#growingup

[coffeenuts]

[ill-monster]

growing up is realizing i never wanted those boys, i just wanted them to want me. i wish i could give 17 year old me, crying over that boy, a hug. cause girl, we gay. 🤷‍♀️🏳️‍🌈

[cerisenoire-html]

Growing Up and Out

My mother My miracle mother My beautiful kind smart mother

Who held me in her womb, her arms, her heart Taught me to say please and thank you And I love you and I hate you

Now I go walking alone, driving alone With my thoughts and hers

I work so hard to leave her Day in and day out I pray I don't burden my miracle mother

But I know that even after all of these years, No one will ever soothe me in the same way

[caesarandthecity]

The Weight of Growing Up

Is this what growing up feels like? Letting go of the will to live?

I remember being a kid, dreaming of leaving home, of moving to the United States.

I grew up. I made it.

And then what?

What about the dreams I have now? The dreams I had as a child? Do I let them go?

Do I forget that once, I dared to dream big? That I reached for the sky, but couldn’t quite grasp it?

Do I have to kill the child I once was?

Do I have to crush his dreams, throw them away, even though I love reliving them in my mind?

I tried.

But dreams don’t just die.

Not like that.

Not the dreams of little César.

I have to let go of who I was to become who I’m meant to be.

My God… it hurts.

But I have to let go.

Goodbye.

[prettyquiescence]

I Don’t Know

I don’t know everything.

I don’t even know all the pieces of me.

But I’m desperate to find them.

Maybe that’s okay.

Maybe not knowing is okay.

At 22, maybe it’s okay

not to understand.

But why does it feel like a hole?

-prettyquiescence

[alyriance]

you peeled me like an apple cracked me at my core you take what isn’t yours and then always ask for more slow and thoughtful mindset crafting something sweet there are days and days and days i wish we didn’t meet place me in the oven bake me in the heat you stew and stir and slave an easy, sleezy treat you surely took your time fingers pacing ancient text taking each and every step to be my perfect wreck released from inferno still hearing the screams i really think you took everything from me dancing in the kitchen street lights peering in i think that we’re so perfect and that’s where this begins 

something i found in my notes app

a.v.

[strangedreamermusic]

“Home, Away, and the Space In Between"

The House That Didn't Feel Like Home.

Home is supposed to be a sanctuary, a place where you feel safe and loved. But once my brother left to study in a different country, that feeling vanished from my house.

My brother was ten years older than me, and I looked up to him. He was my protector and my role model, and knowing him being around always made me feel safe. But he did things differently when he finished school: he packed his bags and disappeared into a faraway land to complete his higher study, quite far from me and my parents. At that time, I was just a little kid who hardly understood why he had to disappear, and the silence began.

First, my parents tried to compensate. They were busy with their work, but they always tried to keep things normal. But I knew that something was different, however. I was not the apple of their eyes anymore, and though they still loved me, the growing exhaustion was palpable. Finally, they decided that it was best to send me away to boarding school. A mere third-grader, I didn't know what the term meant or what it would feel like to live away from home.

Thus, the immediate reality was boarding school, and that would be nothing like the home I had known. Kids kept aloof, and I knew I didn't fit in this place. I learned using my wits and living with my problems with no help from anyone. I missed my parents terribly, but even going home for holidays wasn't comforting at all-they were so engrossed with their lives, and sometimes I would feel like a stranger in my own house.

It had its rules at school, and the greatest lesson it taught me was to keep everything to myself. I stopped talking about my feelings and learned how to internalize everything. It inculcated into my head that problems were something you should always deal with yourself. It felt like my emotions were a burden, so I kept them hidden, locked away in a corner of my mind.

Years passed, and I learned to live with my loneliness in silence. When my parents finally decided to move to Canada after my tenth grade, I hoped everything would feel different. But nothing could fill the void created over the years. Still detached from my family, I didn't know how to draw closer to them again. The house in Canada was new, but it felt cold in ways I couldn't explain.

I thought I would get home when we moved, but it turned out I was trying to rebuild something lost long ago.

[aliyahllast]

There’s no such thing as a bad photo, there are photos that can be different or ones that people don’t like but I promise you that in every photo there is at least one positive!

Look outside the book… sometimes you even have to look to the right sometimes📸💕

[moveleftslightly]

Me and my shadow, September 2018.

The Autumn is here. Making the most of any late evening sunshine in the garden with the boy.

[phanfictioncatalogue]

Growth/Growing Up Masterlist

A Star in the Galaxy (ao3) - danblossom

Summary: The growth from childhood through adolescence of James, Dan and Phil's son.

"You wonder if the moon comes up at night so the stars don't feel alone."

a warm heart (ao3) - okaydoomer

Summary: Inspired by Dan's new year's tweet and especially this reply: "the nips will be cold but my heart will be warm"

On new year's eve Dan is thinking about the year he's had. He's the happiest he's ever been and he can't put his feelings into words but Phil is there to listen and he knows what feeling this is. Pride.

Better does not mean cured. (ao3) - Septic84

Summary: Years of therapy still cannot stop the bad days, it can, however, help them pass easier.

Bowling (ao3) - indistinct_echo

Summary: Dan and Phil have gone bowling a number of times throughout the years.

