#again sorry if this is like. bare minimum baby stuff everyone in this aesthetic learns on day 1.

[yami-mazda]

I've been thinking about the western vs Japanese cultural context surrounding yamikawaii/menhera and listen, I know I'm new, I know I'm a baby kawaii or whatever the fuck and I'm probably not saying anything that hasn't already been said a million times by every western yami kawaii blog ever.

Yamikawaii in Japan originated as a radical rejection of the stigma around mental illness. It also became a way to cope, take joy, wear your heart on your sleeve, maybe even be 'proud'in some way--more in the disability pride kinda pride as opposed to the lgbt pride kinda pride.

And whilst talking about mental health isn't as taboo in America, there is still VERY MUCH a taboo around mental ILLNESS. I have psychosis, autism, complex ptsd, I'm a DID system. (I'm forgetting something.) I KNOW firsthand and several times over what it is like for people to try to use tools like therapy and mental health care to brute force a neurotypicality out of me that I just can't do.

In America, it's more like people are pro mental HEALTH, not pro mental ILLNESS. If you're not mentally healthy, you're expected to work work work until you're an acceptable level of "just a lil sad sometimes" or "disabled, but adorable and sweet" instead of like. People meeting you where you are when you can't get better.

This is WHY everyone on this goddamn site says "stop making suicide jokes." (By extention, yamikawaii was heavily criticized for flippant imagery. That's also why I avoided it for a long time; it just felt like, in a WESTERN context, it was feeding into something bad.) Stop doing ANYTHING that will feed into your self harm. But like. In extreme, possibly rare, situations, that's not enough. (Not even going into the "address the societal systems that MAKE us all so miserable" angle because you're right, you're right, but I'm talking abt self care only rn.) Making me STOP making suicide jokes, making me stop self harming, making me sanitize how I speak about myself and my life just so I don't say or do anything "unacceptable" is NOT helping me overcome my mental issues. It's just making me feel repressed and more pent up so when I finally DO snap and release, it's worse than ever.

I promised myself that if I was ever assaulted again, I would fucking kill myself. So I'm finding a way to do that but also not to die through this aesthetic. By disguising self care as suicidality and self harm and whatever I need it to be, I find that it's much easier to keep on living. I'm tricking my brain in a way.

I feel like using yamikawaii to treat suicidal thoughts is kind of like using electroconvulsive therapy for severe depression. It should NOT be your first go to, it's even ill advised in most cases for obvious reasons. But if the case is so severe that it is all that can be done to treat the issue, then by all means.