To Live, And Live Safely.

💓

An essay Darren Seals wrote to MTV after Darren Wilson was not indicted

“I was actually outside of the Ferguson police department headquarters, standing on top of a car with Mike Brown’s mother and some friends – all the people who have protested and fought with us. We were in the middle of the street and there were a lot of cameras around, CNN and [other outlets].

We already knew what the decision would be, but at the same time it still hurt to hear it.[Darren Wilson] got married right before the decision, so that’s how we knew he wasn’t going to jail. That was the ultimate slap in the face.

And for Mike Brown’s mother to be right there in my arms crying — she literally cried in my arms — it was like I felt her soul crying. It’s a different type of crying. I’ve seen people crying, but she was really hurt. And it hurt me. It hurt all of us.

I don’t recall anyone having a longer protest, a more productive protest, a more creative protest than what we did. I don’t think people will ever really appreciate what we did until years from now. We really did the best we could.

[Mike Brown’s family] is not a family of revolutionaries — this is a family of black people who grew up in the inner city and didn’t have the best education on these topics.

It’s easy to kill black people because we’re the have-nots. We’re at the bottom of the totem pole. What people don’t understand is, we actually live in a nightmare. We actually live in a place where gunshots [are normal]. We hear gunshots everyday.

We plan to rally more and protest more, but the long-term goal: We’re trying to use all the resources we gained from this to educate people, because we all know the system will never change. Black men being killed by police and not going to jail for it – it’s been going on for years and it’s not going to stop.

Our long-term goal is to educate young black men and young black women throughout the world on how to deal with police brutality, how to deal with the police, how to deal with traffic stops and learn their rights.

We don’t educate them on those things now. They don’t teach them that in school, and a lot of their parents don’t know these things because they were never taught. So the goal is to teach people how to avoid those situations, that way another Mike Brown situation won’t occur. We’re trying to prevent the next Mike Brown before it happens, through music, through writing, speaking at schools, talking to the kids and just educating them.

People who are not from our community don’t understand that Missouri [is filled with] oppressed people. That’s why we’ve got a lot of heart to fight this battle. We’ve been taught to fight our whole lives. They will literally have to shoot us down in the streets for us to stop fighting [for this cause].

Police brutality is going on everywhere, this is nothing new, but everyone talks about what we should do, and no one actually does it. For the first time we actually did every step – we marched, we protested, we voted – we did some historical things. We did everything they said we should do. We spread awareness, we kept it positive, we kept it peaceful. For 108 days, we did everything they told us we should do and we didn’t get one day in court. We did all of that and didn’t get ONE day in court.

What’s a civil suit going to do? Give us a little money? That’s just a pacifier. Make [it safe] for a couple of days? A couple of months? Maybe a year or two, before they kill the next Mike Brown somewhere? Maybe not even in St. Louis, it might be in Chicago, Memphis, anywhere. It’s a pacifier. We don’t want a civil suit, that’s not going to do anything. After Trayvon Martin…guess what? Cary Ball died. Mike Brown died. Eric Garner died.“

Source

Hello all! I have learned that a website called Live Heroes has multiple versions of my Princess Mononoke illustration available for purchase. The kicker is that I had no knowledge that the image was being sold and I do not give them my consent to have it on their website. The image was uploaded by a user going by Coffeecatsandcigaretts.  Please help me get this image off of this site!!! This is completely disrespectful/illegal! You can help me by following the link provided below and completely then bomb the comments section with aggression. Here is the link: DESTROY THE EVIL And it would also help if you Reblogged this post!! I’m glad people like my art, but this isn’t flattering to me. It just makes me feel cheap. Unfortunately, I am I one of thousands of victims of this situation. If you see someone’s art being sold and you think it’s being done without their consent please notify the artist!  In addition, if you do want to purchase this image, and love Princess Mononoke as much as I do, then you can purchase a print of it on my printshop: Princess Mononoke Print For Purchase I’ll look into selling other versions of this image since it seems to be so popular! Thanks so much for you support!! In the meantime I have emailed the website, and hopefully will have this issue resolved. It looks like the user made a pretty big profit off of my image. Hope it can be given to it’s rightful owner.  Thanks! :) www.daniel-shaffer.com danielh.shaffer@gmail.com

May you find a source of unexpected joy this week. 🌸

Idk who needs to hear this, but you are not damaged goods, you are not less than and you are not bread that is several days old. You are still you, you are worthy and will always be. You are wanted and you are needed, sometimes it is just a matter of figuring out where you fit in. You deserve to be appreciated and to feel appreciated, and you will, you just gotta hang in there and don’t give up. 🌸

Remember this every day, and keep going.

you’re going to love again, find a job again, create art again, do what you love again, feel powerful again. you’re going to be back on track. i don’t know when, but you are going to feel like yourself again, eventually. this isn’t the end. hang in there.

