This was amazing. Thank you for writing!

I read it as her not really being heard. I won’t speak for her, but being in a similar situation, I know that the habit of being hopeful to the person who has expressed their sadness tends to ignore the reality of someone’s feelings and situation. It starts to feel like you are being invalidated or erased.

But acceptance doesn’t equal happiness. You can accept a truth you wish weren’t true and be healthy and relatively content while still wishing for a different outcome.

Shit happens to everyone that doesn’t make us happy and that we don’t want to deal with. And yes, its nice when friends try to make it better by giving a person hope it will soon end. But for some people, it won’t. Continuing to tell them that they just have to be patient and try harder is exasperating and…

It sounds to me like she does want to talk about it, but wants the people she’s talking with to acknowledge her reality and have the conversation she’s actually trying to have, rather than insisting that she’s wrong and she won’t be alone forever, even though, as she points out, there is no guarantee of that.

I think there’s a fine line between trying to help and just being condescending, though. I agree that Aimee sounds sad about the state of her romantic life, but telling her “oh dont worry, he’ll come along when you least expect it” is kinda setting her up for disappointment. I don’t know if she’s seen a therapist, but…

Or even if people want it, the fact is, not everybody gets it. Not everybody meets the right person at the right time to have the right relationship and then kids.

Yup I started dating someone and the relief in some of my well meaning friends and family was palpable. I don’t know that this man is my one. I am perfectly happy being single and not dating. The boughts of sadness in between acceptance of solitude disturb some people to thier core.

Or she’d rather be able to talk about it openly without being made to feel that her feelings are wrong. There’s nothing worse than trying to be honest with someone and they dismiss your feelings because they don’t line up with what they think you should feel. I really think she’s looking for understanding and…

Carl Sagan likened nuclear proliferation to two enemies together in a gasoline-soaked room. One person has five matches, and the other has three.

They do it when they put you on ‘suicide watch’ -- they take away all your things so you can’t self-harm; including your sheets and pillow cases and in some instances all your clothes so you’re naked with nothing but a drain in the center of the padded room.

‘Technically’ it’s not a punishment but done ‘for your own…

You’ve been calling the USA Russia for a while now?

Second world mean communist.

Of course it’s wrong. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

This is an absolutely tragic story. If I wasn’t doing immigration law, I’d do prison reform, because both make my blood boil at the abuses that law enforcement and jailers mete out on a daily basis.

No one should kid themselves into thinking that the people who run and work these places care if the inmates get better.

Yes. Prison conditions are uniformly fucking terrible. They are often worse for black inmates, but prison reform should be a universal cause.

Er, what possible benefit is there to stripping someone of their privileges for attempting suicide or self-harm? They’re already at rock bottom, wouldn’t removing what few comforts they have left just make things worse?

“[C]onditions that I would expect to find in a developing country, not...in the USA” sure is widely applicable nowadays. Maybe we should reconsider what it means to be a developing country?

Save that hashtag for his inevitable impeachment.