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how to disappear

you’ll need a laptop, still warm, a phone with seventeen missed calls.

to start, clear the browser history first— this kindness costs nothing. hide the drug paraphernalia before the parents arrive. pack the clothes still scattered on the unmade bed, the floor. fold them as their mother would have, had she been allowed to stay.

the books remain half-read, corners turned down on pages they promised to return to. the coffee mug, still stained, sits beside plans that will not happen.

you haven’t scheduled, or budgeted, or mapped any route to this destination— no gps leads here. the student loans come due next month. someone else will have to explain this to the bank.

[davecortel]

Can’t bring myself to finish Beautiful Boy even though I want to read it ASAP. What Nic and his family go through with meth addiction is just… unbelievable. Every scene hits so hard I need breaks between chapters. This book shows how meth doesn’t just ruin lives - it obliterates them. The ripple effects are devastating. But I love how this book is very real and true to its nature. It’s the book I find most relatable to me personally because once I got myself into such situation (and that’s a different story lol).

Anyway, I’m about to end reading this and I can’t wait to blog about the books I’ve read so far this year.

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two months alcohol-free and counting. not because i found jesus or joined AA or anything dramatic like that. just because my skin started looking like a topographical map of my bad decisions and i got tired of explaining to people why i looked like i aged three years in one weekend.

turns out when you stop poisoning yourself every friday night, your face stops looking like it’s perpetually disappointed in your life choices. revolutionary concept, really.

the hardest part isn’t even the social pressure. it’s realizing how much of my personality was just “guy who makes slightly too loud jokes after three beers.” now i have to be actually funny while stone-cold sober. character development is exhausting.

friends keep asking if i miss it. honestly? i miss the confidence boost more than the actual alcohol. nothing quite replaces that liquid courage that made me think i could dance or that my opinions about marvel movies were worth sharing with strangers.

but hey, my liver probably sent me a thank you card, my wallet is noticeably heavier, and i no longer wake up with mysterious bruises and a phone full of texts i don’t remember sending.

small victories, people. small victories.

[davecortel]

Yes… mother knows best.

not all the time tho lol

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it’s a holiday today and my brain is having a whole argument with itself

part of me: sis just stay in bed, read your book, binge netflix, enjoy the day off like a normal human being

other part of me: but your quarterly reports tho… you could actually get ahead for once… imagine how good it’ll feel to have them done…

me: lies in bed stressing about both options

why am I like this lol

anyway gonna compromise by doing neither thing properly and feeling bad about it all day 💀

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Showered with love before the big “I do” 💕 Congratulations, bride to be, my college bff, Ms. Desiree!!! Love you forever!

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Sleep Paralysis

Sometimes I think I woke up too early from hibernation— or maybe my consciousness surfaced mid-coma.

Because this is not my time, not my world, not my life. I am a figment of imagination, a fabrication of others, an echo wearing the shape of something I once called myself.

Waiting, watching from afar, caught in a place where time never moves and yet each day drags on forever.

Nothing feels real— until everything feels too real, and I realize I am trapped here, living life inside sleep paralysis.

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Last night with the high school girls before some of them leave tomorrow. Everyone ordered coffee but I went with matcha instead 😅 Different drink, same good memories with these ladies. Going to miss having the whole gang back home.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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on watching a parent age

i saw somebody say “what if you’re gone and i haven’t become anything yet” and basically that broke me on a random thursday evening

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i want to tell you it's okay to love her more than you love me. i want to tell you that your silence is a small violence, that keeping her name locked behind your teeth is its own kind of cruelty.

you think you are protecting me but i have been watching you disappear little by little, piece by piece, into thoughts of someone else.

i have become an expert in reading the archaeology of your affections— the way you hold your phone, the faraway look that settles in your eyes like dust.

listen, i am not made of paper. i will not catch fire from the heat of your honesty. i have survived worse things than being loved a little less.

tell me about her laugh. tell me how she moves through rooms like she was born to occupy them. tell me the exact moment you realized you had been waiting for someone like her your entire life.

i promise you, i can hold this truth without breaking. i can love you enough to let you love someone else.

what i cannot hold is this half-life, this pretending, this small theater where we both perform contentment for an audience of two.

give me the dignity of your departure. give me the respect of your honesty. let me grieve something real instead of mourning this slow fade, this gradual erasure of what we used to be.

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i have become the person i feared becoming

i feared this skin. this heart that bends toward another man's light. the typical gay. the one who falls. deep into the well of love. only to taste the salt of lies. used. like a poem borrowed and never returned. cheated. by hands that promised forever but held only echoes.

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Mine

At twenty–seven I am still eating alone at my own table, the candlelight leaning only toward me. My friends are dressed in white, their fingers heavy with gold, their mouths rehearsed in the language of forever. Others climb glass buildings, their names stitched on doors that open only upward. And me— I am carrying only a suitcase, its weight filled with paper spines and inked voices. I walk through airports the way some people walk down an aisle— with trembling, with devotion. Sometimes I wonder if I am the last to understand slowness, the last to sit in silence and let the wind comb my hair into something holy. I am not married, I do not belong to a company, or a man, or a child. But I belong to the open road, to a train window where my reflection is soft and unjudging. I belong to the book that bruises my lap with its truths. It is a strange thing, to live a life that looks nothing like theirs— yet still call it mine.

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One of my high school friends, Kwink, just got married today 🥹💍 so exciting seeing my friends slowly tying the knot. makes me wonder tho, when’s my turn? lol