And speaking of Sophia Tolstoy, her diaries are just so depressing.
“I am to gratify his pleasure and nurse his child, I am a piece of household furniture, I am a woman. I try to suppress all human feelings. When the machine is working properly it heats the milk, knits a blanket, makes little requests and bustles about trying not to think […].“
She wrote this when she was 19, one year into her marriage to Leo and as she was pregnant with the first of his 13 children.
A few years later, when she was 25 or so:
“I am so often alone with my thoughts that the need to write in my diary comes quite naturally … Now I am well again and not pregnant—it terrifies me how often I have been in that condition. He said that for him being young meant “I can achieve anything”. For me […] reason tells me that there is nothing I either want or can do beyond nursing, eating, drinking, sleeping, and loving and caring for my husband and babies, all of which I know is happiness of a kind, but why do I feel so woeful all the time, and weep as I did yesterday? I am writing this now with the pleasantly exciting sense that nobody will ever read it, so I can be quite frank with myself […].“
During her 12th pregnancy she wrote about taking scalding baths and jumping from high pieces of furniture to try and miscarry. And at one point while reading her husband’s diary (which he told her to read) she found the sentence “There is no such thing as love, only the physical need for intercourse and the practical need for a life companion.” In her own diary she wrote “They ebb and flow like waves, these times when I realise how lonely I am and want only to cry…”
A few years before her husband’s death, she published a cycle of prose poems titled “Groans”, under the pseudonym “A Tired Woman”.
the most depressing quote from her diaries:
“I have served a genius for almost forty years. Hundreds of times I have felt my intellectual energy stir within me and all sorts of desires - a longing for education, a love of music and the arts… And time and again I have crushed and smothered these longings… Everyone asks, “But why should a worthless woman like you need an intellectual or artistic life?” To this question I can only reply: “I don’t know, but eternally suppressing it to serve a genius is a great misfortune.”
Bernie the baddest.
Bernie Lewinsky, Bernie the Ninja, Bernie the Boss, Bernie the Harajuku Barbie
on the monstrous-feminine
‘The Monstrous Feminine’
Female Abjection in the Works of Charles
Dickens
Role Monsters [a series on monstrous female archetypes by Jess Zimmerman]
Female Monstrosity [collection of various pdfs on this topic]
“Normative Society and the Monstrous Female Transgressor”
The Monstrous-Feminine [the full book by barbara creed!]
“The Good and Bad of that Sexe‟: Monstrosity and Womanhood in Early Modern England”
The Monstrous ‘Other’ Feminine: Gender, Desire and the ‘Look’ in the Hindi Horror Genre
The Monstrous-Feminine [films]
I AM THE MONSTER: SELF AND THE MONSTROUS FEMININE IN CONTEMPORARY YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
Unnatural Women, Invisible Mothers: Monstrous Female Bodies in the Wonders of the East
A Regiment of Monstrous Women: Female Horror Archetypes and Life History Theory
POWERS OF HORROR: An Essay on Abjection [the full book by julia kristeva referenced by barbara creed]
(via illinicoise)
my hot take as someone who has experienced the lowest of lows in terms of severe depression and anxiety and executive dysfunction: the whole “not everyone is neurotypical karen” mindset is legitimately damaging and destructive and ultimately will make you feel worse and more isolated
eating well and exercising and etc absolutely helps with mental illness. obviously it’s irritating to hear that when those things feel like impossible tasks, i get that, and i’ve been there. but forcing yourself to eat better, to walk more, to get up out of bed and shower even when you don’t want to, those things help. they clear your head. they make you feel better. they absolutely do. getting there is hard, but once you do it, it does help
rejecting any kind of help, even the most benign suggestion, from someone who is trying their best to think positively for you and shoulder the emotional burden with you, is going to make you feel worse. it’s going to make you feel that much more cut off and lonely and frustrated. i have isolated myself and ruined friendships with people because i chose to close myself off from people who were just trying to help and i convinced myself that they didn’t understand me and no one would ever understand me. what did that get me in the end? genuinely nothing. it made me feel even more alone.
in 2018 i encourage people who suffer like i have to see where people are coming from with cheesy self-care advice. they’re coming from the heart. and sometimes, doing a face mask or taking a hot bath or eating a nutritious meal or getting up to watch the sunrise or even just one yoga class can make you feel that much closer to the person you want to be. a lot of recovery from mental illness is “fake it till you make it” type shit. so don’t reject even the corniest advice because you are convinced it won’t help you. sometimes it really does. and you shouldn’t keep denying yourself even the smallest of victories because you feel like it’s easier to wallow in how bad you feel. it is so difficult to do good things for yourself and your body, but it is so rewarding
it really blows me when i watch shows or read books where hoes out there tryna survive an apocalypse……. if there’s zombies or aliens or what have you rolling deep in the streets baby gorl im LITCHERALLY killing myself. y’all can drink cockroach milk and eat leather shoes if you want im attending whitney’s birthday bash at 8, bottles on jesus
(via escondidx)
Ladies and baby alligators, Luna Park Zoo, Los Angeles, ca. 1927
(via jayboicool)
Enable mobile theme On the Customize screen turn off the Use default mobile theme option under Advanced Options. 
Photo posts not showing correctly? Turn off Tumblr's beta post editor. 
Further instructions here fix photo posts.
Display avatar image Upload an image to the "Header Avatar" option, square images work best. 
Remove stash credit Remove the stash logo from your website by getting a Full License.
More help & customization If you still need more check out our help section or the theme docs.