#liminalheadspaces

[liminalheadspaces]

Obsessed with reverence but abhorrent of worship. It is weakness, mind-twisting, indoctrinating. But will we always revere until we've scraped up our knees; until we've given too much of our palms; until we hate ourselves and turn green in spite? The jaded shine on your cheek, the same one that kissed the ground beneath my feet - was it always meant to appear? Were you never meant to stay?

-serena

<3

[dagneyrobertson]

Make more time for anything you enjoy. The corollary is also true. Do less of what drains you. It is hard enough to get through each and every day, right now. Use your time to create something, or to appreciate something someone else created. Encourage instead of criticizing. Help someone whenever possible, and accept help when it is generously given. These are principles that have stood me well for many years.

This year I find myself noticing so much generosity and so many people holding others up, but only because I am looking for it. It is so easy to get spun up in the narrative of bipartisanship, so tempting to focus on the stress and sorrow. But, if you are paying attention, there is also so much grassroots good stuff going on. You frame your world view. Gilt, mahogany, barnwood or bullshit? You decide.

-Dagney

#dagneyrobertson #mymidlifecrisis #liminalheadspace

Note to self: make more time for photography.  You enjoy it.

[liminalheadspaces]

I'm sick and tired of being the angry dog, growling and tugging against the chain. Let me in. Let me lay down on the warm blanket by the fireplace. My fur may be mangled and wet, but it is still soft and glows like the sun.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

It's really cold out, much earlier than I expected. My cheeks are red like that night when I leaned over the bridge. I think about you often these days. Someone told me you're speaking to me in cryptic ways. I want to believe they're right because I don't think I'm staying here much longer, and I'd really like to see you before I go. There's still a few things I'd like to do before the cold frosts over.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

I asked the tree, with its leaves littered across the pavement in the middle of summer, if it hurts to watch your guts spilled on the concrete floor beside your body. I asked if it would have anything left to shed by the time the cold breezes came around town. It whispered, it doesn't matter how I feel; it's the way it is. What matters is my bark that will be touched by the dawn of new centuries you will never see.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

Loud laughter plays out on a bright animated screen. I glance to my side and share a smile with our group scattered across the row. Their smiles twitch. Uncanny Valley. I'm not supposed to be here. Oh no, I've done it again. I've wormed my way into people's lives and tricked myself into believing my own delusion of forever. Now, I must quietly excuse myself because I was never invited in the first place. Why must I only realize halfway through? Will I just be a dream? Something you made up in the haze of passing seasons? The routine of quiet shuffling up a theatre aisle feels familiar today, and before I know it, the door swings shut behind me. I fear I'm doomed to grow apart from ninety-nine percent of everyone I meet. I've run through so many people that I don't recognize myself anymore.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

Everything always comes back to the simple truth - is everything I'm feeling true or is there something deeply twisted in knots in my head and the sick mush of my brain will one day be studied in textbooks that explain the dreams of a mad author.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

Yearning is a different kind of loneliness. The softest dreams are the hardest to wake from because the green vile jealousy seeps through my pores as I return to my world. Why couldn't it have been me?

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

I don't know if you believe in the red string, but today, I feel it tugging and biting my skin. In the early hours of the morning, the thin threads squeezed my neck and wrists till I turned a beautiful lavender. I am left with nothing but your name and the epiphany that it was never about the mess we made. It was always about my fear, this unbearable pit at my stomach that gathered when I remembered today that you weren't a story I made up. That you were real. That you really saw me, perceived me in a way I had been waiting my whole life for. But bitter are the harmless wishes we weave myths around. Being completely seen petrifies me. I feel nauseous and frozen, and all I want to do is run away from my own body. I forgot what that felt like until today, until that thread tightened. And I fear tonight it will draw blood.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

On the bus today, I was thinking about how my future self wouldn't let me stay this way, so they definitely know more about me than I myself do now. For a brief moment, when we spoke, I could see them. Old and wrinkled. And it hit me - before today, before June 8th, 2024, I had never once seen myself old. Older perhaps, but not old, elderly. It felt like something inside me had healed and the timeline had shifted a couple months ago, and perhaps in this lifetime, I will grow old and I will know what it feels like to live for years and years.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

I treasure these moments where the soft warm glow of my own street lamp floods the room like a little pocket of starlight in the wide expanse of our universe. Time is fluid and the veil is lucid and I can feel through the void itself and commune with all of me. For a minute, the silly little postcards and the goofy photos on the wall don't look cheap and boring, but their own kind of magic serving their purpose. What I would give to feel like this forever.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

Being alone has helped me survive. In a strange way it has. There's nothing that could go wrong beyond my own doing. There's no one to invalidate or misunderstand and make things worse. I know that being alone will save me again. But at the same time, I know it is also slowly killing me. And I wonder when the slow-acting poison will finally catch up and my magical potion will work no longer.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

I'm returning to myself in so many ways. I could never explain my world in events because everything has been unfolding in my mind. But everything - the fear, the anguish, the love - brings me back to who I was and who I am. I have become more myself over the last year. And it's truly everything: all the pieces are radioactive on their own, but together, they complete me.

Today, I finished up another book. I'm reading with the curiosity and mirth of a child. I open up unknown titles, and I let the sentences on the pages sink in. I don't chase the story; I sit with words and roll them around my mouth.

I read so much as a child because I was eager to create meaning from stories so far from my own. I read anything and everything. Books stirred my heart and enveloped my whole world.

But when I wanted to return to my books a few years ago, I went searching for that feeling and I could not find it. I didn't know what I liked to read anymore. The reward of the epilogue was no match for my impatience.

Today, I realised that I've found the feeling now. And it's just one little speck of the entire universe I've (re)found. It was never about the books - it was always about the words.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

Let my dreams be kind to me tonight. If you must enter them, please tread carefully and leave a trail of only soft whispers and loving words. I am so tired and I don't want to fight and hurt and bruise tonight.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

Another year will pass and I will experience something so extraordinary I can't believe it and I will be thrown into a loop of pure awe and dazed fear. And once again, it'll pass and the equilibrium will be reset. Whoever said death in rebirth was right. I've shed these scales so many times that my past lives feel like a fever dream.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

Pretend for a second you don't know me. Close your eyes, let the tips of your fingers trace the ridges in my palms. Can you feel it? Do you see all that I am? Do you see where I could go? Do you see all my selves and all their journeys? Don't you see, it was all predestined. You were always meant to crumple me in your fist. And I was always meant to thrive in the concrete. So many paths and all of them lead back to right here: your fingers in my palms, and us wishing we could rewrite history. We always land right back here.

-serena

<3