem for those who care about me.
And after I’ve done all that worrying, I need to avoid feeling guilty, so I focus on feeling love and appreciation.
blakekathryn
dededos
germansingergirl
origamiaround
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
