yeah yeah i question the romanticization of every little thing as much as the next cynically-inclined gal but like. there really is beauty everywhere. it is kinda refreshing to let bitches be whimsical. to let yourself be a bitch with a penchant for whimsy. because sometimes the only thing that eases the heaviness put in my stomach by the abject horrors is when my friends come over on tuesdays and i get to make them dinner. when i’m drinking a glass of wine and making pasta and dancing to bluegrass in my kitchen and i hear laughter from the other room. like it really is okay to let the little things warm you.

and i know i have a reputation of goodness and kindness and resilience and whatever so i’m sure you’re thinking “that’s so easy for you to say!” but i had to work for that shit. i had to fight for a sunny disposition.

my dad was never around, always choosing women and booze over me and my brother. i was the weird kid people bullied practically my entire time in school. i’m an addict who was forced kicking and screaming into sobriety. i was assaulted in college and the university didn’t believe me. i’ve got depression and insomnia and severe anxiety and panic disorder. i’ve been on 23 different antidepressants/anxiety meds/mood stabilizers over the past 15 years and none of them have worked and sometimes i’m afraid that i’m meant to be sad forever. sometimes i worry that i’ve never actually been happy. my brother died from suicide on my 25th birthday and there wasn’t even a note. i’m well aware of how awful the world can be. of how terrible shit can get.

and i know it’s not life changing or revolutionary, but damnit, i’m going to get excited when i’m reading a fanfic and the two characters finally kiss. i’m going to laugh when my brother tells me a dumb joke. i’m going to let my heart swell while i’m wearing my flour covered apron, when i’m leaning against the doorway to my dining room, holding my glass of wine curled close to my chest while my friends are eating happily and i’ve finally perfected my gnocchi recipe and all the people i love are happy and safe and full of food i prepared with my own two hands as they sit around my table.

the world has not been kind to me but i’ll be damned if i let it continue to make me hard. i deserve softness. i deserve sweetness. i deserve gentle moments. and if the world won’t give them to me? fine. i’ll make them myself.

so yeah, i often wanna scoff when i see someone stop to smell the roses. but i don’t. because the world is so fucking hard. and i don’t see the point in making it harder on ourselves. it’s so much easier to be numb. to be jaded and bitter. to think of my heart as a wretched organ trapped by a terrible vise of a bone. but then i see sunlight filtering through leaves and it makes me smile and i feel my heart beating and i remember i may be small and i may be fleeting, but i’m alive. and my heart, that wretched organ, beats defiant and persistent in my chest. and the sunlight tells me courage, poor stupid heart of stone, and it makes me brave in a world that makes me ache.

so i will be whimsical and silly and happy despite it all, because if i don’t have that, what the hell do i have?

my life is falling apart time to rewatch fleabag

When Richard siken said “it keeps coming back to that: what do i do with these hands?” and when Mitski said “i don't know what to do without you, i don't know where to put my hands” and when Olivia gatwood said “what am i, if not yours? what do i do with my hands when they are just hands?” and when Sylvia plath said “what did my fingers do before they held him? what did my heart do, with its love?

Maria Anto (1936-2007) — Explosion in a Cathedral  [oil on canvas, 2005]

there is always some fucking laundry and dust and some other shit

Illustration by Leon Carre for “The Terracotta Chariot ’ by Victor Berrucand, 1921

lucille clifton

you guys i. love luke skywalker so much. like he truly is just a little guy. just a teeny tiny little guy.

bi is short for bites you bites you bites you

Vincent Van Gogh (Dutch 1853-90), View of Arles, Flowering Orchards, 1889. Oil on canvas

Reishi farmin’

look how tiny we are, almost invisible, standing on the world's finger. the planet's hair tendrils could woosh us away. yet, here we are. tiny people.

Irish landscapes (by jean marc)

buddie is automatically superior to all other ships because these two shots exist

those greek tragedy fuckers couldn't write this shit

Augustus Leopold Egg (British, 1816-1863)

The Travelling Companions, 1862