Shhh… It’s a Secret

No promises or anything.
To be honest, I’m kind of lowering the bar for myself a bit. It took promising myself no pressure to get me to open a post window.
It’s been almost a year since I’ve written anything of substance. Despite pages of fractured, partially legible ideas and notes, coherent thought has gone screaming into the night each time I’ve considered, you know, committing words to my blog.
Unlike twitter and Facebook, it’s easy to go poking through my old ravings and pick them apart. Unlike twitter and Facebook, a blog doesn’t allow me to write it and forget it. Granted, they’re all permanent… But blogs have something, entirely in my head, which makes them more intimidating… Like the difference between an essay and a term paper… Personal blogging is the thesis I’m writing for the School of Life Bullshit Degree in Know Thyself… With a minor in Navel Gazing.
Ooo… Lint.
Anyway… So, yeah.
I opened the window.
There are words in it.
It’s okay if no one can follow the trail of words.
For now, is enough to write them.
No pressure, Marisa. Really. You have NOTHING to lose in deciding to make another go. How many false starts were there before you quit smoking? Yeah. It’s been almost 2 years since you quit so remember that.
*waves timidly*
I’m back, guys and maybe ready to clean things up around here.

Twelve Habits of Happy, Healthy People Who Don’t Give a Shit About Your Inner Peace

Yes! A thousand times, yes!

Twelve Habits of Happy, Healthy People Who Don’t Give a Shit About Your Inner Peace.

Samaritans cannot deny being data controller for #samaritansradar

Important conversation for Twitter users who live with mental illness.

informationrightsandwrongs

The views in this post (and indeed all posts on this blog) are my personal ones, and do not represent the views of any organisation I am involved with.

So, Samaritans continue to support the #samaritansradar app, about which I, and many others, have already written. A large number of people suffering from, or with experience of mental health problems, have pleaded with Samaritans to withdraw the app, which monitors the tweets of the people one follows on twitter, applies an algorithm to identify tweets from potentially vulnerable people, and emails that information to the app user, all without the knowledge of the person involved. As Paul Bernal has eloquently said, this is not really an issue about privacy, and nor is it about data protection – it is about the threat many vulnerable people feel from the presence of the app. Nonetheless, privacy and data protection law…

View original post 1,330 more words

Rawr

Broke my tablet.

Computer is virus ridden and guarded by the boys like a pack of feral dogs.

I still have my crappy phone but not really able to use it.

Feeling primitive.

So no more posts until I can beat the boys away from the computer with a stick or I can use something that doesn’t require reading glasses and a magnifying lamp.

If I get desperate, I may scratch out some cave paintings on my bedroom wall.

Here’s a Handful of Meh

Woke up to horrendous news this morning and can’t get past the feeling of relief it brings. Oh, and all the guilt for feeling relieved a bad situation we basically brought on ourselves has resoled itself.

Have you ever had a situation where the emotions seem they should be mutually exclusive to each other?

Don’t feel compelled to share details. It’s a little hypocritical for me to keep it private and ask others to tell their tale. I mean, I will… Just not today. Need some distance first.

But if you’ve been there, what were the emotions it seemed shouldn’t exist in the same space? Did it leave you functionally paralyzed? Did it serve as a point of change? Or did you curl up in a dark space and wait it out?

Pretty sure that’s all I have the energy to do with this.

Just in case you get the idea bravery is the SOP around here, it isn’t.

Silence Kills

 

First, links. These two links provide the back story to this post:
About the original hashtag
Blog post referenced in above article

It’s 6am.

Just before midnight I made a snap decision to do a personal tweet marathon.

As the sunlight fills my bedroom window, it occurs to me some preparation may have been in order… But knowing my tendency towards “Meh, no one really cares” I jumped in before giving myself a chance to reconsider speaking up.

Last month, someone decided his particular brand of entitlement justified committing violence on others before taking himself out of the picture and the possibility for a media circus of a trial or a lucrative best-selling book deal. Poor him…

Within days of his video rant and rampage, people had stopped mentioning him by name (Honestly don’t remember and won’t give his name the brain space) and instead started talking about the harsh reality that some men do such atrocious things that all women have learned to live defensively in order to maintain basic personal safety.

As if to prove the point, some men took this idea so harshly, the woman who opened the specific conversation felt the need to protect her Twitter account in order to retain some measure of anonymity and safety.

It’s eaten at me for weeks. The activity on the tag on Twitter may have died down some because people there are closer to the source and heard the request to let it go, but I still see it in other places. It’s a conversation that should not end and an idea that shouldn’t be silenced.

Yesterday, a friend used the YAW tag and instantly found herself a misogynist troll. Someone created an account specifically to bash anyone who dares to share her story using YAW.

In talking with her, Author Leigh Michaels (whose books directly address the damage of silence) last night, I got a little riled up about internet bullies and the use of threats or shaming to silence those whose experiences are uncomfortable.

And we said it… Silence Kills.

Abuse, mental illness, addictions, medication, chronic illnesses, trauma, sexuality… The list of uncomfortable subjects is pretty vast. I know saying anything about it, drawing attention to the idea that keeping silent isn’t about keeping peace as much as it is about self-preservation and fear, I’m tossing out the idea that anyone who feels their religious, political or other dogmatic belief system isn’t getting enough wind could jump in and hijack it for their own purposes.

This isn’t about a movement or a hash tag or any formal or informal… Ism.

For me, it’s about acknowledging that too often silence is personally damaging. How many secrets, games, manipulations or outright crimes have you not shared because the weight of being denied, ignored, accused or punished is more painful than bearing it in silence?

I’m doing a 24 hour marathon on Twitter under the tag #SilenceKills. It’s a deeply personal thing for me and I’ll see it through even if it’s alone.

But if anyone here has a Twitter and has a story to tell that’s been silenced… Abuse, neglect, domestic violence, harassment… Whatever your background, gender identity, race, whatever… If you have been coerced to silence because of some societal taboo and you want to speak up, please do so. You don’t have to interact in any way other than breaking your own silence.

For a few hours, let our voices be heard and damn the bullies.