Star Trek, "The Mark of Gideon."

Airdate: January 17, 1969.

Sigh.

"Has anyone been paying attention to [atrocity or other legitimately horrible thing] going on in [country], or [veiled accusations of bigotry for not knowing]? [insert a post with news but absolutely zero calls to action or suggestions of how someone outside the country might help]"

love that this kind of post is still going around on tumblr. /s this post i'm making is a complaint of every one of that kind of guilt trip post I've ever seen, prompted by one that crossed my dash recently.

first of all, i can barely keep up with the news of what atrocities are happening in my own country, i have literally no idea what's happening in the rest of the world right now. it's not just you. i couldn't tell you what's happening in canada or mexico or half the time even the next state over. Get mad at international news for not covering it, but don't bring that guilt trip down on me.

second of all, if you ARE going to try to bring that guilt trip down on me, the least you could fucking do is tell me how i can fucking help. If you're talking about widespread awareness, the people you want to be pissed at are NEWS OUTLETS for not reporting on it. If you have actual concrete ways the average non-citizen of that country can help, then we're getting somewhere at least.

third of all yes it's a horrible thing. Like, holy shit I read that and was appalled. But all that's going to do is... make me appalled. and feeling worse about the world. Because I can't *help*, apparently, you just want me to be AWARE, okay fine but i'm busy being AWARE of how my own country is trying to kill me right now so you'll forgive me if i have limited resources to focus on a situation i can't change or do anything about other than bear witness to it, apparently. Or that's the sense you gave me by guilt tripping me and then providing zero resources.

But yeah. If something's going down in your country and you want to make a post saying "guys please I just need to make sure people know what's happening" without having any resources for whatever reason, that's fine. I'm supportive. I may even reblog it, though I prefer posts with any sort of indication for how I can help or change the situation.

But making that post, with no resources for how people can help, but also PREFACING it with a snide guilt-tripping accusation of our own bigotry being the reason none of us know about what's happening, rather than a lack of international news coverage and possibly our own preoccupations with stuff happening in our own country? fuck you. I hope the bad shit stops happening and I hope you stay safe, but I think you specifically are a fucking asshole.

Well, this is it. I'm giving you my life story and asking for help.

I'm 18 living in a small home with my parents in Texas. We're not necessarily poor, but we are tight-budgeted. We're a fairly ordinary family on the outside, but really we're far from functional.

My mom is a smoker. She has COPD and emphysema, and I repeatedly have to "catch" her whenever she smokes in an effort to slow her down. I hear a lighter click, open my room door or quickly walk to the source and she puts it out before she can react. Though of course because of this she guilt trips me by putting on crocodile tears and making me out to be the bad guy.

Then there's my dad. He's also a smoker, but much less so. He always takes my mom's lighters and cigarettes when I catch her, and he says he won't let her get a smoke. Only problem? He does. I've caught him repeatedly giving her a cig and a light, and he's even outright told me a few times to let her puff one up. Now, why don't I call him out on this? Easy: he has huge anger problems. I almost never tell mom to put out any cigarettes within his earshot because he'd huff loud and clear and sometimes even scream at me at the top of his lungs, telling me to "chill out." I've only told him that I've seen him give mom smokes once or twice, and even then he shrugs and laughs it off like no big deal. He's outright lying at me and using his stress to justify his temper tantrums.

Just recently I caught my mom again and she put them down and dad yelled at me again for keeping her alive. Afterwards when I thought everything was okay I asked if I could get a psychiatrist's appointment so I could vent all this out, and then he went total apeshit and stormed out the house, screaming that he's had enough on his plate even though before the whole ordeal he was ushering me to immediately get a GED and a learner's permit and a job ASAP. I cried for like ten minutes in my room because of how awful a fit he threw at me, completely missing his own hypocrisy of him being stressed at work and getting mom healthy while I'm stressed about the whole GED/job thing mentioned beforehand, all the while he lets my mom smoke as much as she wants like it's no big deal.

I want to just run away from my family and live somewhere else until they clean up their act. Maybe pack my things and go on a cross-country hiking trip to Canada and become a citizen there, forever. But I don't want to kill myself; I have good friends and despite all this I do love my family, and I don't want to give them the burden of losing a friend/relative.

The sad part is that I cannot ever tell this to my folks, because my mom would start feeling bad about herself and my dad would, surprise surprise, go total apeshit over me and probably even disown me. I'm scared, I'm tired, I'm sad, and I'm sick of it. I'm starting to feel like I shouldn't even go out in the living room anymore if my voices matter that little to the people I live with.

Please, if anyone's here, help me. Help me. Help me please. I can't take it anymore.