mandyb96

[mandyb96]

these days when you close your eyes, what else do you want but to be loved in a warm and permanent way. the open soft hand, the lowered voice, the blanket around your shoulders. you want to be loved like hot chocolate, like spring flowers, like dawn. you want to go to sleep protected and wake up fully rested. you want the wounds in you to matter, you want someone who is patient around your scars.

how greedy. these days when you look around, how many little ways are you assaulted by the notion that it's wrong to need others. individualism! capitalism! bootstraps! every time you try to language it, you need to cover up your desire into a carefully-worded soundbite: of course no single person can fulfill every need and we must invest in communities and i must be responsible for my own mental health and

but the yawning in you doesn't understand logic or sound or reason. it only sees sundays, only sees what you do-not-have, only sees the look others share and that you so desire. sick with dread at it, sick at how it makes you want, how you yearn in no direction.

no matter how many people you take with you to bed, no matter how many hands touch the tattoo you share with your sibling, no matter how many times you kneel with your knees bleeding. always, the ache that never stops chewing, the desperate sick loneliness that never quite abates. it never stops humming, i need i need i need. you burn your inner child for warmth and scatter the ashes into your morning coffee.

so you shut up and you load your life like shotgun shells and you try to make yourself whole in the way that others are whole. you let your father's words spill out of your mouth. you make a quick joke rather than tear your heart open. you sing into the mic and go home with stars in your eyes. your life is beautiful and you're lucky! you have everything a person can need!

but it would be nice, is the thing. to have a love that feels like peace.

[mandyb96]

Untitled painting by Daniel F. Gerhartz/ excerpts from 'Text me when you get home' by Kayleen Schaefer/ 'Hinds feet' by Daniel F. Gerhartz

[mandyb96]

true blue by boygenius / birds of a feather by billie eilish / i’m only me when I’m with you by taylor swift / for good by idina menzel and kristin chenoweth / feels like by gracie abrams / shade of yellow by griff / seamless by sabrina carpenter / seven by taylor swift / space between by dove cameron and sofia carson / i’ll be there for you by the rembrants

[mandyb96]

I get that romance is probably mostly dead and it’ll take a lot to bring THAT back but. Can we please not kill friendship too. Can we please have patient & honest & loving & heartfelt friendships. Friendships that withstand miscommunication. Friendships that withstand the occasional fuckup. Not saying to tolerate toxicity, but there’s a difference between that and just being there for someone. I don’t want friendship to turn into something cold distant unforgiving commodified like I really want to think & feel & adhere to the faith that true earnest heartwarming ride or die friendships exist and we don’t have to forfeit that too

[mandyb96]

i lost a close friend in a really irregular, frustrating way recently. i lost a friend.

[mandyb96]

on preemptive grief. on bracing for impact. on looking towards the horizon line and flinching

Rayne Fisher-Quann, “home for the holidays: an essay (sort of) about grief (sort of)” // me // David Levithan // The Crane Wives, “Black Hole Fantasy” // me (again)

[mandyb96]

So, I’ve just read the new chapter of this fic that I love and I’ve been bawling my eyes out. The non-linear process of healing and learning how to accept love even if you don’t feel deserving of it hits so close to home.

7th poem is from @halfof-mysoul !

[mandyb96]

Words from the mouths of babes, promises ocean deep. But never to keep.

@inanotherunivrse/cocaine jesus - rainbow kitten surprise/fredrick backman, us against you/i lost a friend - finneas/poem - langston hughes/ocean vuong, on earth we’re briefly gorgeous/the underrated heartache - rupi kaur/@sarakleijn/unknown/motion sickness - phoebe bridgers/ @honeytuesday/saw ur mom at the grocery store - abby cates/louise glück, seizure/@thundersoon/ bronze - the regrettes/ritika jyala, the world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire/i still forget we’re not even friends - trista mateer/the light that shines when things end - anonymous/couch sleeper, unknown site/ @saltair-and-palemoonlight/i lost a friend - finneas/dear friend, - dayglow/peter - taylor swift

