It Does Not Feel Good

I'm swooning over this

𝙢𝙚𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙗𝙚𝙖𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙛𝙪𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨:

1. empty perfume bottles

2. abandoned castles

3. pressed flowers

4. smell of soil after rain, Petrichor

5. old books with dust all over them

6. walking all alone in a museum hall

7. languages that humanity no longer uses

8. stars, the moon, the entire universe and it’s secrets

9. old paintings

10. late night conversations

11. thunderstorms

12. vintage love letters

13. gothic architecture

14. waves hitting the shore at nighttime

15. candles that smell like seasons

16. stained glass windows

17. An empty library

18. writing poetry

19. family heirlooms

20. enjoying peaceful silence

Shoutout to @stardustemotions for making the former half of this thread.

underrated part of petting a cat is when you reach over their head to scratch their back and they bonk their head on ur arm

that’s the stuff………………

I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.

Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.

The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.

I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.

i'd be a dead person without my obsessions

My solitude doesn't depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.

~Friedrich Nietzsche

01.03.22, tuesday

have I once again backed myself into the "u have 4 hours 'till the deadline and u haven't even started" corner? yes. yes I have. Have I lost all drops of motivation and the fucks I give ? also yes.

“If you ever ask me how many times you’ve crossed my mind, I would say once. Because you came, and never left.”

— Ritu Ghatourey

some notes on drawing fat bodies in a stylized or cartoony art style! i tried to explain and illustrate things i keep in mind while drawing :)

undoubtedly the best thing i read all day

My brother cracked my rib one morning and gave me half of his orange in the evening.

I remember being younger and sometimes wishing to be a single child, to have all the attention and gifts and time but when he was away from home for the first time, I remember crying and stroking his side of the sofa as if blurting out my first wish- for him to be home, without thinking twice, without a shadow of doubt. Even the genie cried. Growing up with a sibling is like being the only people on a stranded boat, constantly figuring out how you can live with them and questioning how you could ever live without them.

One evening, in a fit of anger, I told him how I never wanted him to be my brother and he yelled that he didn't ask for it either. The air smelled like kerosene and my chest was filled with arsenic. I was raging and threw his favorite toy aeroplane down the window, 7 stories of guilt and shame. He cried all night and I wanted to cut off my right hand, the hand that hurt my baby brother. I didn't know if he was ever going to forgive me or even talk to me. The next morning at breakfast, he didn't look at me or say a word, I felt like my chest was about to explode and guilt clouded my vision. But then, I felt a hand quietly holding half of an orange my way.

The only people on a stranded boat. How do you live with them? How could you ever live without them?

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