on melancholy hill

repeating this like a mantra 🧘🏾‍♀️

my mom saw this over my shoulder while she was on the phone and pointed at it so excitedly as if to say yes this is core to my life philosophy

a graph based on my observations

I would like to apply a Dolly Parton quote to this most excellent graph.

i would like everyone to know this is the scene where spongebobs burger absolutely kicks king neptunes ass

on knowledge

I cannot be both the JUDGE and the DEFENDANT in my own life it is a conflict of interest and I am committing so many crimes and looking the other way

yes your honor I did remain in bed until 3pm instead of buying groceries like I said I would but could I bribe you with. Four more hours and a pizza delivery? Innocent. Court adjourned

IF THE ROUTINE NO LONGER SERVES, YOU MUST ALTER THE PATTERN, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?? YOUR LIFE STARTS WITH YOU

i honestly don’t know how this happened but somewhere between my childhood and formative years i forgot how to exist like a normal person and started to either overthink everything or make disastrous choices without any proper thinking at all. no middle ground whatsoever

If you have no other option, you will succeed.

"I'll figure it out" is a powerful statement. Yes, you may not know what to do next or where to even begin... but you are ready and willing to do what it takes. You will in fact figure it out.

anne boyer “the harm will come: it never doesn’t” / julia armfield “to watch a horror movie is to know that something bad is going to happen. to have a body is really the same thing” / hilary mantel “we don’t have to invite pain in, it’s waiting for us: sooner rather than later” / marie howe “you know how we’ve been waiting for the big pain to come? I think it’s here. I think this is it. I think it’s been here all along” / gregory orr “I want to go back to the beginning. we all do. I think: hurt won’t be there. but I’m wrong” / toni morrison “the hurt was always there” / torrey peters “pain that had to be endured, withstood, pain that was the same as being alive, and so without end”

#that one line from sharp objects … #do you ever feel like bad things are going to happen and you can’t stop them? you can’t do anything you just have to wait?

#THE lake mungo quote #I feel like something bad is going to happen to me. I feel like something bad has happened. it hasn’t reached me yet but it’s on its way

why is explaining a villains sad backstory always taken as an effort toward excusing their actions. why does the conversation need to involve the question of excusing anything rather than just making their present behavior way more interesting by complicating their feelings or their motivations. why is acknowledging complicated feelings or motivations taken as apologism in and of itself. why is everyone so incredibly boring

ON LOVING SOMEONE WITHOUT SAYING IT

Margaret Atwood / Decision to Leave / Richard Siken / Star Trek, The City on the Edge of Forever (1967) / Hozier, Shrike / Caitlyn Siehl, The Sadness /  Lillian Hellman, from Collected Plays; “Days to Come”

people change you and sometimes that is the worst thing in the entire world because you used to like yourself a little more but now you hate the flinch that lives in your shoulderblades and you overthink every moment and you never set a boundary without feeling internally destroyed and it fucking sucks because they shouldn't get to do that, they already ruined your life the once, it shouldn't echo into the future

but also people change you and sometimes that is the softest morning and the best surprise. realizing that you can divide things into perfect thirds without trying because you were a sibling in a group of 3 and always needed to measure out things. you learned to skip rope and step around cracks from the kid down the street. you love the way your favorite english teacher influenced your writing.

you're old enough these days to know your mother was right and you should take a coat just in case it gets cold but you are still too young to have outrun the thunderstorm of your childhood. you arrange your spoons the way you learned growing up but you've since reorganized the rest of your kitchen to make sense to you and the way that you like working. you fold your clothes actually still based on the marie kondo method (you just like the habit of it) but you allow yourself to just-loosely-chuck-some-of-it-in because really who has the fuckin' time for it.

you still can't be in the room while people look at your art (some kind of weird mix of guilt, shame, and embarrassment) but you picked up certain words and phrases from friends that help you slow down and treat yourself a little bit gentle with it. you always take other people's crafts with a reverence like praying, but you can't help that when you see your own work from a few years ago, you mirror someone else's snort of disdain. you saw other people's bodies and freckles and stretch marks and scars and you realized they are all still fucking beautiful to you, almost obscenely so, because they belong to someone you care for so deeply that it blocks out the sun - but you can't help the little flash of self-judgement whenever you pass a mirror; the voice from too-many years of 90's and 00's skinny-means-you've-won.

and it's kind of funny because you meet someone new and while they're making friends with you, you get to see these little stories playing out of them. you meet your mom and you think oh that's where they get the accent and you meet their college roommate and you think that's the same joke you both make and you meet their friend and you think ah so this is explains the oddly vast knowledge of freshwater lakes

and then one day in the mirror you reach your hand up to push back your hair and you think - oh shit, that was them. or you make a comment and you think ah, stole that from someone else. or you stand in the store and get that random flash of they would totally tell me to buy this. and it is like a little strange river to bind you to them - that over all this time and space, their hands guide your hands and your heart in silence. it is good and it is bad and is so precious and so horrible. it is both proof of love on this earth and it is also the thing that is keeping you hurt.

a little promise that is probably true: somewhere out there, your hands are ever-so-often guiding them too.

something I very much needed to read today

why some good things end:

1. something better is coming

2. not everything is meant to last forever

3. maybe it wasn't as good as u thought it was

In my everything makes me burst into tears era

on shame and yearning (pt.2)

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