Scattered Logic

[pornosophical]

[bbastille]

Warmth by Bastille

[laslo-kovacssss-blog]

There was once a very great American surgeon named Halsted. He was married to a nurse. He loved her-immeasurably. One day Halsted noticed that his wife’s hands were chapped and red when she came back from surgery. And so he invented rubber gloves. For her. It is one of the great love stories in medicine. The difference between inspired medicine and uninspired medicine is love. When I met Ana I knew: I loved her to the point of invention.

Sarah Ruhl, The Clean House  (via iliacl)

[babesargent]

remember the white dress i wore all through that film? george came up to me the first day of filming, took one look at the dress and said: “you can’t wear a bra under that dress.”

“ok, i’ll bite,” i said. “why?” and he said: “because… there’s no underwear in space.”

he said it with such conviction. like he had been to space and looked around and he didn’t see any bras or panties anywhere.

he explained. “you go into space and you become weightless. then your body expands but your bra doesn’t, so you get strangled by your own underwear.”

i think that this would make for a fantastic obituary. i tell my younger friends that no matter how i go, i want it reported that i drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.

rest in peace, carrie fisher (october 21st, 1956 - december 27th, 2016)

[bostonpoetryslam]

Saint Francis, when he broke the wolf, Leaned into the stinking sea of wine and blood that was That animal’s body. I am The wolf. God is the night I must not creep into.

Cynthia Cruz, “Joe the Lion II,” from Ruin (via bostonpoetryslam)

[a-mini-a-day]

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHFHHHHHHFHFHFHASJKFKFFJK!!!!!!!!!! Artist Jada Fitch (genius) created these tiny houses for wild bird friends who come and visit.  I rarely say this but I AM SCREAMING quite literally and publicly. I’ve since passed away. Check out Jada Fitch on: Instagram Tumblr Website

[historicaltimes]

Pablo Picasso “paints” with light, photographed for Life Magazine by Gjon Mili, 1949.

[americanpsycho1991]

i’m now seeing posts that are basically accusing therapists of being the same as ““““neurotypicals”””” who tell you that doing yoga will cure your depression

and it’s fucking killing me because ???  the idea of being annoyed by people telling you that stuff is because those people honestly think that doing yoga and “looking on the bright side” will magically cure your depression, because they can’t imagine happiness not coming as easily to someone else as it does to them.  the idea isn’t that getting exercise and practicing positive thinking are useless ways to treat depression.  but that’s what i’m seeing a lot of now and i just want to say…. i got some fucking bad news, cause that is the treatment for depression.

therapists telling you to get good nutrition and exercise are not the same as your yoga-instructor aunt on facebook posting pictures of the sunrise and wondering how anyone can be depressed when the world is so wonderful!!! thats not just an anti-recovery attitude, it’s an anti-treatment attitude, and it’s unbelievably ignorant.

there’s sort of this interesting circular form to dealing with mental illness, where you start in a place of “i just need to think positively and push myself out of this ditch” and then you move to step 2, which is “depression is a real and very serious illness and it’s not my fault that i’m tired all the time, stop telling me to just “think positive” all the time.”

But then there’s step three, which is where you size up your situation and say “look, i understand how serious my illness is, and i’m no longer blaming myself for it.  And it sucks, and I don’t “deserve” this, and I didn’t bring it on myself.  But regardless of how unfair it is, the truth is that I’m the only one who can actually do anything about it.”  And so in a lot of ways, you end up with parallel ways of thinking as before, but this time you’re coming from a completely different source of understanding.  People who don’t know anything about mental illness say “depression is a choice.”  People who are fed up with being depressed and realize that wallowing in the comforting embrace of self-pity is useful to erase guilt, but ultimately won’t help them lead a better life say, “recovery is a choice.”

The first group means that if you’re depressed, you can just magically decide not to be depressed.  The second group means that depression is a crushing weight on your back determined to make your life as miserable (and as short) as possible, and that you didn’t do anything to cause it, but that ultimately you have the choice of giving up and accepting being depressed for the rest of your life, or you have the option of making an effort to improve your quality of life.  Similar statements, totally different meanings.

But I think a lot of people are sort of seduced by the comfort of giving up, and with the good intention of creating communities of understanding and non-judgement between mentally ill people, social media has unwittingly created communities of mentally ill people encouraging each other to give up.  To just accept that this is the way their lives are, and there’s no possibility of getting better.  And that’s how it’s gotten to the point of people dismissing actual mental health professionals as being no different than some ignorant person who doesn’t know the first thing about psychology and thinks an avocado smoothie will solve all your problems.

Avocado smoothie people are coming from the first perspective, that being depressed is a free choice that you can easily opt out of.  Therapists are coming from the second perspective, where mental illness is a horrible reality, but given that you’re seeing them, a provider of mental health treatment, of fucking course they’re going to give you advice on how to treat your mental illness!  Your therapist isn’t going to sit around and say “yeah man that sucks, haha look at this funny meme about how much you want to kill yourself.”  Your therapist is going to give you recommendations of activities and habits that will help you recover.  And they understand that these activities are not easy!!!  They get that!!!  The reason they’re there is to help you introduce these activities and ways of thinking into your life!!!  Otherwise they’d just hand you a pamphlet and walk out!!!

