“The body has been made so problematic for women that it has often seemed easier to shrug it off and travel as a disembodied spirit.”— Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, excerpted in Essential Essays: Culture, Politics, and the Art of Poetry, ed. Sarah M. Gilbert.
questions to ask yourself when you want to use an unhealthy coping mechanism
- why do i want to hurt myself? what will blaming myself reinforce? who taught me i am not allowed to make mistakes? who benifits from this?
- am i feeling overwhelmed? what’s really bothering me? can i write it down? what am i avoiding thinking about?
- am i reacting rationally? what would i tell a friend who was experiencing this? what can i learn from this? isn’t that what’s important?
- am i god? do i control everything? is worrying going to serve a purpose?
(Source: sensitiveanarchist)
the thing about everything is that it all gets easier with practice, so be careful what you practice
Romance as means of redemption is the worst kind of Western medicine, but an obsession with personal transformation is an even more American tendency, or at least it is mine. In the last couple years it became a more interesting challenge to be “good” than bad. I started living alone, vacuuming my apartment weekly, saving parmesan rinds for soup, calling to negotiate better rates for utilities. I became a better cook and friend, especially to myself. These specific tasks are not meant to demonstrate adulthood, the inane fantasy of the unrigorous that there is a finite level—based often on what you can afford to own and what that implies—at which no further acquisition of skills or growth is necessary. Rather, it’s to illustrate that I now live my life in a way that suggests I care to be in it. Naturally that desire transfers to other tasks, practices, and ways of relating––what I mean is that it transfers to love.
“Every Long Letter Is A Love Letter” by Lucy Morris
Human beings be like I must create something or i will kill myself
(Source: techgnosticism)