I was watching An American Tale with a friend, and to my delight, he pointed out that, as a Native, I can call most people "My Little Immigrant."
this is either the dumbest thing I’ve ever made or the culmination
This is of course customizable for the type of privilege you're viciously attacking this poor, blameless person for, instead of spending more of your time and energy giving them the education you clearly owe them, like you're supposed to.
One of my favorite things about a history of abuse is that the most confusing and even suspicious thing a person can do is act with tenderness toward me.
People are so well-aware that not being held accountable is to the advantage of the perpetrator in situations of injustice that we have sayings built around this concept, such as "getting away with murder." But they still pretend to not understand that they're helping oppressors when they remain "neutral." You're full of shit. Stop lying.
TW: Suicide -
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- After a boy cut his arms and told a staff member he wanted to die, the staff member allowed him to shower unsupervised for forty minutes, without reporting his wounds or suicidal thoughts to anyone else. This staffer later said they "don't like" to read patients' backgrounds, and had not done so with this boy. This is why we need to take mental health seriously. It's not about being a coward or giving up- even when we fight it and seek medical attention, our condition is brushed off.
http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/11/youth_psychiatric_facility_in.html
I'm going to toot my own horn here, indirectly remind others with depression how great their work is, and directly tell those who are not suicidal to appreciate the work we do. Conversations about the relationships between suicidal and non-suicidal people are almost always framed as what *you* are doing to support *us.* That's an important topic, but talking about it to the exclusion of what *we* do for *you* is detrimental. There's an important element that suicidal people are constantly attacked for non-adherence, but when we *do* adhere to this unofficial "rule," we don't get recognition, much less respect and appreciation for it. We work our asses off to keep the struggle going FOR YOU. We don't want the people we care about to be sad. So we continue to live a life that is bad enough to prefer death (or, for many, not prefer death per se, so much as we want something to end, and death is or seems like the only way to achieve ending it). We could be doing this for a single day or several years, and everywhere in between. It's exhausting, mentally and physically. I have never had a job that was as hard as staying alive when I have an illness that literally makes me want to die. It's WORK. I don't have to put that work in. None of us do. If you have an at-risk loved one still hanging on, odds are it's because of the intensely difficult labor they put in to make sure you don't have to deal with loss just yet. Treat them like who and what they are. Treat them like someone who is immensely considerate of you, who routinely sacrifices what they want for you. Treat them like someone who has a hard job with long hours. Treat them like someone who has a chronic illness that is more manageable at some times than others.