How to Help People Far Away If You Don't Have Money, Or, We Can't Care About Everything Everywhere Always
This in response to some tags by @shofarsogood on a post of mine: #hoooooly shit those are some devastating statistics#I mean also Nigeria is huge and Gaza is fairly tiny#but STILL#children should not die of malnutrition. not ever.
OH BOY do I have data for you!
But here are some ways to help, instead (I'm going to go out on a huge limb and assume that you, or anyone else reading this, does not have much money to give; if you do, that's great, but most of the information online assumes that. Be aware that many of the ones promoting 'efficiency' are sketchy effective-altruist-y AI-first eugenics-adjacent groups, and do your due diligence).
First of all, and the one that comes up pretty much everywhere, is Freerice. You answer questions, and ten grains of rice (well, probably money, but you know) is given to the World Food Program. Allegedly. I don't know what's happening on their end, but I do use it and recommend it.
The Tab for a Cause extension is also great, especially if, like me, you open SO MANY tabs. (No, more than you're thinking. Still more. Still more. Like, I-think-I-once-hit-five-digits more.) Anyway, you'll need to whitelist it if you have an adblocker. You choose where the money goes -- the Malaria Consortium is recommended by pretty much everyone as being very, very, very good at what they do.
There are a few extensions and programs that do things like 'when you buy something online, we donate money to a charity of your choice'. I try to avoid spending money online as much as I can, so I can't really testify to them. If you have the spoons and skills, there are some programs that connect people willing to volunteer skills (e.g., web design) with organizations in need of those skills.
But what else can you do?
Advocate. Share this knowledge. Contact your representatives (if you're somewhere where that will even possibly change things). To do that, you'll want a good storyline, or something like that. I'd recommend checking an organization affiliated with Reliefweb -- which are a lot of the big ones, like the World Food Program, UNICEF, et cetera -- but there are other sources that you may wish to use; newspaper directories can help you find more local sources for any given country. If you just want data, rather than storytelling, Our World in Data is invaluable.
And you cannot do any of this without taking care of yourself. You are doing no good if you burn yourself out. I'm going to be completely honest, I suck at this. There are so many bad things in the world, and my default response is to learn about them and think about them and care about them.
But you can't do that constantly. And that sucks. But people have limits. And sometimes that means compromising. A lot of the time that means compromising. We live in a world with a lot of issues, and none of them are going to get better if you burn yourself out. Not one thing is going to get better if you learn about how much the world sucks and get depressed and burn out. (But if you don't listen to me and do -- or do listen to me-as-I-do and not me-as-I-say -- I recommend the Sad Bastard Cookbook. It's free, and it really does make getting nutrition into your body easier.)
Go outside. Talk to people. Take up a hobby. Breathe in, breathe out. Get some sleep (I write, at 10:30 PM in my timezone.) Take care of yourself and your mental health. Suffering doesn't make you good, and neither does giving up everything for the cause. Okay?
I’m a firm believer that after working with curses or magicks that deal with a lot of negative emotions you should not just cleanse yourself but also make a point to care for yourself. Treat yourself like a small child who has just been through a painful experience, because you have
Salt
Some honey, raw if you can get it
Sage
Lavender or lavender oil
Your favorite shower soap, must be liquid
Run a hot shower, let it get to your favorite temperature. Then take the salt, honey, lavender and whatever else and mix it into your shower soap. Begin yo cover yourself with it and scrub. But not too hard - this is about cleansing, yes, but also about self-care. Cleanse yourself thoroughly with the mixture then finish your shower. Relax under the water, feel warm and safe and feel your nerves unwinding. If you want, you can plug the drain and lay under the water and make yourself a bubble bath. Just make sure all the salt and stuff, which has absorbed the negativity, is down the drain before you plug it.
Do anything you want to feel comfortable, refreshed, calm and safe.
After you get out, cover yourself with lotion or shea butter, do your hair nice, put on something comfortable.
Make yourself a cup of tea, and go be mundane for a while.
Let’s play the ‘albums that CHANGED YOUR LIFE’ game. Ready? Let’s gooooooooooooooooo!
Alice in Chains’ Dirt
My mother tried so hard to instill a love of bad 80′s pop in me. She was not successful. :/ Anyways, Alice was the first band I like, LIKED on my own, without somebody else introducing them to me; they were on the radio all the time when I was a kid-I vaguely remember Layne Staley’s (fuck you Tumblr, that’s the spelling, I’m looking right at it and you can’t even spell your own name) death, actually-but then they kinda tapered off and I forgot about them until I had my first iPod at like, aged twelve-ish and was trying to figure out what music I, personally, enjoyed. And I sort of remembered ‘a chicken song’, and it took for-fucking-ever, BUT I FOUND IT. And now here we are. Truthfully, all of their music has helped shape the person I am today, in one form or another, but this is the first and my favorite.
