I Think Tumblr Should Be Able To Show You How Many People Have Blocked You. Like Not Names Or Anything,

Friends of ours lost their 22yo son to suicide recently. He was struggling, but kept the depth of it hidden. There are no words of comfort to give, only grieving alongside those who have lost one that they love.

A good friend pointed out that in the midst of this weeping, while it does not diminish the grief, perhaps something good might come out in that those who are similarly struggling with thoughts of suicide might get some perspective that their lives matter beyond the tiny world mental illness traps you in. Your life matters and is worth living.

Our brains are a precariously balanced mix of meat, electricity, and chemicals. Sometimes because of our experiences and/or biology our brains begin to lie to us. It withholds joy and pleasure. "It’s like trying to laugh at a joke that isn’t funny. Trying to smile for a photo you don’t want to be in. It’s like waking up in the morning and hating that you actually woke up. It feels like someone is just draining the energy out of you all the time, every moment you are awake." Doing anything requires immense willpower. Just plain old staying alive becomes a conscious choice made over and over again. You are just so tired and everything is just too much to deal with. The constant state of suffering leads one to try various ways to feel something positive, feel anything, or just escape the emptiness. It's why depressed people try so hard to bring joy to others and help others- they want to prevent others from suffering too and it allows them to feel some happiness vicariously.

The inevitable diminishing returns on the attempts to feel better, feel anything, or just escape eventually lead to the conclusion that there is only one way out of this hell. And depression shrinks our awareness of our own meaningfulness and inner world. The void is all we can perceive. The knowledge that we are loved, cared for, or important is lost. We can sincerely believe that our loss will not so drastically affect our loved ones and escape through death is a viable option.

These are all false of course. Falsehoods our sick brain tells us with honesty, because suicide is quite reasonable given what we are perceiving.

If you are feeling like you don't want to be here, wishing you would not wake up, desiring an accident, imagining about killing yourself, drugging yourself into oblivion, or seriously thinking about if or how you might kill yourself, you need to talk to someone. I got lucky. Someone who loves me more than I love myself saw me spiraling into self-destruction and made me get help and continues to support me in spite of myself. I spent years where my full-time job was not research or teaching, but just keeping myself alive. It's still my job now and then. But the difference now is that after many years of therapy and prescriptions I know that feeling is temporary and false.

I'm sorry it hurts so much right now. When you have some distance from these feelings (I hope that you will give yourself the chance to), I hope you can see that your life is worthwhile and important because you are.

But the only way out is through and that requires talking. I hope you have people nearby who love you you can talk to. If you do, talk to them. If you don't, this will be harder. Either way, you should also get into counseling. A good counselor will help you find ways to survive, build better mental pathways, & develop tools for processing emotions.

Brutal honesty- American mental health treatment system is shit and difficult to navigate. We have far too few professionals in many areas and online is often the only option. But you are a fighter. Look at you all alive and shit when depression has been trying to kill you 24-7. Live a little bit longer. You can do it. And if you are going to live a little bit longer, counseling can help you live it a little bit better.

im fucking sobbing why did they kill him twice in a row in the community notes

The two best reasons to get into fossils are booping trilobites and getting to say the word "fossiliferous" a lot.

Fossil [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Cueball is holding two pieces of rock in a paleontological site. Megan, Ponytail and White Hat are in the background.] Cueball: It's weird to pry open a rock and see an animal that no one has laid eyes on for 400 million years.

[Zoom in on Cueball looking at the fossil he is holding.]

[Cueball pokes the fossil.] Cueball: Boop! Off-panel voice: Hey! Don't boop the trilobites!

I was looking for the tropes, and that says something about me

Rewatched Madea Homecoming w my family last night. And the acting/directing is just so good. It's all relatively obvious when you are paying attention. But because we're all looking for the tropes, when you show us a little bit of what we're looking to expect we don't look for anything else and so we get hit by these big surprises. But if we were watching with an open mind, we'd have not been so surprised.

Just genius work by Tyler Perry.

None of this stuff is serious or complete and it all comes with a huge helping of "perhaps" and a grain of salt.

Nothing here should be taken as the final word on anything. No matter how sure of myself and arrogant I may sound. I know most of this stuff I write is silly or off-kilter or flawed in major ways.

So don't look for the flaws. You will no doubt find them. Look for what is new, different, insightful, creative, revolutionary, outrageous, or true. Try to understand the ideas and test those. Maybe each blog entry, as a whole, is a wreck for you. But there will parts that are treasures for you.

It ain't all that earth-shattering or revelatory to the world either, just to me at the time.

We are all becoming and we all figure things out or learn things at different times in our lives and often independently of others. Sometimes we really are the first person to think of an idea. Usually not. There are over 5000 years of recorded human thought and at this very moment there are around 8 billion other people. There is going to be a lot of convergent thinking going on. And a whole lot more of me hearing things sometime somewhere but forgetting where I heard it from (because I am a very curious and highly educated person who's been around and thinking for a longish time and it's hard to keep track of where all the shit in my head came from and which I created) from others or getting bits and pieces others worked on first and I had heard/read and then put a few things together in my head thinking it was all me.

So I don't promise they will all be new ideas. But they will all be new ways of looking at them. And I do think you'll find a few real originals in there as I transfer stuff from my gmail drafts over to this.

If I have a weird-ass idea or loving take on things that changes the world for the better, God bless it. But mostly I'm just here to share what my brain spit out for our mutual shits and giggles.

Even if I think there might be some really good stuff buried in there for anyone to find if they have the eyes to see and the ears to hear and the heart to understand.

Blessed are the Poor in Spirit

Stop. No. Don’t humanize them.

These are the beings you have lived in fear of all your life.

But worse.

This is the hatred you have been sliced and grated on all your life.

But deeper.

Monsters, monsterous. Ignorant. Apathetic. Blind.

They don’t know they don’t know they don’t know of what you’ve seen. Nor do they want to. Nor would they believe you.

And when they spew their vile hatred no longer are they met with disdain.

They are cheered on.

Power hungry. Hungry for your blind obedience. Your hands. Your toil. Your silence.

So much silence and so much distance like you are an insect trapped beneath glass walls.

But they are hungry for more than obedience now. They are hungry for your admiration. For your adoration.

You have lived your life in literal starvation and in omnipresent fear. Why stop now? Now that the danger goes deeper, deeper, longer, greater than you could ever imagine?

You don’t mind for your own sake. You know you deserve nothing more than to die choking.

You mind for all the poor people. The parents torn from their children. The children torn from their parents. The workers who will not see power ever.

Power. You don’t have the power to feed your people. You don’t have the power to give them water. You don’t have the power to protect the children. You will live your whole life without power.

But you know that the prophecies are on your side. The last shall be first. The first shall be last. The hungry will feast. The well-fed will starve. The sick will be healed, the healthy will grow ill. The powerless will have power. The thirsty will have clean, pure water.

Glory to the newborn King.

All the beetles I vivisected for calcium imaging are waiting for me. Mostly and they are pissed off it was for nothing because we couldn't get the Ca imaging to work on them.

I know my hell will be filled with the bugs I accidentally killed so that I can pay back for my sins and once I have finally be crushed by all, Satan will carry me out on piece of paper underneath a cup.