Enemies to lovers is for those who feel they are living an illusion- a lie. They believe that the closer one gets to them, the more chaos they uncover. They’re convinced they will never truly be understood, that people see them as what appeases their minds. They infatuate over the concept of someone seeing their raw state, with all their flaws only pronounced by the hate- to then still being able to love them regardless. To love them for the very flaws they saw. To acknowledge that there is so much more than what meets the eye, a whole world waiting to be discovered
"And you tried to change, didn't you? Closed your mouth more. Tried to be softer, prettier, less volatile, less awake... You can't make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that. And if he wants to leave, then let him leave. You are terrifying, and strange, and beautiful. Something not everyone knows how to love."
-Warsan Shire
bell hooks mentioned going through a time in her life where she was severely depressed and suicidal and how the only way she got through it was through changing her environment: She surrounded her home with buddhas of all colors, Audre Lorde’s A Litany for Survival facing her as she wakes up, and filling the space she saw everyday with reinforcing objects and meaningful books. She asks herself each day, “What are you going to do today to resist domination?” I also really liked it when she said that in order to move from pain to power, it is crucial to engage in “an active rewriting of our lives.”
I have come to think of the suicidal impulse as the brain waving a flag to say three things:
- something needs to change here
- this is urgent
- I don’t know how to do it
death is the ultimate metaphor for drastic change. it’s a general specific. whatever your problems are, it is very likely that dead people don’t have to deal with them. a real solution to your problems may demand a very narrow range of action that’s likely to be out of reach at this moment, but death is sold on every street corner, so it feels like a more realistic fantasy than happiness.
you don’t really want to die per se but it’s also not completely random chemicals swamping your brain for no reason. you want the pain to stop, you want to be somewhere else, you want to be someone else. it’s urgent. you don’t know how to do it. the end is not the end but a means that feels within your reach right now.
this is the wisdom of bell hooks: daily rituals of meaning and resistance and solidarity are part of slowly building a future where you can make the change you really need. and only alive people can do that. every step you take towards change and power is another step away from death.
A very similar approach is also the main focus of Kate Bernstein’s Hello, Cruel World. Besides the free “lite” version she put out (linked there), the whole book is available to borrow on archive.org.
Hold, the bulb whispers to itself, biding beneath the earth. There will be a day for me. The fields will clear and then I can grow as I know I can, let loose all this green kept shuttered in the seed. When the other roots make room for me. When the wind wanders calm. When the soil is soft, weathered down the rocks and frost with spring-melt. Stay your stem. Wait, it whispers and whimpers and wails– wait– til the winter has fallen back and round again, and patient, polite, withered, it waits.
i'm so glad i'm not a teen anymore i'm sorry for teens that you guys still have to do that. whole heartedly prefer the ways my 20s suck to the ways my teen years sucked
20 Day Shadowhunters Countdown Gratitude List!
So, as some of you know by now, I’ve decided to do a thing where I give a shout-out to some of my favourite blogs, works, stories, etc. as a way of expressing gratitude for everyone who’s struggled through this painful hiatus and all of the times before with me. You all contribute so much to this beautiful community and I can’t thank everyone enough for creating, sharing, and freaking out about content with me on this ridiculous but amazing hellsite I’ll be counting down the days until the S3 premiere by 5′s. This week, on t-minus 15 days and counting, is 15 of the most memorable SH fanfics I’ve ever read, in no particular order*:
*(if you want yours taken off of the list please let me know and I’ll do so asap. Also I’ve done my best to tag everyone based on their ao3 profile/username but if I tag the wrong person or something please let me know!)
