anonymous said:
Hey, so uh, same hat on the whole gender thing, it's really comforting in a weird way to know I'm not alone. (As I once saw in a wise tumblr post: "Gender is a cage and I've chewed the bars off!)- James Baldwin writes about suffering in the healing process, stating: “I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering—but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are.” Growing up is, at heart, the process of learning to take responsibility for whatever happens in your life. To choose growth is to embrace a love that heals.Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions
- Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realise that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvellously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.Thich Nhat Hanh
Never forget: How far you have come. Everything you have gotten through. All the times you have pushed on even when you felt you couldn’t, all the mornings you got out of bed no matter how hard it was. All the times you wanted to give up but you got through another day. Never forget how much strength you have learned and developed along the way.
- As we become mindful of a feeling that’s driving us, we realize that we don’t have to react to it and be driven by it. Instead, we can simply observe it, recognize that it represents a part of us that is suffering, and have compassion for that part of us.Bodhipaksa, “Digital Detox: Reclaim Your Mind From Social Media Addiction”
- No one at all capable of an intense conscious inner life need ever hope to escape mental anguish and suffering. Sorrow and often despair over the so-called eternal fitness of things are the most persistent companions of our life…. It is absolutely necessary that we realize this fact, because people who never get away from the notion that their misfortune is due to the wickedness of their fellows never can outgrow the petty hatred and malice which constantly blames, condemns, and hounds others for something that is inevitable as part of themselves.Emma Goldman, “Jealousy: Causes and a Possible Cure”
“One of the most striking things I’ve realized during my conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism is how Protestants hold such a warped view of suffering.
When you believe salvation is by faith alone, suffering becomes unneeded. Not so for the Catholic, who believes it’s an economy of grace and sin. Catholicism teaches that every ounce of suffering we bear is necessary for salvation. It becomes sanctifying.
Many Prots look at suffering as inherently evil. “If you’re suffering, God must be angry with you.” For many, it’s nearly synonymous with sin itself. They may bear it, but they never embrace it.
The faith alone perspective simply removes the need; the concept of doing penance for sin is alien.
Nearly every aspect of the Catholic Faith reflects suffering, the pinnacle obviously being Christ’s suffering, celebrated in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
The Catholic learns not just to accept it, but to embrace and love suffering.
As Fr Ripperger says, we must step into the boxing ring and be willing to “take the beating”. “If we are willing to suffer, there is nothing in our spiritual life we cannot obtain.”
The enemy hates our willingness to suffer.
All this creates a beautiful harmony. As Tolkien put it:
“Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love.”
I’ve found, personally, that this makes suffering easier to bear.
Suffering ≠ absence of joy
Ultimately, it’s a tool God uses to make us holy, to make us die to the self. Pray that you may fall in love God’s will for you, even if that includes suffering. Which it will, ofc.”
(+)
- We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing – our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in. We can’t hold on to anything – a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, an intimate moment with a lover, our very existence as the body/mind we call self – because all things come and go. Lacking any permanent satisfaction, we continuously need another injection of fuel, stimulation, reassurance from loved ones, medicine, exercise, and meditation. We are continually driven to become something more, to experience something else.Tara Brach
- Christmas, Animals, and Suffering!
Animals given as Christmas gifts/holiday gifts quite often end up suffering for it!
They are dropped off at shelters. Others are simply abandoned out of doors.
On average at small shelters after Christmas there are 42 dogs and 86 cats, plus various other animals that were gifts.
Please think your decision to gift a pet to someone.
Think once, then think again, and then think once more!
Living in abuse, we’re often inclined and encouraged to believe that our suffering has a profound meaning. Abusers will often use religion or some morality nonsense to convince us that our suffering will be worth something, that we’re suffering for good reason, often they even say it’s our own fault they’re putting us thru hell. There’s also a lot of social nonsense about only being a good person if you’re willing to suffer for someone, if you’re willingly going thru pain for another’s sake, that’s presented to us as virtue, as goodness.
But if that were true, then we’d feel the benefits of suffering already. We’d feel like a good person, or we’d feel that it was worth it. We’d know we’ve done well, we’d see results. How come anything that ever comes out of suffering is trauma, devastation, decline of will to live? How come people around us are fine just watching us suffer, even encouraging us to believe it’s for a reason, encouraging us to go on, to blame ourselves, but they do not help us, they do not try to lessen our pain? How are they good people after that? How is their word worth anything? Why is everyone an authority or how bad we are, but we’re not allowed a word on their selfishness?
Our suffering means human beings are being mistreated and abused, it matters that we’re put thru that, it affects us, it changes our worldview, our happiness and quality of life. Our suffering matters because we matter. Our pain matters. It’s inflicted on us against our will, and then we’re manipulated to believe that for some reason we chose it. No human being wants to be put thru traumatic amount of suffering for someone else’s benefit. Because that’s all there is to it, we suffered because we had no other choice, we were forced to make ourselves small so abusers could take up more space, we had our boundaries of humanity pushed until we didn’t believe we were worth the same as everybody else. This is not meaningful. It’s not profound. It’s not by our will. It’s not worth anything. It will never make us feel good. It will never be in our favour. It needs to end. Nobody needs to be put thru suffering anymore. It’s been enough. We all had enough.
- I know the source of all my suffering.
I have traced it to my innermost core:
Even my heartbeat is controlled and calculated.
