"Boycott your abuser friends"

Seen in Paris

I think about this once a day.

—longing for love

what i could never confess without some bravado by emily palermo // nickie zimov // homosexuality by frank o’hara // normal people (2020) // the unabridged journal by sylvia plath // holly warburton

Fortesa Latifi, from The Truth About Grief.

on loneliness, After Cameron Awkward-Rich, Dante Émile

bird watcher

gabi abrão

The Path by Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh

on loving someone who has passed

a self portrait in letters by anne sexton / aubade by louise glück / achilles and patroclus by @maieste / all about love by bell hooks / blue sun by nina mouawad / albert camus correspondance to maria casarès / un homme et une femme by stephan sinding / the gods show up by michael kinnucan / the chronology of water: a memoir by lidia yuknavitch

Here I sit, at 2:36am, on the floor of the home I built with my now ex partner. The makeshift bedroom/lounge room is stacked precariously with all of the little pieces of the last 6 years of my life.

I didn’t plan for this; of course I didn’t. Our tender love shaped my life like the current of coursing river. As quickly as our lives melded together, so too did the disentanglement. The entirety of my adult life, defined so deeply by our intimacy, has dissolved between my fingers. We were the candy floss, and your anger and my mental illness were the water. Neither of us realised just how delicate the relationship was, of course, until it had long since fallen apart.

I can see the next bend in the river of my life, and I know it will be defined by hardship and grief. I welcome it. The self soothing behaviours I have justified for so long have been defining my life, and I exist little outside the four walls of my home.

It reminds me of a recommendation from a therapist when I was much younger; resist against the anxious tendency to make your life smaller. She explained, although it starts with cancelling plans with friends and deciding to do distance education, it can quickly snowball into a life in which one is terrified to leave the perimeter of their home, room, or bed. This proved to be an anxious tendency I have frequented for years. The last few months (dare I say, years) have been suffocated under a haze of weed, sleep and food. I thought I was allowing myself to cope. I now realise by reducing the input into my world, I was taking away my ability to cope.

I’ve shaved my head and I’m moving cities. I’m going back to university and pursuing creative endeavours. I will have little more than clothing, books, records and a yoga mat to my name. I am individual, I am whole, I am healing.