#how strange it is to be anything at all

[der3ality]

[putyourcigaretteoutonmyback]

if god is real ,

he is cruel .

[schmoyoho]

christalbott450 cooked, give them a publishing deal 🗣️

[risesthenight]

there’s this trope where a queer person falls in love with their straight bsf and have to keep quiet as said friend doesn’t shut up about their love interest and i just wanna say

it’s so real

TOO real in fact,

and not just to alloromantics

the aroace experience of watching each and every one of your friends desert you for their partner and put all their energy into a relationship you’ll never quite understand? very painful!

i’ve known you for years and the way i look at you is with the same heart that he does, but my love will always be second to his

[heartz4shauna]

i hope he is okay

[skribbyposts]

Sanji, staring longingly at the sea: “maybe there is something wrong with me but i feel while watching him fight roronoa zoro so hot. but I am a boy and will be punished.

…How strange it is to be anything at all”

[april-is]

April 17, 2024: You Belong to the World, Carrie Fountain

You Belong to the World Carrie Fountain

as do your children, as does your husband. It’s strange even now to understand that you are a mother and a wife, that these gifts were given to you and that you received them, fond as you’ve always been of declining invitations. You belong to the world. The hands that put a peach tree into the earth exactly where the last one died in the freeze belong to the world and will someday feed it again, differently, your body will become food again for something, just as it did so humorously when you became a mother, hungry beings clamoring at your breast, born as they’d been with the bodily passion for survival that is our kind’s one common feature. You belong to the world, animal. Deal with it. Even as the great abstractions come to take you away, the regrets, the distractions, you can at any second come back to the world to which you belong, the world you never left, won’t ever leave, cells forever, forever going through their changes, as they have been since you were less than anything, simple information born inside your own mother’s newborn body, itself made from the stuff your grandmother carried within hers when at twelve she packed her belongings and left the Scottish island she’d known—all she’d ever known—on a ship bound for Ellis Island, carrying within her your mother, you, the great human future that dwells now inside the bodies of your children, the young, who, like you, belong to the world.

--

Also by Carrie Fountain: Will You?

More like this: -> The World Has Need of You, Ellen Bass -> Why I’m Here, Jacqueline Berger -> from Burial, Ross Gay -> Poem to My Child, If Ever You Shall Be, Ross Gay

Today in:

2023: Mammogram Call Back with Ultra Sound, Ellen Bass 2022: Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness, Franny Choi 2021: Weather, Claudia Rankine 2020: The Understudy, Bridget Lowe 2019: Against Dying, Kaveh Akbar 2018: Close Out Sale, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz 2017: Things That Have Changed Since You Died, Laura Kasischke 2016: Percy, Waiting for Ricky, Mary Oliver 2015: My Heart, Kim Addonizio 2014: My Skeleton, Jane Hirshfield 2013: Catch a Body, Oliver Bendorf 2012: No, Mark Doty 2011: from Narrative: Ali, Elizabeth Alexander 2010: Baseball Canto, Lawrence Ferlinghetti 2009: Nothing but winter in my cup, Alice George 2008: Poppies in October, Sylvia Plath 2007: I Imagine The Gods, Jack Gilbert 2006: An Offer Received In This Morning’s Mail, Amy Gerstler 2005: The Last Poem In The World, Hayden Carruth

[dirtonmyknees]

splash !

the waters cold and refreshing,

something to combat the warm summer air,

plop

sitting in the water, the sand clouding it, a shade of brown before returning to the clear color.

the rivers nice, really.

[dykeseinfeld]

was super depressed yesterday abt how my friends don’t really care abt me enough to invite me to anything fun well. now i’m going to a party on thursday night and going on vacation w my friends in a couple weeks so

[silentradi0]

i think about this at least once a day

[belmeran]

i don’t know what i’m feeling right now

[terriblebicho]

that guy who put that comment under that Twilight video had the right idea, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is like, a really good song to have a sexuality crisis to.

[roadsidegrave]

when I can’t rb the neutral milk hotel stimboard because op says proshippers dni and I just rbed and tagged a gifset from a romantic movie as the twins from breaking bad :(

[putyourcigaretteoutonmyback]

────────────────────────────

do i,

one person out of eight billion, on a planet that's bathing in a sea of stars and galaxies,

even matter ?