I make sure no dream’s deep, dark foreboding,
no imprisoned passion, no stirring sorrow
can break through this armor to my soul.Hermann Hesse, from “My Misery,” The Seasons of the Soul: The Poetic Guidance and Spiritual Wisdom of Hermann Hesse (North Atlantic Books, 2011)
- walking on broken glass
because im bingeing annie lennox and i cried over this anon prompt
warnings for graphic discussions/flashbacks of non-con and self-harm/suicide. srry :(
prompt: do you think andrew would ever cry?
*
“Andrew.”
It was stupid-funny how oxygen particles, such irrefutably tiny particles, could tear through his lungs like this. Like shards of shattered window panes, creating slits in his throat and choking him with the metallic stench of his own blood, every inhale tore into him, every exhale numbing the excruciating pain.
Why was there glass in his skin?
“Andrew?”
Oh, yes. He remembered now. He’d put his fist through the bathroom window, one Neil had climbed out of months ago.
The crunch had sounded much the same as Drake’s skull. Fist to glass, stick to head, crunch, crunch, crunch. His laugh grated against his bloodied throat, just like it had when he clutched onto Luther’s headboard. Maybe it hadn’t been the drugs in the end: Maybe they just removed the urge to smother the laughter.
Who even coined the term rape? Who illegalised it? People take and take and take, regardless of whether it’s honour or loyalty or kindness: Rape is just the same. It’s an act of taking.
That’s what people do.
They take. And take. And take. What had they taken from Andrew? Comfort in his own skin. The ability to reminisce on a childhood. A functioning family. They took his ability to express complex emotion: His ability to even conjure emotion at all. They took away sleep, free of nightmares. They took away touches, free of tainted memories.
Instead of all these basic things they gave him thin white scars across whiter skin. Self-hatred that burned out years ago and left an empty void. They gave him bloodied sheets, and the burn between his legs that had shame ricochet within his skull whenever he sat.
Wherever Andrew walked was shards of broken glass. Some were permanently embedded into his skin: Others had callouses grown around them, permanently numbed. Where-ever he walked, he left a bloody trail, tragic and undeniably horrific.
Everyone of us was made to suffer. Everyone of us was made to suffer. Everyone of us was made to suffer.
Seems like Andrew had taken on other people’s shares.
“Andrew.” That wasn’t Neil. “Are you alright.”
Aaron. His blood brother. His blood brother, who’d bloodied his other brother. Drake was his brother. It’s just brotherly affection. You’re just looking for attention, Andrew. It’s just a misunderstanding. Brotherly affection. Brotherly affection. Please, oh for the love of God, please don’t, please stop, please-
The only brotherly affection he’d ever got was someone with hands wrapped around his neck as they fucked him, or someone whacking heads with Exy sticks till they imploded.
“Fine.” He croaked. He felt invalid. It had been Aaron’s trial today, afterall. Who’d stood as witness? Neil, obviously. Kevin. Nicky. Who else”
He did. Right. Yes. Staring at Cass the whole time, he did. Told a jury about the bloodied sheets, the money stolen from Richard’s desk to buy razors when kitchen knives were too serrated. Knowing Cass still refused to acknowledge or even see what her son was doing, he looked at her. How had Drake learned to be like that? How had Drake been anything but the perfect, caring older brother, when he was lucky enough to have Cass as a mother?
Why do the people who get everything they could ever ask for, take what isn’t theirs?
Andrew had walked on a path of broken glass his entire life: It was Drake who knocked him over and pressed his entire body into the splintered shards. Dragged him by his feet, by his hair. Carved into his chest and took out any remnants of a soul, of a heart, of the chance to heal.
The door to the bathroom creaked open slowly, and expanses of tanned skin knelt before him. How could Andrew forget his intangible - his - nothing - something - everything -
He didn’t know what to call Neil.
The man refused to touch him until Andrew had nodded slowly to his whispered yes or no? He went, not for the bloodied fist, but for Andrew’s jaw. A thumb swiped under his eye, and came away wet.
It was so inconceivable that Andrew’s thoughts ground to a halt. The last time he’d cried was at the age seven. Sammy. Samuel. Andrew remembered the noise of a Jack Daniels cap being spun shut, until the bottle lid was tightly screwed. That was always Andrew’s cue, to come take the bottle away. He’d be grabbed by the hair, often hard enough to have chunks of hair come out, and thrown to the nearest surface.
Say please. Say please, Andrew. C’mon Andrew. Say please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please!
Please.
Stop.
He and Neil sat knee to knee as his body convulsed with silent sobs that clawed out of his throat. He shoved them down the best he could. He wanted to punch himself in the gut, cut his wrists open, fling himself off a balcony, careen his car into a wall, choke himself on a rope -
“Andrew.” Neil whispered. “It’s over. You’re safe.”
You’re safe.
He stopped holding his breath, sucking in one last gasp of oxygen, with all its tiny, shard like particles. Neil’s hand was on his cheek, still. It hadn’t moved. As Andrew’s head fell forward until it rested on Neil’s shoulder, heavier than he’d ever known, Neil’s palm gently slid to hold the back of Andrew’s neck. Sweat clung to him like a second skin, and Neil should have had a knife in his gut for trying to comfort Andrew via touch, but his scent was so grounding, the topography of his scarred skin so familiar that it couldn’t be anything but comforting.
Because Neil knew. Neil saw. Neil understood, in a way that is simultaneously terrifying and relief-inspiring.
He supposed Neil had walked on broken glass too.
Carefully, within Neil’s gentle grasp, he began to remove the shards.
*
is this ooc? dunno. maybe. is it heart-wrenching? everything about andrew is. so. sorry?
also i might continue this with neil and lola. i’ve wanted to do a character study on lola for a while now. i am slowly re-ascending to my throne as angst queen.
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