Black Butterfly

🧿Expect nothing, appreciate everything🧿

[frederick-the-ii]

*RARE* John Denver & Johnny Cash - Take Me Home Country Roads

Found this while going through my granddad’s VHS tapes and couldn’t find it anywhere online, so here it is.

[caruliaa]

maybe cain wldnt have killed abel if they had video games to healthily channel the violence between siblings. unfortunately back then the only smash brothers they had was smash brothers head in with a rock

[windwardstar]

In case anyone wants some perspective on how utterly random triggers can be. I haven’t lived in a house with a garage door in four-ish years. Right now at this moment, I honestly can’t recall what they sound like, except something metallic moving and rather clanky.

There was one on tv. I wasn’t even paying attention to it, I had my headphones on and was actively trying to tune the show out. My ears picked up on the sound of the garage door, and a jolt of adrenaline shot through my body as I grabbed my laptop and moved to get out of my seat and run to my room.

I realized what happened after about two seconds.

The sound is gone from my ears, but my heart is still racing and I’m waiting for the door to the house to open, to hear the jingling of my mother’s keys and her footsteps moving through the house. My muscles are still tense and I’m fighting the urge to run to my room and stick a board in front of the door.

For years, the sound of a garage door was my warning to pack up what I was doing quickly and retreat to my room if I was out of it.

I can’t remember the sound of the garage door right now, but I can’t tell my brain to stop trying to react to it.

[windwardstar]

This can be reblogged, if anyone was wondering. I wrote up this post with the intention that hopefully people who read it and didn’t really get triggers would understand a bit.

[the-real-seebs]

So, a thing that’s particularly important here: The trigger here is not the bad experience itself.

[jumpingjacktrash]

after my super funtime medical adventure, i had to change all my bath products, because my brain had associated the scent of them with being terrified and in extreme pain.

these were products i had chosen myself because i liked the smell. and they got connected to the medical phobia because i was using them to wash off the hospital reek and the fear sweat and so forth. i don’t know why they became a trigger. maybe because washing off the hospital smell didn’t make me not in pain. maybe because their ‘fresh pine ocean breeze bluegreen spicy stuff’ smell didn’t really replace the hospital stench, just mingled with it.

but for whatever reason, smelling these objectively nice soaps made me do flashbacks and get all hopeless and wobbly. so they had to go.

triggers are random. they’re often something that was simply present during a trauma, and you can’t guess what they’ll be. no one who hasn’t heard me explain this would ever associate suave naturals ocean breeze body wash with unbearable abdominal pain. so i guess the takeaways here are twofold:

- if you have triggers, remember other people can’t predict them, and don’t expect to be protected from them all the time. that’s up to you.

- if you don’t have triggers, don’t assume you can judge what a ‘real’ trigger is, and if someone asks you to accomodate them, don’t be a dick about it. even if you don’t want to make that accomodation, decline politely and apologize, don’t disparage their request.

[erinthebrave]

This is a wonderful addition. And while I’m sorry this is the case for you, i can explain it. I specifically study olfactory memory, how odor memories are formed and retained. And the olfactory cortex is split up into two distinct areas: anterior, and posterior. The anterior portion is responsible for anything related to food, navigation, and socializing (how babies know their mom by scent or how you can literally track a pizza shop by following the smell of the dough). Good things! Happy things!

But The posterior portion is literally all devoted to fear and pain. This is how lab mice, despite NEVER having ever met a fox or encountered their smells in the wild (because they live in a lab from conception to end) will freeze in fear if you put a drop of fox urine around them. It’s why animal care technicians aren’t allowed to smoke- the smell of smoke can stress the animals so much (fire! Death! And we can’t run away to safety!) that they miscarry, and sometimes die.

This part of your brain is crucial for your survival. It learned, without you wanting it to, that “hey. When you smell this smell you’re *dying* so get away from it.” I’m glad you’re able to switch out the scents, that’s a good strategy for lessening your stress. Otherwise your brain is constantly yelling GET AWAY. RUN AWAY. DANGER.

[amandaswork]

my personality: 😈🤡👊😡💥

my bullet journal: 🤓🌷💖😘😇

[xoblackbutterflyox]

[xoblackbutterflyox]

[xoblackbutterflyox]

https://instagram.com/stories/grewupinacult/2434283826668503550?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&igshid=lvcnvp42vp0t

Watch this story by Survivor23 on Instagram before it disappears.

5 Followers, 21 Following, 5 Posts

[xoblackbutterflyox]

[gnitefuck-os]

You know when I look back, I was a great christian. But when I was religious, I absolutely hated myself and I was convinced that I would never be good enough to be worthy of love. My heart for people was so strong and my love for Jesus was just so sincere. I wanted it so badly. And it's fucked up that in spite of all of that, the church made me feel repulsive and unloveable, full of sin, with a nature that would always betray me. I'm glad I'm on a road to healing even now, but man it hurts to think about sometimes.

[fuckmountain2-deactivated202204]

[minmaneth]

…and, at the time of his death, he was one of the most hated people in the USA.

[life-as-a-hobby-deactivated2022]

The FBI sent him a letter trying to convince him to commit suicide. Don’t let this revisionist bullshit slide. The things they say now about protests, kneeling, etc, are the same things they said about the sit-ins and marches.

