It’s okay to go up and get offline or watch Netflix during a time like this.
It’s okay to relax and go to bed, hoping for the best.
It’s okay to protect yourself from the on-pouring of updates.
Your sanity and ability to cope is just as important.
Just know that you’re important. Mute me if you have to.
Levy, I love you for reblogging this. I just wrote up a similar post because I wasn’t seeing any. Hugs to you.
Thank you! I feel bad for not being involved, but since I am actually in the hospital right now I’m just going on tumbler for fandom related cheering up and trying to ignore the serious stuff.
Aw, honey, I hope your head gets better. Those non-stop migraines are the worst.
I think – especially people who are socially privileged in one way or another (I’m white and cishet, for example) and try to recognize and work on that and pay attention to social issues – we can feel like we’re BAD for not being able to process or handle serious stuff.
But I think you can recognize “This is a terrible thing” even if you just can’t deal with it or process it or it’s just TOO HORRIBLE or follow the updates. I can distance myself from violence, mentally, but even I felt nauseated and furious seeing some of those pictures of how rubber or wooden bullets harmed people.
(As long as you’re not going “Oh, the police are right!” in which case I hope something bad but non-lethal happens to you.)
Bottom line is it’s AWFUL! But I feel helpless and angry and … I can’t do anything about it. I don’t have money to fund the lunch programs and stuff and just … it’s too big for me.
So you might have to use X-Kit or Tumblr Savior to block posts and/or do things that help you stay in your happy place.
For anything – whether it’s a smaller thing affecting mostly just your life or a huge problem, you NEED to be able to take care of yourself before you can take care of anything else. And recognizing your limits is part of that. YOUR mental health and well-being HAS to come before anything else.
Am I making sense? Is what I’m saying offensive?
One thing it took me a long time to learn is that IT IS OKAY TO PROTECT MYSELF. I have an anxiety disorder. I am autistic. I also, if I let myself, compulsively watch/read rolling news, because my mother compulsively watches/reads rolling news, and because I was raised in that house, I learnt that that’s what you DO if there’s shit going down. It has taken me many, many years to be able to read/watch a little, and then walk the fuck away, because if I DID walk the fuck away, I felt like I was being a bad person, and pretending that it wasn’t happening. Particularly if the thing happening was to people a different colour to me. I felt I HAD to witness it, or I was being Just Another Privileged White Person, ignoring what was happening.
After many years, I have come to a kind of a truce. I am allowed to read a little, I am allowed to make myself aware of a situation. I am allowed to sign internet petitions, and help if there is any realistic way I can help. And then I have to put it down, step back, and walk away for a while. Immerse myself in escapism; read a fic, watch a movie. Knit. And that is what I need to do to protect myself. And that’s okay. I have acknowledged the situation, and pushing myself into a day-long or days-long anxiety attack doesn’t help anyone and doesn’t make me a better person. It hurts me, and helps no one. I am allowed to protect myself.
And so are all of you. Protect yourselves. It doesn’t mean you don’t care.
knitting in the dark 