HALF THE SUGAR TWICE THE SPICE

1. push yourself to get up before the rest of the world - start with 7am, then 6am, then 5:30am. go to the nearest hill with a big coat and a scarf and watch the sun rise. 2. push yourself to fall asleep earlier - start with 11pm, then 10pm, then 9pm. wake up in the morning feeling re-energized and comfortable. 3. get into the habit of cooking yourself a beautiful breakfast. fry tomatoes and mushrooms in real butter and garlic, fry an egg, slice up a fresh avocado and squirt way too much lemon on it. sit and eat it and do nothing else. 4. stretch. start by reaching for the sky as hard as you can, then trying to touch your toes. roll your head. stretch your fingers. stretch everything. 5. buy a 1L water bottle. start with pushing yourself to drink the whole thing in a day, then try drinking it twice. 6. buy a beautiful diary and a beautiful black pen. write down everything you do, including dinner dates, appointments, assignments, coffees, what you need to do that day. no detail is too small. 7. strip your bed of your sheets and empty your underwear draw into the washing machine. put a massive scoop of scented fabric softener in there and wash. make your bed in full. 8. organise your room. fold all your clothes (and bag what you don’t want), clean your mirror, your laptop, vacuum the floor. light a beautiful candle. 9. have a luxurious shower with your favourite music playing. wash your hair, scrub your body, brush your teeth. lather your whole body in moisturiser, get familiar with the part between your toes, your inner thighs, the back of your neck. 10. push yourself to go for a walk. take your headphones, go to the beach and walk. smile at strangers walking the other way and be surprised how many smile back. bring your dog and observe the dog’s behaviour. realise you can learn from your dog. 11. message old friends with personal jokes. reminisce. suggest a catch up soon, even if you don’t follow through. push yourself to follow through. 13. think long and hard about what interests you. crime? sex? boarding school? long-forgotten romance etiquette? find a book about it and read it. there is a book about literally everything. 14. become the person you would ideally fall in love with. let cars merge into your lane when driving. pay double for parking tickets and leave a second one in the machine. stick your tongue out at babies. compliment people on their cute clothes. challenge yourself to not ridicule anyone for a whole day. then two. then a week. walk with a straight posture. look people in the eye. ask people about their story. talk to acquaintances so they become friends. 15. lie in the sunshine. daydream about the life you would lead if failure wasn’t a thing. open your eyes. take small steps to make it happen for you.

Not to say that my story is the same as Rosa’s at all. It’s not. But there were things that we wanted and thought would be really important — like the word itself: bisexual. To me, that’s an important word in my coming out. I know that not all people are totally celebratory of that word because it’s from a time where it was like these two genders — that’s all there is. And now there’s a lot more flexibility and fluidity in sexuality, which is why sometimes I gravitate toward the word queer as well. For me, bisexuality includes people that are trans, it can include people who identify in different kind of ways. But for Rosa, there was a point for her where she heard that word somewhere along the line and she saw herself in that word, so for her, it was important for her to identify in that way. I suggested that that word was really important to Rosa and that it also would be really important to the bi community to have that word said aloud on TV. Not just a suggestion that she dates girls now, but a clarity on this character: This is who I am, and I’d like you to know it — and accept it.

[ding dong, ding dong]

