woooooooooooooooow
that is a fuckload of victim blaming u got there son
okay so, no. people don’t make these jokes for the sake of upsetting their loved ones on purpose. it’s for venting, for coping. why the fuck would you make your friends feel like shit just because you feel bad??
also, mental breakdowns happen. it’s not a conscious, planned decision to act impulsive and suicidal. it’s also pretty damn shitty to say that people only make self-deprecating jokes for speshul snowflake attention~
you prolly shouldn’t suicide bait either, it’s illegal. like, literally. google it up.
tl;dr mentally ill people are not ‘manipulating’ their loved ones by being suicidal and making coping jokes so stop
Holy FUCK, anon. That opinion is unpopular probably because it lacks any trace of humanity or actual knowledge of what mental illness actually entails?? The only way I can even continue writing this is if I assume that you either lost someone to suicide, or have suicidal ppl you care about and are super worried about. That’s p unlikely, and still doesn’t make your “opinion” excusable, since that last sentence means you would actually want them dead, but I digress.
Ok, so why do people make jokes about their mental illnesses? Because mental illness fucking SUCKS, and making a joke about how much you are hurting helps a little. It’s a really fucking common coping mechanism, and among one of the more constructive ones (or, at minimum, one of the less destructive). Connecting to people in similar situations helps a little, seeing that other people feel the same way you do, that what you are feeling is not some persoanl failing, but actually a (relatively) common thing. It helps you realize that you are not broken and the worst person ever, just mentally ill. People joke about their persistent suicidal thoughts because it is one of the few things that actually helps them, you know, not kill themselves!! Tumblr is often the one place mentally ill people think they can vent about how they feel without people invalidating their feelings or putting them down. Like you are doing now, jackass.
Moving on.
A symptom of many mental illnesses and personality disorders, including depression, is low self-worth. The affected person believes they are terrible and unlovable. This person did not just decide they want to believe they are the scum of the earth, it’s just an almost inevitable part of the package. This belief is very persistent, and will remain even in the face of contradictory evidence, (AND is strengthened by assholes like you who reinforce the idea that the things they have to do to survive, and by extension the people themselves, are wrong and manipulative and terrible!!!)
People often have such a hard time trying to grasp the fact that they are loved, flaws and all. The person often believes that they must have somehow tricked or manipulated the person who cares about them into loving them. Or they assume that the carer just has yet to “realize” what a terrible waste of space the cared for is. Or that the carer is merely pretending to like them out of a general pity, not actually loving them for who they are. Or they do believe people love them, but genuinely are convinced that they are a burden to those that love them, and that their loved ones would have a much happier and fulfilling life with them dead (or, at the very least, if the depressed person had never existed).
Also, one of the symptoms of many disorders, especially depression and certain personality disorders, is “splitting” or “black-and-white thinking”. Basically how the loved one is viewed depends on the loved one’s current actions. So even if you are mostly very kind and loving and supportive to someone with this symptom, if at the moment you are ignoring them or being grumpy or distant to them or basically are not or are not able to show love at that moment, the person is likely to think you hate them or just don’t care about them, even though you don’t! And they can’t really help that they can’t reconcile past loving actions with present inattentiveness or w/e it is that lead to the conclusion. It’s just a really unfortunate thing about how their brain works and it’d be real fucking shitty to try and guilt-trip them over.
Like, honestly. I am so goddamn tired of mentally ill people getting written off as manipulative for just displaying the fucking symptoms of their illness. Fucking do your research! And if you do it and still find the need to berate mentally ill people for having different needs and behaviors than someone who is not mentally ill, then fucking stay away from mentally ill ppl forever and go fuck yourself! Yeah, amazingly, having a different brain makes you act differently. Who would have guessed!
Also, I love how you accuse mentally ill people of being manipulative when you are literally GUILT-TRIPPING and SUICIDE-BAITING in the same fucking ask. You are a fucking insensitive hypocrite and I hope you never interact with any mentally ill ppl because you will hurt them. On the off chance you are mentally ill yourself: ?????????? What the fuck?????????? Why would you do this if you know how it feels? Or are you not suicidal or just a more private person abt your mental illness and just assume that your feelings represent EVERYONE, when you’re probably in the minority by a long shot????
TL;DR: Go to Hell, anon, and also maybe do some research before you go sharing hateful, uneducated opinions.
(However, people who have never been suicidal making suicide jokes at the expense of mentally ill people can join you in Hell.)
