reblog if ur old enough to remember those fucking edits of all ur favorite characters styled like the old ipod ads as silhouettes with headphones
these. by the thousands.
not to be emotional on main but fanfiction is a gift and it’s so fundamentally human to tell each other stories and i am deeply grateful to have that in my life. thank you all for adding so much emotion and meaning to the world with your words
one of the things about having an unstable parent is that it can so easily ruin your future. you want to get out, but getting out takes having agency. it takes the resume and the grades and the stellar community service history.
but you have to choose your battles. you know if you sign up for an after-school activity, it'll be okay for a while, so long as the activity is parent-approved and god-fearing. over time, like all things, it will become an argument (i can't keep carting your ass to these things) or a weapon (talk to me like that again, see if you get to go to practice). sometimes, if you love the thing, it's worth it. but you also know better than to love something: that's how they get you. if you ever actually want something, it will always be the center of their attention. they will never stop threatening you with it. telling you of course i'm a good parent, i came to all of those stupid events.
you learn to balance yourself perfectly. you can either have a social life or you can have hobbies. both of these things will be under constant scrutiny. you spend too much time with her, you should be at home with family is equally paired with you're acting like this because you're addicted to what's on that goddamn screen. you cannot ever actually win, so everything falls within a barter system that you calculate before entering: do you want to learn how to drive? if so, you'll need to give up asking for a new laptop, even though yours died. maybe you can work on a computer at the library. of course, that would mean you'd be allowed to go to the library, which would mean something else has to bleed. nothing ever actually comes free.
and that bitter, horrible irony: you could be literally following their orders and it still isn't pretty. they tell you to get a job; they hate that your job keeps you late and gives you access to actual money. they tell you to do better in school; they say no child of mine needs a tutor. they want you to stop being so morose, don't you know there are people who are really suffering - but they revile the idea you might actually need therapy.
you didn't survive that fall the way other people would. you've seen other people scramble and get their way out, however they could. maybe you were made too-soft: the answer didn't come to you easily. it wasn't quick. it was brutal and nasty. some people even asked you why didn't you just work hard and escape during school? and you felt your head spinning. why didn't you? (they control your financial aid. they control your loan status. they love having that kind of thing). maybe in another life you got diagnosed sooner and got the meds you needed to actually focus and got attention from the right teachers who helped you clear hurdles to get up out of here - but for now? here?
the effort of trying. the effort of not-dying. that kind of effort was absolutely agonizing.
oh no, universe, please. don't let me want things again, i can't withstand it. something in me is undulating, restless. i have so many beautiful things and beautiful friends and all my needs are met. and still, this ache - when i get back and go to bed, she stirs in me again. not quite, she says, keep looking. you're not home yet.
your phone is still saved in my car's bluetooth memory and my phone still has nick's speakers system saved and every time i switch my pillowcases i do it the way regina taught dominic who taught me how to do it too.
i still flinch because of how [ ] hurt me yeah but a few weeks ago alex and i sat on their floor and talked about how i am able to touch the people i love now, when four years ago i couldn't stand any human contact at all, horrified by the way it made my skin crawl
i didn't remember about the trip we took once up into the rivers and mountains, how you'd been there too, wading deep in the water, how i gave you a rock after. i was scrolling in my instagram history trying to find something else completely and then all the sun of the day came back, how you and me and crisco and maddie all howled songs in the car the whole ride home, my foot to the floorboards, absolutely speeding. i take a lot of pictures because my brain barely holds my own name (it's like the scene in spongebob all the time up there, i tell ziara, because i talk on the phone now, a lot, the way you taught me to enjoy) and the pictures are really good because they're filled with my friends and my activities and the light in my life and the pictures are also really bad because sometimes i am reminded that i used to be horribly in love with you, the kind of love that blots out the sun and moon, no matter how many times other people said she's not good for you
so i go through my memories carefully like stepping through a blackberry bush because i don't know if im embarrassed or hurt but it doesn't feel good and my spotify still has the playlist saved from your birthday party like four years ago and google maps still remembers alison's old address on melrose street even though she moved like forever ago and in my notes app i have like 106 non sequiturs i can no longer parse but they must have been important enough to write down so i don't delete them just-in-case their meanings reveal themselves like fog parting over the bluegreen hills
the birds are singing and i know how to identify a robin because of edie and i know how to make a souffle set properly because molly showed me, her hair untangling from her high bun, gentle and pretty; and i know how to bake because my mama taught me and i had forgotten i wrote you a love poem but then onedrive says today in your memories
I can’t stop thinking about the depth and the weight of loss in Through Me. How it builds and builds. How the first part is about losing yourself, to new worlds, to forces larger than you, the enormity of it all. How you resist and resist it only to find out that you’re running yourself ragged, trying and trying to run against the tide until you understand that you have to let go and let the loss happen. I’m thinking about the second part, about losing people, losing loved ones. Trying to understand the loss by abstracting it. It’s a grave. It’s silence. It’s unheard footsteps at the door. About graves and graves and graves. And still you don’t understand it. And still you don’t comprehend it. Until you think of one person, who becomes loss embodied. And still, you cannot measure it
KE HUY QUAN wins Best Supporting Actor for WAYMOND WANG in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE | 2023 Oscars
this is so fucking funny
imagine getting banished from your homeland for running a con and when you go to get a prophecy about what to do next the priestess is like
There is a jarring, clear sharpness to the way loss is described in Through Me (the flood) that has me keening in grief and pain
But try measure loss Measure the silence of a house The unheard footsteps at the doorway The unemployment of the mouth The waking up, having forgotten And remembering again the full extent Of what forever is
as someone who just lost her dad almost a year and a half ago now, this particular verse hit hard. i don’t think anything really prepares you for what it’s actually like to wake up and remember that not only are they gone... they’re gone forever. it’s this weird liminal space of grief that i was never ready for and that i still deal with on some days.
it’s that feeling of having an awful day and the knee-jerk reaction to call dad, just like you always do. because he always knows the right things to say, or when you just want someone to listen. until you remember.
or when something exciting has just happened- some kind of great news that you want to share. i should tell dad! you pick up your phone and then you remember.
this is why i love hozier and his music. he captures feelings and emotions and puts them into words in ways that i would never think to, but manages to define them perfectly.
hey. don’t cry. crush four cloves of garlic into a pot with a dollop of olive oil and stir until golden then add one can of crushed tomatoes a bit of balsamic vinegar half a tablespoon of brown sugar half a cup of grated parmesan cheese and stir for a few minutes adding a handful of fresh spinach until wilted and mix in pasta of your choice ok?
I must run away, I must escape this very day or I shall go out of my mind.
Anton Chekhov
Have you ever had that feeling - that you’d like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self?