time sure does fly when you're

LEO: You really don’t want to admit it, because it’s a pretty ridiculous thought, but you’re scared of what being fully healed from the heartaches you’ve experienced entails. Because you aren’t sure of who you are when you aren’t hurting and you don’t know how to observe the world with unclouded eyes. It’s okay to be apprehensive of the sides of yourself that you haven’t had many opportunities to become acquainted with. While you may know yourself better than anybody else, that doesn’t mean that you need to be an expert on all things you. It’s okay to still be in the process of meeting yourself and figuring out who you are. You aren’t racing the clock. VIRGO: You’re finally embracing the things you’ve been talking about doing for so long, but something feels off about it and you don’t know why. Because isn’t this the thing you’ve been working towards? Isn’t this the life you pictured yourself living after pulling yourself out of the gutter and onto the grass? I don’t think it’s right to assume that you’ve made the wrong decision here, but it’s important to remember that not everything you wrap your arms around is going to feel soft and easy to swallow. Sometimes the right decision has to hurt in order for it to be the right decision. Soon you’ll know if there’s anything that needs changing. LIBRA: I know that trusting your instincts after being led astray so many times is a difficult thing for you to wrap your head around. You’re not the type to forget about the poor decisions you’ve made, or the mistakes you’ve given life to. However, road bumps and wrong turns aside, you are still a person worth listening to. It may seem as though everybody else has a map showing them the route to success and that yours was lost in the mail, but I’m going to let you in on a secret: nobody has a clue, a lot of us are just really good at acting as if we are. You haven’t fallen behind, you’re running with the wolves. SCORPIO: Everyone assumes that you have a lot of love in your life but, while it’s easy to pinpoint a handful of people that have handled your heart with the utmost care, it’s easier to identify those that haven’t. At the end of the night the latter is what plagues your thoughts and wrings the tears out of your eyes, and admitting to that seems like a sign of weakness. But I want you to know that you aren’t obligated to live up to the expectations that the world holds for you. You’re allowed to make your own goals and visit your own places of interest. And the people that can’t love you for that aren’t people that you need surrounding you, anyways. SAGITTARIUS: You have a tendency to look for yourself in everybody you meet, stacking your personality traits up like chips in a poker game that you’re destined to lose. The problem here is that in order to do this it involves reducing yourself to the most basic of traits and that isn’t what you are. Just because you can rattle off a list of acquaintances that use humor to detract from a situation in the same way that you do, doesn’t mean that you’re a carbon copy conglomerate of the souls you’ve met and interacted with. You’re unique, and you’re a lot more than simply a list of shared qualities. There are parts of you that cannot be put into words. CAPRICORN: Has anybody told you lately that they’re proud of you? I know that things have been piling onto your windowsill and that you haven’t had the energy to clean it off yet but you’re still standing tall and you’re still here and that’s something to be happy about. Celebrating the small victories isn’t something that you’re used to doing, but it’s time that you start; it’s time that you open your eyes to all of the things that you do on a daily basis that warrant praise and positive attention. An action doesn’t have to be monumental in order to be important. You do wonderful things each and every day. AQUARIUS: It’s been difficult to get back into the depths of your passion because there’s a really loud voice in your head saying that it isn’t worth it. A feeling of insecurity welling up in your throat and spilling out of your mouth whenever you open it to speak. Sure, your dream is big. Cynics may have told you that it isn’t worth pursuing. But there’s a reason that you’re chasing what you are, right? It’s because it makes you happy, and it makes you feel whole. And I know that it can be incredibly discouraging to stumble over things you care about, but you just have to keep walking despite all of that. Your goals are worth it. PISCES: Lately you’ve been haunted by the memories of people that only came into your life to take. The nightmares have become an almost regular guest in your bed, taking the sheets and kicking your shins every night like clockwork. I want you to know that what you need to do in order to gain closure over the unkind past seems terrifying because it is. I also want you to know that you deserve to move on from those that have harmed your growth in the past. It may seem impossible to reach a place of contentment with the situation you’re picturing as you read this, but you’re more than capable of surviving what’s follow you. Allow yourself to thrive. ARIES: Taking care of yourself still feels foreign, sometimes. Acting adult-like is an oversized jacket that you’re familiar with shrugging off and leaving at home despite the weather that requires its presence. There’s too much societal and social pressure to be fully grown all of the time, in my opinion. Not to say that you shouldn’t be responsible, or that you don’t already take care of the things that you need to, but you’re able to reevaluate what it means to be a successful human being. You aren’t chained to standards or rules or cookie-cutter definitions of “being a grown-up.” Don’t lose touch with the roots that mean so much to you. TAURUS: Another ending, another heartbreak, another name written through the steam on your shower wall. It isn’t fair that you give so much and still only get apple cores and empty promises handed back to you. I know you’re starting to wonder if it really is a “you-thing,” if the absences you’ve needed to learn to exist around were created by your own hands in ignorance. While most failed connections falter on both sides of a line, that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to be mean to yourself for things that aren’t exclusively your fault. Being kind to yourself is a practice that will benefit you more than you know. It’s okay to give yourself a break. GEMINI: Happiness is a lover that always sends you postcards but never tells you when they’re coming home. You’ve grown so accustomed to their quick scrawl reading “wish you were here” that you can almost predict each cards’ arrival after every new bout of sadness. It feels like your emotions enjoy mocking you a lot of the time, making you cry over your latest heartache while reminding you of the moments in which you felt nothing but pure and unfiltered joy. I can’t guarantee the continuous presence of bliss in your life, but I will say in confidence that it’ll always come back to you. Even when you think it won’t. Especially then. CANCER: It’s a lot easier to let the dying embers of a fire fade into darkness than it is to stoke them back to life. I know that you’re tired of crouching next to weak flames, watching them flicker and refuse to glow despite your best efforts, and for good reason. Everybody knows that you deserve better from the world, that isn’t a question. How could you, the big-hearted lover of love, be destined for something as ugly as this? The answer is that you aren’t. Large, beautiful, fulfilling things are on their way, slowly but surely. Don’t forget that it won’t always feel like this. You won’t always view happy moments as a quick reprieve from the norm. Promise.

I made a rule for myself: I would not include anything that human beings had not already done in some other place or time, or for which the technology did not already exist. I did not wish to be accused of dark, twisted inventions, or of misrepresenting the human potential for deplorable behaviour. The group-activated hangings, the tearing apart of human beings, the clothing specific to castes and classes, the forced childbearing and the appropriation of the results, the children stolen by regimes and placed for upbringing with high-ranking officials, the forbidding of literacy, the denial of property rights: all had precedents, and many were to be found not in other cultures and religions, but within western society.

1st person: Pisces, Libra, Cancer, Sagittarius, Virgo, Gemini

not to sound preachy but i’ve never seen anybody rebut “make a terf angry” with “make a trans woman feel better” and… that’s kind of tumblr’s attitude towards trans women summed up as concise as possible. more people should strive to be the second thing because the first is performative and lazy… thank u discourser-of-kruphix…