Tag: suicide mention
The thing about Tumblr that probably makes me saddest is the underlying assumption that women past a certain age (which seems to be about 25?) stop having any sort of outside interests beyond family/career/kids. Like, y’all are always so shocked that grown women have lives and can fangirl as hard as we did as teenagers.
It makes me sad not because it makes me feel old (although it does), but because these younger women are constricting their own lives–they fully expect that this will happen to them someday. Y’all deserve better. Y’all deserve to EXPECT better.
And worse than that, the idea that there’s something WRONG with a grown woman who has other interests.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
One of the biggest things I realized growing up?
It doesn’t happen.
You expect somehow you will change when you are finally An Adult™. You’ll stop enjoying the things you enjoy now for something more “adult” or “mature.” You’ll FEEL like an adult and not like a child anymore. You’ll feel comfortable and secure and not scared and unsure and confused. You expect you will feel like you have your shit together.
But I can tell you that it doesn’t happen. You’ll still feel like the “you” you were at 15 or 17 or 19.
You just have these…things to deal with. Like rent. And insurance.
You have a job either because a) you like it or b) it keeps the lights and internet on.
You’ll look up from fangirling one day and realize “Shit. I am twenty eight years old. That’s almost 30!” Or maybe it will be that you look down at the small child clasped around your legs and realize “That is my child. I have a child. A human being child.” Or maybe it will be that you have to negotiate your budget around con tickets AND a mortgage payment.
Growing up isn’t a thing that happens.
It’s a realization that it doesn’t happen.
Holy shit, y’all. There are some AMAZING responses to this post. Yes, everything alwayshometomarvel says. All that.
Feeling like I wasn’t ‘adult’ enough fucked me up for years. I would cry at night and feel like a total piece of shit because I was married with a kid, and yet I still did ‘not adult’ things–I played MMOs, I cosplayed and went to conventions, I drew fan art and wrote fan fic. I kept waiting for the day that I would wake up and realize that what I really needed to be doing was the laundry, cleaning the house, making dinner every night, etc. Basically, be the ‘perfect’ wife and mother.
And somewhere between then and now, I somehow managed to tell myself…fuck it. I AM an adult. I go to work every day and pay the bills and help raise my son and take care of the house. I do legit adult things. AND I play MMOs, go to conventions, and participate in fandom. And THAT’S OKAY. I’m 32 years old now and finally at peace with that part of myself. (Having a supportive husband and kid doesn’t hurt either!)
All of this is such truth. Believing these things about growing up, and especially about being over 25? Really made it hard for me when I turned 30.
I was literally suicidal on my 30th birthday. I spent the whole day in tears. I felt like I had died and my life was now worthless and small and never going to be hopeful or full of promise or fun again. I felt like killing myself on my birthday because I bought into this lie that somewhere after your mid-twenties, you diminish as a woman because the only thing that made you alive and shiny was your youth.
I’m 31 now and I’m done with that shit. I’m over it. I don’t care if you think I’m too old for something. If I’m an old lady in Tumblr terms, then I’m past the legal age where I’m obligated to care what you think.
So, I’m telling you girls out there right now who are in your teens and twenties, get rid of this idea of what older women are “supposed” to look like. Get rid of this idea that “soccer moms” don’t play video games or that all women over 25 should be married and contemplating kids. Get rid of the idea that fanfic and fandom and fun things are for “kids.”
Mostly, get rid of this notion that the only thing really valuable about you is your youth. Youth is part of life, but it’s not the most valuable or beautiful or exciting time of your life. I like my life at 30 about 1000% than I did at 15, 18, 20, even 25.
on her deathbed, my grandmother pulled my mom close to her and said, “i don’t feel old. i don’t know how i’m supposed to feel. but inside, i still feel seventeen.” when I was a teenager, I used to think that story was sad; sad and strange somehow, like she’d been frozen in time. but now that i am a woman in my thirties, I understand. I understand her. I am a grown woman in the ways that matter. I listen to myself more, trust my experience more. but inside? I still feel the joy and rage and mess; I am still changing. we’re not frozen in time. we are just still growing.
the more we acknowledge that modern “adulthood” is largely a concept designed to sell vacuums and sedans, and not an arbitrary total overhaul of self at age 35, the more we can admit our ongoing capacity– no, our ongoing NEED for play and playfulness and exploration. those are childish things we should never have to put away.
this
this
I’m 33. I feel like i’m a bad imitation of an “Adult” most days.
queerhomestuck 