Is It Just Me Or Does Having A Positive Interaction With A Stranger Scratch A Very Particular Itch? I

I hate the “Thoreau’s mom did his laundry” criticism so much, it drives me crazy.

Henry Thoreau did not go to Walden Pond because he thought it would be a fun adventure. He went into the woods because he was deeply depressed and burnt out. He was running from the horror of his brother and best friend recently dying in his arms, and the haunting memory of causing the Fairhaven Bay fire. His friend Ellery Channing literally gave him the ultimatum of either taking some time off to write and think, or else be institutionalized.

I think Thoreau’s mother saw her depressed son choosing to retreat into a small cabin in the woods, and was worried about him. Of course she did his laundry - just as Ralph Waldo Emerson probably brought him firewood and bread. These were not chores of obligation to support a “great” man, but services of love to help their deeply depressed 28yo son and friend.

And if you ask me, there’s a lesson in that - to “suck out the marrow of life” and “live deliberately,” one must also accept help offered from the people in your life who love you. There is no true transcendentalism or individualism without love and friendship behind it.

can't count on one hand how many times ive cried this week because of everything that is happening in armenia. im so happy seeing people on tumblr talking about it.

turks and azeris buy the weapons they use to kill us FROM ISRAEL. if you are for "free palestine" you should be for "free armenia" and "free artsakh" as well. there is no supporting one and not the other.

there is no. supporting one. and not the other.

free hayastan, ազատ Հայաստան.

Was feeling like the worst person ever. Ruminating over all my past sins and realizing that while there is nothing in me that makes me truly evil, there is also nothing that makes me good. Trying to come up with reasons why I'm not a worthless waste of space and coming up empty. All the while, my stomach was churning to a sick rolling boil, fueling the fire of my self-hatred.

Turns out I was just hungry.

"Intellectually disabled people can be smart in other ways :D"

Literally there are intellectually disabled people ON THIS SITE who have said that they ARE NOT SMART and that is absolutely fine!!! Nobody has to be smart!!! Ever!

You don't have to have a secret talent that makes you smart, you don't have to be creative or have special, secret knowledge, you can just... not be smart. It's that simple.

Smartness is not morally superior to intellectual disability, and people with ID don't have to have something that makes them smart.

To all the people with intellectual disabilities on here, I hope you have a good day where nobody tries to tell you that you have to be smart!

(This was posted because I saw zebulontheplanet's IQ posts again and looking at the comments on there, knowing several people with ID on here, makes me really mad)

Sigh, my mother will strongly deny the possibility I could have ADHD and turn around and send me a video about executive dysfunction clearly tagged #ADHD and say that's so me.

I think we as a collective need to stop telling young marginalized people without friends that their isolation is self-made and will end if they start to be more outgoing when this is actually more often than not a result of being raised in small bigoted communities and poverty.

People younger than me from liberal metropolises have advised me that if I want to find other LGBTQ+, disabled and neurodivergent folks I should join a local queer space, mental health group, book club or tabletop group and then I had to explain to them how I have to work until my mid-twenties to afford moving to a place where those things exist. I live in a conservative small-town and my options for meeting new people irl are "school / work" and "parties". Which is where the bigots are.

But simultaneously we're told that isolation is inherently detrimental to our happiness, that every year spent in that state is wasted, that even when we don't feel miserable, we secretly are without realizing it. That a life without a certain amount of irl friends and social activities isn't worth living. That we must spend every waking minute trying to exit isolation. That we're wasting away. Which is bullshit.

Stop treating social isolation of marginalized teens and young adults as a sign of personal failure to be outgoing as well as a state of inevitable and constant suffering. Start treating it like the structural problem it is. Stop demonizing being alone. Start normalizing online friends as real, valuable friendships. Start normalizing the idea that times spent alone are worth living as well. Because some of us are going to be here for a while, whether we like it or not. Hand out hope, not pressure.

Art