i’m just gonna leave this here as a reminder that “hitting bottom” doesn’t mean “staying on bottom for the rest of your life and dying as a piece of crap”
I will never, ever, not reblog this.
*huggles RDJ* Anyone on here who loves him, someone posted an amazing story about him when he was younger. I wish knew where the link was so I could share it. Instead, it’s just cut and pasted below. If I find the link, I’ll replace it with that.
I will also say that I have read this several times now and it still makes me cry.
“True story: His Name is Robert Downey Jr.” by Dana Reinhardt
I’m willing to go out on a limb here and guess that most stories of kindness do not begin with drug addicted celebrity bad boys.
Mine does.
His name is Robert Downey Jr.
You’ve probably heard of him. You may or may not be a fan, but I am, and I was in the early 90’s when this story takes place.
It was at a garden party for the ACLU of Southern California. My stepmother was the executive director, which is why I was in attendance without having to pay the $150 fee. It’s not that I don’t support the ACLU, it’s that I was barely twenty and had no money to speak of.
I was escorting my grandmother. There isn’t enough room in this essay to explain to you everything she was, I would need volumes, so for the sake of brevity I will tell you that she was beautiful even in her eighties, vain as the day is long, and whip smart, though her particular sort of intelligence did not encompass recognizing young celebrities.
I pointed out Robert Downey Jr. to her when he arrived, in a gorgeous cream-colored linen suit, with Sarah Jessica Parker on his arm. My grandmother shrugged, far more interested in piling her paper plate with various unidentifiable cheeses cut into cubes. He wasn’t Carey Grant or Gregory Peck. What did she care?
The afternoon’s main honoree was Ron Kovic, whose story of his time in the Vietnam War that had left him confined to a wheelchair had recently been immortalized in the Oliver Stone film Born on the Fourth of July.
I mention the wheelchair because it played an unwitting role in what happened next.
We made our way to our folding chairs in the garden with our paper plates and cubed cheeses and we watched my stepmother give one of her eloquent speeches and a plea for donations, and there must have been a few other people who spoke but I can’t remember who, and then Ron Kovic took the podium, and he was mesmerizing, and when it was all over we stood up to leave, and my grandmother tripped.
We’d been sitting in the front row (nepotism has its privileges) and when she tripped she fell smack into the wheelchair ramp that provided Ron Kovic with access to the stage. I didn’t know that wheelchair ramps have sharp edges, but they do, at least this one did, and it sliced her shin right open.
The volume of blood was staggering.
I’d like to be able to tell you that I raced into action; that I quickly took control of the situation, tending to my grandmother and calling for the ambulance that was so obviously needed, but I didn’t. I sat down and put my head between my knees because I thought I was going to faint. Did I mention the blood?
Luckily, somebody did take control of the situation, and that person was Robert Downey Jr.
He ordered someone to call an ambulance. Another to bring a glass of water. Another to fetch a blanket. He took off his gorgeous linen jacket and he rolled up his sleeves and he grabbed hold of my grandmother’s leg, and then he took that jacket that I’d assumed he’d taken off only to it keep out of the way, and he tied it around her wound. I watched the cream colored linen turn scarlet with her blood.
He told her not to worry. He told her it would be alright. He knew, instinctively, how to speak to her, how to distract her, how to play to her vanity. He held onto her calf and he whistled. He told her how stunning her legs were.
She said to him, to my humiliation: “My granddaughter tells me you’re a famous actor but I’ve never heard of you.”
He stayed with her until the ambulance came and then he walked alongside the stretcher holding her hand and telling her she was breaking his heart by leaving the party so early, just as they were getting to know each other. He waved to her as they closed the doors. “Don’t forget to call me, Silvia,” he said. “We’ll do lunch.”
He was a movie star, after all.
Believe it or not, I hurried into the ambulance without saying a word. I was too embarrassed and too shy to thank him.
We all have things we wish we’d said. Moments we’d like to return to and do differently. Rarely do we get that chance to make up for those times that words failed us. But I did. Many years later.
I should mention here that when Robert Downey Jr. was in prison for being a drug addict (which strikes me as absurd and cruel, but that’s the topic for a different essay), I thought of writing to him. Of reminding him of that day when he was humanity personified. When he was the best of what we each can be. When he was the kindest of strangers.
But I didn’t.
Some fifteen years after that garden party, ten years after my grandmother had died and five since he’d been released from prison, I saw him in a restaurant.
