“

Slavery was once a right. Now-outdated notions of privacy and property allowed marital rape as a right. But the costs of those rights were the violation of others rights, and we reached a point as a society (through much debate, struggle, blood, sweat, tears, and more) where we decided that protecting rights like slavery and marital rape was no longer worth the damage they inflicted. Alcohol was a right, then it wasn’t, and then it was again because prohibiting drinking caused more trouble than we were able to tolerate. However, when the right returned it did not go unchecked. This is how we negotiate rights in a democracy.

Guns Are a Right, Yes—But Do They Have To Be? (via smdxn)

(via egadsy)

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I will not forget you, though. I don’t think that you particularly deserve my memory, nor do I flatter myself into believing that you return my sense of vague wistfulness. There is no part of me that wants to return to the limbo I existed in for so long, or even the often-imagined parallel universe in which you reciprocated my feelings to the letter. I do, however, want to remember what it feels like to be hurt, to want, to need something so desperately only to find out that your life is perfectly fine without it. As much as the little scar on my knee will always remind me to watch out when I am running, yours on my heart will teach me to be kind. Because I know what it feels like to be cast aside with indifference, and I know that it’s a pain from which the body itself takes a long time to recover. You will live in my mind as a cautionary tale, a fable of how much damage words can do — especially when they are insincere. And though I am not nostalgic for what we did have, I am hopeful about life being filled with everything we didn’t.

Chelsea Fagan, I Will Not Forget You (via 5ft1)

(via ninarofl)