Requested here

[mandyb96]

it’s an unspoken thing between all of us- the grief of all the friends you never got to say goodbye to. like, the friends youd make in science class because the teacher sat you next to one another, the friends from your childhood who you mightve only spoken to in school, but whose existence sunk its teeth into you and left a permanent mark. even the ones you were closest to, the ones you called best friend for a time, somewhere along the way you parted without even noticing it. somewhere along the way, you played outside for the last time, shared food for the last time, stayed up talking for the last time, said i love you for the last time. when was the last time? we didnt decide to stop being friends. we didnt even say goodbye. but ‘see you next week’ turned into ‘it’s been a long time’, and now, if you saw each other in the street, you might pretend that you didnt. you might not even recognise them. they might not even recognise you. you can’t remember the shape of their nose. and what about the connections you made online when you were a child, playing games that meant so little with nameless friends that meant so much? or when you were a bit older, talking to strangers but loving them like family? here, raise a glass to the friends who disappeared one day, who deactivated, who stopped messaging you back, because online friends can bring you just as much joy as real life ones, too. when the adults told you dont talk to strangers, they didnt consider the good morning! :) texts, the have you eaten today? texts, the trying to hold in your laughter at 3am texts, the i wish timezones and continents and countries didnt exist so i could hug you texts, the little pieces of a persons heart texts, blue light flooding across the world just to say i love you. sleep well. i love you. i love you. the grief comes in waves. it’s slow, and soft, and steady- you dont notice it pooling around your ankles at first, you dont want to- but it comes. childhood is where the grief begins. it’s reared like a well-loved pet, a hungry mouth under the tablecloth. a passing thought from time to time, when you remember the girl you befriended a long long time ago, and when you wonder where she went. it doesn’t feel like much at first. it doesn’t break you yet. it’s not like real grief, not like anyone died, but you had something in your hand and now it’s empty and you can’t remember where you put it. it’s like that, except the thing in your hand was a person who loved you, once. a person whose face you couldn’t draw if the world got on its knees and begged you. when you dont get to say goodbye to someone, your memory becomes a funeral, every conversation you ever shared with them a eulogy. because this is how the story goes. i had a friend. this is not a poem. i had a friend.

[mandyb96]

— Fiona Apple

[mandyb96]

hey did you know??? that if you stop stretching and maintaining mobility in your body then it goes away?? things get tight and you can't move the way that you used to??? and when you decide to try getting a stretch routine going that the first week fucking sucks because you keep going 'damn i used to be able to do this no problem' and then you have to switch gears and be kind to yourself and just focus on getting better from here instead of berating yourself for dropping the good habits in the first place??? and your body never stops aging so you gotta keep taking care of it and sometimes you gotta take care of it extra in certain areas because of things that happened when you were younger and it's boring and sometimes hurts but it's so necessary???

i am yelling this at myself right now i am going through An Experience (trying to get into a routine of body maintenance again for my physical and mental health)

[mandyb96]

if i could remove the shame and guilt girls feel from same sex attraction and give it to porn addicted straight boys, i would. how can they feel nothing for the way they dehumanize us while sapphics apologize just for existing?

[mandyb96]

[mandyb96]

the weirdest fucking thing to me is how men will be like "it's so hard being a man. no one cares that i'm sad. the loneliness we experience could NEVER be understood by a woman" and then also be like "btw i never talk to my friends and i don't know their names and i love hanging out with men because they don't talk about their stupid emotions all the time. women could never understand a bond like this." like ???

[mandyb96]

I was enchanted to meet you.

TAYLOR SWIFT performing Enchanted (Taylor's Version) in TAYLOR SWIFT | THE ERAS TOUR (TAYLOR'S VERSION) (2024)

[mandyb96]

THE ARCHER The Eras Tour, Melbourne

[mandyb96]

It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.