[ID: I’m told I am a visual learner in school. / Which means: I know only by sight. / Which means: when I ask you if you know me, what I want you to say is: / I have seen you and I have loved you regardless. / I have watched you and I have held on to your shaking hands and I have wiped tears from your cheek and here I am, / in spite in spite in spite. / You do not need to be good to be loved. You need only be. /end of ID]
“It occurs to me as I fight so hard with myself that these cruel and persistent voices are the echoes of trauma from the times when people treated me like I am now treating myself.”
— Jenny Slate, Little Weirds
Yes, there is a place / where someone loves you both before / and after they learn what you are.
Neil Hilborn, "Lake", The Future
“So what can we really do for each other except—just love each other and be each other’s witness? And haven’t we got the right to hope—for more? So that we can really stretch into whoever we really are? Don’t you think so?”
—
James Baldwin, from Another Country (Dial Press, 1962)
on purpose. I love you on purpose.
the seven husbands of evelyn hugo / the swan no. 3 / euripides (trans. anne carson) / reassurance
…oh, I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I’d get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don’t want it any more, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can turn to, regardless of what I do, regardless of who I become. Something that will just be there, always, like tomorrow’s sky.
– Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans
banish the idea that platonic love is a lesser form of love
if you go through life not investing in your friendships the same way you invest in romantic relationships, you will always be looking for love, feeling lonely, completely blind to the love all around you
friendship is not a lower level relationship. it is not a lesser form of love.
“Are women labeled / crazy when you feel / like their rage / outweighs the evidence / of their pain?”
— — Jasmine Mans, “Crazy,” Black Girl, Call Home
It is simple, sometimes. The sun is warming up my heart. We say - "you know what? I'll go with you". This is such a simple, small desire we carry in our bodies in tiny patchwork art: just come with me. I have a whole world to see, but it is better to see it with somebody.
I think part of the issue is people assuming that everyone MUST want to move upwards. Like… it’s the next logical step for a person to want to move up the chain: from worker to manager, to district manager, eventually owner.
But I always think of growth like plants.
Aspens grow tall to reach the sun, for sure. But dandelions grow deep, understanding themselves fully so that if some misguided fool tries to uproot them they’d have to try damn hard. And then there’s thyme and other creeping plants, which spread themselves out so much that if you chop a part of it off it roots wherever it can find dirt to root in.
It’s okay not to have lofty dreams. You know what kind of plant you are better than anyone else.