I'm a red-blooded corn-fed AMERICAN MAN and if I wanna get my tits chopped off that's my god-given right as a tax payer.

Subtle signs of long-term psychological abuse:

Intrusive belief that you have to do everything perfectly and flawlessly or you are no good, deep drop in self-esteem upon making a smallest mistake or being criticized, feeling that your value is tied completely to how well you can finish tasks, perfectionism

Low self-esteem, feeling you’re less smart, less capable, less valuable or less lovable than the people around you; struggling to feel like you’re an equal part of something, worry that people don’t find your worth keeping around, always worrying about being left behind

Over-taking responsibility for everything, bending backwards to make things go well for everyone, feeling guilty and ashamed if something goes wrong that wasn’t in your control, always taking tasks other people wouldn’t do, doing anything to feel useful

Making excuses for other people when they hurt you, always being ready to ‘look at it from their side’ and assume they had a good reason to hurt you, or didn’t mean it, or didn’t realize they were doing it, or were ‘just lashing out’ and doing it because of their own pain – but you’d never make those excuses for yourself, or forgive yourself if you did that

Double standards for yourself and others, you feel it’s okay for others to be selfish, unreasonable, short-tempered, assholes, hurtful, impatient, self-centered, but it’s not okay for you to be any of that, judging yourself way more harshly than others

Constant fear of abandonment from your friends and loved ones, fear that you won’t be able to go on if you’re rejected and abandoned by them, over-pleasing them in fear they’ll leave

Feeling there’s something deeply wrong about you, always looking for a way to blame yourself for anything that went wrong, feeling cursed, impostor syndrome

Inclination to hide as much as possible about yourself, only showing an image to people you socialize with, fear that if anyone knew the ‘real you’ they would be repulsed and grossed out

Shame for feeling pain, shame for crying, feeling weak and despicable for being vulnerable and hurt, urge to hide and isolate whenever you’re in pain, feeling others would hate you for it

Constant pressure to prove yourself, never feeling like you’re 'good enough’, rarely or never feeling happy or proud of yourself, every day is a battle to show that you’re still worth something

Feeling you have to be always open to scrutiny and criticism, even if it comes from people who don’t know you and don’t wish you well

Arranging your life only to please others, acting a role of support or a servant in other people’s lives, feeling selfish if you try to think of what would be best for you

Worrying that every nice thing anyone has said about you was out of politeness, and every horrible thing someone said about you is secretly true; inability to hold a consistent self image that isn’t affected by everyone’s view of you, imagining that others are thinking the worst of you

Spiraling into feelings of not wanting to exist anymore, wishing you weren’t born, not being able to find anything good about yourself, seeing yourself as a stack of flaws and past mistakes

You know... I had an experience about two months ago that I didn't talk about publicly, but I've been turning it over and over in my mind lately and I guess I'm finally able to put my unease into words.

So there's a podcast I'd been enjoying and right after I got caught up, they announced that they were planning on doing a live show. It's gonna be near me and on the day before my birthday and I thought -- hey, it's fate.

But... as many of you know, I'm disabled. For me, getting to a show like that has a lot of steps. One of those steps involved emailing the podcasters to ask about accessibility for the venue.

The response I got back was very quick and very brief. Essentially, it told me to contact the venue because they had no idea if it was accessible or not.

It was a bucket of cold water, and I had a hard time articulating at the time quite why it was so disheartening, but... I think I get it a little more now.

This is a podcast that has loudly spoken about inclusivity and diversity and all that jazz, but... I mean, it's easy to say that, isn't it? But just talking the talk without walking the walk isn't enough. That's like saying "sure, we will happily welcome you in our house -- if you can figure out how to unlock the door."

And friends, my lock-picking set is pretty good by this point. I've been scouting out locations for decades. I've had to research every goddamn classroom, field trip, and assigned bookstore that I've ever had in an academic setting. I've had to research every movie theater, theme park, and menu for every outing with friends or dates. I spend a long time painstakingly charting out accessible public transportation and potential places to sit down every time I leave the house.

Because when I was in college, my professors never made sure their lesson plans were accessible. (And I often had to argue with them to get the subpar accommodations I got.) Because my friends don't always know to get movie tickets for the accessible rows. Because my dates sometimes leave me on fucking read when I ask if we can go to a restaurant that doesn't keep its restrooms down a flight of stairs.

