this is me wondering if the economics exam is going to go well or not

have read 470 pages of hal varian’s intermediate microeconomics in two days and keep thinking i see indifference curves everywhere

what I ended up getting was as usual not what I wanted, but instead this book and an even more entrenched cynicism about romantic love. cos, i remember how much fun we used to have together and the things he said to me, and regret, sometimes, how i didn’t let him have what he wanted: no strings attached. i got other things instead, though. this amazing book. hours spent in the library listening to this and reading isaiah berlin while it rains outside, feeling the greatest happiness i have ever felt. writing essays that express my ideas. all this richness. being co chair of the student union’s women’s campaign, organising things with a lovely group of people. a job in bangladesh in the summer. a brain which won’t stop ticking away and thinking about things and constructing ideas, not any more. a lot of friends in college who aren’t judgemental and selfish like he is. volunteering in an advice centre for asylum seekers with amazing people, actually making a difference at last. plans. a moral identity and a background justification for my actions, higher pleasure, a sense of dignity. all these things which i’ve written essays about this year, all these things which i’ve started to feel this year. i feel different now, i think as i go the short walk from my room to the library. about him, about everything. 

Womcam <3

maybe I should fight harder for you

but I said I’d let you go when you wanted me to

so, so slow

can you feel me letting go?

I, I know that we turn away

when the cracks begin to show

and now we’re sleeping with the television and all the lights on,

one of us is leaving soon but we’re both already gone.

stuck at the lost and found,

we watch things disappear…

looking for the missing piece, but it was never here.

ever hour I find a way, a way

to convince myself to stay

back and forth, I can’t juggle

lying here,

need to stand up and struggle.

but life gets stranger than fiction each year, and crueler, and funnier

and you have me caught between fire and air

unable to breathe or burn.

sophiaselfish:

В моем городе нет моря, но куда бы я ни шла, мое море со мною.

he plays music down the phone to me, and i hold the it close, letting the music drift out from between my fingers, close to my heart. i want to see you. you need someone who appreciates you. i hear his voice, how it’s changed, how his words have changed… remember his eyes, his skin, hear the desire in his words. now, there are things i would choose over anything else, above him: knowledge, passion, dignity. but a love that strong permanently changes you, moulds you around it. when it is gone, the shapes it carved in your skin remain, and the space it left yearns, sometimes, for what it once held. i think of his passion and intelligence and strength, remember the awe in his eyes as he looked at me, the song he wrote for me one day. come and see me before you leave. i can’t, of course… i can’t risk for a single moment being distracted from studying. but i remember the phone calls down the years, how the attachment grew stronger with time, and wonder if there are some things that are just meant to be. i dream about him that night, daydream the next day, tell myself off for being weak.

thebootydontlie:

