I really do love you

TW: weight discussion

oh my goddd being an short asian woman is suchhh a scam wdym my maintenance is 1400-1600 calories at my current weight and asian bmi is also more restrictive (for valid medical reasons that correspond to fat storage) this is so unfair i just want to eat 3 pieces of toast without feeling full beyond belief my body is minmaxed for starvation era china not sugar filled processed food delicious america

I think I hated being a child. For kindness and for cruelty, I had no rights, no voice, no future.

i have so much to do and so much to see and so many opportunities of joy but i am so tired. i need a month or a lifetime to rest, without waste.

There’s a theory that it’s just you living every single person’s life, when you die you are reincarnated as the person born right after you were. You’ve committed every atrocity and suffered every consequence. You’ve survived and died by the worst torture, and you doled it.

So now every time I learn about a new horror, a new murder, a new accident, it’s instinct to think about myself there, lying under rubble, thrown in a septic tank, drowning under a million gallons of salt water. It’s instinct to see myself release the bomb, desecrate a dead body, steer myself directly into the bottom of the ocean.

This empathy will not help anyone, but me perhaps. I am not above any cruelty, any stupidity, any mistake. And I am not above the pain it causes either.

I hope this theory is not true. It would be a lonely world, just me and the spinning Earth.

When I was a kid, my dad told me I need to protect my little sister and I replied indignantly, “Why? She’s not my kid. Why should I be forced to take care of a child that you had that I don’t want? What do I owe her?” (in less coherent words).

Why was I like that? Why was I so self-sabotagingly logical and mathematical at such a terribly young age?

again” - Margaret Atwood

I have a terrible memory. I wonder what I’m trying to forget and trying to hide from myself.

and sunflower” - Mahmoud Darwish

Isn’t it so nice, in a life of changes and growth, that the sun and the moon stay the same from when I was 1 until I am 100.

Something I don't often see is a discussion of Holden's phoniness in regards to his own actions, specifically with Jane Gallagher. Holden starts thinking about Jane when Stradlater mentions his date with her, and he doesn't ever stop thinking of her for the rest of the book. When he runs away, he constantly tells the reader that he wants to call Jane, plans to call her even.

Every time he craves that connection though, he deflects. He goes on a date with Sally Hayes instead of talking to the person he wants to. He does call Jane but her mother picks up instead and Holden hangs up, claiming that he doesn't want to get involved in a boring conversation.

Catcher is a book about human connection and the barriers, "phoniness," that people put up to avoid saying what they think and doing as they say. Holden criticizes people for being dishonest and phony while he lies to strangers for fun and refuses to affirm his own desires. Holden, like us all, is not above it all.

Imagine explaining to the Ancient Sumerians that people in America struggle with mild dehydration.

"Oh I'm sure it's explainable. I'm sure water, especially clean water is difficult to acquire."

"No, we have safe water at demand at home and almost everywhere in public. We just forget to drink it."

I miss a sky bright with stars instead of street lamps.

I think I had a happy childhood. Maybe I'm lying to myself and maybe I'm blocking out the sadness and pain and anger. I can convince myself that I ran with laughter in my arms.

I would not wish my child to have the same childhood as me.

Would I be disappointed in myself if I met me? Would I create a hole of grief in my heart? Would I cause the headache behind my own eyebrows? Would I shove a wad of sadness in my mouth?

I feel like in the future the terms "modern" and "contemporary" will shorthand to the 20th and 21st centuries. A modern robot will cease to be a robot created at the time of writing but a robot created between the years 1900 and 2100.