Have you noticed all the lingerie lately? Well, it’s totally Gogo’s fault. I don’t know how many times I will trot out the tatas but, I thought the design and colors in this little number from Miao were too good to pass up. Besides, it’s in the Love Gacha which is sort of like playing slots, but with guaranteed prizes. It comes in five different colors. At 30L a try, you can’t go wrong gambling on this one. Besides, if you get duplicate colors, you just have some Valentine’s Gifts to give your friends. You don’t have to say you were trying to get the teal one and got 10 pinks first (not that this happened to me).

I picked up these gorgeous boots from Lassitude and Ennui from another event that is coming up on Feb 11th, the Back to Black event. What is so striking about this event is that items contain notecards with personal history and information about mental health concerns to promote awareness\. Mental illness can be even more devastating than more easily understood physical illnesses in large part because people don’t understand it. This is an event to increase awareness of mental health issues which can promote empathy and compassion. I think compassion is needed more than anything.

When I was a child, I often visited my married brothers and sisters on weekends. I had a favorite sister (she still is) and her husband was one of my favorite people in the world. She was the the next-to-youngest of my siblings and didn’t get married until I was 3, so I was a a few years older than their kids. I think I was their practice kid. My brother-in-law loved me and would take me with him scavenging at the dump (You can’t imagine how much fun that is until you try it.) and taught me to drive by letting me sit on his lap and steer while he operated the peddles. He would take me to the drive-in for sloppy joes which was an incredible treat. He taught me how to climb trees, how to draw and how to whittle. I loved him a lot.

When I was in my teens he developed depression, an all-encompassing depression that kept him from sleeping, that changed his personality and wrought pain and anger throughout his family and his life. The doctors explained that some form of communication between the left and right sides of his hypothalamus was not working. It was an illness with a physical cause that manifested in mood and behavior changes. He spent months in one study or another at the Mayo Clinic. He had electroconvulsive therapy. He took prescriptions. He went on a lecithin diet. He went to Canada and got prescriptions not approved in the US, but nothing worked. He could no longer work and retired on disability. He used up his entire lifetime maximum heath benefit and his insurance would no longer even cover a cold.

Two years after I graduated from college, he went to the city park and struck up a game of frisbee with some strangers. He had never played frisbee in his life, but experience wasn’t really necessary. Maneuvering close to the river bank, he managed to jump after a frisbee, miss and fall into the river – the river that has drowned everyone who has ever fallen in. It’s a lovely fiction he created to protect his children, but those of us who knew and loved him know that it was suicide. He had often said that the only way he could live with the crushing despair was that slim hope that there was an answer, but that if he ever thought there was no hope, he would rather die. And so he did.

But you see, even that is not the end of the devastation of his illness. I realized how terrible it was a few years ago when talking to my nephew. I mentioned how much I had loved his dad and he said, “My dad, my dad was a shit.” He then went on to describe a total stranger – a moody, angry man who didn’t teach his kids to draw or whittle, who didn’t let them steer his car or take them to the drive-in or fishing or climbing trees. But, you know what. He did do all those things and my nephew has forgotten. Those memories have been supplanted by memories of a sullen, angry man who sat on the living room couch and yelled at anyone who talked too loud. I tried to remind him of times I went with him and his dad, tromping through the woods, hunting grouse and throwing cow pies, but he would have none of it, insisting that it never happened. That was when I realized that the damage went so much deeper than I had ever thought. Depression didn’t just kill my brother-in-law, it killed his legacy and his children’s memories of him.

Illness is never an individual affliction. Loved ones are all affected when someone they love is ill. With conventional physical illness, however, the community draws close with compassion and understanding. With mental illness, however, the community often draws back in fear and confusion, isolating the family and increasing the pain, suffering and alienation. Awareness campaigns such as Back to Black give people the opportunity to change that and to find a way to bring people who suffer from mental illness into the Beloved Community.

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****SHOPPING LIST******

• Poses: Reel Expressions Cabaret Chair 1 & 2
• Skin: Belleza Chloe Pale 30
• Eyes: Poetic Colors
• Lashes: Lelutka
• Hair: Shag Your Wish (Project Themeory)
• Lingerie: =^^= MIAO Dulce Lingerie Teal Corset (Love Gacha)
• Boots: Lassitude & Ennui (Back to Black)
• Jewelry: *P* Phoebe Piercings & More Monica Earrings (Back to Black)

Tagged: Back to Black, Belleza, Chic Management, lassitude & ennui, miao, Phoebe Piercings, Poetic Colors, Project Themeory, Reel Expressions, THE LOVE GACHA