[furbearingbrick]

respectability politics is a trap.

respectability politics is a trap.

respectability politics is a trap.

[darksteel-relic]

Look at this vintage political cartoon. Reactions to MLK and BLM are near identical.

[demiboy-mint-choco-deactivated2]

His own kids are telling yall not to fall for the bullshit

[karowl]

I think about this picture a lot

I think about how I would look at it when I was maybe five or six and be told that the people in it deserved what was happening to them. And how I tried to convince myself of that fact, how I tried to make myself believe it, and how I never could.

[thrivingexjw]

Whenever I would see this picture I would think of myself being the one with the hand reached out looking to grab something. Queerness and feeling out of place made it so that I never actually believed I was worthy of paradise, because we’re told none of us really are.

[xoblackbutterflyox]

That shit hit deep

[untitled40887]

Elders Handbook

I am curious how many of you know about it or have read it? Would anyone like to see some of it?

[fruitxbat-deactivated20161206]

I’ve read it!! Total sexist bullshit- not to mention it totally backs up the claim that JWs protect child molesters

[bhujangan]

I did too, and reading it made me even happier I left

[ex-jw-stuff]

I really really want to read it.

[bhujangan]

Anyone who wants to read it should check out http://avoidjw.org/manuals/

If you aren’t comfortable going to the website, message me and I’ll send you a link

[untitled40887]

Thank you @weird-slytherin-girl-ist-geil for the link.

[xoblackbutterflyox]

Have literally wanted to know what my dad read for years ... so enlightening .. so glad I left

[systlin]

My maternal grandmother (who is awful) has bounced between a few religions over the years, all in various flavors of fundamentalist Christianity.

Forty years or so ago, she settled on the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Who combine all the shitty things about several sects into one morass of awfulness.

This was a formative experience for my mother, who hates them with a burning passion and who is a member of several ex-Jehovah’s Witness websites where people go to vent.

And even after she broke away as soon as she was out of her mom’s house, they sent people to try to ‘bring her back into the fellowship’. Some of these people showed up at my parent’s wedding, to try to convince her that it would never last with a non Jehovah’s Witness husband. Dad, apparently, threatened to throw them headfirst out a second story window.

I’m fairly certain she’s actually cursed a few elders.

But, anyway, I distinctly remember her gathering me and my brother and sister around her when we were kids, and saying, very seriously,

“I don’t care if you three grow up to be gay, or transgender. I don’t care if you decide to flip burgers all your life, so long as you’re happy at it. I don’t care if you choose to worship trees, Ancient Egyptian gods, or nothing at all. But,” and she paused here for emphasis. “If you ever decide to become Jehovah’s Witnesses, I’m going to feel as if I’ve failed as a parent. So keep that in mind.”

Fast forward nineteen or so years. We grow up, I take to actively worshipping trees. Mom is Very Proud of this. Sister is a biologist living in sin with her boyfriend, brother is a physics student living in sin with his girlfriend, I’m married to the closest thing to an agnostic Christian I’ve ever met, and we’ve happily not spoken to Grandma for years.

And on Sunday morning at some unholy hour of the fucking day, there’s a knock on the door, and lo and behold there are three young men at the door with copies of the Watchtower.

My husband, seeing the twitch in my eyelid as we peek out the upstairs window, somewhat blearily, pats my shoulder.

“I’ve got this.” He says, grinning. I know that grin. That’s the Evil Grin.

And then he goes and pulls his old Slipknot shirt out of the drawer, and I know Dis Gunna Be Good.

Long story short, he invited them in for tea and corrected them on everything they tried to tell him for forty five minutes, citing verse back to them and telling them how they fucked it up. He got out the Bible at one point. He started lecturing like a damned theology professor.

By the time they left they looked actively terrified.

It was glorious.

[exmosuggestion]

Media: its WWIII time!

My traumatized paranoid ass: its the end of days its the end of days its the end of days

Also me: please. Chill the fuck out.

[some-jw-things]

Jehovah’s Witness childhood is just *loud construction noises* *reads a book* *fears for my cat* *reads a book* *wishes I had a different family* *goes to school* *reads a book* *thinks about the end of the world* *reads a book* *goes to meeting* *construction smells* *is extremely sad for no reason* *reads a book* *goes to school* *talks about religion excitedly* *wants to die* *reads a book* *reads The Literature* *reads a

[boarself]

the holy baptism

backed into a corner by a rush of people what’s holding you back? why aren’t you turning in your time each month? we need to fix you you need us or else you’ll end up like them little do they know I am already one of them and once they find out my life is over people rush around me from all sides like a rush of water a wave, a tsunami the pressure is overwhelming if I accept their forced help my dreams will be permanently shattered if I refuse they will turn on me they will destroy me they will throw me out like the garbage that I am

[xoblackbutterflyox]

Deep

[gneerly]

hey friendly psa/reminder that with the seasons changing right now, a lot of people with mood disorders (and even people without them) can get all messed up and wonky from that so try to go a little easy on yourself if you find yourself spiraling or getting emotional a lot lately okay? youre doin your best. love u