Mastodawn

It's been almost two decades since I and people my age read books like It's Kind of A Funny Story and Thirteen Reasons Why (years before netflix) and the conversation I remember about mental health and suicide back then was SO different than today and SO clear about the fact that it was social issues, academic pressure, misogyny, homophobia that was killing people!

We have now gone from "it's okay to not be okay" and "talk about it" to "just get therapy and fix yourself on your own" and cutting minors off from ANY resources whatsoever, including access to suicide hotlines without parental permission in at least one US state. Almost all discussion ABOUT suicide or self harm, or eating disorders or drug use or abortion or rape, has been censored off the mainstream internet. The right to be suicidal or not alright online, and to be connected to resources and help and hope or even just visibility and conversation by fellow humans, is being erased in a scary way right now.

Suicide prevention and mental health talk (especially the messy kind, the unmarketable posts by people who are not doing well, the problematic and incoherent shit) has always been about fighting the suppression of discussions about child abuse, queer identity, sexual violence, violent enforcement of beauty standards, capitalist abuses, and other things. It's a political project to try and shut all this down and it has to be resisted. People deserve to survive. And this especially includes people who aren't thinking clearly, who want to die, who are hurting themselves, who aren't getting better on a socially correct timeline, etc.

Please protect WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT the right of yourself and your friends and especially any young people you know to have vulnerable, messy, unresolved emotional experiences and to be able to express them, including imperfectly, including in ways that would get someone banned from a mainstream social network. They're trying to kill people. We have to do what we can to keep everyone alive.

#suicide #mental-health #and-if-you-are-thinking-about-dying-at-all-please-remember-not-to-do-that-today #this-is-your-sign #tried-to-cw-this-properly-but-if-something-is-missing-please-let-me-know #earnest-millenial-post