@myblueberrynightsblog

I lost my best friend 3 years ago- not lost as in dead but lost as in we only text each other on our birthdays now. Movies and books don't tell you that a friendship dying is like the sinking of a ship, you try to get higher and higher and hold onto the rails and unanswered texts, the captain tries to steer it to safety and salvage pieces of two broken hearts until you're left with memories of what once was. We were friends for a decade and knew each other's diaries by heart, I still remember her phone number and the way she took her coffee. Seeing her in streets is like breathing in a scent you forgot you knew but it immediately takes you back to a summer in '07.

Movies and books also don't tell you that friendships don't just end after one fight or incident, it's like the rusting of a bridge, the slow decay of flesh and bones and secrets. It took weeks, months- until one day I woke up and I realized I hadn't thought of her in a while. And I wrote a poem that day and I titled it 'The dying of a best friend' and I put all my love for her in a tiny box with my half of the matching pendant of a dolphin we had and stored them in a corner of my heart under the heading Grief. Where else can one hide unspent love?

It's been 3 years since I lost my best friend, lost as in I still carry our secrets in a tiny box but we only text each other on our birthdays.

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire

Being "clever" is hardly the most important part of writing. You can do totally obvious things and write about idiotic characters and your writing can still be amazing.

Using big words is hardly a hallmark of great writing. There are people that write with big words that just sound like they're trying too hard. There are people that use small words that write amazingly well. Don't put yourself down because your writing is simple! Simple writing can be beautiful.

Being "poetic" is not the most special writing ever. There is some writing that is very to the point and blunt that is still incredible.

You don't have to fit under a specific writing style for your writing to matter or be amazing. Your writing is amazing because you made it, not because it's poetic or uses big words.

Give yourself more credit - you're doing amazing things!

A lot of people on my 'silly victorians lit their homes with undetectable gas' post have been wondering what wild and wacky things we use today without realising it and people a century from now will mock us for relentlessly.

Its the plastics. Just completely absurd quantities of plastics. Particles in every part of our bodies and environment. Plastics being marketed as environmentally friendly. Breaking down every time we wear or wash our clothes or walk in our shoes or drive our cars and if our belongings catch fire in our desperate efforts to save the others, the fumes from our furnishings and carpets and clothes give us every type of cancer at once.

ig: jonmichaelfrank

Just spent over an hour on the phone with a nearly incoherent drunk teenager who moved halfway across the US to follow her boyfriend to college only to find out that he's been cheating on her since the first week of the semester. She found out because he broke up with her so he could be with the other girl. She thought they were going to get married and live happily ever after and now her whole world (justifiably) feels like it's ending. This is a friendly reminder to think long and hard about following a significant other to college if you don't actually want to attend that college yourself. I've seen this happen way too many times and everyone thinks that their sacrifice will be worth it long term and that they're going to beat the odds and I literally do not know a single person who that's actually worked out for. The only high school sweethearts I know who are still together are my parents (they got married at 18. My dad didn't go to college, but supported my mom through engineering school while pursuing his own career) and a couple who went to different colleges in different states and maintained a long-distance relationship for 3 years before moving to the same city and getting married a year later.

For my teenage followers: Please be selfish with your college choice (and maybe think long and hard about whether you even need to go to college, but that's a different soapbox). It's ok to put yourself first, here. Love does not require martyrdom. Someone who truly loves you and wants the best for you is not going to demand that you put aside your plans/dreams so you'll be easily accessible to them.

I wish donation posts where just things like “i’m struggling and I have no house or meanings to buy food at the moment/ I or a family member need treatment I hate to ask can someone please help me out” instead of a long ass list of how many minority points you have in order to deserve compassion … “Me and my family are going hungry” “I can’t pay my medical bills” should be enough of a reason imo to feel compassion for that person but anyways.

im glad tumblr doesn’t have a verified feature because it means whenever a comany wants their own url they have to snipe somebody elses blog to get it and it always creates such a huge backlash on here that whatever the brand was hoping to accomplish on tumblr becomes impossible due to the unfiltered hostility emanating from the userbase

He can say everything just with the expression of his eyes: German actor Sylvester Groth (Goebbels in Inglorious Basterds). "I think I was born for silent movies. For an actor it´s fantastic to play only with the expression of the eyes, so that everybody can see what´s going on in the mind" (Berliner Zeitung)

Apple factory in Fremont, CA in the 80′s

My dad wasn’t a perfect parent but he did raise me with the attitude of “If you’re gonna make a decision about your body I’ll bring up anything I might be concerned about, but at the end of the day I’ll support what you do.”

So when the time came for makeup and shaving legs and eyebrow threading he asked me once if I thought I might wanna do all that to seem more professional. I said “Nope.” and then he said “Alright.” and we never spoke of it again. Just like that.

And when I decided to go on testosterone he said “This is what you want? You’ve thought it through?” and I said “Absolutely.” and that was the last conversation about that.

It’s kind of amazing what having that kind of home environment does. If I ever brought up what people at school were trying to pressure me into doing he’d joke and say “Oh, they were messing with you? Did you punch them?” and when I responded with the appropriate amount of fake horror he’d laugh and remind me to know when to say “Screw ‘em!” and walk away.

And my brother was raised the same way. So when I wanted to cut my hair or he wanted to grow his out or when I didn’t want to shave my legs or my brother did want to shave his, we just did what we wanted and we continue to do what we want. And the world still got in. Sometimes I still feel pressure from society. But I honestly don’t think it’s nearly as bad as it could have been. I’ve seen what happens to people whose parents added to the pressure. A lot of them feel guilty for just doing even the simplest things.

Let your kids pick out their own clothes. Let them do what they want with their hair. Teach them to think over decisions before they make them. Which ones will be permanent, and which ones will grow back. Which ones they can take off whenever they want, and which ones will take time to reverse. Teach them how to say “nah I don’t feel like it” And then when they’re old enough let them just go for it. You’ll have a much happier kid then if you’d tried to control everything about how they look.