But you can’t access that kind of help - the kind where you say “getting out of the house is a real problem for me, I never have the energy to get out of bed” and your therapist says “okay let’s figure out how to break this down into small steps, we’ll set a small goal for this week, and next time we meet you can tell me if it worked out, and if it did then we can figure out what the next goal will be, and if not then we can figure out why it didn’t work and try a different approach” - if you immediately dismiss any mention of recovery as “neurotypical bullshit.”

Anyways please please please take your healthcare seriously, get treatment, and realize that giving up and normalizing your depression/anxiety/etc as something that will never ever get better (yes, even if it’s a chronic condition that you’ll never fully cure, you still need to treat it) is not okay.  Try to get good nutrition. Try to get sunshine and exercise.  Try to be social.  Making an effort to do things that will help you is not the same as thinking mental illness is a switch you can easily flip.  Getting treatment is not the same thing as pretending your mental illness doesn’t exist or isn’t serious.  On the contrary, getting treatment is taking your mental illness seriously.  I’m not saying you should never make a joke or reblog a fucking meme or anything, I’m saying don’t use social media as your mental health care provider.  Social media can be a way to vent, but venting is not the same thing as recovering.

Honestly it can take a very long time to get to that “step 3″ perspective but it’s a vital step.

[killerblackberrypie]

THIS.

I’ve got my boyfriend calling me at 8am every weekday morning to get me out of bed so that I *get out of bed*. I then tell him when I’ve gotten to the gym.

We have worked this out between us, consensually, because I can’t fucking make myself do it. Because depression. But when I get up and go to the gym, suddenly my days get way, way more functional. I eat real food, I run errands, I cook- instead of laying on the couch feeling like my diaphragm got nailed to the floor. (They don’t all necessarily happen every day, but they become at least theoretically feasible.) This isn’t part 1, it’s part 3. Because dammit, I am fucking sick of this shit. I don’t deserve it and it’s a real issue- and for me, having someone to basically hotwire me because my starter is broken is how we’re gonna get a routine that takes minimal spoons to run.

Sometimes depression is cureable. Sometimes it’s just treatable. But dissing treatment because “gah neurotypicals” is shooting yourself in the foot.

Sometimes self-care is baths and Netflix and junk food and Tumblr. And sometimes self-care is an arranged phone call at 8am.

[lumycena-main]

This is so important. Turns out, recovery is really hard. But you know what’s harder? Depression. I was really skeptical of my therapist because I thought I’d ‘tried’ every method that tumblr had listed out for me. But after 2 sessions, and committing to listen to and trust my therapist, my depression began changing and I’m began getting better. After 2 months, I’m still not there yet, but damn is it a hell of a lot better than it used to be.

[ainokiseki]

I was 13 years old. It was my birthday. And Royston Sinclair III had broken my heart in front of everyone. I’d snuck into your closet that morning and took that green beaded top that was your mother’s, that you kept so carefully wrapped up in tissue paper in your cedar closet. I was never supposed to touch it. But I stole it, and I wore it to school with my Chemin de Fer sailor jeans, and I thought no one was as stylish as I was. But Royston laughed. He said I was cheap. He said the only reason he’d been my boyfriend was because he was mad at Angie Morgan and he wasn’t anymore. He called me loud and weird. He said there was a rumor going around that I wasn’t actually a Gilmore. That I was the gardener’s daughter and…you’d bought me because you couldn’t have children of your own. And I was crushed. And I ran out of class… and I ran out of school, and I went to the mall. And I was sitting in the food court, wishing I had some money to buy a pretzel ‘cause I was starving, and I looked up… and there was Dad. Standing in front of me… at the mall.

[patsyjefferson]

Elizabeth Hamilton’s mourning ring, which she likely wore on a ribbon around her neck, containing a lock of her husband Alexander’s hair.

[scatteredlogic]

Lady Macbeth: the quickest way to a gentlemen's heart is through the fourth and fifth rib

[nestacherons]

my kingdom awaits, tell the world i’m coming home

[noveldom]

His native language was thought.

[bookmania]

You and I both know, the dark doesn’t make the bruises disappear. It just makes them harder to see.

Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You (via bookmania)

[hamotzi]

some of the dogs from old friends senior dog sanctuary! 

[explore-blog]

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

After 87 courageous years on this earth, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel (September 30, 1928–July 2, 2016) has left us — and left us his timeless, increasingly timely wisdom on our shared responsibility in ending injustice. (via explore-blog)

[the-final-sentence]

You see, I am an author who writes close to home.

M.E. Kerr, from “The Author” in Edge (via the-final-sentence)