…I almost killed myself
I put on my sunglasses, to hide my swollen eyes, over my tears. I cried all my makeup off. Went inside to have a milkshake. I don’t know why. I wanted something to drink as I figured out what I would do. I got a soda and a milkshake. Medium. The cashier looked at me and with a line around the corner of the counter he rushed away from the counter “Hold on “ he yelled to a coworker.
I filled my soda and went back and saw him looking all over. I go up and he gets close and says “I made it a large”.
That was seriously enough for me not to do it. His kindness. Someone went out of their way and as I went back in my car to cry I realized I could muster through a few other days. A few more weeks. Then I came down from that panicky high of anxiety, depression, and pain. I finished my shake. And it was enough time to let me feel better. I… I’m alive. I’ll make it through.
Try and be nice today. Tomorrow. Something as much as a smile. It helped so much.
Thank you man at McDonalds.
The milkshake saved my life
I hope you all can read this and remember to be kind
The smallest of gestures can save a life. My Mum answered her phone when I called and I am alive today because of that.
I’m glad you’re here.
It’s a phone call, a milkshake, a friend.
I feel like I shouldn’t keep reblogging this but when I do more people see what kindness can do…. I don’t know. Love everyone as yourself.
Nah, keep rebloging it. It gives hope.
walked sobbing around a city once wearing a summer dress in mid-september thunder and rain. basically dragged myself into LUSH as the smell of the store always made me smile. the shop was empty and dead due to the weather, just this blonde short woman behind the counter who smiled at me. i stared at her feet and asked ‘do you have anything for people who are scared a lot?’ (i was so out of it i had no clue). she showed me two bath bombs, one pink and one blue, and said both were good – i chose the pink, paid for it and left. i then sat at a bus stop clutching the LUSH bag in one arm and my prescription meds in the other – i’d lied and ordered a refill so i could just drift away with sleeping pills. when the bus arrived and i was out of the rain, i decided to have another look at my bath bomb, smell it and what not. opened my bag and saw she’d put the blue one in there for me as well and written on the receipt ‘feel better soon 🙂 hope you like x’.
no one had ever been so selflessly kind to me before, i didn’t know what to do with it except hang around long enough to use the other bath bomb.
Actually I’m going to reblog this again because of the truth of the inverse: think of any time you have been casually cruel or petty to someone for humor or because you weren’t in a great mood.
The power of small gestures goes both ways.
Tag: don’t forget the good stuff
This made me nearly bite a pencil in half in enraged memory.
@ THE REST OF MY ANCIENT HISTORY CLASS; Y’ALL ARE WELCOME FOR THAT FUCKIN A THE REST OF YOU DID NO GODDAMN WORK FOR
Oh man, so I know everyone hates group projects with ample good reason, but lemme just tell you something that happened to me in my final year of uni. My dad got real sick and was in and out of hospital numerous times, one time with a suspected heart attack. Which meant my mum ended up caring for my dad, and I wound up caring for my disabled brother, on top of working a part time job and going to university full time.
My grades slid dramatically. I was having to appeal nearly all my results with my professors, and was mercifully granted extensions by all but one of them. (Which, if you’re out there Ronald: stub your toe and step on lego for the rest of eternity.) And then our Revolutionary Cultures prof. assigned a group project, and paired us at random with our classmates. And I knew, I knew I was just going to be a dead weight so I went to my new buddy and told them we should go to the profs office and ask for her to be switched to someone else who wasn’t just going to drag them down. And my new best buddy for the rest of the semester looked at me, looked at our assigned project, and very gently started to cry as she told me “I was just about to say the same thing to you,” and then tearfully told me her mum was dying, and the only reason she hadn’t dropped out to take care of her was because her mum wanted to see her graduate. She’d been given six months and we graduated in five. Provided we finished this class. And we were both out of appeals and leniency time.
It’s probably one of my most vivid memories from the whole college experience, just sitting on the floor of the Renaissance Lit corridor hugging someone who until a moment ago had been a relative stranger known only in passing, and trying to tell them it would be okay, we’d get the paper done. And we did. We scraped a C- together between the two of us and we managed to coast over the passing mark for the class and were allowed to graduate with abysmal but passing marks.
And I still think about her all the time. Especially when I wind up in group projects for work, and it feels like no one else is shouldering any of the burden, I make a note to reach out and say “hey, you don’t seem to be engaging with this much, are you okay?”
And a lot of the time it shocks people. They’re not expecting earnest concern for their lack of interest, and you find out things like their kid is sick, their dog just died, they’ve got health issues going on, or sometimes they just don’t know where to begin with the project and didn’t want to tell you that because they were frightened of being judged or perceived as lazy when they’re just overwhelmed.
And I honestly wish things like this were taught in team building exercises, cause that’s what group projects in school are. They’re supposed to be teaching you how to work well with others and achieve a common goal, while at the same time totally skipping over the fundamentals of human interaction and how to engage socially with others, and it’s fucking bullshit.
