Wondering Wanderer

Traveller, wanderer, reader, lifelong learner, student of the Faculty of Arts, nanny, host, guest, admirer of art, believer, doubter, dreamer.

[wondering---wanderer]

What make "Oliver Twist" and "A Christmas Carol" such timeless and recognizable tales? (Via TED-Ed)

[wondering---wanderer]

One Artist's Mission to Illustrate All the World's Mythical Beasts

Squonks, Lindworms, Dijiangs, and more.

[wondering---wanderer]

Fantastic prices for used books! 

[just-shower-thoughts]

The fact that “palindrome” isn’t a palindrome is kinda sad

[wondering---wanderer]

White House asks for Van Gogh loan – but Guggenheim offers gold toilet instead

The Guggenheim Museum proposed lending Maurizio Cattelan’s America after turning down a request for Landscape With Snow

What a time to be alive.

[revan-trevelyan]

Sometimes the help you need isn’t the help you want. Call 1-800-273-8255 if you’re thinking of suicide.

[ube-makaveli]

This comic meant a whole lot to me. It was sincere in its depiction and treated the issue through the eyes of a grounded person. Not some godly hero saying everything is better than it seems, but a person trying his best before bringing her somewhere who can actually help.

[niambi]

I’m????

[alarajrogers]

Oh my God this actually explains so much.

So there’s a known thing in the study of human psychology/sociology/what-have-you where men are known to, on average, rely entirely on their female romantic partner for emotional support. Bonding with other men is done at a more superficial level involving fun group activities and conversations about general subjects but rarely involves actually leaning on other men or being really honest about emotional problems. Men use alcohol to be able to lower their inhibitions enough to expose themselves emotionally to other men, but if you can’t get emotional support unless you’re drunk, you have a problem.

So men need to have a woman in their lives to have anyone they can share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities with. However, since women are not socialized to fear sharing these things, women’s friendships with other women are heavily based on emotional support. If you can’t lean on her when you’re weak, she’s not your friend. To women, what friendship is is someone who listens to all your problems and keeps you company.

So this disconnect men are suffering from is that they think that only a person who is having sex with you will share their emotions and expect support. That’s what a romantic partner does. But women think that’s what a friend does. So women do it for their romantic partners and their friends and expect a male friend to do it for them the same as a female friend would. This fools the male friend into thinking there must be something romantic there when there is not.

This here is an example of patriarchy hurting everyone. Women have a much healthier approach to emotional support – they don’t die when widowed at nearly the rate that widowers die and they don’t suffer emotionally from divorce nearly as much even though they suffer much more financially, and this is because women don’t put all their emotional needs on one person. Women have a support network of other women. But men are trained to never share their emotions except with their wife or girlfriend, because that isn’t manly. So when she dies or leaves them, they have no one to turn to to help with the grief, causing higher rates of death, depression, alcoholism and general awfulness upon losing a romantic partner. 

So men suffer terribly from being trained in this way. But women suffer in that they can’t reach out to male friends for basic friendship. I am not sure any man can comprehend how heartbreaking it is to realize that a guy you thought was your friend was really just trying to get into your pants. Friendship is real. It’s emotional, it’s important to us. We lean on our friends. Knowing that your friend was secretly seething with resentment when you were opening up to him and sharing your problems because he felt like he shouldn’t have to do that kind of emotional work for anyone not having sex with him, and he felt used by you for that reason, is horrible. And the fact that men can’t share emotional needs with other men means that lots of men who can’t get a girlfriend end up turning into horrible misogynistic people who think the world owes them the love of a woman, like it’s a commodity… because no one will die without sex. Masturbation exists. But people will die or suffer deep emotional trauma from having no one they can lean on emotionally. And men who are suffering deep emotional trauma, and have been trained to channel their personal trauma into rage because they can’t share it, become mass shooters, or rapists, or simply horrible misogynists.

The only way to fix this is to teach boys it’s okay to love your friends. It’s okay to share your needs and your problems with your friends. It’s okay to lean on your friends, to hug your friends, to be weak with your friends. Only if this is okay for boys to do with their male friends can this problem be resolved… so men, this one’s on you. Women can’t fix this for you; you don’t listen to us about matters of what it means to be a man. Fix your own shit and teach your brothers and sons and friends that this is okay, or everyone suffers.

[thistherapylife]

If I have done nothing else good in my life, I have taught a solid dozen teenaged boys that they can form deep, lasting, emotionally supportive relationships with friends, teachers, mentors, etc. And that getting that emotional support doesn’t make them weak but it DOES make the situation easier to tolerate and move through.

[wondering---wanderer]

Hands up

I used to open my arms to hug him and hold his hand in mine. Then I held my hands up to show my mistaken friends that my finger actually isn’t wearing a ring. Now, I lift them in the air to prove to close ones that no, I haven’t cut my wrists yet.

[wondering---wanderer]

At the end of the day

When I ask myself at the end of the day if the day was worth living, I don't have an affirmative answer. No matter how hard I try. But I will try again tomorrow.

[rubyetc]

I found these gifs I made a while back for a site that’s not running anymore, so I thought I’d post them here. It’s a description of psychiatric symptoms and states of mind using a pink box and some other stuff. 

[apriljanee5]

These are so accurate

[psych2go]

Interesting! Just thought I’d share! 

[entierradefrikis]

[fuzzynecromancer]

There is no unskilled labor, only undervalued skills.

[innerpeaceonly]

I got my heart broken and I survived, I failed 3 courses in university and graduated, I got rejected in the very first job I applied for and got promoted yesterday, I went through hard times with my family but then two years later, we laughed our hearts out over lunch, The closest friends disappointed me several times but I made new friends and loved them with all my heart. I did it once, I can do it again.

[redactedc]

I NEEDED THIS SO BADLY

[totallyboardaf]

This. This everyday. I need this everyday.

[ejlandsman]

[wondering---wanderer]

Nightmare

I'm trying. Every day again. I'm looking away, distracting myself, meeting people, smiling, taking my meds. But nothing makes sense anymore. No matter what I do, no hope, for too long now. Stuck in a permanent state of drowning. Waiting for the day to end. For my life to end. For this nightmare to end. Please wake me up

[wondering---wanderer]

I'm broken. They say the time heals, but I'm just getting worse. I'm trying, but I don't have the strength to carry on anymore, I'm tired of being a burden, a ruin. It hurts too much. I'm sorry

[psych2go]

You’re a different human being to everybody you meet.

Chuck Palahniuk (via psych2go)

[wondering---wanderer]