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oh dear

@just-a-classics-nerd

Where's the line between dark academia and mental instability?

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

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Might I add:

The defeat of the wizard who made people choose how they’d be to be executed

The woman who raised the changeling alongside her biological child

The human who died of radiation poisoning after repairing the spaceship

The adventures of a space roomba

Cinderella finding Araura (and falling in love)

I don’t know a snappy description but the my nemesis cynthia story certainly lives in my head

I am in love with you /p

What about the one with the princess locked in a tower learning to become a wizard? That’s lived in my mind for years and I haven’t seen it in a long time

"Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.

But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said.”

We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.

Fun fact: one of the reasons why we stopped using thou is because people hated the quakers.

"Thou" was the informal "you" and "You" was formal, and the quakers just kinda refused to use the formal one because they were all about egalitarianism. A lot of people didn't want to be mistaken for quakers so they started only using formal "you" to avoid that. And it basically ended up being phased out of English because of that. And that's why we don't have formal and informal "you" like other languages do!

To understand mythologies, myths, folklores, folk tales, you kind of have to try to look at them through the eyes of those who lived and breathed during the eras when they were written, in the places where they were told and retold and passed down the generations.

You kind of have to learn how people lived and worked back then and where they were, how societies were structured and maintained, how cultures were made and kept, how things were in those time periods and how they impacted and influenced folks' ways of living and thinking.

If you only ever see them through a 21st century first world lens, I guarantee you, it just ain't gonna work.

I was working on a history paper today and found a book from 1826 that seemed promising (though dull) for my topic, on an English Catholic family’s experience moving to France.

And it ended up not really being suitable for my purposes, as it goes. But part of the book is actually devoted to Kenelm, the author’s oldest son…and man, his dad loved him.

Kenelm seems to have had a fairly typical upbringing for a young English gentleman, although he is a bit slow to read. At twelve he’s sent to board at Stoneyhurst College—often the big step towards independence in a boy’s life, as he’ll most likely only see his parents sporadically from now on, and then leave for university.

When he’s sixteen, however, his father moves the whole family to France, so Kenelm gets pulled out of school to be with them again. Shortly after the move, his dad notices that he seems depressed. Kenelm confides in him that he’s been suffering from “scruples” for the last eighteen months—most likely what we’d now call an anxiety disorder.

And his dad is pissed—at the school, because apparently Kenelm had been seeking help there and received none, despite obviously struggling with mental health issues. So his dad takes it seriously. He sets him up to be counseled by a priest—there were no therapists back then—and doesn’t send him away to be boarded again, instead teaching him at home himself.

And his mental health does improve. His dad describes him as well-liked, gentle, pious, kind and eager to please others; at twenty he’s thinking about a career in diplomacy or going into the military—which his dad thinks he is not particularly suited for, considering his favorite pastimes are drawing and reading. He’s excited about his family’s upcoming move to Italy, and he’s been busy learning Italian and teaching it to his siblings.

Henry Kenelm Beste dies of typhus at twenty years, four months, and twenty-five days. That’s how his dad records it. That’s why his dad is telling this story. It’s not an extraordinary story—Kenelm’s story struck me because he sounds so…ordinary, like so many kids today. And he was so, so loved. His dad tried hard to help him compassionately with his mental health at a time where our current knowledge and support systems didn’t exist. You can feel how badly he wanted his son to be remembered and loved, to impress how dearly beloved he was to the people who knew him in life.

I hope he’d be glad to know someone is still thinking of Kenelm over 200 years later.

Anyway, that’s why I’m crying today.

so I fell down a Google rabbit hole a little bit. the whole book OP is describing is on Project Gutenberg (it's called Four Years In France and the bit about Kenelm's education starts at page 282), but I really wanted to focus on that bit because I think it's remarkably understanding of mental health issues given the time period:

Scruples are, by no means, of the nature of religious melancholy; they are not inconsistent with the Christian grace of hope: they suppose innocence; for the sinner may be hardened, may be penitent, may be wavering, but cannot properly be said to be scrupulous: scruples not only preserve from sin, but have also the good effect (the gift of divine mercy,) of purging the heart from all affection to sin, as was manifested in the future life of Kenelm. Yet this fear, "the beginning of wisdom," acting on an ill-informed conscience, is hurtful, as it indisposes to a cheerful energetic performance of duty. I said to Kenelm, "If there are beings, (and we are told that such there are,) who are interested that man should do ill, they could by no other means so effectually obtain their purpose as by fixing our attention on that by which we may offend." A priest, whom I had known in England during his emigration, and whom I had the advantage of meeting again at Paris; a man whose sanctity inspired Kenelm with respect and confidence,—said to him, "Unless you shall be as sure that you have offended God in the way in which you apprehend, as you would be sure of having committed murder, I forbid you to mention it even to me in confession."

