This One Really Gets Me Bestie

Joan Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook”

1. bathe by hailaker

2. art by maggie stephenson

3. ocean vuong, night sky with exit wounds

4. art by charlotte ager

5. banana yoshimoto, goodbye tsugumi

oh, i am finally old enough to know why my parents took so long to grab their coats. why they would ask us to get ready to go only to sit down for another round of coffee. what would i tell myself, at 10 years old? it’s okay. sit down with them too. take in the extra hour with your friend and her family. when you get home, write down every moment in your diary. one day you will be older and you will be waving goodbye to your best friend, and you will turn the key to start your beat up little car engine, and you will look back over your shoulder. her hair will be blowing in the wind and she will be beautiful and you will be, for a moment, struck by all of it. what you will feel is so wide and nameless that it will engulf you. and you will think of being 14 and kicking her under the table in math every time you wanted to whisper something behind the teacher’s back. you will think about how long the days felt, and how you could hold her hand whenever you wished, but you didn’t. and you will think about all of the people you could have lingered with. and you will wish, more than you have ever felt a wish, that the universe just gave you that - more time to linger. more time to say - i love you. i know i need to leave, but i don’t want to leave you. and when i go, i am leaving a piece of my heart that lingers too. 

one more round of coffee. the days are so short, and you are so lovely.

In queer theory, the term queer is used to describe ruptures in commonly held assumptions about sexuality, gender, etc.

The sheer existence of asexuality shatters one of the oldest held beliefs about humanity which is that sexual attraction is a necessary and inevitable force that drives all people

Ace ppl turn this on its head. Our presence challenges the core of what it means to relate to others, to be happy, to find fulfillment —

To be human.

We are, if we choose to claim it, queer.

calm

cr: a quien corresponda

Reminder that if you're feeling pain due to your aspec identity, that that pain does not mean you have failed in any way or are doing yourself or anyone else a disservice by not being interested in/not being able to experience romantic/sexual relationships. Had society never drilled it into our heads that romance and sex are necessary to be happy, then I can promise you that we'd all be out here living the lives we want and enjoy without the stress of what anyone has to say about it or how anyone else sees it. It is the fault of amatonormativity/heteronormativity. It is the fault of compulsory attraction. It's never been your fault. And yes it's hard to believe and ignore anyone who would dare accuse you of being broken in any way, it's hard to ignore exclusionists sometimes, but just try to keep it in the back of your mind that you didn't do anything wrong. You never have. You are not faulty, you are not broken, you are as you were meant to be, and if you hate it right now, that's understandable. If your attraction changes at some point, that's completely fine and valid. However you are, that's perfectly normal.

pictures that fill me with infinite tenderness

I gotta ask, how do people, like, do stuff???

Ellen Bass, ‘The Thing Is’

when kafka said ‘you wouldn’t believe the kind of person I could become if you wanted it’ and when brontë said ‘if you ever looked at me with what I know is in you, I would be your slave’ and when Sartre said ‘if I’ve got to suffer it may as well be at your hands’