I had one professor who ever did research to see if I could do all the coursework she had planned, and who came up with alternate plans when she realized that I could not. Only one. It was a medical history and ethics class, and my professor sounded bewildered as she realized how difficult it is to plan your life when you're disabled.

This woman was straight-up one of the most thoughtful, philosophical, and ethical professors I've ever had, one who was incredibly devoted to diversity and inclusion -- and she'd never thought about it before, that the hospital archives she wanted us to visit were up a flight of stairs. That the medical museum full of disabled bodies she wanted us to visit only had a code-locked back entrance and an old freight elevator for their disabled guests who were still breathing.

And that's the crux of it, isn't it? It's easy to theoretically accept the existence of people who aren't like you. It's a lot harder to actively create a space in which they can exist by your side.

Because here's what I did before I contacted the podcasters. I googled the venue. I researched the neighborhood and contacted a friend who lives in the area to help me figure out if there were any accessible public transportation routes near there. (There aren't.) I planned for over an hour to figure out how close I could get before I had to shell out for an uber for the last leg of the trip.

Then I read through the venue's website. I looked through their main pages, through their FAQs to see if there was any mention of accessibility. No dice. I download their packet for clients and find out that, while the base building is accessible, the way that chairs/tables are set up for individual functions can make it inaccessible. So it's really up to who's hosting the show there.

So then and only then I contacted the podcasters. I asked if the floor plan was accessible. I asked if all the seats were accessible, or only some, and whether it was open seating or not. Would I need to show up early to get an accessible seat, or maybe make a reservation?

And... well, I got the one-sentence reply back that I described above. And that... god, it was really disheartening. I realized that they never even asked if their venues were accessible when they were booking the shows. I realized that they were unwilling to put in the work to learn the answers to questions that disabled attendees might have. I realized that they didn't care to find out if the building was accessible.

They didn't know and they didn't care. That, I think, is what took the wind out of my sails when they emailed me back. It's what made me decide that... yeah, I didn't really want to go through the trouble of finding an accessible route to the venue. I didn't want to have to pay an arm and a leg to hire a car to take me the last part of the journey. I didn't want to make myself frantic trying to figure out if I could do all that and still make the last train home.

If they didn't care, I guess I didn't either.

If they'd apologized and said that the only venue they could get was inaccessible, I actually would have understood. I know that small shows don't always get their pick of venues. I get it. I even would have understood if they'd been like "oh dang, I actually don't know -- but I'll find out."

But to be told that they didn't know and didn't intend to find out... oof. That one stung.

Because.... this is the thing. This is the thing. I may be good at it by now, but I'm so tired of picking locks. I'm tired of doing all the legwork because no one ever thinks to help me. I'm tired of feeling like an afterthought at best, or at worst utterly unwelcome.

If you truly want to be inclusive, you need to stop telling people that you're happy to have them -- if they can manage to unlock the door. You need to fucking open it yourself and welcome them in.

What brought all this back to me now, you may be asking? Well... I guess it's just what I was thinking to myself as I was tidying up my phone.

Today I'm deleting podcasts.

trauma doesn’t often feel like trauma is ‘supposed’ to feel. it feels like indifferent detachment, watching from outside yourself because nothing can hurt you there. it feels normal, just how people interact, so why are you making a big deal about it?  it feels like a joke – just how kids play, just how adults tease, just how some relationships work.

you wake from nightmares five years later and still wonder if you made it all up.

trauma can look like bad behaviour. like the stubborn refusal to get better, to stop self-destructing. trauma is putting yourself in harm’s way because you don’t really mean it, or because it’s funny, or because you just want to feel something, or because you just want to stop feeling. it’s wanting to destroy and reassemble yourself into another person entirely, so your real life can begin. because this isn’t real. because really bad things don’t happen to people like you.

trauma is the constant feeling of being an impostor. it’s the drive to survive twinned with the impulse to make yourself more sick in more ways. to hurt yourself to prove how bad you feel, or to punish yourself for exaggerating. you want people to believe what you’ve been through, to tell you your feelings are real, that your memories really happened. but when people do take you seriously, you play it off as a joke, apologize for bringing the mood down.

you go on and on about how it wasn’t that bad. you seek permission to still love the ones who hurt you, because it’s the people closest to us who can hurt us most deeply.

you can feel like the people who hurt you are the only ones who really knew you. in low self esteem, you can mistake cruelty for honesty.

there will always be people who have been through worse. that doesn’t make what happened to you okay.

there will always be people who don’t believe you. that doesn’t mean you are lying.

at some point, you have to take yourself seriously. you have to make a life you can stand to live. it’s the only way to survive.