antagonist.

It’s crazy because you can talk and plan and speculate and say you want to do this or you’ll never do that and it’s still all theory. Love will take you by surprise and nothing you said before that will have prepared you for it.

There's always something wild about reading an entire novel in a day. When I set it down at last, I had to remind myself, "Oh, yes, a reality exists outside this book."

a beautiful mess it is

Controversial take some of u will get defensive at, but there IS a right way to give advice (in my opinion). I recently discovered this when I made friends with my former bar manager, a guy in his 50s whom I’m literally in love with (platonically lol). I frequently ask him for advice, and he doles it out to me freely, but he’s also always like “you have it in you to figure this out.” He’s always like “you don’t need me for this; you have it in you.” He’s always reminding me that I have the capacity and experience and emotional intelligence to work through even the toughest weeds. That’s the way to give advice. If you’re not bolstering your friend’s confidence, if you’re not inquiring about their own thought process, if you’re just caustically cutting them off with advice every single time, I’m sorry but to me that’s doing it wrong.

“Do it scared” “do it alone” are all great tips, but my biggest takeaway from therapy is do it messy. This is especially true if you’re getting out of a burnout, which I experience often. Literally just do it messy. You don’t need to pick the perfect trail to walk, the perfect playlist to listen to, whatever the fuck it is. You don’t need to have a meticulous to do list and wake up at the exact time you planned and drink the exact amount of water you planned to drink. Like the biggest thing for people like me to remember is sometimes it’s okay to do it messy. Put on a random yt workout and just get it done in sweats. Do 5 minutes of a daunting task and go from there. Sometimes just getting up is a win during intense burnouts or depressive funks. Literally just do it messy.