please could you be tender

every time it rains i think of that raymond carver poem. poetry is like prayer to me methinks. or an incantation

the best thing about the moon and the sky and the stars is that while you can't ever take a picture of them that does them justice......you don't need to. they're gonna be there tomorrow

being in your early twenties is like [grocery shopping alone] [having instant noodles for dinner] [remembering random details about that one friend you haven't spoken to in five years] [feeling overwhelming guilt for every purchase that isn't strictly "necessary"] [having midday naps] [finding out through facebook that the girl who was mean to you in high school has a husband and a baby] [falling a little in love with every stranger on public transport] [pretending you're not afraid of being alone] [wondering when you'll feel like a fully realized person] [listening to bands you liked in middle school] [blinking and it's suddenly december] [failing to imagine yourself ten years from now] [feeling like you're running out of time]

you can't waste your life btw it's just not something that's possible to do. your mere existence is already a precious and valuable use of your time. the time you spent becoming who you are now was inherently worthwhile

Love really is just "I’m thinking of you. I will ask you if you are okay. I remember your favorite flavor of tea. I want to talk to you. I hope your mother is well. I will read to you. I like your laugh. I want to help you. I will sit next to you. I got you the chocolate you like. Your eyes have gold in them. I think you'd like this book. I miss you when you aren't here." isn't it?

have you eaten? (i love you). did you get enough sleep last night? (i love you). how do you feel today? (i love you). did you have a nice day? (i love you). will you come on a walk with me? (i love you). here's some fruit I cut up for you. (i love you) (i love you) (i love you).

so much of being an ok person is just 1) not panicking, 2) not taking things personally, and 3) not letting the vindictive gargoyle that lives in your head tell you what to do. this sucks because brains love doing those things

i want to be inconvenienced by you. i want to wait for you, i want to hold your things while you do something else, i want to make adjustments to my plans to make space for you. someone at your side who takes up no space and has no needs of their own is not a person, but a shadow. i don't want a shadow, i want you. i want my life to be altered by your presence in it. please, inconvenience me.

i need to go on a life changing road trip. i need to be put in a tupperware container and shaken. i need to get into a homoerotic fist fight outside a church. i need to be buried in the ground and forced to dig my way out. i need to change my identity and fake my own death. i need help. there is nothing wrong with me. i'm the most normal person alive. nobody has ever been more fucked up than i am. the passage of time is an illusion. i am wasting my life. i am never going to die.

BREAKING NEWS! secondhand book, upon first reading, is discovered to have the underlinings and annotations of a previous owner. a hundred hearts have been healed, more at 8

You can’t deserve a person’s love. You’ll drive yourself crazy thinking like that. They either love you, or they don’t. That doesn’t mean you weren’t good enough for them to love you, because love isn’t something you earn by being good enough. It isn’t something that can be quantified or doled out. Don’t blame yourself for not being loved how you need to, just teach yourself how to look for love where love lives.

This isn’t just about romantic love, or even skewed towards romantic love, although it does apply there too. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to accept is that my mother simply wasn’t someone who was capable of loving me, and there is no version of me that I could have ever been that would have earned that love. But with acceptance came healing. I was able to love myself more instead of resenting myself for not being more than any one person could be.

Are you listening? Even love for yourself isn’t earned. It is a kindness you give yourself.