Just for some context and to translate this into simpler English: Kenelm developed these "scruples" after a serious illness which, among other things, tanked his grades and meant that he didn't win an academic award he'd been trying to achieve. His dad directly links that illness with his mental health issues.

His dad describes "scruples" as Kenelm being afraid of accidentally sinning, and he's so preoccupied with it that he spends all his time thinking about how to avoid sin than, like, socializing with other kids or spending time with loved ones or actively trying to do good. It's coming from a good place, but it's preventing him from living his life (and also ignoring God's mercy/the concept of confession, but like, it's very clear that the dad's most concerned with how it's affecting the kid in general, and the religious stuff is how he's able to explain it).

And I really like the priest's "unless you know you sinned, on purpose, in the same way you would know if you murdered someone, you have done nothing wrong and therefore you have absolutely nothing to confess to me about."

But what's really interesting here is that the dad distinguishes scruples from "religious melancholy" – what we'd probably now call intrusive thoughts. Kenelm is afraid of accidentally sinning and is trying so hard not to that it's interfering with his life; people with religious melancholy are being bombarded with thoughts of sin and are convinced that they are beyond salvation because of those thoughts.

But what's REALLY interesting is a sermon I came across while Googling religious melancholy:

I come now to the last case I proposed to speak to, which doth relate to these unhappy persons, who have naughty, and sometimes blasphemous thoughts start in their minds, while they are exercised in the worship of God, which makes them ready to charge themselves with the sin against the Holy Ghost, to pronounce their condition to be without hopes of remedy, and to fear that God hath utterly cast them off [...] That their case is not so dangerous as they apprehend it, I shall endeavour to show by the following considerations. 1. Because these frightful thoughts do for the most part proceed from the disorder and indisposition of the body [...] 2. Because they are mostly good people, who are exercised with them. For bad men, whose heads are busied in laying one scene of wickedness or other, how they may gratify their malice, or execute their revenge, or over-reach their neighbours, or violate their trusts, or satisfy their beastly lust, rarely know any thing of these kind of thoughts, or use to complain of them. But they are honest and well-meaning Christians of unhealthy constitutions, and melancholy tempers, who are so miserably harrass'd by them; who above all things earnestly desire an interest in their God and Saviour, and for that reason the least dishonourable thought of him, which insinuates itself into their minds, is so dreadful unto them. 3. Because it is not in the power of those disconsolate Christians, whom these bad thoughts so vex and torment, with all their endeavours to stifle and suppress them. Nay often the more they struggle with them, the more they increase [...] It will be therefore much to your detriment to hide yourselves from your friends, and to quit the calling wherein you were exercised; in that people of dejected tempers never fare worse than by themselves, and when they have nothing to do [...] When you find these thoughts creeping upon you, be not mightily dejected [...] Neither violently struggle with them; since experience doth teach that they increase and swell by vehement opposition; but dissipate and waste away, and come to nothing when they are neglected, and we do not much concern ourselves about them [...] It is not therefore a furious combat with melancholy thoughts, which will but weaken and sink the body, and to make the case worse, but a gentle application of such comfortable things as restore the strength, and recruit the languishing spirit that must quash and disperse these disorderly tumults in the head.

To translate into simpler English:

  • Your intrusive thoughts are not a moral failing; it is a disease you cannot control.
  • The fact that these thoughts disturb you is a sign that you are a good person: you're not imagining sin in order to plan doing it, it's just coming into your head without you wanting it.
  • It is counterproductive to isolate yourself (since it cuts you off from support) or to just try really hard not to think about that thing you're thinking about. Trying really hard not to think about it just means you're thinking about it more.
  • Instead, remember that the thoughts are only thoughts (and won't do anything without you acting on them) and perform gentle self-care.

