“what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is a bizarre message

and all the tumblr posts I’ve ever seen satirically riffing on it (“what doesn’t kill you makes you paranoid/suicidal/more likely to burn down a walmart” etc) are equally bizarre

like.

a few things that have not killed me have made me stronger. (exercise. food. oxygen. college. economic privilege. sertraline. public transit.)

a few things that have not killed me have made me weaker. (executive dysfunction. patriarchy. neuropathy. the fact i don’t have teleportation superpowers. smog.)

but most things that don’t kill me have very little detectable effect on me at all. (kangaroos. dwarf planets. the city of Boise Idaho. kite-flying contests. Georges Pierre Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. the dog that played Wishbone. all the atoms in the Andromeda galaxy. all the digits of pi. slime molds on a rock in Bratislava. books that have never been written. the word for “snail” in Italian. parallel universes.)

and nothing has ever actually killed me. yet.

idk. maybe i’m just infinitely strong.

from the infinite number of things that haven’t killed me.