15 Styles of Distorted Thinking

1. Filtering: You take the negative details and magnify them, while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. A single detail may be picked out, and the whole event becomes colored by this detail. When you pull negative things out of context, isolated from all the good experiences around you, you make them larger and more awful than they really are.
2. Polarized Thinking: The hallmark of this distortion is an insistence on dichotomous choices. Things are black or white, good or bad. You tend to perceive everything at the extremes, with very little room for a middle ground. The greatest danger in polarized thinking is its impact on how you judge yourself. For example-You have to be perfect or you’re a failure.
3. Overgeneralization: You come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence. If something bad happens once, you expect it to happen over and over again. ‘Always’ and ‘never’ are cues that this style of thinking is being utilized. This distortion can lead to a restricted life, as you avoid future failures based on the single incident or event.
4. Mind Reading: Without their saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, you are able to divine how people are feeling toward you. Mind reading depends on a process called projection. You imagine that people feel the same way you do and react to things the same way you do. Therefore, you don’t watch or listen carefully enough to notice that they are actually different. Mind readers jump to conclusions that are true for them, without checking whether they are true for the other person.
5. Catastrophizing: You expect disaster. You notice or hear about a problem and start “what if’s.” What if that happens to me? What if tragedy strikes? There are no limits to a really fertile catastrophic imagination. An underlying catalyst for this style of thinking is that you do not trust in yourself and your capacity to adapt to change.
6. Personalization: This is the tendency to relate everything around you to yourself. For example, thinking that everything people do or say is some kind of reaction to you. You also compare yourself to others, trying to determine who’s smarter, better looking, etc. The underlying assumption is that your worth is in question. You are therefore continually forced to test your value as a person by measuring yourself against others. If you come out better, you get a moment’s relief. If you come up short, you feel diminished. The basic thinking error is that you interpret each experience, each conversation, each look as a clue to your worth and value.
7. Control Fallacies: There are two ways you can distort your sense of power and control. If you feel externally controlled, you see yourself as helpless, a victim of fate. The fallacy of internal control has you responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around you. Feeling externally controlled keeps you stuck. You don’t believe you can really affect the basic shape of your life, let alone make any difference in the world. The truth of the matter is that we are constantly making decisions, and that every decision affects our lives. On the other hand, the fallacy of internal control leaves you exhausted as you attempt to fill the needs of everyone around you, and feel responsible in doing so (and guilty when you cannot).
8. Fallacy of Fairness: You feel resentful because you think you know what’s fair, but other people won’t agree with you. Fairness is so conveniently defined, so temptingly self-serving, that each person gets locked into his or her own point of view. It is tempting to make assumptions about how things would change if people were only fair or really valued you. But the other person hardly ever sees it that way, and you end up causing yourself a lot of pain and an ever-growing resentment.
9. Blaming: You hold other people responsible for your pain, or take the other tack and blame yourself for every problem. Blaming often involves making someone else responsible for choices and decisions that are actually our own responsibility. In blame systems, you deny your right (and responsibility) to assert your needs, say no, or go elsewhere for what you want.
10. Shoulds: You have a list of ironclad rules about how you and other people should act. People who break the rules anger you, and you feel guilty if you violate the rules. The rules are right and indisputable and, as a result, you are often in the position of judging and finding fault (in yourself and in others). Cue words indicating the presence of this distortion are should, ought, and must.
11. Emotional Reasoning: You believe that what you feel must be true-automatically. If you feel stupid or boring, then you must be stupid and boring. If you feel guilty, then you must have done something wrong. The problem with emotional reasoning is that our emotions interact and correlate with our thinking process. Therefore, if you have distorted thoughts and beliefs, your emotions will reflect these distortions.
12. Fallacy of Change: You expect that other people will change to suit you if you just pressure or cajole them enough. You need to change people because your hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them. The truth is the only person you can really control or have much hope of changing is yourself. The underlying assumption of this thinking style is that your happiness depends on the actions of others. Your happiness actually depends on the thousands of large and small choices you make in your life.
13. Global Labeling: You generalize one or two qualities (in yourself or others) into a negative global judgment. Global labeling ignores all contrary evidence, creating a view of the world that can be stereotyped and one-dimensional. Labeling yourself can have a negative and insidious impact upon your self-esteem; while labeling others can lead to snap-judgments, relationship problems, and prejudice.
14. Being Right: You feel continually on trial to prove that your opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and you will go to any length to demonstrate your rightness. Having to be ‘right’ often makes you hard of hearing. You aren’t interested in the possible veracity of a differing opinion, only in defending your own. Being right becomes more important than an honest and caring relationship.
15. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy: You expect all your sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if there were someone keeping score. You fell bitter when the reward doesn’t come as expected. The problem is that while you are always doing the ‘right thing,’ if your heart really isn’t in it, you are physically and emotionally depleting yourself.

I never thought, in all this, that I would come to love knowledge for its own sake. I have used it to lift myself out of poverty and humiliation and will use it to lift my community out of the same. It was never anything more than a weapon in war; I was a soldier, determined, complete. Never did I think that it would affect me the way it has, lift me to dignity as it has, open so many doors in my mind, give me eyes to see the world with. I have truly fallen in love with it. It has uplifted me so much.

barwaaqo:

i read so much theory that sometimes i begin to think about the world in a very disconnected esoteric way. it is very disconcerting, this disenfranchisement that sometimes sets in between my lived experiences and my politics. i forget myself, i lose myself… but sometimes i find myself in a hot room where a woman named mariam puts henna on our arms, there are so many of us women in this room, we are sweating and talking loudly and reveling in each others company. we drink tea together, talk about the men in our lives, we grow frank and honest. we talk about the war, its new facade, the condition of our hearts. we speak in the language of our grandmothers, we speak in this new english language we’ve all learned. we talk about our children, the ones we’ve carried, the ones our wombs have yet to bear. i reconnect, i remember the roots of my politics in the company of women who share my skin. we hold hands, kiss each other on the cheek, on the mouth, when we gather like this we sow the seeds of our liberation. to my sisters, to those of us who know what it means to walk the world as a woman.. may we never lose sight of our histories and selves in classrooms or in books.. may we never forgot the roots of our politics, the stories of our mothers, told and untold.