Same Tho

PREACH

The not so funny thing about mental illness

I’ve met a lot of people who flaunt their mental illness. They use it as an excuse to be bad to other people and to themselves, and they want all the attention that comes from that. They’re upset and need help and assume that needing help means they have a mental illness. And maybe they do, maybe they really have that mental illness. But the problem with so many people using things like depression and anxiety for attention is that it forms an image in people’s heads that mental illness is something that exists only when something bad has happened, and that everything will be ok once the situation improves. I’m gonna be honest: this gets me so angry. Not so much angry as jealous. I’m jealous of these people that can just switch off their mental illness when they’re happy. I’m happy. Everything in my life is objectively amazing, but it’s still so hard just to keep getting out of bed every day. I feel guilty cause there are people out there with problems and I want to end it all even though everything is amazing. But that’s just it; Mental illnesses don’t care what’s happening around you, they’ll do anything to keep you in their grasp. It’s not fun and it isn’t fair. Which is why when people use mental illness for their own gain without actually having it I get so upset. We should all be able to get help, with or without an illness, but these illnesses aren’t a trend or something cool to look up to, they ruin lives. Lives like mine. But, this isn’t about me. Not really. It’s about everyone with mental illnesses that they can’t just turn off when they get bored or want to be happy. I want to acknowledge the struggles they go through daily, the strain on their relationships, jobs, personal hygiene, even when everything is going well. You deserve better, and I hope one day you can find it one day. 

To children, the world and everything in it is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course. This is precisely where philosophers are a notable exception. A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. To him or her, the world continues to seem a bit unreasonable- bewildering, even enigmatic. Philosophers and small children thus have an important faculty in common. The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder.

Jostein Gaarder- Sophie’s World.

this lil baby is called a stoat

(Part two of my message)

These are not the people I know. These are strangers who have been led astray and brainwashed by people who don’t think of anyone but themselves. My own family is almost unrecognizable to me. There are moments where I feel like I know them, when my grandmother will ask me to help her fill up her hummingbird feeder or sit down and tell me stories about her life or about my mom. Or when my papa will talk my grandma into letting me do something (yes, I’m a legal adult, but I’m still a kid to them) and then wink at me behind her back. But then they go back to being strangers, to people I sometimes feel uncomfortable just sitting down with. To conspiracy theorists, to people who, if they knew my whole belief system, might think I was evil. And it’s all because you value money over human beings. It’s all because you’re selfish. I miss the grandma who always bought me cotton candy when we went to the children’s museum, even though she knew I would get her car all sticky. Who taught me how to sew and helped me print off coloring pages and turn them into little coloring books. I miss the papa who would always carry an unreasonably big camera around his neck when we went to the zoo, who played basketball with me, and who let me ride on his lap while he mowed the lawn. I miss the people I knew. Those people are gone now, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get them back. I hope and pray that I will, but I doubt it very much. It’s a strange experience, watching someone become more distant every day, and yet still feeling them right beside you. Still getting encouraging texts and talking to them on the phone. It’s weird to sit right across from someone and recognize their face, but not the person behind it. It is extremely difficult, almost impossible, to come to terms with the fact that your family is gone when they’re standing right in front of you. It’s a kind of grief that is not easy to explain, and not recognizable to most people. But it is there. So, to everyone I addressed this letter to, to the people who have profited off of people’s radicalization, I don’t want an apology. I don’t want you to suddenly start fact checking and taking down disinformation. It is far too little and far too late. This is one of those mistakes that you simply cannot fix, no matter how hard you try. The only thing that you can do now is recognize what you have done, and let the guilt haunt you for the rest of your life, and I truly hope it does, because you stole my family from me, and I will never, ever forgive you.

This year I had a Spanish teacher named Ms. McConnel, which was really difficult for me because for the first couple weeks I kept accidentally calling her Ms. McGonagall.

Art Critic: the skull in the corner is artfully placed on the periphery of vision to symbolise the omnipresence of death, important thematically to the artist’s conception of life and mortality.

Actual Artist: aw shit, I got all this negative space, guess I’ll stick a skull there that looks pretty rad.