07 April 2014

Semicolon tattoos explained


From The Semicolon Movement:
"The semicolon is used when a sentence could have ended, but didn't"
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The Semicolon Movement
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The movement is for anyone who has ever self-harmed, has a personality disorder, or has tried to commit suicide. The semicolon is a sign of hope. Your sentence is not over yet, remember that.
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How it Works
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If you have ever harmed yourself, attempted suicide, or just want to support the cause, put a semicolon on your wrist or wherever you feel would mean the most. Every time you see it think of something that makes life worth living. 
Share your stories and photos at the link.

5 comments:

  1. As with many such things, I will be supportive and approving of any person I encounter with the semicolon. As a tattooed person who works with youth with serious emotional disturbances however, I respectfully offer a word of caution: Self harm is nearly always a very different action than suicide. In situations where they go hand in hand, typically someone has not noticed a young person's efforts to either reach out for help, or to regulate his or her own stressors.

    Young people who struggle with depression and anxiety can become socially isolated and turn to the internet for support. Too often, what they find is an echo-chamber that can tell them only what they want to hear or already believe to be true. The semicolon movement strikes me as a potential problem if young people are attracted to it and begin to romanticize it in similar ways to self-harm and suicide. Depression and anxiety can be crippling illnesses, but instead of embracing them as identities, young people should be treated for them (and not necessarily with medication) instead of continuing to wear them as a badge. Mental illness is something that people live with. When it becomes an identity for someone, that person will struggle even harder to overcome the effects.

    That being said, I also believe strongly that it is important to be able to talk about these struggles and not only in hushed voices. Cancer was once a taboo subject as well and we've overcome much of that stigma. Hopefully we can do the same for people with mental health struggles. I may well be wrong - the semicolon may help this process but I suspect it could become a self-inflicted yellow star identifying people who may not be receiving the proper support and care.

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    1. Excellent insight; thank you offering for the comments.

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  2. As someone with severe mental illness, I have to disagree with the well-meaning person up there. You're assuming, as many people outside the problem do, several things.

    1. That 'help' is available for everyone. This is not true. 'Help', especially talk therapy, is only available to those that can pay for it. Not just paying for appointments, but being able to find a doctor who won't mistreat them, or who knows about and has experience with all their illnesses. But mostly? Money. Money money money. Disabled people--and a large portion of the 'invisible disabled' are mentally ill--often can't even afford to eat or pay rent, and it is legal in most places to not hire them or to pay them wages that make them indentured servants (i.e. having a job becomes more of a cost than a profit).

    2. That 'young people' as a group are foolish, unable to make wise judgements, and that 'the internet' is 'an echo chamber'. I hear this argument a lot when people want to dismiss the internet as a platform for self-education, alternative socialising, or--#1 helper to depression!--a way to combat isolation. What is heavily implied is that instead of the internet people should 'be normal' and 'socialise with "real people"'--who have *just as much chance of being bad influences* as the friends on the internet. But the thing about the internet is that it causes people to find others like themselves more quickly, or at all. It helps the socially anxious socialise when 'normally' they wouldn't be able to at all.

    3. That finding other people like you is inherently bad, that a healthy thing to do is... what? Find people who constantly tell you you're wrong, or stupid? You're talking about 'young people who struggle with mental illness' as though they're a different species, as though they're poor lost souls who must be isolated and given treatments to make them 'normal'. As a young people with mental illness, I am deeply offended and angry at your condescend. Who the hell are you to judge whether this semicolon movement is helpful? Like for real dude your privilege is showing with your talk about 'not receiving proper support and care' like it's somehow a frikkin CHOICE for most of us. Maybe if I had money enough to spend on 'proper support and care' I WOULD. But hey, I bet you anything most of the people in the semicolon movement, just like most mentally ill people, CANNOT AFFORD IT.

    So in closing: take your judgemental know-it-all 'I have to rescue the poor crazy people from themselves' BS and eat it. I'm sick of attitudes like yours and I'm sick of people trying to tell mentally ill folks that we're stupid, that we 'shouldn't identify' as our disorder. Do you even understand what 'mental disorder' means? It means it's there for life. It means it IS part of your identity. You CAN'T make it go away. You fight it every day. So screw off with your preaching, you obviously don't know what you're talking about, you're just talking out of your hat, preaching words you heard from some BS helpline that feeds people sugar-coated orders. You don't know what depression is like. You don't know what self harm is like. Even if you have suffered them, you've got some MAJOR internalised ableism going on, and you need to stop spreading it around.

    Mentally Ill people, wear that badge. Wear that reminder. Do what you want to your body. It's YOURS. You modify the hell out of it. And you know what, don't listen to anyone who tells you what to frikkin do with yourself like they know what you're going through. If they knew they wouldn't be giving your orders. Especially if those orders fracture and separate us. We are villified and victimised on the daily, we need to unite and stand together as much as possible. Take up a symbol if that's sth that helps. Be supportive of each other. Don't listen to this clown.

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  3. I have a question, and please no negative comments. I recently lost a close friend who took her own life last week. I plan to get a semi colon tattoo in her honor, as well as to help spread word on the topic of suicide. Because I have never self harmed nor attempted suicide I am afraid that having the tattoo might offend others who have them for different reasons. Would it be offensive for me to get this tattoo to honor my friend?

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    Replies
    1. As somebody who has attempted suicide and plans on getting a Semicolon tattoo I would not be offended. If you're worried about it talk to the people who you are worried about offending and see what they think :)

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