Sue Zhao

Tired of optimising. Tired of living to be productive, of never ending to-do-lists and overdue tasks. Tired of follow-up emails characterised as “just checking-in”, and the self-imposed pressure to grow and improve and be better and everyday better. Some days - the difficult days - I look back and everything is still the same. I’m still 18 experiencing the most devastating loss I’ve ever known. I’m still 21 falling in love for the first time, I’m still 23, losing it. I’m 25, afraid to be touched by anything that isn’t tepid, worried that decisions to be vulnerable will be another gross miscalculation of devotion, feeling totally unhinged, lost even despite revelation after revelation. How many books can you read about yourself before you understand? How many conversations, or journal entries, or journeys of self-discovery before you stop surprising and disappointing yourself at every juncture? I am not myself. I am entirely myself. I can’t ever lose myself even if I wanted to. Some days I can’t decide if I want to.

Being in your twenties is feeling like time is running out / wanting to do something with your life but not knowing what / is like falling in love and not knowing whether it will last / because the last time it didn’t / is getting pangs of emotions you thought you’d left behind when you turned 19 / is rewatching cartoons at 1am and realising you missed so many of the jokes as a kid / is romanticising tiny apartments / or any space to call your own / is reaching out to old friends / with no good excuse / is getting on a plane for a second chance / and finally forgiving because now you understand / is unravelling and not knowing if it means you’ll disappear / and losing faith and believing in fate and whispering clichés, head pressed into a pillow one weekend, hoping

Can’t believe my last post on here was from 2022 - tumblr you will always have my heart and soul even if by now it’s just a shout into the void

Don’t often wish for time to pass but can’t wait until 2023

The concept of teaching people how to treat you is so wild to me - especially people who love you. I always believed that in love people would treat you right without having to be taught but I guess the nuances to what “right” means have to be communicated too