Oh shit. Sally Field kinda went off here. “The garment you knit for yourself as a child.” Might have to read her memoir now.
They should invent a method of asking for reassurance that nobody secretly hates you that doesn't make people secretly hate you.
this reply deserves to be here.

please don’t spend your life convincing yourself that love or joy is reserved for the idealized version of you that only exists in the future
The Doubling of Self: An Interview with Richard Siken by Peter Mishler
file -> phrases that are going to shift something in me forever
My father always told me: "If you want to go for a run, go for a run, don't look for company. Sooner or later, on your fifth run or your twentieth, like-minded people will find you themselves." And only recently have I realized that this principle works everywhere.

“That’s why high school, or a crappy job, or any other restrictive circumstance can be dangerous: They make dreams too painful to bear. To avoid longing, we hunker down, wait, and resolve to just survive. Great art becomes a reminder of the art you want to be making, and of the gigantic world outside of your small, seemingly inescapable one. We hide from great things because they inspire us, and in this state, inspiration hurts.”
— One of the best articles I’ve ever read. Rookie Mag. By Spencer Tweedy. (via wildyork)
step one to overcoming social anxiety is to realize that most people kind of suck and their opinion of you is literally worthless
step two is to realize that the people who don't suck are actually pretty cool with whatever weird stuff you say
i must not get takeout. takeout is the wallet-killer. takeout is the little-death that brings total obliteration. i will face the kitchen, fridge, and pantry. i will make choices about what to cook and then execute them. when hunger is gone there will be nothing. only i will remain.
“but it wasn’t that bad”
did it hurt? did you feel scared? unsafe? were you embarrassed? humiliated? terrified? did you feel confused on why? does it keep you up at night? do you avoid being in a similar situation? did you cry? did you want to cry? who told you it wasn’t that bad?

“If you inherently long for something, become it first. If you want gardens, become the gardener. If you want love, embody love. If you want mental stimulation, change the conversation. If you want peace, exude calmness. If you want to fill your world with artists, begin to paint. If you want to be valued, respect your own time. If you want to live ecstatically, find the ecstasy within yourself. This is how to draw it in, day by day, inch by inch.”
— Victoria Erickson (via serendipitousromance)

how does thou live deliciously?
eat delicious things in all manner of sense: consume delicious novels, let your skin soak up warm sunlight, hold or kiss the ones you love, be amused by terrible jokes, plant basil in your kitchen window and smell it regularly and use it for cooking. be endlessly without self-imposed limitations in noticing and enjoying beauty, because there is no moral rightness to making delight a scarcity.
Btw, studies show that the caterpillar is a conscious goo inside the cacoon with memories from its previous life.
the most infuriating thing about personal growth is that even if someone else did have the answer you needed and conveyed it to you in a precise and effective matter, it won't make sense until you're ready for it. you could hear it every day of your life and it wouldn't matter a fucking bit until it finally clicks. there's very little you can do to influence when that happens, either

2023
FIND GOD
READ DOSTOEVSKY
EAT VEGETABLES
FUCK SILLY
FALL IN LOVE




