hope shines eternal

Anne Michaels, from "Infinite Gradation," originally published in October 2017

サボオオオォォォォ

some one piece tributes ~ which character should i do next??

Here's to the people who weren't abused by their parents, but whose parents sucked anyways. Here's to people whose parents fucked up raising you out of ignorance and not malice. Here's to the kids whose parents didn't know what to do with you so they did nothing at all. Here's to people whose parents are getting better and growing as people but still hurt you. Here's to every mean comment that wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't come from your mom; here's to awkward family dinners because you're all trying to forget;

here's to you, survivor of a thousand 'not as bad as it could have been' hurts. I see you. You aren't alone.

I feel like wanting things has been important to being happier for me

Hard pill to swallow, maybe, but sometimes you are the problem. You may not have been initially, but people around you can only have so much endurance for understanding why you're "like that" and how you got to where you are now. Even if you were the one who was victimized, hurt, or abused to begin with, your behavior affects those around you. There's a point at which personal responsibility needs to kick in, or you will become toxic. You can become toxic even if you never become an abuser yourself. If other people are constantly having to help dig you out of the holes you made but you keep slapping their hands away, you cannot expect them to have an indefinite amount of patience and energy to keep trying. If you're not putting in the work to recover from what damaged you; if everyone else in your life is consistently the only one making a real effort to effect change for you--you're the problem.

keep going

imagine a skeleton. obviously this is already blowing your mind. now imagine he had a gun

Illustrations from Dante’s The Divine Comedy by Donn P. Crane 

We have a deal~

my toxic trait is that i exclusively refer to fast food restaurants using these names

When I saw this image for the first time years ago it permanently rewired my brain

J. R. R. Tolkien, undisputedly a most fluent speaker of this language, was criticized in his day for indulging his juvenile whim of writing fantasy, which was then considered—as it still is in many quarters— an inferior form of literature and disdained as mere “escapism.” “Of course it is escapist,” he cried. “That is its glory! When a soldier is a prisoner of war it is his duty to escape—and take as many with him as he can.” He went on to explain, “The moneylenders, the knownothings, the authoritarians have us all in prison; if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as possible.“

Stephen R. Lawhead

“I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which ‘Escape’ is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?”

-J.R.R. Tolkien

“Hence the uneasiness which they arouse in those who, for whatever reason, wish to keep us wholly imprisoned in the immediate conflict. That perhaps is why people are so ready with the charge of “escape.” I never fully understood it till my friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, “What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and hostile to, the idea of escape?” and gave the obvious answer: jailers.“

-C.S. Lewis

“As for the charge of escapism, what does “escape” mean? Escape from real life, responsibility, order, duty, piety, is what the charge implies. But nobody, except the most criminally irresponsible or pitifully incompetent, escapes to jail. The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is “escapism” an accusation of?”

– Ursula K. Le Guin