This is for the people who didn’t party in their teens and twenties. For the people who didn’t have that “coming of age” movie experience with shenanigans and revelations. This is for the people who mostly keep to themselves. Who maybe prefer things to be quieter and gentler. This is for the people who don’t feel like they belong in a culture that values loud parties and flashing lights. I see you. And you are valid.

LEO💕

Drawing practice

Most of being in ur early twenties is just like this:

being in your twenties this being in your twenties that--

being in your twenties is getting separated from all your friends as they all choose different life and career paths and all of you being collectively miserable across the world and missing each other and crying every single day

"Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti" painted by Tamara Łempicka, 1929

your early twenties are so fucking relentless.. i know no one has it figured out, and we’re all fucked together but it doesn’t feel like it. 

i remember hearing rudy francisco say “i am trying to convince my shadow i am someone worth following,” and i feel that in my soul. it’s exhausting to cycle through this period, doing your best every single day and still feeling like it’s all wrong?? to look at others and feel embarrassed at yourself for existing incorrectly as if that’s even possible?? are we not exhausted?? i am. i am so tired of being unkind and critical of myself. i give all my “bad traits” a disappointed glare. and all my “good traits” a cringe... i’m studying to be a psychologist and i feel bad for being emotional and soft as if the world isn’t trying to rid us, esp women of colour, of that. there is so much to be cynical about, and i am disgusted at myself for the way my heart sings when a friend checks up on me?? ridiculous. 

i watched s3 ep5 of ted lasso, and ted’s speech made me sob. specifically, “the belief that i matter...regardless of what i do or don’t achieve.” i am a perfectionist and i know it. but nothing embodies radical self-love than such a statement, for me. that speech broke me and healed me at the same time... to receive such grace, kindness and love?? to challenge yourself to offer that grace and love to yourself?? 

the fact that i am a person.. deserving and worthy...with value.. regardless of what i do not accomplish and regardless of what i will accomplish... i know this sounds so fucking basic but i feel like someone has simultaneously cradled me and my inner child. 

the fact that i matter simply because my heart is good, my intentions are pure, and i am alive. i think the greatest thing i will do in this life is challenge myself to offer myself love and grace. and that will be enough. i will be enough. 

being in your early twenties is comprised of debt payments to your student loans and to the people who took care of you two years ago and to your friends who love you now and to the guardians that caught you when you fell and to the elderly neighbour across the street who has always said good morning to you since you were 13 and to the sun for keeping you alive and to the moon for giving you a reason to live

20s

me as a teenager, daydreaming what I'm gonna do in my twenties: have a fiancée, my own flat, get best grades at studies, lots of pets...

me in my twenties now: *ordering chew safe silicone beads for babies to make chewelry with my autistic girlfriend*

this year I turned twenty two

I'm in my twenties don't scold or yell at me "I'll cry"

Recent

My baby's pretty like a car crash

sometimes i sit in my balcony and think about the point of life and human existence and then I eat a mango or hug my mom or go to the beach or watch modern family or sing to my dog or bake cookies with my friends or clean my room or read a Ocean Vuong book or listen to Okinawa by 92914 or take a nap under the sky or watch a Wong Kar-wai film or have the most perfect soul healing meal or fall in love five times a week or feel the breeze through my hair and it all makes sense.