Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

Happy to inform everyone here, you're only one degree of separation away from my cats

There have been three deadly shootings this year so far on my street. I feel that all I can do is avoid complacency and prepare for the possibility of being shot, because if it happened without my anticipating it I'd feel even more foolish. This reminds me I'm even worried about Tuffy the cat sitting at the window.

Not helpful mookie

― H.P

it's not and it is? like it's not constructive criticism at all, it's snark, it's being unwilling or unable to engage seriously with what i'm saying, but it's meaningful and valuable for all that

absolutely fundamentally my posts here are about me, i just found out yesterday that a (not close) friend was rooming with a neo-nazi who did a mass shooting while they were roommates. that's kinda fucked up and i think i got a right to talk about that experience in a thread about spree shootings. learning that information hit me really hard emotionally. i had nightmares all last night about it.

because the thing is i have so much close contact with so much fucked up shit and i barely talk about any of it. i don't think i'm... i don't think my problems are extraordinary, really, but a lot of people around me, the stuff they have to deal with _does_ seem extraordinary. and if i try to talk about any of this shit, this shit that's kind of a regular part of my everyday life, sometimes someone will come up and say that i'm making everything all about me.

see it's valuable in context, in context as part of the thread. a lot of folks here do, i think, get where i'm coming from, get what i'm talking about, and are able to, like, at least engage to some extent with those experiences. the frustrating thing is sometimes trying to talk to people who don't see the same fucked up shit on a regular basis, sometimes our perspectives seem mutually incomprehensible to the extent that i have a hard time understanding what they're even talking about. that scares me. all this shooting, all this violence, the ways it affects those of us in its proximity, and as much of it as there is, a lot of times it doesn't seem possible to talk about it because i'm not doing it in the _right way_ or whatever. i don't want to be dogpiled, but if it's one person, if it's one person who's gonna speak up and be sarcastic and shitty about it and not engage in good faith, in a weird way i think that is helpful, because that is a perspective a lot of people do have, still. it helps me personally to be reminded of that.

i guess it's not a healthy thought exercise for everyone but it has been for me. anyway i'm pretty much done talking about it, it was something i needed to talk about it and i did and i wanna thank all of you who were able to hold space for that. sorry i don't have cat pics. :(

The true solution to all the world's problems
🖼

I probably shouldn't weigh in, but for what it's worth, Kate, I went back and read your first post about this and it's not clear to me that you were responding to something so emotional. I think in particular the first paragraph comes across as flippant rather than a response to pain. To be clear, I fully believe that you were strongly affected -- it makes sense that you would be -- and it makes sense, in retrospect, that the seeming flippancy might in actuality be a screen for deeper and darker feelings. But I don't think it's entirely fair to "go off" on mookieproof for responding negatively to the "mass shooter number" framing.

fwiw i got no hard feelings and lots of gratitude towards/for everyone here. really appreciate having had this space to say some stuff i needed to say. if anyone has any negative feelings or judgements towards me as a result of my posts here, fair enough. :)

fwiw i don't dislike kate (and very much enjoy her music posts, particularly those about how pink floyd does or does not rule; would totally read a book)

and i can understand that transitioning would become one's most important topic

but her personal posts have become increasingly solipsistic -- which is fine in certain circumstances -- but i think rather less so in a thread discussing mass shootings. that's all