July

Guys I am like 80% sure I am happy and no longer depressed but I don’t actually like it? Its. a hollow happiness bc all of my passions were formed when I was mentally ill and I have no sense of identity anymore now that I am recovered ish, I fear that this crisis will work me back up into a depressive fit if I don’t find some meaningful enrichment soon

Hi all, here are some Diotima quotes from Plato’s Symposium that are making me lose my mind at 2 am. All quotes are from the Cambridge University Press (2008) Translation.

lately, when I think of summer, I think of

being sixteen and overgrown backyards with their old fences and rusted latches that were no match for graceless feet and hands.

warm evenings spent on balconies with our backs pressed to brick or iron, old wood and secrets splintering between us.

breathing in chlorine and lilacs under the rustling shade of a maple tree, and wondering how long you’d smell like home.

long drives and old forts and even older rivers, and the way our legs dangled off the edge of the locks, palms pressed to concrete instead of together.

roadside restaurants and souvenir shops and the way we shared sodas and honeysticks, tasting each other the only way we knew how.

the way you said, “this was fun” and “I’m glad we met,” and the way I asked, “will I see you again?” and all you could do was smile.

lately, when I think of summer, I think of you.

tracking mississippi mud along the richelieu river

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Hal Borland / M. Cumulus Life, Illuminations / Mary Quant / Unknown / Take a Load Off, Joanna Franklin Bell / Unknown / The Wild Marsh Four Seasons at Home in Montana, Rick Bass / July Moon, Louise Townsend Nicholl / VSCO: vxdb / The Months, Linda Pastan / Instagram: KJP / Lot, Bryan Washington / Tumblr: nobodysflower

And just like that, and now I am

Unsettled in my life again

The bubble burst, the joy all spent

Alone surrounded by my friends

They love me but can’t understand

There’s nothing more that I could ask

What is this discontented grief?

I feel incurably unwell

Though none externally has changed

Boat capsized at the smallest shift

My heart a songbird in a cage

It’s wailing, howling, and for what?

For all I ever dreamed is here

Perhaps I let my dreams decline

The bird remembers it could fly

And dreamed of more than comforts then

Yet still I think I’ve made a life

Worth living and rejoicing in

And my malaise in paradise

Just proves the problem wasn’t there

It’s in my head, its me, its me.

I wait every year for summer, and it is usually good, but it is never as good as that summer I am always waiting for.

Henri Lebasque, Village au bord de la riviere | Martha Gellhorn

Curse of crush on unattainable boy

Today’s edition of curse of crush on unattainable boy is less unattainable and more curse; he’s single and handsome and goes to my school and is one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever had a conversation with and we talked for hours, but it’s finals week and then I’m going abroad and he’s graduating, and right person wrong time SUX pals, getting your heart broken in three hours is very melodramatic but no less miserable for it. Had we but world enough and time etc etc

When there is no more depression like a stone around my neck, rare and treasured happiness becomes commonplace, and the euphoria of joy now feels like nothing, nothing at all, and contentment is not a mountain peak overlooking a panoramic view, but a flat and featureless plain. With no depression hiding me in a little pit, away from the sun, there is no shade or shelter, Just the glare, an undefended and uncharted expanse with room for dread to creep in unhindered, for uncertainty to reign when all directions look the same, and when there is no more up, no more climbing out, how do you decide where to go?

The tension between I will love you enough to stay and I will love you enough to give you my heart knowing I have to leave