I grew up in Los Angeles where celebrity sightings are commonplace and where I was raised to respect people’s privacy and never bother someone while they’re out having a meal, but on this day I decided to abandon the code of the native Angeleno, and my own shyness, and I approached his table.
I said to him, “I don’t have any idea if you remember this…” and I told him the story.
He remembered.
“I just wanted to thank you,” I said. “And I wanted to tell you that it was simply the kindest act I’ve ever witnessed.”
He stood up and he took both of my hands in his and he looked into my eyes and he said, “You have absolutely no idea how much I needed to hear that today.”
I made a series of Calming Bunnies (based off of the Calming Manatee meme) for my friend Gab, who isn’t a huge fan of manatees!
We can always use more bunnies, I think.
omg I love the manatee and now I love the bunny too! :3
How can someone stand behind abortion, when you have a life inside of you that God created for you? How can you say that this life isn’t worth it? If you can’t take care of the baby for whatever circumstances than there is always adoption available to couples who can’t conceive, but still want the joy of being parents. OPEN YOUR EYES! God has bigger plans for us all that we don’t even realize the picture.
Excuse me but it appears your baby is actually upside down
Did you take Sex Ed freshman year because babies come out headfirstHi, OP! As someone who was given up for adoption, allow me to call bullshit on your little post there! You see, when I was adopted, I was a white-skinned, healthy, neurotypical infant, which basically put me at the top of the list, right underneath white-skinned, healthy, neurotypical MALE infants! There’s only one kind of infant people wanted to adopt more than me! I was SOOO lucky! But if you actually bothered to look at the information readily available on the interwebs, you would be aware that the majority of people who are forced to rely on abortion for family planning are poor people and people of color. Of course, those two demographics intersect, thanks to the institutionalized racism of our society! Neat huh?!
Of course, even babies of color are not in high demand with couples looking to adopt. Many who do want to adopt outside their race choose to go outside the country, where laws are less strict and the process is often less expensive. Of course, most of the infants adopted this way are obtained in unscrupulous fashion, but who cares about that when you’re saving a little Korean or African baby from the horrible fate of growing up in Korea or Africa??? And all those children who have birth defects, are born with diseases or disabilities, or have other issues… WELL. Who wants to invest that kind of expense and time? Why would you adopt someone broken, LOLOL?!
Granted, there are some wonderful people who understand the system a little better, and make it a point to try and give POC and disabled children a good home. But they make up a very small fraction of potential adopters! This difference in supply and demand leaves a lot of children stuck in the foster system, where their chances of being adopted diminish with every passing year, and their chances of being physically or sexually abused INCREASE! Isn’t that wonderful?
And of course, we haven’t even talked about the person who is giving birth to the baby! I know you probably think pregnancy is a wonderful, happy time, and for some people it is, but it is also one of the greatest health risks a person can take. I love my son very much, and from the day I found out I was pregnant with him, I wanted him! But I also nearly died giving birth to him. You see, I had pre-eclampsia, the most commonly fatal birth complication in the world. My blood pressure was 180 over 130! At twenty-two years old, I was actually headed for a stroke, hah hah! How funny is that? And all it took was missing a single pre-natal appointment during which my blood pressure rose to dangerous levels and my body tried to kill both me and my son. Those seizures sure were fun, as was the emergency c-section performed without anesthetic! And being chained down while the operation was performed, because I was delirious and wouldn’t stop trying to fight off the doctors, that was a BLAST! It was great for my husband too, since he almost lost his wife and child in just forty-five minutes. You can imagine how thrilled he is at the prospect of me ever getting pregnant again. Babies are certainly cute, but pregnancy can have massive health complications, and I know it’s such a bummer, but they are PERMANENT. :( My abdominal muscles never recovered from being hacked through with a scalpel, and the flood of hormones caused by late pregnancy have changed things from heartburn (never used to have it, now, all the time!) to my emotional reactions (I cry when I see pictures of kittens now. I used to be tough). These are changes I did not ask for, cannot control, and cannot fix! And many people go through worse! I know, right? Unbelievable, but go look up the word ‘episiotomy’ and then look up ‘birth rape’ and I’m afraid you’ll find some stuff that just isn’t very shiny. Plus, the studies actually show that people who carry a baby to term, give birth, then give it up for adoption suffer HIGHER rates of post-pregnancy complications like post-partum depression and post-partum psychosis, general depression, and other mental health issues. Adoption actually isn’t good for the person giving birth at all!
