#so TECHNICALLY i didn't waste money from my salary

[maranull]

i need to stop.

i ordered another gunpla.

i have to be restrained at this point.

[hmajorgirl]

I turned 25 yesterday

Hi 21 and 24.5 me. I don't have a lot of updates but I wanted to say a few things.

I love you. This was all you needed. I love you. If I could reach in here and pull you out from the ethernet i would hold and squeeze you for a really long time. I'm sorry you had to go through so much time thinking and reaching for a different version of yourself, the ig model, the it girl, someone who has it all together to be happy and enough. I am also sorry to disappoint - i never became her and i will never be her. It's funny though because for the longest time we really thought a perfect career, money, habits, boyfriends and friends would be happy but to be completely frank i am happy with you, i love you in all your netflix binges, cake for breakfasts, crying on public transport, procrastination, clothes on the floor, laundry overpiling states. You don't need to be anyone else and I'm sorry it took me so long to get there, but we're here now.

Now i feel like it's a little frivolous to update you on the technicalities - i quit my job, i broke up with that boy who didn't treat us well enough- it takes receiving love to recognise it's absence and i am lucky i have received a lot of it lately, i'm moving back home, my salary hasn't changed since we last spoke, i am excited for a new career in design. We were caught up in metrics with an anxiety to validate a hypothesis that my life would not be wasted: in kilograms of weight, in property owned, in the rank of a profession. and you know what i AM SO PROUD OF US, for coming out this side of events, it's still a process but i'm beginning to see that life is not to be measured by material things and it sounds like an age old wisdom but of course it's been hard to understand. You wanted to be free from yourself. You wanted to escape through wealth, identities and new beginnings. But we are free now. And I'm free from myself because I'm holding and swaying with her. She's the porcelain chipped china doll on the kitchen table and i'm drawing the blinds open, sweeping the floors, playing music on the radio and brewing something delicious in the oven. This is how we became free.

For the first time in a long time i feel more aligned with who we're meant to be more than ever and we don't have a house and soon even a job, I am moving back in with my parents and that's okay, I am very grateful they're something I can fall back on. All the old metrics of success and melting and we are slowly finding the confidence in the courage to do things that we want to do, to take risks, explore and have faith rather than do things that we think we should do.

I am very proud of you. I hope for the rest of the years I am as satisfied as I am today with myself. I hope I grow to be more confident and I hope I live with conviction, I hope I can see that my truth is my perspective and no one else's and I hope I can be loved and give love to my friends and family as much as possible. I hope we are still happy and I hope we know that happiness is not something you earn but something that you allow yourself.

I hosted my first ever successful birthday party at the age of 25 yesterday, people bought cake and love, for some moments i felt like i could just lean back and let life take care of me. i hope this feeling grows.

I love you. I'm not sure when we'll speak again, it's funny because when I was writing at 21 and even 24 I always thought the questions would be the same, the only differing thing would be the content, where I was living, who was in my life, what I was doing. But the form has changed as I have learned and grown and I am excited at how things progress in the next few weeks months and years - what will 26, 27, 40 year old me write? Before, I had questions, I placed anxious expectations. Now I just have faith and a patient curiosity to hear from them as I'm confident that they will have great perspectives to share.

One of my key goals last year was to build a sense of self and establish more trust with her. I think we've made great progress :) I'm proud of you. I love you.

So here's 25 me signing off. Hope all is well, take care - I know you will.

P.S planning to see Beth and her child in August (finally!!) i am really excited! <3

[valotar]

we both grew up in a small town poor and with shitty parents and unspoken problems fogging up the air around us and we just didn't know better. we had never seen anything else. now we go to a toy store and get things we never had back then, and i didn't really even know what i was missing; i didn't see what wasn’t there. how could i? how could we have known?

we're doing okay now. we're looking at it from the outside; with more perspective. we know it wasn’t right, and we're trying to be better. more open. i still have to remind myself that i'm safe now, and that being honest doesn’t have to feel like pointing out your weak spots. you're trying not to bottle up your emotions, and i'm trying to learn how to exist without holding my breath.

we're both struggling, but we're trying.

i pay half a day's salary for two stuffed toys that bring me just as much joy now as they would have back then. maybe even more so; they come guilt-free, now. they come with no complaints. no-one tells me they’re a waste of money, or resources, or time, or space, that they’re stupid or ugly or that i don’t need them.

which, i know, is technically right. i don’t need them, strictly speaking. but my friend picked this one out for me because she remembers what my favorite animal is even when it’s one that most people couldn’t even name and i don’t think anyone ever knew me like this when i was growing up. i graduated a while ago and i don’t think my parents could tell you what my degree is in even though i've told them many times. so i am going to take this soft little pink salamander when she holds it out to me and i am not going to let go. and i love him more than i ever dared love anything growing up.

i don’t need all my other pretty little trinkets to live, either, but having them makes me happy. i never had much stuff as a child, nothing that was really mine. my life wasn’t really mine, either, and i never had an ounce of control over what any of it looked like. and now that i do, i want my life to be pretty. i want to be in charge of my own home. my own life. i want to make my own decisions and i want to surround myself with things that i have chosen.

sure, they might be technically useless, colorful glass and string lights, pretty rocks and paintings and stuffed animals in pastel colors.

but they are mine.