Untitled

in almost every other children's book where the main heroine is swept away to a land of whimsy she's shown having a lovely time; braving dangers occasionally, trying to find her way home, sure, but ultimately delighting in the magic around her. meanwhile alice spends her entire time in wonderland like

look, here’s the thing: alice in wonderland’s enduring fucking charm is that it perfectly captures the vibe of being a very tired and annoyed child who is nonetheless required to play along with adult nonsense.

I'm gonna go ahead and add - the reaction image is barely even a joke. This is the original illustration of her at the Mad Hatter's tea party.

What I have to remember is that I deserve to heal. I deserve to get better. I deserve to wake up one day, and not be overwhelmed by all the pain in my life. 

#looked up and thought ‘that can’t be hard’#and then my eyes widened with horror as I realized the sheer number of rectangles everywhere#I’m . I’m horrified

I had a sales woman in furniture store try and tell me not to buy a hot bubblegum pink loveseat because she wanted me to “think about the future”

when I first bought my house, I announced my decision to paint my bedroom purple. I had wanted a purple bedroom for thirty damn years, you fucking bet I was gonna have one now. My friends decided, for some reason, that I meant what one of them referred to as “14 year old girl purple” (through what’s wrong with the colors a 14 year old girl chooses, I don’t know, even if they’re not what I want as an adult). They didn’t believe me until they saw the color on the actual wall, even thought they helped me pick out paints. My mother, meanwhile, decided to get worried that if I painted my bedroom a “dark purple”, it would be “depressing”. As if, with an entire house to live in, I would spend all my time in the bedroom, which I wanted to be dark because I would be sleeping in there. In the damn dark.

I’m thirty and my first big furniture purchase was a custom coffin shaped coffee table that opens up and is lined with purple crushed velvet. I would have loved it at 13 and I love it now. Growing up doesn’t mean you have to abandon what makes you happy.

GROWING UP DOESN’T

I have told this story before, and I will tell it again, because I am An Old now and repeating stories forever is our prerogative:

This is the door to

I’m 35. I have been told my place looks like maybe a LP fan lives there.

When I first moved into my place, I painted the spare room, that eventually became my office, lime green, the kind of lime green that glows down the corridor when I open the door - The colour was only available as an “accent colour” in the section of paints intended for children’s playrooms, and in the shop I got a lot of “Oh your son will love this!” And from people I knew I got a lot of “Oh well, you’re 21 now, you’re basically a teenager, this is a terrible idea, you’ll hate it and need to pull out all the furniture to repaint it.” And I have to report that I am now in my forties and my office still looks like this, and it makes me smile every time I see it.

this is such a modern idea, too

The examples of decorated homes above are both either modern or upper class, which makes it easy to dismiss because “sure the rich people have beautiful homes” and “sure, modern middle-class people have lots of color in their homes.”

I painted rooms in my house these colors and some people had doubts:

Non cooking spray stick

Non spray stick cooking

Non cooking stick spray

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2609/