Pearl Jam’s Riot Act
A handy-dandy Google search of ‘bands like Alice in Chains’ brought up Pearl Jam, so off I went to my local secondhand media store (I love you, Bookman’s!). I was hoping to pick up a copy of Ten, actually, but they didn’t have that one, and I was attracted to the cover of RA. It’s still my favorite album of theirs, I think, and it got sort of relevant again (it came out during the Bush admin, shortly after 9/11 and ahhhhhhhh), but, like...okay. Angsty Teenage Scary had slightly overprotective parents AND a private school that felt it was their right to be up your ass whether you were on campus or not. So ‘I Am Mine’ was my ANTHEM for a little while there, because fuck you, it’s my life. MINE. (I was not a rebel. It was the principle of the thing. If MY parents okay’d me having ONE shoddy wine cooler at sixteen, the school doesn’t need to know or care.)
Linkin Park’s Meteora
After Chester Bennington died, I saw somebody explain that a lot of his music was less ‘it’ll be okay’ and more ‘here, I’ll sit in the dark with you’. Which. THEY’RE RIGHT. Okay. Sad story time: I was horrifically unhappy in high school. Teen angst, yeah, but the aforementioned private school was an awful fit. I was a little suicidal, at that time. Like. I don’t think I would have hurt myself, but I definitely would have been cool with not waking up in the morning, you know? Like that. (Better now! Amazingly, transferring schools worked wonders.) People didn’t really want to hear it, so this was...this was a validating album. You know, ‘it’s okay to be pissed and sad and hurt, you’re not being dramatic or annoying for having feelings like that’. I needed that, at the time. (Tip: validation is great. You don’t have to fix the problem or even understand it, you just need to acknowledge it. That goes a long way.)
I’m giving myself the gift of relaxation this year
Finally, I have power and internet back. I know I need to rush to get back to work to get up today’s Risen post and resume pages on DaT, but after the rough week it’s been here I’m in need of a recovery period. Plus, it’s my birthday, and I want to do silly stuff for myself today, dang it.
So, yeah, hiatus is gonna last a wee bit longer.
Maybe I’ll do another completely self-indulgent silly post for Risen. Maybe I’ll just spend the day binging on video games. Either way, I’m going to have fun and not worry about work on my birthday!
Can hou write something (even a few words) about Sanvers or Director Sanvers not wanting to be touched? Not in a sexual way, I'm talking about a hand on a knee or something like that. You can choose between Alex, Lucy or Maggie. It's just... I'm feeling this way right now. I flinch. I definitely hate this year's holidays.
Hey, of course! I’m sending the best thoughts your way!
I just posted it on AO3 - http://archiveofourown.org/works/11602002/chapters/30095982
TW for moments of internalized homophobia
Chapter Text:
“I still can’t believe you never saw the original Jumanji,” Maggie gasped, looking over at Alex as though she had been the alien child who crash landed on earth all those years ago.
Alex looked to Lucy for support, but she just shrugged. “I’m just as shocked. My baby bi heart pined after a young Kristen Dunst in that flannel shirt/overall combo for a very long time.”
“Loser,” Maggie teased.
“Please, you had it just as bad.”
“Maybe.” Fixed with the weight of Alex and Lucy’s combined looks of disbeliefs, Maggie finally gave in. “Alright, alright, yes! But she wasn’t particularly high on my list of formative childhood crushes, so…”
“And who might have landed on that list?” Alex asked, a teasing glint in her eye.
“Well obviously there’s Miss Honey. Duh.” Lucy and Alex both nodded in agreement. “Um…oh! Harriet the spy.”
“That why you became a detective, Sawyer?”
“Hush. You two are the ones that demanded answers. Um…I had some confusing crushes on one or two of the Sandlot boys, though looking back on it…I had a wonderful partner while I was in the academy who looked and dressed an awful lot like Yeah-Yeah in their childhood pictures.”
“Oh yes!” Lucy squealed. “Some of those boys were adorable. I think all of my friends and I crushed on the older one…”
Eventually they lapsed into a contented silence, passing around the nearly empty bowl of popcorn until Maggie began the process of cleaning up the pile of blankets and pillows they’d accumulated while watching the movie.
The next day, they piled out of Maggie’s car at the National City mall, willing to brave the crowds to go see the new Jumanji film, though Maggie maintained it would “never be as good as the original.” As they traipsed through the parking lot, Alex shivered and grabbed for Lucy’s hands for warmth, only to find them rebuffed.
“Too cold out,” Lucy muttered, stuffing her hands in her pockets and ducking her head in the wind. She saw the hurt expression in Alex’s eyes, but tried her best to ignore it, unable to deal with whatever conversation it would lead to at the moment.
Once they made it into the mall, they were immediately besieged by crowds—families with crying children, teenagers out of school and hanging out with their friends, young couples still in the thrall of new love and oblivious to the world around them—and jostled closer together. Lucy nearly jumped a foot in the air when Maggie’s arm snaked around her waist, giving her what she supposed was likely meant to be a comforting squeeze. But immediately it felt suffocating, felt ticklish, felt itchy, like her body was rejecting the touch itself.
“Stop,” Lucy hissed, arching her back to get further away from Maggie’s arm, the loose hug feeling like a vice grip around her.