────────────────────────────

if i was gone it wouldn't affect the world all that much, maybe the people around me, but that's temporary. we all die anyways, don't we? people say life is short yet it feels so, so long despite how the days will pass me by. how ill sit in bed doing the same things, scrolling on this phone, recognizing I should get off, get up, go do something, yet still, I remain unmoved. in my bed. on my phone. and the next days the same, and the next, and the next. my days are all spent the same, what good does living do me, really.

one small person in a universe full of things that have far more potential then ill ever have or live up to. a quit exit would be taking pills, or jumping in the river only a quick drive from me, maybe drown myself in the pool.

ive planned it in my head, sort of anyways. i could sneak out in the middle of the night, walk hours just to find the bridge, to feel the cold railing before ive sunken beneath it. or i could take a ton of pills, though that's not guaranteed. neither of them are i suppose. its funny, really, how suicides something ill always think about. it's the only constant on my mind; even if im happy, out with my friends or family, it lingers. what if this is the last time i see them? the last time they see me. it gets worse when I'm sad. killing myself would take evey feeling ive ever felt away, and id be gone.

i wonder if death is peaceful, i wonder what happens once we die. everyone does, i think, yet it remains unanswered until it happens. tons of reasons to stay, but tons to leave. sometimes i think about how if i do have another life after this, ill never know since it won't actually be me, it won't be my second life because itll be someone completely different. theyll have a different name and face, a different conscience because they won't be me. ill be dead, and someone else will live their life.

when you put it like that, do second lives even exist? if it won't be someone with the same conscience, someone who won't know of your existence, then really, it's just someone else.

“ in my next life I want — ” not your next life, someone else's life. someone completely different. and sometimes, i wanna be something, i wanna be everything, but thatll never be possible. i cant live every life, study every animal whilst learning of every movie ever made. i cant read every book written or listen to all the music that was created on this planet, and that frustrates me.

alot.

i wanna be soft, gentle, but at the same time, i wanna be loud and confident. i wanna get better, to live without the need to criticize my every move, every feature on my body or every word i said, but at the same time, i wanna get sick, be the worst i can be. cut my skin every day, go weeks without food, stop showering, give up, all in the hopes someone notices. to simply let go, to see how it feels, to see if it's any better then trying to be good, to be kind, better then putting in the effort to get out of bed every day, to shower, to do laundry.

back to suicide, i guess. its a sin, isnt it. but is god real? so many things yet to be proven. if god were real, why would he waste time with such insignificant things such as humans, much less care about the sexuality of someone or what they choose to believe in. god is cruel, afterall. someone could spend their whole life being good whilst believing in a religion other than christianity, and guess what. to hell they go. someone who's suffering, who sees suicide as their only way out, to hell. the rapist of someone who committed because of them, they repent and suddenly their a saint. to heaven, of course. what makes someone a good person, really? is if how often they compliment others, is it whether or not they pick up the money someone dropped and return it to them? to be a good person must you believe in certain things, does your past define how good you are? what does it take to be defined as good.

life is unfair, really. you're born into a body, into a family, you're raised, taken care of, unless you arent. the people you're surrounded by as you grow completely dictate who you become, and you cant control that. the body you've got from your mom, the addiction gene from your father, the nose and face you hate from generations before, stuff you get stuck with. you can't change most things, sure, workout, starve, do as you please but that doesn't change the structure of your bones or the people who made you. plastic surgery is expensive, and youll be called fake anyways, so is it worth it? I wonder why it's so hard to like myself.

i really dislike my face, my body, my personality and my voice. the little comments people make, whether they intend to cause harm or to not. they linger within my mind, floating in a thousand other thoughts i have yet to think deeper about. i guess thats what im doing right now. i would be journaling this but my hands hurt, so now whoever sees this gets to decide if they wanna read this. thats probably why i made this account. to rant, to vent.

something i really can't imagine is being anything older then I am right now. being an adult, growing up, it seems so impossible but i know it's not because i see it all around me every day. maybe it's because since from a young age, i always thought id be dead. that id kill myself before the age i am now, before i ever got to be a parent or employee. i still think that, probably, because i still wanna kill myself and its still set in my mind. “ i wont be anything more then what i am right now. ”

maybe its true, maybe its not.

the question “ what do you wanna be when you grow up ” was always hard for me. i never knew, i mean, my childish dreams of being a youtuber were there but that's it. i have no idea who i am or who i wanna be. theres so many jobs, but only so much time to do them, so many careers require a certain course in school, which tends to be expensive. what if i choose something i end up hating? what if im stuck for the rest of my life and miserable. im scared of growing up, of making the wrong choice.

on that topic, sex. its scary, really scary. what if i lose it to the wrong person? of course, i could wait till marriage, but divorce is always a possibility so even then. who would i consider the right person? im not sure. itll probably hurt, what if they see me naked and change their mind? someone seeing me naked is scary. maybe ill just die a virgin, lame, but atleast i won't have to be vulnerable. what if I bleed and he says ew, what if it goes wrong, what if what if what if.

my mind is full of what ifs, always. what if the hangout I have planned goes wrong? what if I get made fun of? maybe I think too much.

thats probably it for now, read it or don't, I wish tumblr said how many words it had. maybe it does, not sure, anyways, bye.

[moodstabilizr]

being in your 20s is basically doing the same shit u did at 13 but u have to pay taxes

[delulumc]

im crying so much because I saw this and it's basically Mina's entire characterization in Pretend