#10.10.25

10/10/25 🩵

september flew by like a sheet of paper on the wind; october has felt like four weeks now and it's not even halfway done. "everything is so much," i say in a text to a friend. i go to work and only sometimes get a migraine. i keep track of my mood to find out if days have really been as bad as they've felt. i am absolutely in love with autumn. i listen to albums straight through. i haven't touched my art journal in another month and i've barely read a book since august. i play piano, though, and try to learn guitar. i fill shelves with books; i unpack memories; for the first time since high school i have all of me in a single tangible place. my tiny precious dreams i have kept safe in one corner of my heart the past three years get to come true: a space on the counter for a mug from each place i've lived; a shelf on my bookcase of every one of my art journals, all twelve of them all in a row; my books all together, organized by genre and then by color. i don't know what else to say––i usually only write when i'm sad, and that skews my life into looking darker and heavier than it probably truthfully is. still, i start the days off crying and spend a whole shift at work trying to get my brain to stop sounding its alarms. fear is not an extension of love, i beg my brain to realize, and yet the urges shiver through my fingertips and it takes every ounce of my energy to combat the things my brain thinks can ensure security. i don't know how to keep my loved ones safe or how to stay present in my body or how to stop asking for reassurance or how to know what wanting should look like or how to pray or how to speak or how to heal. still, i try. i wear soft hoodies that make friends feel closer; i buy myself a cinnamon roll when meals are hard to swallow; i make a third cup of tea. i light the candle. i fold the laundry. i miss God. i desperately want to be held. my friends' voices wrap around me in the form of phone calls and voice messages––distance is a curse and technology is a gift and as my friend tells me over the phone three timezones away, we will do the best with what we have. i hate the ocean and i hate the passage of time and i hate pretending i haven't been crying by the time i get back home. but my brother washes my dishes as an act of care and my loved ones are still breathing and the sun keeps turning the sky orange. i have done brave things and i will do more before the month is through. and the world is heavy and my heart is dripping and my brain is faulty and my body is unreliable and the air is cool and the trees are laden with splendor and i don't know how to do this but i know that we are going to be okay.

The brothers...

Been doing some doodle for people who vote for Killua in the best tortoiseshell contest :3c

published 10/10/25