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It's a horrible day on the Internet, and you are a lovely geuse.

Adult - Plants-liking queer menace - Front-desk worker of a plural system - Unapologetic low-effort poster

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Three pixel stamps: a breaking chain icon in trans colors against a red background, an image of someone being booted out reading "This user is UNWELCOME at the university", and a darkened lamppost.(fallen london stamps by @vagorsol)



Another great essay by LB, an older one but one that I think about on the regular

While making this essay, I received a copy of People magazine which just so happened to have a page of labeled “Stars’ Self-Care Secrets,” made specifically to advertise and sell such products: “how these celebs chill out in between all those parties, premieres and awards shows.” In this framing, self-care is a luxury product, selling an idealized self of professional and social success, affordable by the rich. Celebrity allure is People’s whole brand, but I’ve seen it elsewhere too, that focus on beauty, luxury, and sensual comfort. Health benefits might be invoked, but they’re rarely proven.

The message might seem to be, “self-care like a rock star!” but the undertone is, “only rock stars can afford self-care.”

This is false. Many forms of self-care can not be bought—a good night’s sleep, for instance, or good friends. Other forms may cost very little—my favorite shirt was secondhand, cheap as dirt, and it makes me feel better every time I put it on. It’s true, I’ve spent a lot of money on some things for the sake of treating myself well… but it wasn’t necessarily the stuff that was branded as self-care. The product is not the reality.

There's a place for those products, for indulgence, luxury, and comfort, but they should never be the end-all be-all of self-care. That self-comfort can be hollow, a pretty distraction from the deeper changes that need to be made, and it can lead to dark places.

Proper self-care is more than the lollipop after the doctor; it is also the agonizing physical therapy to recover from an injury, the changing of posture and activity to try and prevent further damage, possibly even leaving the unsafe environment where such injuries are inevitable.

For instance, one of the most self-caring things I ever did for myself was become homeless. It was awful, but that rock bottom turned into my solid foundation. It taught me that my life had to change, I had to change, and forced me to reassess everything. What were my skills and abilities, truly? What needed to change, and how could I go about it with the scarce resources at my disposal? How could I survive and improve?

It was an ordeal, but when I emerged, I had become someone that I respected. All my life, I’d felt out-of-joint, like some vital limb was dislocated and causing me continual pain; now everything was pulled straight. I had built myself a life that was no longer at odds with my root needs. I can’t say I’m grateful for the experience, exactly… but it was a powerful, transformative, necessary one.

That too is self-care. Compared to the hot-baths-and-expensive-soap self-care of the magazines, it might be the ugly stepsister, but it is the stronger sister. A hot bath makes me feel good for a day, but the Homeless Year ripped my life up by the roots and laid it on a better, more sustainable track. One is a treat; the other is an investment. Only a fool confuses the two.


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