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I think one of the kindest things you can do for people with various mental health struggles is just... let people back into your life after they've been absent for a while.

Making friends as an adult is so fucking hard already and isolating yourself from other people is a very common symptom of depression, anxiety, burnout, ocd, trauma, grief, etc. Which means that someone will do the hard work of recovery/healing and resurface back into a world where their previous friends have written them off because they stopped showing up.

So if you know someone where you're like "yeah we could have been better friends but they fell off the map a bit" and that person suddenly reaches out, or starts showing up to events even though you kind of forgot they were still in the group chat... well they may have been Going Through It and you don't actually have to punish them for their absence you can just be glad that they're back.

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Bridge of Sighs, Saint John’s College, Cambridge (by ferdalangur-net).

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Terra Keck

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Raven Girl / Connectome, Royal Ballet (2013)

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Owen Gent. An unkindness, 2023.

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"The study that had the most direct impact on the psychiatric profession— as well as public consciousness—at this time was David Rosenhan’s (1973) classic research On Being Sane in Insane Places which found that psychiatrists could not distinguish between “real” and “pseudo” patients presenting at psychiatric hospitals in the United States. All of Rosenhan’s “pseudo” patients (college students/researchers involved in the experiment) were admitted and given a psychotic label, and all the subsequent behaviour of the researchers—including their note-taking—was labelled by staff as further symptoms of their disorder (for a summary, see Burstow 2015: 75-76). This research was a culmination of earlier studies on labelling and mental illness which had begun in the 1960s with Irving Goffman (1961) and Thomas Scheff (1966). Goffman’s (1961) ethnographic study of psychiatric incarceration demonstrated many of the features which Rosenhan’s study would later succinctly outline, including the arbitrary nature of psychiatric assessment, the labelling of patient behaviour as further evidence of “mental illness,” and the processes of institutional conformity by which the inmates learned to accept such labels if they wanted to have any chance of being released from the institution at a later date. Scheffs (1966) work on diagnostic decision making in psychiatry formulated a general labelling theory for the sociology of mental health. Again, his research found that psychiatrists made arbitrary and subjective decisions on those designated as “mentally ill,” sometimes retaining people in institutions even when there was no evidence to support such a decision. Psychiatrists, he argued, relied on a common sense set of beliefs and practices rather than observable, scientific evidence. Scheff (1966) concluded that the labelling of a person with a “mental illness” was contingent on the violation of social norms by low-status rule-breakers who are judged by higher status agents of social control (in this case, the psychiatric profession). Thus, according to these studies, the nature of “mental illness” is not a fixed object of medical study but rather a form of “social deviance”—a moral marker of societal infraction by the powerful inflicted on the powerless." -Bruce Cohen, Psychiatric Hegemony, 2016

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another thing that's deeply fucking annoying is the way schizophrenia is treated as an all-or-nothing thing, where if you don't have the most severe presentation of it that cannot be masked under any circumstances ever, you can't have it at all. and also if you're self aware of your symptoms in any form, you can't have it at all, especially (in our experience) if you have any awareness about your delusions, even if your awareness extends only as far as "other people think these are delusions and i know this because i've been told as such, so it isn't safe for me to talk about them because i risk getting hurt if i do"

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There is a child sitting beside you on a train inside your mind. This child believes that the past is a place that can be returned to. The earnestness with which it believes this to be true is terrifying. If it tries hard enough—or, maybe, if it’s not careful—it is sure that it will find its way back home, into a version of the world that feels more real than this one. The child stares out of the window, waiting with longing or terror for a stop it’s sure is coming up. Nothing you say to it can convince it otherwise. Station after station pass by. You want to wait with the child—how can you leave it behind, all on its own?

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the subway is an angel and they've plastered ads all over her

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i should be used by a bottom for their own pleasure both sexually and nonsexually. use me. i'm obedient and loyal. i'll do anything you want. i'll cuddle you and keep you warm, i'll let you use my mouth to get off, i'll carry heavy things for you, i'll fuck you as hard as you need. treat me like a pet. i'll gladly be your big puppy and love you like you need

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Horniness is not intrinsically less pure than any other human motivation

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Fumi Nakamura, “The Noise Must Become Music”

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There is no feeling more divine than being desired by a fellow trans person… heaven on earth

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Phyllis Shafer, Magical Moment at Fallen Leaf Lake, gouache on paper, 17.5 x 22.5 inches.

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rainbow trout

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IRA C. SMITH (??)

‘92