For the past four and a half months, I have had my address out on the internet as an invitation for anyone to send me their blades so they can take a step forward towards getting better.
In those four and a half months, I have received these:
- 71 blades
- 4 bobby pins
- 3 paper clips
- 2 safety pins
- 1 needle
- 1 letter opener
- 1 lighter
I can’t really say much in response to this, because honestly I don’t think there are words to describe how proud and how humbled I am.
These people are fighters, and the day they sent those away, it was another step towards winning the war.
Bless you all…Thank you for trusting me <3
NOTE: If you would like to send in your tools, I will accept them and I will attach them to cards and keep them safe just like the ones pictured above. You can send anything you want to:
Elijah K
PO Box 1211
Burnsville, MN 55337Oh my god. Amazing.
I think this just confirms that all “Beliebers” are fucking a class psychotic. They started the trend #cutforbieber because of Justin Bieber smoking weed. WHO DOESN’T WHEN THEY’RE 18 YEARS OLD.
I am so appalled. This pushed the limits for me. I don’t even know what to say to these people anymore.
I’m so fucking mad i checked twitter and it’s an actual thing
Googled it; It’s a particularly awful trick pulled by 4chan to try and lure actual bieber fans into self harming.
IT PISSES ME OFF WHEN PEOPLE ARE NASTY TO PEOPLE FOR SELF HARMING
THAT PERSON IS SAD ENOUGH TO PHYSICALLY HARM THEMSELVES
WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU SAY SOMETHING TO UPSET THEM EVEN MORE KNOWING THAT
THAT IS WHY THEY DO IT
FUCKING HORRIBLE IDIOTS
[TW: abuse, manipulation, self-harm, suicide] giant, massive, flashing red flag number whatever
when the only way to “keep” a person from self-harming or attempting suicide is agreeing with them 100% on absolutely every topic, and never contradicting them
just because they are directing their violence at their own body in an attempt to manipulate you rather than directing their violence at your body in an attempt to manipulate you doesn’t make it any less manipulative.
If any disagreement is framed as “betrayal”, ever conflict is framed as a crisis, every boundary you draw is framed as a dismissal of their feelings, and their primary reaction to those things is to hurt themselves or attempt suicide, then: 1. they need professional help, and 2. you need to get away from them.
this also goes for cases where you can never tell if they’re going to be fine with you disagreeing with them, or they’re going to react by hurting themselves.
I feel like lately, in multiple contexts, I’ve heard “well [x,y,z] is having a hard time/is fragile/is unstable/etc so you just have to be really careful around them” used as an excuse for manipulative, abusive behavior and honestly, no. You should not have to tiptoe around someone like they are a minefield and any misstep could cause an unpredictable and violent reaction. THAT IS NOT OKAY no matter how fragile someone is (especially because people who do this are almost never as fragile as they act).
“Depression is a rather rude house guest; Depression rarely calls ahead to see if it’s a good time, and Depression never arrives alone. It brings it friends: Despair, Self-Injury and Suicide. Depression is the invisible plague.” Emilie Autumn
(Source: st0ckhill)
TW ABLEISM, VIOLENCE, SELF HARM /// Crazy. And. Violence. And Glee.
I’ve been kind of quiet about Colorado. Well, kind of. I’ve been trying to stay away from the news and make empirical statements about guns, is what I’m trying to say. I’ve been quiet. I shut my eyes and everything with the news because what I really wanted to hear was whether my (Colorado based) family was okay, not whether the shooter was crazy. But no one even asked if he was crazy. They’ve just assumed, and ‘mentally ill’ has become a tag word, giving me more reason to stay away from even beloved news networks like NPR.
I have….I have no defenses. They’re all gone. So I can’t write this essay about how it’s easy to kill people with guns, but not sticks or why crazy people are dramatically more likely to be killed than kill. I can’t do that right now. I’m not really able to find any words. And I’m not sure adding my opinion into the endless sea of ears stuffed shut will help anyone out. But I do want to talk about crazy and violence. And Glee.
I read this blog post and I thought about violence. But about how many people will think I’m silly for thinking it’s violence. (I don’t have defenses for that, either, so we’re just going to assume we all are on the same ground – tying your students down to stop them soothing themselves with movement is violence.)
And I watched Asian F again. (It’s Season 3, episode 3 of Glee. You should watch it before reading further, because it’s relevant.)
Emma Pillsbury is a character (and because I relate to her I’m calling her a human) is a human who has gone through violence. And not many people will recognize it as such. Her parents tied her hands down to get her to stop her weird movements. And, well, it never worked. (I’ve never met anyone who has been tied down who doesn’t stim still). They were nice with the twine. Others had duct tape, others rope.
The lucky ones (of which I am counted) were redirected and guided. It was just made clear that we couldn’t move like this.
(I move like this more. I’ve always moved like this. I’ve always shaken my hands out and swung my keys around and paced in my room for hours and hours and hours on end rather than socially interacting. But I move – my hands – my arms- more freely now that it’s occurred to me that it’s okay. I used to self harm instead of move. It was a problem.
But now I move. And now I soothe myself with movement – not a razor – because it works. And now I probably embarrass people more with my moving and my hand flapping and my clapping and my rocking back and forth and my rubbing my legs because I know it’s embarrassing. I’ve been told. Your hands have been placed on mine to tell me to stop.)
It didn’t work. But we weren’t in schools or classrooms or homes, luckily, that considered this a solution.
The unlucky ones have had their wrists broken because they were held down too strong and too long and they wanted to move too much. This force echoes every time you tell me to stop moving, every time you put your hand on mine to make me stop. Every time you even remind me how annoying it is so I go to another room until I can stop (because sometimes I desperately want to be like you, and I want to be better). Because you have…you have the power. You’d have more power if I was a kid and you could tie me down.
You can love me, I can love you, and this can still be true. It has to be.
Will made Emma stop moving her hands in the final scene of Asian F. Quiet Hands. And it was reminiscent of the violence he’d just learned about. And he still made her stop moving her hands. And she was calming herself down and she was not hurting herself, but he still made her stop.
And she did, because, God, does she want to be better for Will. She wants to be the perfect girl for him, and the perfect girl does not have OCD, and she does not move her hands. And oh God, does she try.
But there is violence and there are bodies. We don’t count them. When moms drown their autistic toddlers we don’t light candles for them like we did for Casey Anthony’s daughter because it’s hard to parent a child with autism. We don’t count the deaths. We just….we just don’t, and I don’t know why.
This isn’t the same as shooting up a movie theater.
I know.
You’re making this about disability again.
Because it’s already about mental illness and crazy people and who kills people more often and who should be put away, kept away from society. It hurts that the discussion is there every time someone murders, but I’m not the one who brought it. I wanted to avoid it. I prayed and wished for us to focus all on how it’s morally depraved to murder, rather than who’s crazy and kills and who is sane and should be killing the crazy.
I don’t have defenses, or clean sentences, right now. I just…I have my reactions. I have my movement. I have the ability to close my eyes and hope that this all blows over.
It’s violence to shoot up a theater but it’s also violence to drown a toddler and….and….and…
If you look at the rate of sane and crazy people and who gets killed, you won’t find sane people on top. That’s really what I’d like to say.
I want to add to this, because I like to add commentary, but I honestly for once, have nothing to add. Yes,.all of this.
This post is all I want to day and more.
(But lets also remember that intersectionality does matter in every discussion of ableism, as well, and that a white disabled person is far less likely to be a victim of police violence, for example, than a black one. Almost all the autistic people who were murdered recently were POC,.as well).
^