I’m afraid the picture you chose to use there is also pretty disingenuous. I know, I know, it seems like nitpicking. I’m not trying to be mean! :( But that picture shows a fully developed, viable infant, and most abortions are performed when the fetus isn’t even a fetus - it’s a blastocyst. That’s just a clump of cells. Seriously! You can totally find pictures on the interwebs and they’re not even gross, LOLOL! Later-term abortions are usually performed because of health complications, though some of our intrepid state legislators are trying to change all that! They care so much about people who are pregnant, you see, that they want to force them to carry dead or dying fetuses inside them until their body either becomes infected while it rots in their tummies (this is called sepsis, and it makes people very sick, and can even kill them!), or forces it out naturally in a gush of blood and fluids! Isn’t that so caring of them? I’m so glad they’re around to make those decisions for me! And if a pregnant person is not allowed to terminate an unviable fetus, in some states, they have to carry the child to term, give birth to it, and then watch it die in their arms because its lungs weren’t developed, or its brain formed outside its skull, or any of a million possible birth defects that will kill you just as quick as lickity-split! Isn’t that wild?! Of course, these people go through terrible grief, and as I mentioned, some of them may get sick and die from not being able to abort dead or dying fetuses. But I guess that’s just A-okay with you, huh?
Basically, I think before you suggest adoption as a universal alternative, you should actually go do some research on adoption. And before you condemn abortion, you should do some research on abortions - not the stuff your church is giving you, the stuff the real doctors are saying. Go to Planned Parenthood (if they haven’t all been closed down, ROFLMAO!) and request whatever information they have on the process, the statistics of who has abortions and why… and actually, all of that is on the interwebs! Isn’t technology AMAZING?
And in closing, since I’ve been asked this question many times and I know it’s coming? Yes, I realize I am here talking to you because I was not aborted. But the thing is, if my mother had chosen abortion, I wouldn’t know the difference, so it wouldn’t matter to me. And if she decided that choice was best for her, then that choice would have been best for her, and I would never want to take that choice away from her. As it is, since I was given up for adoption, and since I have seen the statistics on how badly people who give their children up for adoption suffer, I have spent much of my adult life worrying about her, whether she’s healthy, whether she’s okay, and feeling that if she did suffer from any of the common post-birth symptoms, it is at least partially my fault, even though she made that decision on her own. Which is silly, I know, but at some point, all children have to stare down the consequences of their parents’ having them. For some, that’s poverty. For others, a life-time of their parents struggling to treat and care for a severe illness or disability. For others, it’s wondering if their mother ever got over giving them away, and wishing you could reach out and assure her that it’s okay, she doesn’t have to be haunted.
May your birth control never fail!
Pro.
Sonneillonv deserves a mother fucking standing ovation here.
Slow clap.
this is my favorite post because i think it’s the strongest argument for how abortion isn’t wrong and adoption is not always a solution so people should start researching and not just believing what ever is being shoved down their throats at church. This is not a slow clap this is thunderous boom of people all over the world saying thank you
I clicked on erinsmomma out of curiosity and “Person abandoned their tumblr after losing an argument for abortion. This is now an abortion resource tumblr.”
oh holy molies that last bit right above this
“Person abandoned their tumblr after losing an argument for abortion. This is now an abortion resource tumblr.”
Score one for the good guys!
you ever thought that maybe the reason girls say they’re fine when they’re not, or they’re not mad when they are, is because the second they show any semblance of emotion they’re written off as hysterical bitches that are probably on their period?
THE FUCKING DA VINCI CODE HAS BEEN CRACKED
FUCKING THANK YOU.
there was this one guy that kept asking me out.
every time I would politely decline.
He then kept complaining about how I led him on and put him in the “friendzone”
He got his friends to try to bully me into dating him
The next time I saw that guy, I told him “congratulations! you’ve left the friendzone!”
he looked really happy.
I then told him: “You’ve now entered the enemy zone! don’t ever talk to me again.” (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧
Rhode Island becomes 10th state to legalize gay marriage
(Photo: Charles Krupa / AP)
Rhode Island became the final state in New England and the 10th in the country to legalize gay marriage after independent Gov. Lincoln Chafee on Thursday signed a bill that will allow same-sex marriage.
