“i don’t want to write about trauma. especially now that i’m not traumatized.” 

“she said: ‘i don’t think abortion is a big deal. my friend’s friend had 13 of them.’” 

“something bad didn’t happen to us. we found something bad and now we’re going to be like, ‘fuck it.’” 

"in some sense, as I respond to this other’s pain, as I touch her cheek, I come to feel that which I cannot know. It is the ungraspability of her pain, in the face of the thereness of my own, that throws me into disbelief. But it is not her pain that I disbelieve. I believe in it, more and more. I am captured by the intensity of this belief. Rather it is my pain that becomes uncertain. I realise that, my pain — it seems so there — is unliveable to others, thrown as they are into a different bodily world. The ungraspability of her pain calls me back to my body, even when it is not in pain, to feel it, to explore its surfaces, to inhabit it. In other words, the ungraspability of my own pain is brought to the surface by the ungraspability of the pain of others. Such a response to her pain is not simply a return to the self (how do I feel given that I don’t know how she feels?): this is not a radical egoism. Rather, in the face of the otherness of my own pain, I am undone, before her, and for her.

The sociality of pain - the ‘contingent attachment’ of being with others - requires an ethics, an ethics that begins with your pain, and moves towards you, getting close enough to touch you, perhaps even close enough to feel the sweat that may be the trace of your pain on the surface of your body. Insofar as an ethics of pain begins here, with how you come to surface, then the ethical demand is that I must act about that which I cannot know, rather than act insofar as I know. I am moved by what does not belong to me. If I acted on her behalf only insofar as I knew how she felt, then I would act only insofar as I would appropriate her pain as my pain, that is, appropriate that which I cannot feel. To return to my introduction to this chapter, it is the very assumption that we know how the other feels, which would allow us to transform their pain into our sadness."

Sara Ahmed,The Cultural Politics of Emotion (via negationparty)

(Source: lovedontdancehereanymore)

"First, no one thinks they’ll be defined by disaster until they are. They can sense it on the horizon, but the gamble is a gamble, and you never know. Second, things are so bad, so minimally imaginative for sexual relations, that people tend to do the thing they heard about doing just to keep things going, and if it means poisoning themselves and wearing out their bodies, or being over- or understimulated, even, they’ll do it. I do it. I make better decisions but not different kinds of decision."

Lauren Berlant, For Example (via negationparty)

well, there you go. 

"Trauma impels people both to withdraw from close relationships and to seek them desperately. The profound disruption in basic trust, the common feelings of shame, guilt, and inferiority, and the need to avoid reminders of the trauma that might be found in social life, all foster withdrawal from close relationships. But the terror of the traumatic event intensifies the need for protective attachments. The traumatized person therefore frequently alternates between isolation and anxious clinging to others. […] It results in the formation of intense, unstable relationships that fluctuate between extremes."

Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery (via psychologicalsnippets)

since i like my trauma aestheticized i usually read literary trauma theory, not clinical trauma theory. this, however. when i told couples therapist #2 that it was impossible to live talking about kids one minute and how we were going to break up the next her eyes lit up and she said “that’s real. that’s relationship trauma.” of course, this was the same therapist who asked me to compare my boyfriend to my exes, while he was sitting next to me. i refused, obviously. what kind of an asshole do you think i am? seriously. 

i put on some chloe perfume, because i like cloying, and took a really long walk. then i ran into this and was like, oh, oh. i tried to make the whole event a little more perverse by walking all the way around the hospital to figure out where it was that my room was, based on what i remember being able to see, and i sort of figured it out, but not enough to take a picture. “i should’ve known” came on and i smiled a little, deleuze quote etc. etc. i had a few anti-epiphanies while i was walking along the side that had all the windows i could see myself in, like, “wow, i’m wearing the same coat as i was that night. wow, i’m wearing the same purse as i was that night.” but i’m pretty much always wearing the same coat and purse. then exactly the right taylor swift song came on just as i got to the door of my apartment so i walked around the block a few more times so i could listen to it twice. the whole experience was super-cleansing and totally in keeping with the ways in which i’ve been writing about trauma and the unexpected pleasures of unpredictability lately. there might be a better word than “pleasures.” now i need to stay up late and get these 2500 words in order. last essay. 

"a traumatic event is simply an event that has the capacity to induce trauma. my claim is that most such happenings that force people to adapt to an unfolding change are better described by a notion of systemic crisis or ‘crisis ordinariness’ and followed out with an eye to seeing how the affective impact takes form, becomes mediated. crisis is not exceptional to history or consciousness but a process embedded in the ordinary that unfolds in stories about navigating what’s overwhelming."

lauren berlant, cruel optimism 

“what happens when experience is systematically denied—could produce trauma or rage or experience of being crazy or going crazy” 

—old notes from freud class on dora 

"[through the notion of trauma] we can understand that a rethinking of reference is aimed not at eliminating history but at resituating it in our understanding, that is precisely permitting history to arise where immediate understanding may not."

cathy caruth, unclaimed experience: trauma, narrative, and history 

on the right kind of casual

dorightwoman:

“I hope you will find ways to work with the OCD not just medically but also intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually in order to find the daily practices that work best for you in order to manage your daily life. Given your interest in affect theory and your work in this most recent chapter on spirituality, I do think there’s a way that you are seeking something through your intellectual projects that could really help you here but you’ll need to dig deep and also be willing to explore the emotional dynamics of your life as a scholar.”

—

Remember how I sometimes find my dissertation advisor intimidating? Can you imagine how fraught I was over disclosing my recent health issues to her? I waited anxiously all week and then received this message in response. Even when traveling abroad, even when far away, even when finishing her own project, she pushes me to find my own spirituality, to practice self-care, to find healthy ways to mesh my personal and private and political lives, and I am reminded all over again why I want to work with her. I cannot believe how lucky I am to have such a mentor.

this is exactly what i want to read, especially today, when i was just talking about her beautiful book.

i remember the first 24 hours in the hospital obsessing about how i had possibly just accidented myself into totally fucking up my phd, which is one of the only things i ever really wanted. i lay in bed and thought, well, i guess i’ve always had my fantasy backup plan, and i guess i am going to finally work at planned parenthood or a women’s health clinic, and live in some small town, maybe on the ocean, and it’s okay that i won’t publish in academic journals, because after work i can go home and write on tumblr. then maybe whatever was in the IV kicked in, and whatever medications were in my body dissipated, and i was like, wait, WHAT? 

if you are going to have OCD or depression or anxiety or a really bad year that ends in a really bad drug interaction, this is the right little corner of academia to do it in. everyone is kind and supportive, even casual in the right way, and maybe encouraging of it becoming part of your work. i will probably write about this for the rest of my life or at least until i get feminist bored of it. i will definitely always feel really lucky that i had such a soft landing and hope that one day, when my students have OCD or depression or anxiety or really bad years, that i will be just as generous as everyone has been with me.