99-Year-Old Lady Sews A Dress A Day For Children In Need
Lillian Weber, a 99-year-old good Samaritan from Iowa, has spent the last few years sewing a dress a day for the Little Dresses For Africa charity, a Christian organization that distributes dresses to children in need in Africa and elsewhere.
Weber’s goal is to make 1,000 dresses by the time she turns 100 on May 6th. So far, she’s made more than 840. Though she says she could make two a day, she only makes one – but each single dress she makes per day is personalized with careful stitchwork. She hopes that each little girl who receives her dress can take pride in her new garment.
this lady must live forever
She made it!
She recently passed in May and was still sewing dresses that day (her final count was 1234 dresses).
http://wqad.com/2016/05/06/quad-city-dressmaker-dies-on-eve-of-101st-birthday/
rest in peace, you wonderful person. 💜
One of the most powerful moments I experienced as an ancient history student was when I was teaching cuneiform to visitors at a fair. A father and his two little children came up to the table where I was working. I recognised them from an interfaith ceremony I’d attended several months before: the father had said a prayer for his homeland, Syria, and for his hometown, Aleppo.
All three of them were soft-spoken, kind and curious. I taught the little girl how to press wedges into the clay, and I taught the little boy that his name meant “sun” and that there was an ancient Mesopotamian God with the same name. I told them they were about the same age as scribes were when they started their training. As they worked, their father said to them gently: “See, this is how your ancestors used to write.”
And I thought of how the Ancient City of Aleppo is almost entirely destroyed now, and how the Citadel was shelled and used as a military base, and how Palmyran temples were blown up and such a wealth of culture and history has been lost forever. And there I was with these children, two small pieces of the future of a broken country, and I was teaching them cuneiform. They were smiling and chatting to each other about Mesopotamia and “can you imagine, our great-great-great-grandparents used to write like this four thousand years ago!” For them and their father, it was more than a fun weekend activity. It was a way of connecting, despite everything and thousands of kilometres away from home, with their own history.
This moment showed me, in a concrete way, why ancient studies matter. They may not seem important now, not to many people at least. But history represents so much of our cultural identity: it teaches us where we come from, explains who we are, and guides us as we go forward. Lose it, and we lose a part of ourselves. As historians, our role is to preserve this knowledge as best we can and pass it on to future generations who will need it. I helped pass it on to two little Syrian children that day. They learnt that their country isn’t just blood and bombs, it’s also scribes and powerful kings and Sun-Gods and stories about immortality and tablets that make your hands sticky. And that matters.
New Yorkers aren’t unfriendly or unhelpful. What folks who think that miss is that we’re always jammed into a too small subway car or a too narrow sidewalk or a too cramped elevator. We don’t have enough physical space, so we give each other psychological space by minding our business. But if someone needs help, we’re there.
Tonight I was riding the 7 train out to Citi Field. At Grand Central, a guy who seemed to be somewhere on the eccentric/addled scale got on and yelled “my man’s going to Kennedy – JFK airport. Y’all got this?” He was intense enough that I looked up and saw he was pointing to a puzzled-looking Asian man who’d gotten on in front of him. He said it again – “JFK airport, y’all got this” and stepped back onto the platform.
The folks in the subway car started talking, verified the route, talked to the man to make sure he understood, found someone in the car who was getting off at the right stop, and deputized him to go with the man to the E train. Y’all got this? Yeah, we got this. We’re New Yorkers.
My mom faceplanted after tripping over a manhole cover as we were rushing down the street in NYC and at least seven people immediately were there to help her up.
this is going to sound like such a Tumblr Story but I swear it’s happening as i type but like. outside my dorm window these guys were playing catch and they asked their friend to join him and i heard something muttered and then the other guy was like “you’re in college and you don’t know how to throw a football?” and like up in my room i was grimacing bc here come the Gay Sissy jokes obviously but instead – the kid goes “that’s okay! we’ll teach you.” and for the last hour they’ve been teaching him how to play like i’ve been listening and i guess you want to catch with your fingertips and use your elbows and bend your knees and think about your wrists and they’re …? actually being so kind and saying like ? some of the most constructive criticism i’ve ever heard surrounded by things like “oh! great job on that catch” “sweet throw! now you’re getting it!” and … my heart has never been so warm
i just wish this world like told boys… it’s okay to be like this. it’s okay to be supportive and friendly and frankly nurturing to other boys. i wish boys were allowed to be gentle and sweet and kind. boys….. be good, upturn the patriarchal standards and homophobia entrenched in this culture…. go teach a guy how to throw a ball.
UPDATE: the guy who’s teaching just said “BEAUTIFUL throw! sorry i didn’t catch it but that was PERFECT!!” and the guy who’s learning is like “?? i… i did it good??” and the first guy just says … in the most proud voice ever like .. “bro you did it GREAT” and tbh i’m gonna cry there’s too much Good here
Making Herstory #MakingHerstory
So, my friend made herself into 15 foot long cardboard velociraptor with googly eyes
wupacing 