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i think to be in a happy longbig relationship you gotta be best friends first and foremost. like no matter how developed the romantic side gets, if youre not friends then its straightup over.... a husband is a friend first and a husband second..

"I love you but you're doing wrong in a way I cannot condone" and "I hate you but you're being wronged in a way I cannot stomach" are top tier and I need more of them.

still caring about internet friends you lost touch with years ago is so embarrassing. yeah i had a deam we met up irl recently. the last time we spoke was maybe 7-8 years ago. i still wear the laces we randomly decided was a sign of our friendship. i dont know what any of your socials are or if youre even active on any. sometimes i see someones art resemble yours and i wonder for hours. do you still go by that name you chose? whenever i see it i wonder if its you. we couldve passed each other in this vastness a thousand times and not have a clue.

we were lonely kids having fun together. do you remember?

There's this perception, I've noticed, that if you're going to have a cultural conception of something like "mental health" in your fictional setting it has to be like Ideal, it needs to be the ideal version of mental health awareness/conception/care or it needs to not exist at all even a little. Does that make sense.

Similarly there's also this idea that either a character knows what therapy is, has had some, and has had an overwhelmingly positive experience and result from it, or they have literally no concept of therapy at all, like Harry Du Bois not knowing that he's a cop style. Total blank. Very odd.

The options are not "this story takes place in the Instagram infographic universe" or "you get nothing. Everyone has a caveman's understanding of what depression is." is all I'm saying. Make a setting with a concept of mental health that sucks. Send the character to therapy that doesn't work. Officially diagnose them with something that sucks and is absolutely going to be taken out of the in-universe dsm in a couple of editions. Try something difference.

Best brain hack is taking “this too shall pass” and applying it in the micro. The panic you feel from an argument with a friend, wanting to get on your phone when you should be studying, the absolute obsession with someone you’re crushing on, pain from rejection, utter hopelessness at a situation that is not entirely hopeless. Heavy on situations that induce panic and incentivize you to act out of turn, maybe to send a text you shouldn’t be sending or to blow up at someone or whatever it is. The antidote to knee jerk reactions is literally just “this too shall pass” and allowing yourself to feel the physical manifestation of your extreme emotion. Literally just ride it out. Even for things that can’t immediately be resolved, it makes such a big difference and prevents you from reacting in ways that you would undoubtedly regret down the line.

nothing online is ever truly deleted. except that one fucking thing you're looking for