antilamentations

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Family Tree

"Your DNA test offers you the powerful experience of discovering what makes you unique and learning where you really come from."

"Learn more about your family."

"Find new relatives."

"Build a family tree."

I know where I come from.

It's cold and white and Protestant. It's striving to be better while stepping on others. It's alcoholism and asylums and generational lies.

It's hypocrisy. It's grandiosity. It's empty.

Marital rape was recognised as a criminal act in 1991. Coercive control was recognised as an offence in 2015.

As soon as my memories began I recognised a sick feeling in my stomach, a tightness in my throat.

I recognised the smallest change in an adult's mood. I recognised how the temperature in the room could slip.

Let me tell you some things I've learned about my family.

Marriage is not love. Home is not safe. Violence does not have to be physical. Silence can be a weapon. Find new relatives? I'm fighting my way out of the tigers' cage.

I'm "personality disordered". I have "poor coping mechanisms". I "struggle with interpersonal relationships". I'm the fucked up child of fucked up children.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I don't need a test to show me how close I am to the canker-blackened branches.

#poetry #theyfuckyouupyourmumanddad #eupd #bpd #fuckchristmas

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Stylish Seniors That Prove Age Is Just A Number

#Flawless

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Jessica Jones, you are a hard drinking, short-fused, mess of a woman. But you are not a piece of shit.

#like this wild place

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i don't give a fuck about how you fuck: or, your hot ass mess is not my revolution

your poly is only politically relevant to me if…

you center respect and love for women and femmes in how you do relationships.

you understand and care about how your actions in relationships are directly connected to the well being of your communities. (y’all know that this shit breaks up friendships and communities all the time.)

you are aware of and work to resist heterosexist and patriarchal notions of love that are grounded in ideas of capitalist property ownership, misogyny, and racism.

you respect any and all of your partners.

you do not pit your partners, hookups, or love interests against each other by being shady and shitty about communication — especially if you are masculine-identified and your partners, hookups, and love interests are women and femmes. *of course, when this happens, it’s “unintentional,” right? but when misogyny structures how we understand and do relationships in such concrete ways, you need to fucking fight as hard as you can to actually BE intentional. being unintentional in the way of, “oh it just happened,” or, “but i didn’t do anything wrong,” when what is naturalized is being careless about the relationships between women and femmes, then not having intentions or thoughts around all that is a problem.

you understand the importance of (and work to center) the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs and boundaries of yourself and your partners.

you understand how each of your relationships impacts all of the other ones. and you understand that the way you carry yourself in one relationship will show up in your others relationships.

you do not dismiss your partners’ jealousies, insecurities, or negative feelings as just them being “jealous” or “too emotional” or “not really getting it.” you don’t blame people for their emotions.

you accept full accountability for your actions when you are hurtful, unintentional, or careless in your interactions with others.

you do not dismiss others’ concerns about you being possibly disrespectful or misogynistic as them not being radical or sex-positive enough.

you understand that having the space/freedom to love and fuck however you please does NOT mean that you are operating in a vacuum. you understand that everything you do has consequences - and act with care.

you understand that poly is not about having the freedom to do whatever the fuck you want to. you understand that poly is about having the freedom to pursue your needs and desires openly without shame, and to hold yourself to being intentional and responsible especially because those needs or desires are about OTHER PEOPLE and OTHER PEOPLE’S BODIES.

you get that you are not entitled to the guarantee that everything you do/want will be okay with all your partners or your communities, esp when your actions will impact them and when people are always operating from different contexts, traumas, desires, needs. (aka, you don’t do disrespectful shit and expect your partners or friends not to respond just because you didn’t mean to hurt anybody.)

you understand the importance of informed consent — meaning, if there are things that are going on that might even possibly make someone reconsider cuddling with you, having sex with you, or being intimate with you, then you need to be open.

you don’t take consent for granted. ever.

you know how to set, talk about, and respect boundaries.

you don’t use your “poly” status to be emotionally neglectful and/or abusive to your partners.

you don’t treat people like they are expendable, disposable, or otherwise meaningless, even if it’s a quick fuck or a fling.

you communicate openly and honestly without withholding important information, especially when it’s hard.

the desire to love/fuck lots of people at the same time is not something inherently radical or meaningful. people have always wanted to love/fuck multiple people, whether or not that’s been in accountable ways. basically, if people are side-eyeing you about how you do poly/relationships it’s not always because they’re just colonized sex negative tools of the state or some shit lol.

(and thanks disorientd, seafoamknives, & lowendtheory for talking/thinking through a lot of this with me. all love. ♥)

#life goals #yes

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I’ve spent the last few months trying to figure out if I was the one who dragged you under or if i was the one who drowned.

