this is going to sound really fucked up but i just need to say it i think.

I never realized that people could actually care. I always thought that the depictions of friendship in movies and TV shows were over-the-top portrayals, and weren't things that actually happened. This was then exacerbated by the fact that my entire life I always wanted people to just Know How I Was Feeling like they do on TV and I found out that that's Not How It Works. I always thought I was naive for caring so much about my friends and for doing nice things for them out of the blue, and I always resented myself for resenting my parents for not doing more for me as a child.

So when I got to uni, and my friends started caring about me and asking if I was ok when I looked sad and doing nice things for me, I didn't know what to do with myself. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me in a long time. When I was staying with a friend, and she said that she left the window open in the room I was going to be staying in because I liked it to be cold when i sleep, I bluescreened. I didn't know how to respond. It is quite literally one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for me. No one had ever paid that much attention to the things I liked. Every year on my birthday it was either a gamble if I would get something I actually wanted from my parents (spoiler alert: I was often disappointed) or I would just have to straight up tell them what I wanted. I got accustomed to the latter, and now I don't mind, but receiving two gifts from friends about languages this year made me realize that I could have it so much better.

And don't even get me started on online friends. I sort of thought that everyone was lying about them? Or that it was something unattainable, and reserved only for God's Chosen Favorites or something. But no, there are little people in my phone who care about me. They legitimately care about me as much as I care about them. I've been nervous to ask them about their well-being because I'm still nervous about being naive and getting a wake-up call that no one cares again, but after being told that they were worried about me when I overslept, I think i should know that I'm in the clear. And that's not even including all the times they tell me to go to bed when it's late, and when they ping me about things I may enjoy or things I was involved in.

All this is to say I guess that I'm touched that people remember my existence. It makes me feel good to be wanted. I will be eternally grateful to both my irl and online friends who made me realize that just because my parents or my friends from home didn't care enough to remember what I like or to go out of their way to do nice things for me, it doesn't mean that no one will. I need to step up and do more for you guys. I trained myself to push down my desire to help and check in with people because I thought I was betting on something that I'd never get in return, but now I know I can.

Thank you all, and I love you 💚

i do unironically think the best artists of our generation are posting to get 20 notes and 3 reblogs btw. that fanfic with like 45 kudos is some of the best stuff ever written. those OCs you carry around have some of the richest backstories and worldbuilding someone has ever seen. please do not think that reaching only a few people when you post means your art isn't worth celebrating.

i think we should remind musicians they can absolutely make up little stories for their songs btw. it doesn’t have to be about them at all. you can invent a guy and put him in situations to music. time honoured tradition in fact.

hate when you find a character whose so infuriatingly Your Type that its embarrassing like yeahg no one is gonna be surprised when i announce this is my new Guy Of The Month

after patrolling, unwinding in a diner somewhere ...

throw the man a bone batman geez

[on the verge of having a complete breakdown] i need to make some kind of list or perhaps sort things into categories

I could get over anything as long as I have something new to be obsessed with

i love how hyenas still have the winter coat gene

EVERY SINGLE DAY there are MILLIONS of characters in their late 20s who get falsely accused of being father figures to teenagers when in reality the description of "weird older cousin" or "step-sibling that moved out before you were born" is 1000000x more apt

6’2 and standing at the front of the crowd is crazy. you already have an advantage just by being alive brother. blocking out all the sunlight. life on the forest floor, withering away

look me in the eye and tell me Charlie wouldn't do this

"Stop being funnier than me on my own post" is one of my favorite healthy tumblrisms, along with things like "hang on lemme look that up...yeah this is funny" and explicit tone indicators (positive). Like yeah let's build a world where we playfully format healthy interactions. You made a post and you wanted to be the star but damn, you've really gotta hand it to this other person for their really funny addition, so here's the internet equivalent of giving someone a friendly punch on the shoulder while making sure they know they got a good grade in social interaction

clair de lune will always go down smooth, claude really did put his whole debussy into this one

its baffling seeing people on here being all shocked about how other ppl didnt have sex or do drugs or drink or go to parties etc etc in high schools like. sorry i was too busy getting bullied to do all of that stuff i guess. why are you surprised that there’s losers on the cringe loser website

I saw a tiktok talking about the massive shortage of feminine hygiene products in Gaza.

The only charity right now that seems to be helping with this shortage is called Motherbeing

Motherbeing is an organization based on education and providing assistance in healthcare for Arab women.

They recently donated 200,000 sanitary pads as women have been taking dangerous measures to delay their periods out of fear of toxic shock syndrome.

In case you are unaware, toxic shock syndrome is a possibly life threatening infection that develops from wearing a feminine hygiene product, usually tampons or cups, for too long.

They currently don’t have donations open, but people are trying to get them to. There’s products you can buy from their website, however.

This will get like three notes, but I just came across it and I wanted to post something. When something as serious as genocide happens, people forget little things like pads and tampons, which actually can be life threatening.

If you want to donate to charities similar to this one, here’s a few I found:

-Helping Women Period: provides pads and tampons to women (and people with uteruses) who are low income or homeless.

-The Pad Project: supplies low income women with pads all over the world.

-She Supply: provides pads and tampons for homeless women in Texas

-Free the Tampon: organization working towards making sanitary products free

-The Period Panty Project: takes physical donations of sanitary products as well as just donations for women in Ohio.

-Days for Girls: donated reusable pads to women all over the world.

There’s a lot more. Feel free to research

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?