This is from 1692. THE SAME YEAR THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS HAPPENED, JUST FOR A POINT OF REFERENCE.

the thing about mr darcy. is that everything he does he does because of his eldest sibling syndrome. it's so important that he has a younger sister and it's so important that she's 16 and it's so important that their parents are dead. it's so important that georgina is friendly and cheerful and that he hates everyone. it's so important that he loathes wickham for what he did to her and gets involved to stop him from destroying lizzy's younger sister's life. it's so important that he moves bingley away because he thinks he's about to get his heart broken. it's so important that bingley is a lot like georgina. like seriously darcy is an asshole because he's an eldest sibling and he's so so sweet because he's an eldest sibling that's the whole point

yes girl you are so [if i loved you less i might be able to talk about it more] [hands are unbearably beautiful] [i'll take care of you it's rotten work not to me not if it's you] [if you are intolerable let me be the one to tolerate you] [i could recognise him by touch alone] [i love you i want us both to eat well] [on purpose i love you on purpose] [whatever our souls are made of his and mine are the same] [i am half agony half hope] [you have bewitched me body and soul and i love love love you] [he is half of my soul as the poets say] [i'm sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for but i'm so lonely] [i love you most ardently] [let me stay tender hearted despite despite despite] [someone has to leave first this is a very old story there is no other version of this story] [mostly i want to be kind] [tell me how all this and love too will ruin us] [you said i killed you haunt me then] [someone somewhere can you understand me a little love me a little] [i will love you as misfortune loves orphans as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong] [sorry about the blood in your mouth i wish it was mine] [who will come into my kitchen and be hungry for me] can we kiss now

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i think the most beautiful thing about me is that i can predict the future by looking at the present and feel like shit after because so many will die and my hands will be considered painted with their blood

“Every day I get more convinced that I was created for you alone. It is through your eyes that I saw the world; on your lips my poems were born. Without you, my life is a wasteland. I am colorless, tasteless, smelling like a land never visited by rain.”

Rawda el-Haj, tr. & ed. Adil Babikir, Modern Sudanese Poetry: An Anthology; “Heart’s Confessions”

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

Avatar

Might I add:

The defeat of the wizard who made people choose how they’d be to be executed

The woman who raised the changeling alongside her biological child

The human who died of radiation poisoning after repairing the spaceship

The adventures of a space roomba

Cinderella finding Araura (and falling in love)

I don’t know a snappy description but the my nemesis cynthia story certainly lives in my head

I am in love with you /p

What about the one with the princess locked in a tower learning to become a wizard? That’s lived in my mind for years and I haven’t seen it in a long time

Two identical infants lay in the cradle. “One you bore, the other is a Changeling. Choose wisely,” the Fae’s voice echoed from the shadows. “I’m taking both my children,” the mother said defiantly.

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Once upon a time there was a peasant woman who was unhappy because she had no children. She was happy in all other things – her husband was kind and loving, and they owned their farm and had food and money enough. But she longed for children.

She went to church and prayed for a child every Sunday, but no child came. She went to every midwife and wise woman for miles around, and followed all their advice, but no child came.

So at last, though she knew of the dangers, she drew her brown woolen shawl over her head and on Midsummer’s Eve she went out to the forest, to a certain clearing, and dropped a copper penny and a lock of her hair into the old well there, and she wished for a child.

“You know,” a voice said behind her, a low and cunning voice, a voice that had a coax and a wheedle and a sly laugh all mixed up in it together, “that there will be a price to pay later.”

She did not turn to look at the creature. She knew better. “I know it,” she said, still staring into the well. “And I also know that I may set conditions.”

“That is true,” the creature said, after a moment, and there was less laugh in its voice now. It wasn’t pleased that she knew that. “What condition do you set? A boy child? A lucky one?”

“That the child will come to no harm,” she said, lifting her head to stare into the woods. “Whether I succeed in paying your price, or passing your test, or not, the child will not suffer. It will not die, or be hurt, or cursed with ill luck or any other thing. No harm of any kind.”

“Ahhhhh.” The sound was long and low, between a sigh and a hum. “Yes. That is a fair condition. Whatever price there is, whatever test there is, it will be for you and you alone.” A long, slender hand extended into her sight, almost human save for the skin, as pale a green as a new leaf. The hand held a pear, ripe and sweet, though the pears were nowhere ripe yet. “Eat this,” the voice said, and she trembled with the effort of keeping her eyes straight ahead. “All of it, on your way home. Before you enter your own gate, plant the core of it beside the gate, where the ground is soft and rich. You will have what you ask for.”