🎀my secret world🎀

— Ernest Hemingway

this year:

okay, but, like, I feel like we need to emphasize more on how important it is to have a partner you can just talk to. I was telling this to someone the other day, but Hollywood and media focuses so much on sexual tension and explosive passion in a relationship, and while those are completely valid and understandable things for certain, not all, people to desire (even I myself do), I feel like there’s barely enough light casted onto the value of being able to converse with your partner and relish in their company even in the most neutral discussion. I can barely count how many films, particularly romance ones, have emphasized on the importance and value of being able to speak to a partner like they are your close friend, and being able to absolutely adore their company, and engage in conversation with them about anything and everything, even if it isn’t romantic. Lexi and Fez, Aristotle and Dante, Marianne and Heloise, Jesse and Celine, Connell and Marianne. so many people adore these couples because they showcase such a human, genuine connection through conversation. Lexi and Fez discussing God and the backlash of social media. Aristotle and Dante’s talks on finding identity and how life feels better when the shoes are kicked off. Marianne and Heloise debating over what it meant when Orpheus turned around, and the release found within music. Celine speaking to Jesse about how the media is controlling our minds and how she thinks she really loves someone when she can detect every detail of them, Jesse speaking to Celine about when he saw his deceased grandmother in the sprinkle of a hose and the things he remembers his parents having said to him. Connell and Marianne sitting under the summer sun, eating ice cream, discussing the differences in their class and how money can be simultaneously corrupt and indescribably appealing. all of these couples have made me realize how while passionate kisses under the rain and loud proclamations of your love for someone are valuable for certain people, it is also inexpressibly important to find someone who you can linger in the passenger seat for just to hear what they thought about the movie you watched last night. someone who you take your time putting your shoes on for just to hear about the physical sensation they got when the second last line of your favourite song reverberated through their headphones.

One thing people need to understand about extremely kind, nice and loving people, is that their other side is just as extreme. It’s the hell they survive that makes them gentle. Don’t mistake their self-control for weakness. The beast in them is sleeping, not dead.

I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.

Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.

The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.

I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.

— Unknown

“Nothing that happens is ever forgotten, even if you can’t remember it.”

- Spirited Away (2001)

Keep reading

— Emma Goldman, “Minorities Versus Majorities”, Anarchism and Other Essays

It’s a fact of life.

— Alice Hoffman (via quotemadness)

this year:

I was dying to hear someone say that I was enough and it was ok