1. Destiny Calls by clockworkswan y’all this is legit one of the most impressive pieces of fanfic I’ve ever read in my entire life, it’s literally almost as long as all three Lord of the Rings books put together. It was also one of the first multi-chapters I ever read, and the description of Magnus has stuck with me for my entire time in the fandom and as a writer. Beautiful imagery and characterization, 10/10 would recommend but 0/10 for trying to read it in 2 days like I did @clockworkswans
2. takes on any shape by oh_la_fraise also one of the first I ever read, and right from the description had me snorting. Such an adorable concept and really entertaining and beautiful to read- you’ve got Magnus as a kid, you’ve got bad-ass Catarina, what more could you want? @ohlafraise 3. The Personal Assistant of Magnus Bane by MenckensChrestomethy holy fucking fuck this is funny. I LITERALLY did a spit take the first time I read this with the soup I was eating, at the first two lines of the second chapter. I also just now realized looking it over that the piece about spinach puffs must have implanted in my brain and inspired my Perils of Memory and Spinach Puffs story like numerous months later, so I’m gonna have to go credit that! I’ll leave y’all with this quote from the fic too, which has been like a lens for how I interpret Magnus’s character in many ways since reading it: “Magnus is a good man… But he is not a nice one” @menckenschrestomethy 4. Somebody out there by mckvch (RaiseYourVoice) (Saphael) I included this on my ace-friendly fic rec list too, but I’d seriously recommend it to anyone who likes Saphael. My first serious Saphael fic, the first time I’d seen “asexual” in fanfic, and just an overall super pleasant and easygoing story that I’d come back to every now and again @mckvch
This is absolutely insanely lovely and I honestly had the biggest grin on my face when I saw that it was Have Pride that you’d mentioned - that was my first multi-chap SH fic, and I am nostalgically proud of it, so thank you!! And of these fics that I’ve read, they’re all absolutely fabulous, and the rest are going on my to read list 💕
“what kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.” nina simone
This is why we dance: Because screaming isn’t free.
Please tell me: Why is anger–even anger–a luxury to me?
— Mohammed El-Kurd, from “This Is Why We Dance,” Rifqa
— Baek Sehee, from “I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki.”
“James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78”, An Interview by Jordan Elgrably
Would he kill for you? Would you lie for him? If not, why bother?
Natalie Díaz, from “Isn't the Air Also a Body, Moving?”, Postcolonial Love Poem
How to protect yourself during stampede
this isn’t the usual thing I’d share on my stupid nerd blog, but this is SO important. I was nearly crushed in a crowd like this once. It was terrifying because you have NO control over the panicking mass of humans around you. you are just at the mercy of all this chaotic force. this is a real thing that can happen very suddenly! it did happen in the news recently! My situation was, the olympics was happening in my city, I was on my way home from school, and a crowd of people suddenly flooded into the street around me. in seconds it went from, busy-city-street-crowded, to, wtf I can’t even move crowded. I was so pressed against the backpack of the man in front of me, my feet lifted off the ground a moment. People were climbing lamp posts, signs, bus shelters, trees, everything to get up out of it. it was like the street became an ocean of people, and all the people’s survival instincts were making them dumber. everyone was yelling. no one knew how to solve it. police, fire fighters and medics saved us by breaking the locks on the inside of the mall we were trapped next to. a huge group flooded into the building, releasing a bit of the pressure on the people outside. I was in that group that got in.
We were trapped in the mall awhile. Because the olympics was on, they had big screens in a few sitting areas of the mall that would normally be showing the games. but now the coverage was focused on this crowd surge. They showed a helicopter shot of the building we were now in, totally surrounded by colorful dots. a solid mass of humans with no space between. I know someone was partially trampled and needed medics, because I saw that, but i don’t know the statistics on who else was hurt, hopefully no one killed! I don’t know if these methods can definitely save you, but they might give you a better chance. so watch and share!
Sharing to my own stupid nerd blog for the same reason, this is SO IMPORTANT. Human crushes are one of the most unexpected ways to die. People go out to a show or a sports game, and make it there, but they never come back. Other strategies include staying away from large obstacles (like fences) that you could get crushed against, and doing your best to stay above the crowd. Try to climb onto something if you can.
And also — not to get nitpicky with deadly tragedies, but they’re called “human crushes,” not “stampedes.” It’s an important difference in description and also in respect. The deaths usually happen because the victims are pinned together in a tight space, they can’t breathe (as in the video) and they suffocate. “Stampede” doesn’t convey what actually happened to those people. The crush that happened in Seoul recently wasn’t because people “stampeded,” it was because they couldn’t move at all and they suffocated. But calling it a “stampede,” you’d think it was the people themselves that ran over each other, like wild animals. It’s disrespectful and untrue.
Horrifyingly, the victims of many human crushes have been blamed for their own deaths, which are usually purely accidental or due to criminal mismanagement from authorities. If you’re in a mental place to read about tragedies and police corruption, check out the Hillsborough Disaster, in which 97 people died due to the incompetence of the police, who then blamed everything on the victims: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster