#i dont know how to make myself like this. whatevs

[glitterfingers]

Started as a silly crush from eleven years ago. These feelings have existed for more than a decade. I live a quick jeep away from where i last saw you. I still recall your face between my legs in the blue room that December morning. I'm not sorry I didn't stay when you asked, but I regret being scared out of my mind when you requested tulog muna tayo, huwag ka munang umalis. My regrets are few and far between but I'll admit i regret not staying. For you I admit I remain a staunch defender of being absolutely selfish with my heart. I would not have survived you if you lied and pretended to want me when you didn't. But i can live through this pining. Thanks for rejecting the hypothetical but sincere request, for not being an asshole and using me for your ego (the bar is in the lowest circle of hell). After all those years of denying it to myself, you remain a constant ache in my chest. I still dream about you once a year and am hit with obscene longing every time. It would be comical if I weren't so disgusted at how much i want. And I'm so frustrated because it's been four years since I've last talked to you and it's you that i want specifically and only you. The blue room is long gone. That morning exists only in my memories. I've known no peace since. Thought time away would make the desire fade but it only gave the yearning depth. I've tried I've been trying i continue to try to let it go, let the wanting of you go. I endure raw desperation and this version is somehow the most amusing to my other friends, but the worst to you and you're not the cause, i just wish it were easier for me to have been your friend without simultaneously craving you.

But my long term longing is in your shape and the color of your skin and the tattoos you let me bite and how the morning sun hit your eyes and how we made each other laugh and i miss you all the time. How are your parents. What did you think about Senshi's story from Dungeon Meshi. What obscure movie are you going to recommend me now. Let's debate on why you said Junji Ito was for normies. I'll give you some of my tea and you'll thank me. Your friends probably still love you, even though your lives have all evolved, just talk to them. Will you let me kiss you properly just one last time? Don't let me kiss you, i'll probably never want to let go. I still haven't, but I swear I've tried everything I know though. Or do let me. I dont know. I've loved a couple people since the last time i thought i was in love with you. Apparently i cannot framework myself out of desire (who knew), but I've pried away the excess. I can love people without wanting them in my life anymore. Tell your parents you love them before it's too late.

I send a quick prayer for you every year on your birthday, i stopped greeting you because you never sounded like you enjoyed any of it, but it doesn't matter, the prayer is for my benefit, i never forget. I wish i could.

I wanted you before I knew how to be your friend. Maybe now I am paying that price. I like to believe I'm a better friend and lover now too, but we owe each other nothing. I love you anyway. I know you're not happy, but I hope you're content. I hope one day I'll see you out and about and my heart will stop feeling like it'll explode at the sight of your face. I'm a good liar but i know i can't help but look at you with reverence. Is that why you always looked like you knew something i didn't? I wonder what you saw on my face those last few times. I never did know how to covet without sacrificing and carving out a part of myself, but whatever spell you have me on means I've gotten better at loving myself too. I am no longer unhinged by longing and regret and aching. Time and space away from you (and everyone else really) has taught me that i dont need to bleed to prove my capacity to love. That sometimes the best way to love someone is to leave them the fuck alone because it'll be the best for everyone involved.

I'll see you. Probably next year in my dreams again.

Dedicated to the girl who continues to haunt my dreams even though it's been years since we spoke.

erin morgenstern/richard siken/stick season - noah kahan/not a muse: the inner lives of women: a world poetru anthology; "mountain nights" - rati saxena, edited by kate rogers and viki holmes/unknown/ @2j/unknown/do I wanna know - arctic monkeys/dear friend, - dayglow/ @etherealarte/we should be well prepared - mary oliver

[ddeck]

"I sense my padawans. Aayla Secura shimmering in the force — a beacon of blue light."

— Star Wars: Republic #75

+ close-up undercut

[inkskinned]

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

[stiffyck]

I WISH ARO HEADCANONS WERE MORE POPULAR IN FANDOMS

[umblrspectrum]

Can we get more of the murder drone x rain world au?

ok

[clumsypuppy]

learning abt friendship decay and "not reaching out to your friends for months at a time unprompted is not neurotypical behaviour" has me feeling a certain way

[bannock-freak]

"shipping saiki is aphobic because he's aroace!"

stares at you with my demiromantic asexual in a committed relationship eyes then looks at the camera like im in the office

[xenomorphicdna]

On the string propaganda

Heeellll yeah

Bestie is an entire PLACE

I look at those guys and let me tell you the soul of that thing ain't just in the puppet, it's in all the neurons carrying the thoughts and emotions, it's in the power rails that serve as the heart. All the memories in the memory conflux and all the numbers we see flicker across displays, the flux condensers, the puppet; a little avatar.

No way these massive machines see life the same way we do. They have their own experiences and senses and things they hold dear. A world we can't imagine, a way of living we couldn't even comprehend.

I could never tear an iterator apart to be just a puppet. Who am I to decide how's life supposed to be enjoyed or perceived?

You treat your creechurs however you want- I ain't gonna dictate that. But damn, hearing the thrums and buzzes of the linear systems rail? They are alive with so much power, these mechanical beasts are exactly what they should be.

[perilegs]

i know astrology is fake but i'm not too keen on how a lot of people on this website seem to be clowning on it as a hobby a bit too hard. i swear the woman who thinks it's neat how she and her friends with the same sun sign are all similar isn't trying to say that you are who you are born as and there is nothing you can do to change it. it's a hobby. an interest. what happened to finding meaning and joy in the small things. does it affect you if someone enjoys tarot reading or crystals. does it make you upset someone has interests that they enjoy.

[analog-television]

being in this fandom while ALSO having a fascination/knowledge in the realm of CRT tvs, tv production, and meteorology really feels like i have an unreasonable amount of power (and yet im too lazy to figure out how to use it).

[harbingersecho]

grif's surgery but just a little more... obvious?

I actually rly rly ADORE frankengrif but I don't have an in-show reason why he'd have extensive long-term allogeneic skingrafts on his face 😔

[comvi]

im personally very bad at the whole “you should have many different characters with very different personalities that showcase different types of people”-thing because i create my characters solely for myself. and whether or not those characters have differing personalities or very similar ones is not in my hands because i just make what i like and use what i get attached to

[pleasedontcareaboutme]

It's missing my father hours rn so imma just dump a bunch of pictures here and cry

( sorry i don't know the source of anything I just had them on my phone)

(also dont read the tags i just need to let it out lol)

[moonstandardtime]

theres this really weird culture shock i get in regards to other white peoples general pov on black culture. im white and american, and pretty clueless as far as im concerned, but i also grew up in a city with a very large black population. i didnt really ever have any friends growing up but i did have eyes and ears and a tendency to eavesdrop out of boredom.

the culture shock part comes from things like this—in 2021 i was active on twitter (regrettably) and at some point there was a whole fuss over non-black people using aave. i looked at the lists and they were full of phrases and terms i learned from my classmates first.

and in high school i heard the n slur daily, only once or twice ever with a hard r, and i have no idea when i learned the difference. once on the internet i saw someone baffled over the use of the word in a friendly context, and i thought, have you never seen two black teens having fun together? thats sad.

my bus route in k-12 went from my bougie neighborhood full of white kids to apartment blocks full of black kids. i never really noticed it as a kid but in high school i did, and. im not really sure how to describe how it feels. heavy-handed maybe. like ive been looking at the sky for as long as i can remember, not because im a meteorologist but just because its there, and suddenly now there are people telling me about this crazy new thing called "clouds", and im like, theyve always been there. have you never left your house? did you never watch the goddamn weather channel? where have you been?

[deoidesign]

.

[clumsypuppy]

i feel like. theres designing a character with certain themes and motifs in mind, and then theres making a gijinka for the water bottle on my nightstand