tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us

Woke: throuple

i turn 30 on july 1st.

i haven't heard from you in over a year. which is kind of nice, if i'm being honest. in that time i think a lot of things changed for me. a lot of things got sharper. for a while i was so utterly broken that i made my therapist cry while i was talking to her. that felt bad. (sorry kate).

i almost made my instagram public again, but then had to pause. would i only be doing that so that there was a chance you'd see me? so we'd cross paths and start talking? the other day someone said "i heard from your ex" and my heart dropped. like i'd been slapped. for some reason, i felt something almost like fear, which doesn't make any sense. i guess my body heard what happened and said: oh, this person hurt me so badly it literally rewrote my life story.

i think you were probably right, and this wasn't a good relationship. there's still strange things i miss doing. i miss playing board games with you. i miss the particular smell of your room. i miss the weight of your leg over my hipbone, your very-slight snore. all of this is still massively less than i used to miss. i miss you gently, almost ambivalently. recently my adhd did a cool trick - i got bored of thinking about it. i used to think i'd never be bored of it. that i could never actually escape it.

it's just that i was supposed to be different at 30. i was gonna be engaged and happy. i was going to be drinking on a rooftop with you. i was going to be coming home early from the party so i could crawl into bed with you. i was going to be looking for a house for us. i think i miss how easy that future would have been - which means, on occasion, i am missing the idea of you.

i am okay. i hope you're okay too, honestly. i've never wanted you to be hurting. you once told me that i'd be too furious with you to ever talk to you again. here's the thing - i am not like you. even after you left me, i was never actually... angry. it just is something that happened, and it hurt, and it's over now, and that's... okay. sometimes it's actually even better.

it's just that... i don't know. recently i was having lunch with a friend and she asked me so you still don't believe in love? and i looked at her and bit my lip. i thought about the rooftop i had imagined and the gift list i compiled with all your favorite things on it. i thought about how i got a new phone right after we broke up just so i wouldn't be tempted to go through photos. i bought myself a couch for my birthday - and it reminded me of you. how horrible; that i can't do anything anymore, not without your shadow somewhere.

here's the thing - i know you're not thinking about me as much. you got to pick up and leave. close the door. enough was enough.

i told my friend depends on the day. i think i believe in community and art and passion and friendship more than i ever have. i think i believe in singing at the top of your lungs and running flat-out and dancing in public. i once told my high school best friend that i didn't expect to make it to 30. i thought i would die far before then, miserable, unhappy. i was doing badly; i assumed all forms of survival had to be indelicate. rough.

i remember because of the melodrama of my teenage spirit. i told him unironically - creatures like me will never find love.

All of these books are queer, but they all have back blurbs that don’t say they’re queer. While this can be a pain if I’m scouting for queer SFF, it can come in handy for people in a situation where they don’t want to be reading queer books openly. 

Please do note that I don’t have hard copies of the books on hand so it’s possible that an author quote or something mentions one being queer (I feel like this isn’t super likely, but I don’t want to rule it out). Some might also have author biographies mentioning that the author is queer. Also, some may be shelved as LGBT on Goodreads or categorized as queer on Amazon. So if you’re planning on asking for any of these as holiday gifts, I would suggest going to the Amazon page or where ever your relative is likely to buy it from and double check that it’s something you’d be comfortable with sharing openly. 

I wish I had more pansexual books, but the ones I know of tend to mention queerness in the back description. 

With the exception of The Spy with the Red Balloon, these are all books I have read or are currently reading. If you want to recommend others, feel free to do so in the replies!

You can find my other queer book recommendations here.

Links to the queer books database (or Goodreads if the book hasn’t been added yet) are available below the cut. You can find information on content warnings there.

feeling normal about this hanif abdurraqib poem

[Image ID:

THE AUTHOR WRITES THE FIRST DRAFT OF HIS WEDDING VOWS

(An erasure of Virginia Woolf's suicide letter to her husband, Leonard)

Dearest,

I feel certain I am going mad again.

we will go through terrible times. And recover. I begin to hear your voice, and can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems

will give me the greatest possible happiness.

I don't think two people could have been happier with this disease. I know

that without you I can't properly feel.

What I want to say is You have

saved me.

Everything has gone from me

but the certainty of your goodness.

the fact that he added Everytime by britney and NOT toxic is highly offensive jdfhgk

but ugh so many amazing songs on there!!! 😩 take me home, anti-hero, that's what I want and drunk text are very fitting for the story imo but yeah all of these are giving the exact vibe I was hoping for lol so now I'm even more excited 🥺

here is the playlist btw.