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Safe passages and other lies

"Humanitarian corridors" in Palestine... I've seen this before. It means safe zones for "observers", it happened in Balkans and what did it do? It only enabled the UN to casually observe the genocides. Help? What help? I remember the blue helmets. I remember what we've been told about them. They were there to "save us". All I remember them doing is driving around in tanks and giving the kids the victory sign.✌️What victory??? You know what I did? I collected shrapnel and shell casings around town to stop other kids finding them. Even when we were told not to handle shrapnel due to poisoning risk. I did more for my town than the UN did. Don't tell me the UN was there to peacekeep. Srebrenica! Sarajevo! Vukovar! I remember the reports on tv, I remember the scenes and I remember the UN tanks parked on the side of the convoys of people being forced to leave their homes. What were they doing??? Nothing! Soon, the only thing left from Palestinians will be the reports the UN collected while "observing" their descent into oblivion. Fifty, hundred years from now, when no one remembers a living Palestinian anymore, we will watch the footage and say Never Again. Until it happens again.

So yeah. I stand with Palestine. Just like I stood with Bosnia.

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December 1st, 2022 (on grief and displacement)

As far as I can remember, at the age of 24, I have only been two funerals. Both happened during warm summer days spent in Bosnia. I was just a teenager when I attended the first one to show support to my godmother, who had just lost her grandfather. He was buried in the orthodox fashion. Neighbours, friends and family were present. A priest said a few words, before singing a haunting prayer. Everyone was so quiet and sad. The second one occurred years later, when I was a young adult and my cousins, who live in Bosnia, lost their nana. She was buried in the muslim fashion, a street away from their home. Again, neighbours, friends and family were present. The imam and some of her male relatives prayed for her. The atmosphere was heavy. A lot of people cried and could not stifle their sobs. 

My grandpa, my dad’s dad, died when I was 15, but it is still feels like it only happened yesterday. I remember the moment I learned the news. I had been away for a week on a school trip to England. My grandpa had been sick for a little while and we’d get news over the phone regularly. I was young, so I didn’t think much of it, and my parents just let me be a carefree teenager. The day I got back from that field trip, my mum and my sister came to pick me up. As soon as we got home, I felt something was odd. Before we got there, the lights everywhere in the house were off. I asked “Where’s dad?” My mum took me to my room and put down my luggage there. She let me know my grandpa had passed away while I was gone and my dad had gone to Bosnia to take care of things. After that, I think I pretended I had to pee and locked myself in the bathroom to cry. We never were too good about communicating or sharing our feelings. I don’t remember much after that. I just know I felt really sad, but my parents made the choice for me that life had to go on. And so it did, except on the few nights I’m occasionally hit by grief and I cry.

Death has hit a few other times since then. My grandma lost her sister during Covid, when travelling from France to Bosnia was impossible. I saw her melt in front of my eyes from grief. Only a year later, when they could finally go back, she was given some of her jewellery that she shows me from time to time. “Ovo je od moje Mine.” she tells me.

Then, a week ago, my grandma lost her brother, her only remaining sibling, from a devastating lung cancer. On a Thursday, his son called us to let us know he only had a few days left. My parents started planning a last minute trip to Germany where he lived, so they could see one another one last time, since covid and old age had made travelling harder than ever, but he decided against it. He died on that Saturday.

“They were lucky to be in the same country when their relative died.” That’s a sick, selfish thought I had when I wrote those first few paragraphs. I try to make sense of things, and think for a second maybe if I got to bury all these people and say goodbye, it’d be easier. Of course, the reality is a lot different and it’s never that easy. As I got old, I realized wars create two types of distance, the geographical one and the emotional one. Because I don’t see my extended family that often, distance makes it hard to connect. If I don’t even get the chance to connect emotionally, it should be easy to handle death when it comes around, right? As a result, when I grieve those close to my heart, I think I mainly grieve what could have been. I grieve the stories I was never told about my parents, or my grandma, or their own life stories. I grieve the fact my sweet grandpa never really really got to see me grow up and I never really got to see him get old. He saw me once a year, for a month. And most of the time I was too busy being a child running in the street with my friends, except when he would force me to walk to the store with him so he could buy me all the chocolate in the world. Despite my occasional resistance, despite the little time we spent together, it was a widespread fact in the family that I was, somehow, his favourite grandchild. I always pretend I’m ashamed of it - because grandparents shouldn’t have favourites - but deep down I think I’m proud of that. I always wonder if he’d still be proud of me today, were he around. We both only got a glimpse of what our relationship could have been. I cannot wrap my mind around that kind of injustice.

