ff

a friend texted me yesterday, while i was out running work errands, that he was crying over the sentencing in the rehtaeh parsons case.

 

remember her? rehtaeh. we aren't supposed to use her name. remember? remember how well reporting went for her? remember that there was a photograph of her rape, and still she was blamed and shamed and doubted and mocked? remember how cruel the world was to her? remember how she did not survive it? remember how we grieved when she died?

 



{rehtaeh's father, delivering the victim impact statement yesterday as reported by the cbc}

'why wouldn't a person report an assault?'
'we are having a watershed moment!'

{amanda hess writes on rehtaeh for slate.com}

i don't know what justice would look like, exactly. i don't. but i know this isn't it. i don't like prison as a catch-all. but i want something. i want something better than this. a system that rips a girl to shreds when she has already been broken apart.

the system is broken. the system is sick and rotting at its core.

'why wouldn't a person report an assault?'
'we are having a watershed moment!'

forgive me if i am not a believer. forgive me if i am too tired, even, to cry for her again. and for the ones who never got brought out into the public eye, whose assaults stayed 'community matters', who will never even come close to this non-justice-justice, to being heard and believed and cared for.

happy friday, don't forget.

today i read

 

{sara benincasa for human parts at medium}

* stick around

find the thing that helps you stick around. flowers. trees. when things are okay, the list can be a million times longer, but when things are not okay, a list of one or two... it can be enough. it could be.

recently i added: books. if one option is to not be here, and another option is to quit everything and read books in bed for the rest of forever, forsaking all other things (except, of course, flowers, dogs)... i'm just saying... it is an idea.

we're on eachothers' team

twice this year i have cried and cried and cried over the death of a celebrity. being empathic to a crippling degree means i get real sad about stuff all the time, and i'm generally pretty okay at being rational while being sad, but these two got through real deep. philip seymour hoffman, robin williams.

i've talked about depression times a million on here, and elsewhere, and i'm tired so tired and would probably just say the same things again, open heart breakable heart, void vs ache, the nothing, and and and, so go back and read if you feel like it. there are also other people saying things too, of course. i am grateful to them.

today, just : there are a lot of spectacular amazing gifted giving smart funny gentle badass beautiful humans on team depression. it makes being in the club a little better to think about them. the ones who talk and do and fight however they can, even if it is just tiny in my livingroom, they make it better to be a person who has been depressed and will pretty much certainly be depressed again at some point. but. oof. it is a hard team to be on. of course. because it is a team that loses a lot, a lot of good ones, best ones. this year has been a bad one for our team. and i am so sad.

dust in the spotlight

{from my tumblr, but really from here}

 

i want so much to tell you not to die. i know it is a useless and mostly meaningless thing to say. but i'd like to say it all the same.

i am sure you have people who actually know you, who are there, who are telling you not to die. and i know that even those people can barely create a pull, really, when the sinking begins. and i am only a girl on the internet.

i do not understand suicide. but i do understand that my lack of understanding is largely luck. my moods have not got that far in. not yet. hopefully, maybe, they never will. but also one of the many medications i take or will take might maybe tick just so. and that side effect they tell you might maybe happen will happen. i understand that my not understanding is a fragile thing. i am susceptible to that side effect, of course, too. if the nauseous and the fatigue and the headaches and the reflux and the trouble swallowing and the fitful sleeping that leads to foggy, unfocused days... if those, then the others, too, are possible.

so i understand that telling you not to die is not helpful. asking that you not die is unkind. i can feel people wanting to ask me not to die, and i want so much to promise them forever and ever i won't. i want to laugh at the absurdity of the thought because it is, for me, so far, a completely absurd one. hopefully forever and ever.

(and now, in the weeks since i wrote this, you have seemed so good. so safe and so fine. in the way that you may never be entirely fine but you are fine for now fine. and it doesn't seem so pressing that i tell you not to die. but really i don't know a single thing.)