Perpetually Sorry

by Jung Lee

it’s always so meaningful when someone interprets you accurately, or says a spark of a phrase, a half-a-sentence, that resonates with you so intimately that it feels like they’ve dipped a finger in a lake of you and made a ripple that goes on and on and on

I'm telling you right now. You don't have to beat yourself up for people taking advantage of your kindness. You don't even have to rebrand into a heartless bitch. You just have to pay more attention to figuring out who's worth your energy and who's not. Don't diminish your worth because someone didn't recognize your value.

My dad has a massive vegetable garden and it is his life. Whenever I ask how things are going, he tells me about the garden. Periodically he will text me a picture of the things he's harvested and ask when I'm coming to pick them up. And for a while, the biggest bit of garden gossip has been his nemesis, the gopher. This gopher was consistently ruining his day by pilfering the best of everything just before my dad could harvest it. Anytime I talked to him, all he had to tell me about was "that damned gopher." He dreamt about killing the gopher, his truest enemy. He tried to train the dog to hunt the gopher, but the dog is a pacifist. He led some of the barn cats to the holes, but the barn cats have unionized and refused his offered rate. He then laid no-kill traps (can't risk having poison near the crops) with eventual gophercide in mind, but then suddenly he was faced with a cute and terrified animal and didn't have the heart. He released it. "He was so scared, he'll never come back." The gopher was back the next day, with a vengeance. That was some weeks ago. Today, my dad sent me pictures of his garden, and I saw a squash gently laid by the gopher's hole, like a package left on the doorstep. I said "Dad, what's that squash doing there by the gopher hole?" He said "Oh, he likes squash best." In an effort to appease the gopher, my father now gives him a little squash everyday, like leaving an offering for a garden spirit. This apparently works well as a compromise; the gopher has stopped stealing, content to have his meals delivered to his door.

it’s honestly crazy how many ppl u meet in your early twenties who have never been in love or been in a relationship or had sex and then you’re like oh it’s actually normal and social milestones actually mean nothing bc everyone is different and has different experiences. cool!

The whole concept of “late-bloomers” is just another semingly cute name for the the belief that people have expiring dates and only youth is worth it and I wholeheartedly abhorre it