In therapy, on Tuesday, as I sobbed because I felt like death kept knocking on my door too many times in a really short period and it was becoming inescapable and somehow the world kept spinning and life had to go on, I kept rambling about how impossible it was, because of the fucked systems we’ve created and continue to uphold, to live humanely.  “What if I wanted to stop everything for three weeks or three months to take care of myself? Of my grandparents? To deal with the fact even grief has to take a widely different form for us displaced people, and daughter and granddaughters of displaced people?”  “Why three months or weeks?” she asked. “I don’t know, Julia. Maybe all those years in Catholic school finally paid off and my subconscious can’t help but think about the Holy Trinity!” (Except I don’t actually call her by her first name, but I think it’d be funny if I did.) “But the point is I couldn’t do that!”  “No you’re right, you couldn’t do that. You can’t stop everything for three months, but you can try to set aside some time to write down what you’re going through and take that time for yourself. You can do little things for your grandparents too. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.”

I think all these thoughts and feelings would take more than a regular lifetime to process. But I don’t know what to do with them, so I might as well write about them, as per my therapist’s suggestion. Send them off into the ether. Make them other people’s problems too. Anything to avoid keeping it to myself in my sad brain and dealing with it on my own. 

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i’m tired of all the “pretty” people having the same bratz clone face i’m tired of the skinnies wearing clothes literally made for toddlers just because they can and making it trendy to be the size of a two year old i’m tired of cosmetic surgery being girlbossified and i’m really really tired of being a woman who just wants to EXIST while being told that i’m not doing it right and that changing everything about myself is supposed to be Empowering and True Feminism

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Did that. Neighbours called the police. Lol

the feminine urge to release a gut-wrenching scream from the depths of your soul

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Gay weddings from different cultures

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besties i think i found a quote for nbd..........

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FOR SALE!!

I'm in desperate need of extra money. I've had a new medication added to my growing list and I'm trying to cover the extra cost at the same time as not being able to work. I'd appreciate any reblogs. 🖤 (husband print holder not for sale)

I have 3 quality prints of original artwork, available separate or together. £10 for all 3, £5 each. £2 postage, UK only.

Thank you so much for looking

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‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

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me: okay so like. they’re called ‘canon’ urls right? and it’s kind of like a status symbol, where a more canon url is indicative of a ‘better’ or more popular blog. one-word non-plurals are usually the best, with one-word plurals and two-word urls underneath. dash urls or non-canons are at the bottom of the ladder, and you won’t typically see canon urls following or interacting with them. it’s pretty common for blogs to hoard urls, which is why url trades are a thing. a REALLY good url can even be sold if there’s someone willing to pay for it

the 13th century peasant i just time-traveled to meet:

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Two moods of Joey Batey

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when your favourite mutual is not active </3

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Virginia Woolf ― The Waves

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What News Of The North

INTRO - THE SNOW

Disclaimer: this is my self indulgent writing, I am feeling very sad lately and I just want a story that has all the elements that make ME happy. A band of characters, SNOW and a lot of it, wintertime, magic, wolves, a subtle critique towards urbanization and organized religion. It's my personal feel good writing

The snow fell for days, six days, if the church records are to be believed, for six months if you choose to believe the old barkeepers. But, if you were to travel east, to the small villages on the coast of the Crystal sea and ask the people there, they would tell you the snow fell for six years after the King of Jira came back victorious, riding his black stallion into the cities, a carcass of the northern Witchmother dragging behind the steed. In truth, nobody knew really. But what everyone agreed on was two things:

The first thing is that it was the witchfolk that brought the snow. Through some unholy magic made to kill all the crops and starve the world. And the second, that anyone touched by the snow was left tongue-twisted, rambling in a language that nobody understood. These unfortunate people were soon left on their own. The world, unable to make sense of them banished them into washer-houses and churches where they were expected to quietly disappear.

It was not only the people the snow changed, the forests grew wilder and the beasts more bold. It said to have changed them, dogs bit their masters if touched by the snow. It was when the first walls sprung up. Wooden spikes at first to keep the beasts at bay and then gradually walls of stone. They coiled around the cities like ripples on a clear lake surface. They kept the world out and the forest grew closer and darker.

The talk of war slowly faded, as did those that were cursed by it and so did the northern witchfolk. It all melted into memory, watered down by telling and retelling but never did it truly vanish. Because the snow still came, every year it would fall silent and while and cover the world whole before disappearing. Those were the days of silence, when men hid by the warmth of their hearths, resurrecting the old fears through their stories.

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‎سَيَفْتَحُ اللهُ بَابًا كُنْتَ تَحْسَبُهُ *** مِنْ شِدَّةِ الْيَأْسِ لَمْ يُخْلَقْ بِمِفْتَاحٍ

Allaah will open a door which, in the midst of your despair, you thought was created without a key.

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F R E A K I N G O U T

Joey stans

How you doin?

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He so cute 🥺

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support fat girls with weird curves

support fat girls with no butt

support fat girls with small boobs

dont just support the hour glass/big booty “acceptable” fat girl