For the Mermaids, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)

#all the other wounded places

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Two months in and all you know is your new medication makes your hands shake. Twenty-four years old, and you’re finally starting to understand that calling a place home doesn’t make it feel like one. Yesterday, you learned how to change a tire, but you still don’t know how to love someone without cracking your ribs open and spilling through the fault lines, like some kind of natural disaster. You’re pretending if you keep laughing you won’t have to admit you’re afraid; pretending like love’s gonna solve all your problems; pretending you’ve got it all together when you don’t have it at all. You have made so much out of so little– you built yourself tall on the backs of every person who told you you couldn’t. You flew your colors in a war zone– made it back wounded and alive. You have done everything you know how, and it means something to have tried.

Twenty-Four by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)

#fuck #yes #it was exactly like that

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“Freud vs Jung” by Eugenia Loli

Portfolio | Store | Facebook | Instagram

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Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends & we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was just red.

#all the other wounded places

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I roll myself a cigarette slowly, carefully. I live.

Miklos Radnoti - from Tajtékos ég (via watchoutforintellect)

#yes

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Aldwych station is one of many disused stations on the London Underground network. The station opened in 1907 under its original name ‘Strand’ as a branch of the Piccadilly line south of Holborn but was never heavily used, and after facing multiple closures during its lifespan the doors to Aldwych were finally closed in 1994. Despite being in use for 87 years the station was never fully finished; only one set of stairs and passages to the platforms, and about half the platform area, was fully completed. Some of the unfinished areas have since been used to experiment with tiling and fixtures when planning décor for other stations on the network.  During the Blitz in the 1940’s the station was used as an air raid shelter and housed up to 1500 people, to control numbers only those with valid tickets could enter. Valuable artwork from various museums was also stored in the station for protection during this period, including the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum.  Since its closure the station has been used as a filming location for film and TV productions, often disguised as other stations on the tube to avoid disruption. Productions featuring Aldwych include Atonement (2007), V for Vendetta (2005), The Edge of Love (2008), 28 Weeks Later (2007) and the music video for the Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’.  Due to its historical significance, Aldwych station is now as Grade II listed building.

www.aridleyphotography.com

#i live by the river #ancient and forever #i've been there

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FAT, Femme, & Fearless The Introduction of the Beautifully Complex I had the great opportunity to work with a close friend, Paxton Taylor, in this 80’s meets Hollywood Glam fashion shoot, which encompasses two very distinct styles that inspire much of my everyday wardrobe. Within both of those eras, a very thin yet curvaceous body standard was needed to create the signature looks of the time. I’m not thin. I definitely have curves and probably a little more. Being the Jarrid that I am, I make it my mission to break sociocultural beauty standards and allow myself to be influenced by those styles while staying true to myself. Today I fully embrace FAT! Fabulous and Thick! Fearless and Triumphant! Fashionable and Trendy! Before all the photo-shoots and the social media coverage, I had a negative connection to the word “Fat” and associated it with being undesirable and the lack of opportunity that exists for me based on the size I am. Boy was I wrong. FAT gives me the strongest feeling of confidence and motivation I’ve ever had. Despite what America’s perception of beauty is, I’m still turning heads and I am given the most extraordinary experiences that I could ever wish for. As the shoot progressed I became more in tuned with my body, allowing myself to feel confident, beautiful, and sexy in the most femme ways, despite how society may try to shape my gender. “Due to socially constructed gender roles and a strictly enforced binary, this expression is often discouraged and even shamed. It is important that we question these assumptions and attack coercion that enforces them, if we are to ever truly be free, free to be ourselves, free to live our truth. (Corey Kempster)” I think being inspired by two, embracing two, but not being limited by two, has opened my mind to the most beautifully complex ideas, living a truth that most won’t understand and being appreciated for it. The More photo-shoots, interviews, and articles I do, the more fearless I become. It becomes less about me and more about the activism and being part of creating visibility for the gender spectrum community. I’m able to use my words, thoughts, and physical body to set a presence, not to join and become part of mainstream society, but to diversify society’s understanding of the beautifully complex. Be Proud, Be Complicated, Be Beautiful - Jarrid Jones (Words of a FAT, Femme, and Fearless Being)

#femme #amazing

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#like this wild place #my emotions are a struggle at the moment

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1983

#flawless

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Cambridge: an airy realm of scholarship built over a dark and omnipresent underworld.

#statements of objective fact #picture of one of the UL's reading rooms on my dash #all these years later and i still struggled to breathe

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“You’re born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget.”

#all the other wounded places #smoking

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If the sun is up return to bed and wait until nighttime. There are not enough hours in the night to spend them sleeping. Once it is dark you can be all Dante Rossetti about it and stroll about some darkened woodland or else lay amongst Chinese...

#goths i have known #also goths i have been #if i'm honest i'm still being it a bit now

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‘There is no money’ read the infamous note from Liam Byrne. But I’m afraid there is no compassion. We are waving – the activists; the mental health service users and their friends and families; the doctors and nurses and social workers and carers; and yet still, still, we are drowning.

Jeremy Hunt and the Tories are a scary prospect for Britain’s mental health - Hannah Jane Parkinson (via talkmentalhealth)

#ouch #true #and mentions social workers #it's rare to remember to mention social workers