AreaSIX

Here I thought I was ancient because it was combat. Seems like there are many of us old farts around here.

Reddit used to have a lot of good posts full of wisdom. This was posted there around 10 years ago in reply to someone struggling with losing their child… It has helped me, and countless others, immensely with putting grief and loss in a proper perspective. Just beautiful.

I didn’t write this, but I reread it every time I lose someone I love, and it has helped me a lot. Hope it can do the same for you.

"Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.

As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks."

My dog. Easily the most value I’ve ever got for my money, no comparison.

First you say “they’ll never directly come out and say they support Russia, but their criticisms against either countries are one sided against Ukraine, and it’s extremely rare they’ll say anything about Russia”

But then you also write: “I’ve not seen any “pro war news”. I see news on the war, but I doubt there’s many people who want the war.”

In this not pro-war news, but “news on the war” that you see, is their criticisms towards Russia maybe one-sided? Would it be fair to say that they’ll extremely rarely portray the US and Nato negatively in this war? Why is it that you do not view one-sided reporting from your side of the fence as being pro-war, characterizing it as just “news on the war” as if it’s just naturally reporting the facts? Do you not see how that’s hypocritical?

I’m firmly against defederating anyone. It’s sad that so many just want to remove voices they don’t like from a public forum. I believe that we should avoid defederating at all costs, it should be the absolute last measure contemplated after everything else fails. I didn’t like their posts for a couple of weeks doesn’t even come close to being a good reason IMO.

Ditto, the unapologetic attitude is something I often miss on the left. Everyone on reddit seemed to hold back so that they wouldn’t get dog piled by the reactionaries. This is refreshing. Of course there’s a lot I don’t agree with, but I’m old and most people on there are young I imagine. I used to sometimes say brash and idiotic things when I was younger too. Their heart seems to be in the right place, and the left needs a counterweight to balance the right’s efforts to effectively monopolize mainstream online discourse.

Shitting on lemme.ee because of one commenter is about as reasonable as hating on hexbear because of some trolls. Why don’t you two just attack each other personally instead of dragging your instances into it? Maybe, just maybe, you guys being immature doesn’t represent your whole instance and is just representative of your own shitty attitudes.

ITT: reactionaries being completely oblivious of what Sartre stood for.

How hard could it be to find out that Sartre was a communist? It’s like quoting an anti-Semitic speech by Adolf and saying “just change ‘jew’ to ‘nazi’ below”. This is impressively stupid stuff.

So, no evidence of genocide then. Why are you acting so dense? You know the difference between war crimes and genocide right? No one is denying wear crimes occur, but you just insist on focusing on one side’s war crimes and elevating them to the level of genocide despite even institutions controlled by the west denying there’s a genocide. And you completely ignore or obfuscate the war crimes of the side you support. Who’s being dishonest here? Who’s being weaselly?

Reactionaries quoting Sartre is just chef’s kiss. They just want to silence any opposition to Nato raping every nation deemed to be non western. It’s always the same shit. You were against the invasion of Iraq? SADDAM SUPPORTER! Opposed the Afghanistan invasion? PRACTICALLY A MEMBER OF TALIBAN!

“Either you’re with us or you’re with the enemy” has always been their mode of operation, and whaddya know, the whole world turns out to be the enemy, because no one outside of Europe wants to be with them.