Flotsam (ao3) - Phandabbydosey

Summary: Dan is a ten year old merman who has been cruelly ripped away from his home and family to be put on display in a far from adequate tank. Phil is a ten year old boy who is obsessed with merpeople and thinks it’s a dream come true when the local aquarium rescues one from the English coast. However, things aren’t quite as they seem and ,as the two grow up together and get closer, Phil discovers the truth and becomes disenchanted. Dan has to struggle to survive while Phil endeavours to save his friend from a miserable, humiliating life performing himself to a premature death.

games you don't want to play (ao3) - lestered (clonetrobed)

Summary: You try not to pay attention to some of the couples starting to cosy up with each other. You want someone to lay with you in your sleeping bag and look at the stars.

You don’t get that. You don’t get to be normal. You’ve never felt the giddiness of young love, or even of a really intense crush. Those things aren’t for you.

You want something you can’t have. You want a boyfriend.

Growing Pains (ao3) - palomeheart

Summary: Sometimes Fi thinks about how her life would be different if she had been born a boy.

Growing Older With You (ao3) - jestbee

Summary: It’s Dan’s birthday and he’s not over thinking it this year… much.

Growing Up - neutralhowell

Summary: Dan and Phil’s daughter is getting ready for her first school dance and everyone is nervous and they both get emotional at her growing up.

Growing Up - doomedhowell

Summary: Dan and Phil’s son goes to school and is excited but once he gets there, he’s shy and hides behind Dan and Phil.

Grown On Each Other Like Mould (ao3) - natigail

Summary: Inspired by this snippet from a gaming video

P: “The friendship-dragon!”

D: “That’s the least appropriate one for us two. That would be the mould dragon.”

P: “Is that our- Is that us?”

D: “That’s our friendship. The mould dragon.”

P: “What? That we just know each other so well, we’ve grown on each other like mould?”

growth (ao3) - Rawritsamehh

Summary: Dan gets lost in thought while he prepares for a date.

If I Ain’t Got You (ao3) - Nefertiti1052 (Succubusphan)

Summary: Phil wakes up feeling particularly fond for Dan and all the growth he’s done. A lazy morning talk about the future.

Meet Me In The Hallway (ao3) - CanDanAndPhilNot (enbycalhoun)

Summary: Dan is seven years old when he meets Phil Lester and friendship comes easy for them. Over the years they meet each other in the hallway despite what life throws at them.

Moving On -adorkablephil

Summary: Post-TATINOF. Wanting to move his content in a more serious direction (not to mention the fact that he’s been following Phil around since he was a teenager and has no idea who he is on his own), Dan moves out in order to separate his “brand” from Phil’s. Is there any way their friendship can survive? Or will it be changed forever?

Pumpkin Pride (ao3) - ThoughtaThought

Summary: Phil's family runs a Pumpkin Patch on the outskirts of a small town. The Howells move into the house next door (but this is the country, so it's like... half a mile away) and Dan grows up hanging out with the Lesters. Each chapter is a moment in their life as they grow up and get together with absolutely zero angst. From 1996-2023.

slipping through my fingers (ao3) - Gal_tic

Summary: Even though he said he’d never grow up, Phil grew up.

Or, Kath reminisces on how time flies

The Boys who Walk Too Close Together (ao3) - Star4545

Summary: The story of Dan and Phil growing up together and getting pushed down, but always getting back up because they have each other

The Park - jilliancares

Summary: Dan and Phil meet at the park as kids and continue to meet at the park as they grow up.

Unnatural (ao3) - ahappyphil

Summary: @philslion “Getting away from my father’s pride was one of the best things I’ve done. Nice to be with Lioness by ourselves no matter how unnatural.” On growth and changed perspective.

when the trees lose their leaves (ao3) - strawberry_saturn (vanillaxheart)

Summary: Dan is moving out of his parents house and he takes a moment to move on.

[yellowmanula]

From so-called existential reflections and conversations with fellow millennials, people say that TV cartoons are harmful to kids. We survived the parenting methods based on sitting the kid in front of the TV and turning on Cartoon Network. And what, did we not grow up into decent people?

[eric-sadahire]

At some point in your childhood, you and your friends went out to play together for the last time, and none of you knew it.

[lime-lover-forever]

puffer jacket and yummy food snz😚💘💘💘

[professorpski]

Doris Phipps and Lily-Annie Pollett, though they looked incredibly plain and depraved in oyster satin blouses, tight-seated bell-bottomed trousers, red nails on dirty hands, greasy curls hanging on their shoulders, a cigarette forever glued to their lips, were really very nice, kind girls.

This description of a pair of women train porters assigned to a town stop in England during World War II comes from the mind of the stationmaster Mr. Beedle. He, like many older people in the novels of Angela Thirkell, is upset by changes brought by the war: here, the disappearance of the squad of male porters he had commanded before the war broke out. Even though trousers make perfect sense for the physical job of hefting and toting bags and trunks, and pushing carts piled up with boxes and bags, they are part of the reason that the young women seem depraved to Beedle. And one would hardly expect their hands or hair to stay clean in the midst of all this dust and dirt.

Of course, women had been doing dirty work for time out of mind, think farm women and scrub women, and doing some of it in trousers, but that did not shake belief in the rule that women should not be wearing pants in public places. It was not until the 1960s, and only after a drawn-out public debate, that pants on women in the North Atlantic world were seen as anything but sloppy or overly sporty. So it was a big shift when by the late 1960s, women were wearing all kinds of pants whether or not they were embarked on a dirty job at a train station.

This fashion in fiction is from Growing Up published in 1943. You can find reprints of Thikell's works at Virago Books: https://www.virago.co.uk/?s=thirkell

[in-tenebris-et-in-solitudine]

Do you ever start telling your parents a funny story, but then you remember what happened was illegal.

[k47w]

And I watch how my dreams outgrew this house