“Okay…” Maggie trailed off. “Sorry.” Shaking her head, she tangled her other hand with Alex’s, figuring it probably had to do with the crowds more than anything else. After all, there were plenty of days Lucy’s heart still raced when they were out and couldn’t see a clear path to an exit, when people brushed up against her with no warning or reason, and Maggie had come to expect it. She and Alex had learned to stand on either side of her when they were out, helping to form a kind of buffer when crowds were bad and her anxiety was acting up. They’d learned that sometimes it helped to walk closer to the perimeter of buildings, rather than cutting straight through the heart of it where the crowds were denser.
Lucy walked a few feet ahead of her girlfriends, taking a moment to breathe deeply, trying to slow her heart rate a little before going into the theater. She was grateful to see that the cinema was crowded, but in an orderly way, the families and couples culled into neat-ish lines and cordoned off with stanchions.
Eying the length of the lines, Maggie volunteered to go get their snacks, while Alex got in line for their tickets and Lucy ran to the bathroom to let cool water run over her wrists—an old trick she had learned for cooling herself down. She wasn’t sure that it actually did anything physically, but the important part was that she believed it worked, so it helped.
By the time she got out of the bathroom, Alex had their tickets, and Maggie was at the counter, picking out an assortment of treats to complement the drinks they’d already shoved into their bags, figuring they would save on half the expenses.
“Hey!” Alex waved, making sure Lucy saw her. “I’m so excited,” Alex gushed. “We haven’t all been together at the movies since our date back around Halloween.” But when her hand settled on Lucy’s hip, Lucy shoved it away.
“Seriously, knock it off,” Lucy snapped. “We’re in public.”
“And?”
“Just—there are kids around,” Lucy huffed.
“It’s not like I’m trying to fuck.” Alex crossed her arms across her chest.
“I just—just stop it, okay?” Lucy felt like the eyes of everyone in the theater were trained on them, could feel her skin still prickling uncomfortably from the heat of Alex’s touch, felt like she needed to wash and scratch at her skin until the feeling disappeared.
“How are my girls doing?” Maggie asked, popping in with a huge tub of popcorn in her arms and a wide grin on her face.
“Not now,” Alex mouthed, sensing that Maggie was in one of her giddy moods, which often led to excessive touching—something she normally enjoyed but knew wouldn’t be welcomed today, at least not by Lucy. She might not get what exactly was happening, but she knew better than to force Lucy into anything.
“Let’s just go see the movie, okay?”
Maggie watched the way Lucy seemed to fold in on herself, glancing between Maggie and Alex’s tangled fingers and the families—heterosexual families, Maggie corrected herself—that surrounded them. She thought back to how she had felt visiting one of her first girlfriends’ families in a conservative town in upstate New York, remembered the way they’d let everyone call them sisters, knowing it was the safer bet, remembered how they hadn’t corrected family members who knew and still introduced them as friends, assuming the introductions were keeping them safe. And she remembered still being struck with that same feeling years later even in liberal towns—places as generally open-minded as National City. And it didn’t matter that she was out and older and far removed from the homophobia of Blue Springs, that she went to Pride and nearly bathed in glitter and painted rainbows on her face, that she proudly asked women out on dates and held them and knew deep in her heart that their love was just as good as anyone else’s. None of it seemed to matter when her heart raced with remembered panic that was no less real for its being past. With a little nod at Alex, she dropped their hands, knowing that their relationship was still secure and sound, even if they weren’t public about it for an afternoon.
“So, Luce, Alex and I were thinking, maybe it’d be nice to do dinner at home today, instead of going out to eat.”
“Yeah, I’m a little tired,” Alex offered. “Plus, it’s so crowded, I don’t know if we’d be able to get a table.”
“Or we’d get stuck surrounded by crying kids,” Maggie added, wrinkling her nose, remembering the last time she’d ended up with a bawling toddler’s fistful of spaghetti on her leather jacket.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Alex and Maggie quickly agreed.
And even though they had offered perfectly legitimate reasons for their choice, Lucy suspected it had a lot more to do with her than they were letting on, and she was beyond grateful, even if she wished it wasn’t the case, wished she knew exactly why there were stretches of time when something as simple as a brush of a hand against her would send her reeling.
And in the dark of the theater, seated in the aisle seat with Alex to her left, Lucy dropped her hand to Alex’s, finding that she was okay when she controlled it, grateful when Alex dropped her hand back when Lucy froze as fingers tried to actively tangle back into her own. But she still smiled at Lucy just the same, still grinned when Lucy’s hand dropped back on top of hers, when Lucy’s fingers traced distracted patterns across her palm.
And on the way back through the mall, her girls flanked her, keeping the crowds at bay without once trying to force their way into her space, their animated chatting helping to keep away the conviction that she had messed up somehow, that she was pushing them back into the closet and keeping them from being happy. Because they were still smiling and laughing, still including her in their conversation and making plans for dinner that night and dates later that week. They were still hers, and they were still happy.
