#on surviving

[akindplace]

Even if you feel like you have only survived this year, it’s still a hell of an accomplishment. I’m glad you made it through the end. I hope the next year will be kinder, softer, and that you’ll get to do more than survive. I hope you live the life you wish to live, I hope you thrive, and find some peaceful stability. I’m proud of you for surviving everything you faced this year. It’s not an easy thing to do, sometimes all our energy goes to trying to survive and we might feel like we haven’t had time to do what we actually wanted to, and that’s incredibly unfair. But it doesn’t mean you didn’t do anything important this year, because surviving isn’t a waste of time, it is an achievement to manage so many problems. It’s good that you tried to cope with what life threw at you. These things brought you here, and I’m proud of you. I hope next year will be better for us 🩵

[spiderarchive]

I had to destroy a part of myself to survive. I had to leave her there in a burning house. She can never leave. She burns so that I can live.

[gasolinehive]

— RYUICHI SAKAMOTO: CODA

Ryuichi Sakamoto playing a piano (Grand Yamaha) that survived a tsunami which killed more than 1,600 people after the earthquake in Fukushima on March 11, 2011. He said it felt like playing "the corpse of a piano that had drowned"

[on-trying]

[prettythinguglylie]

Sometimes, it really genuinely just burns down to if life doesn't give you small joys anymore, what's the point? if you don't feel the slightest bit of excitement opening a package from the mail, if you don't smile at nice people, if you don't feel the sun on your face, whats the point of all the suffering?

[spiderarchive]

We can never go back. I know that now. We can go forward. We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until we let go grief about the love we lost long ago, when we  were little and had no voice to speak the heart's longing.

All About Love, bell hooks

We are all going forward. None of us are going back.

Snow and Dirty Rain, Richard Siken

All About Love, bell hooks | Snow and Dirty Rain, Richard Siken

[clairenatural]

there's a cherry blossom tree in DC that keeps blooming every year even though it shouldn't and the park service keeps thinking it's dead and then it keeps blooming! well they're removing a lot of trees to rehabilitate the area and they've said it's finally time for stumpy to go and they're going to mulch it and use the mulch to enrich all the other trees so it can help everything else keep going. and they're also going to plant spliced little pieces of it all over so that stumpy can live forever and this is genuinely sending me into a spiral

[bloodstainedmuzzle]

Resident Evil 4 Remake (2023) Leon S. Kennedy [ 1 / ??? ]

[markwateneymemorialcrater]

Please note. The orange one is not included because A. He isn’t a billionaire. And B. Calling him obnoxious is too kind for him.

[wrenchwenches]

[akindplace]

I think we often play down the awful things that happen to us, maybe because they’re so hard to think about, maybe because we’re disappointed things didn’t turn out the way we wanted and we blame ourselves even though a lot depends on external factors we couldn’t control. Anyway. Everyone is really going through it, and it’s good to give others the benefit of the doubt and try our best to be kind, right? Yeah, that also applies to you. You don’t have to earn everything by giving yourself away until there’s nothing left, or by proving yourself perfect over and over. Don’t demand so much out of yourself. Sometimes it’s best to recognize those things you’ve been through weren’t easy, and to remember you’re not a failure because you couldn’t completely control those bad situations you found yourself in. I hope you can realize you are more than the bad things that have happened to you, that life won’t always be great, but it won’t always be a complete tragedy. You’re just a person trying your best to keep going even though some terrible memories still bring you down. But I hope you’re proud for having survived. It’s time to create more pleasant memories. You’ve hurt enough. You deserve comfort, and love and help.

[james-p-sullivan]

the older i get and the closer i am to reaching 30, the more the people around me try to deny me my age. it’s a constant ‘oh you’re just turning 29 again teehee 🤭’ or ‘dont tell your SO that, he’ll leave you for a younger model 😉’ and i just???? hate it?????????

i spent my entire teenaged years fighting for my life. i crawled through the deepest pits of my depression to cling to the promise of a life beyond that pain. i was so convinced that i was going to die young, that i would never see the grace of my age starting with a 2, let alone 3.

so im going to turn 30, and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do to stop me from loving it.

[rapidpunches]

"SURVIVING"

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

[thedogeveryonehates]

🦐A SINGLE MOM WHO WORKS TWO JOBS, WHO LOVES HER KIDS BUT NEVER STOPS🦐

[asteroidtroglodyte]

5 years ago, I was in Rehab.

10 years ago, I was watching my Potential and Opportunities dissolve and evaporate in an ocean of cheap gin and expensive whiskey.

But 5 years ago, I was in Rehab.

One of the exercises they had us perform was to imagine ourselves happy, 5 years in the future.

Many of us in that room had forgotten how to imagine nice things happening to them. A few snorted (well, I snorted), finding the notion that we’d even still be around in 5 years grimly humorous.

For about half of us, it was the last stop on the way down.

But I indulged the therapist. I was there, after all, because I did not want to die. So, I imagined myself, 5 years hence.

Happy.

It came to me all at once; an artistic remix on Norman Rockwell’s Freedom From Want, reframed with myself placing food at the table.

Sunday Dinner At My Place, I answered, when it came my turn to share my fantasy. I was asked what food I imagined eating.

It’s not the meal itself, I said, it’s the implications framed around it. Sunday Dinner At My Place means that I have a Place. It means that I have Family that will actually speak to me and friends who actually want to see me. It means money enough not just to feed myself but others too. It means having the time to spare to take the time preparing the meal.

A lot of nodding heads all around me. A struck chord. Many people with no Place, in that place. Nowhere that would lament their leaving.

5 years hence, as I lay down to sleep in my Home, with my Wife and my Son, surrounded by my Art and my Flowers, I reflect.

It was a long road. It was hard. We lost people. So many people. There were long days and long nights and hospital stays. Angry arguments with ghosts. I changed, in ways I never hoped for, or expected. Good ways, finally, for once. Slowly, against the backdrop of a world in chaos, I found my mind.

Sometimes, My Wife wondered aloud, what she did to deserve me. After some stumbling with my feelings, I eventually settled on an answer.

I’m a Rescue.

She gave me a Home.

And, so, I gave her a Family.

It seemed fair

This Sunday, my folks, which whom I have not had a shouting match in years, will come over for dinner. We will cook and eat together. My Friend became My Wife, and she took a piece of me and with it she made Our Son. There will be many hugs, and no violence. Good Things Happened.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you don’t know what the future holds.

don’t give up yet, ok?

It could get good, even.