think-stained

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idgaf if my parents are disappointed in me I'm not impressed by them either

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Really fucked up that you can just inherit complexes from your mother and be fully aware that they're complexes from your mother but still do all that shit

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@W_Asherah

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being in your 20s is like: i’m so young i’m so old. i should do everything i should rest. i can do what i want but i need to be careful. i’m an Adult™ but i need help from an Adult™. i’m so smart i’m so stupid. i’m leaving i feel left behind. i want to be a kid again and i can’t wait to be old. i’ve done a lot i’ve done nothing. i wanna be alone but i’m so lonely. like.... what the hell ??

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OOF 

(original text from article by devon price)

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Having your main anxiety response be Avoidance is crazy cause you'll think you're chillin and then one day you're like waitttt I've been paralyzed with fear this whole time. Damn

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“i used to live there” is such a sad phrase. seeing places u used to live in is an odd thing. It’s like ‘i know where the best hiding place is in there. my bedroom was the one directly to the left as you walk in. i took my first steps on that flooring. i used to play in that yard with my grandma. she died two years ago. that was the only place i ever knew. those walls contain all of my childhood memories. i can no longer go there, but i know every corner like the back of my hand.’

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The front door of my childhood house is painted blue now and there's an empty diaper box in the alley. The neighbors I never spoke to don't recognize me and the posters stapled to poles say the names of last week's parshiot. I know this because my partner's father sent them Shabbos trivia addressed to their deadname. The calendar says that yesterday was the new moon but I'm not sure if that makes today Rosh Chodesh. I gave a Hebrew name for my own today but it wasn't the one I grew up under. A girl on the bus wore a long skirt and a necklace spelling her Yiddish name and I dreamed of telling her I went to school with her sister, don't you remember we met at that Shabbaton? I walked back from the library and my legs carried me to the wrong home.

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they should invent a way of not becoming your father that doesn't involve becoming your mother

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sometimes that sad feeling is due to low blood sugar, and sometimes it's from decades of history. not that complex

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“I don’t know what my goals are, no. Thanks for asking.”

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Dads love having undiagnosed autism

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Not long before her death, Anna Kamieńska wrote what I think is her best poem (available in English, at any rate), a stark, haunting, and insidiously hopeful little gem called "A Prayer That Will Be Answered." The title is worth some stress, in both senses of that word: "A Prayer That Will Be Answered." Lord let me suffer much and then die Let me walk through silence and leave nothing behind not even fear Make the world continue let the ocean kiss the sand just as before Let the grass stay green so that the frogs can hide in it so that someone can bury his face in it and sob out his love Make the day rise brightly as if there were no more pain And let my poem stand clear as a windowpane bumped by a bumblebee's head (tr. by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak) This is an uncanny poem. It gives God all power (the continuance of the world) and no power (it was going to continue anyway). It is implicitly apophatic, you might say. That is, it erases what it asserts: it is a prayer to be reconciled to a world in which prayer does not work.

Christian Wiman, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair

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“You still crave lemonade, but the taste doesn’t satisfy you as much as it used to. You still crave summer, but sometimes you mean summer, five years ago.”

— Alida Nugent

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Praying Drunk

Our Father who art in heaven, I am drunk.

Again. Red wine. For which I offer thanks.

I ought to start with praise, but praise

comes hard to me. I stutter. Did I tell you

about the woman whom I taught, in bed,

this prayer? It starts with praise; the simple form

keeps things in order. I hear from her sometimes.

Do you? And after love, when I was hungry,

I said, Make me something to eat. She yelled,

Poof! You’re a casserole!—and laughed so hard

she fell out of the bed. Take care of her.

Next, confession—the dreary part. At night

deer drift from the dark woods and eat my garden.

They’re like enormous rats on stilts except,

of course, they’re beautiful. But why? What makes

them beautiful? I haven’t shot one yet.

I might. When I was twelve, I’d ride my bike

out to the dump and shoot the rats. It’s hard

to kill your rats, our Father. You have to use

a hollow point and hit them solidly.

A leg is not enough. The rat won’t pause.

Yeep! Yeep! it screams, and scrabbles, three-legged, back

into the trash, and I would feel a little bad

to kill something that wants to live

more savagely than I do, even if

it’s just a rat. My garden’s vanishing.

Perhaps I’ll merely plant more beans, though that

might mean more beautiful and hungry deer.

Who knows?

I’m sorry for the times I’ve driven

home past a black, enormous, twilight ridge.

Crested with mist, it looked like a giant wave

about to break and sweep across the valley,

and in my loneliness and fear I’ve thought,

O let it come and wash the whole world clean.

Forgive me. This is my favorite sin: despair—

whose love I celebrate with wine and prayer.

Our Father, thank you for all the birds and trees,

that nature stuff. I’m grateful for good health,

food, air, some laughs, and all the other things

I’m grateful that I’ve never had to do

without. I have confused myself. I’m glad

there’s not a rattrap large enough for deer.

While at the zoo last week, I sat and wept

when I saw one elephant insert his trunk

into another’s ass, pull out a lump,

and whip it back and forth impatiently

to free the goodies hidden in the lump.

I could have let it mean most anything,

but I was stunned again at just how little

we ask for in our lives. Don’t look! Don’t look!

Two young nuns tried to herd their giggling

schoolkids away. Line up, they called. Let’s go

and watch the monkeys in the monkey house.

I laughed, and got a dirty look. Dear Lord,

we lurch from metaphor to metaphor,

which is—let it be so—a form of praying.

I’m usually asleep by now—the time

for supplication. Requests. As if I’d stayed

up late and called the radio and asked

they play a sentimental song. Embarrassed.

I want a lot of money and a woman.

And, also, I want vanishing cream. You know—

a character like Popeye rubs it on

and disappears. Although you see right through him,

he’s there. He chuckles, stumbles into things,

and smoke that’s clearly visible escapes

from his invisible pipe. It makes me think,

sometimes, of you. What makes me think of me

is the poor jerk who wanders out on air

and then looks down. Below his feet, he sees

eternity, and suddenly his shoes

no longer work on nothingness, and down

he goes. As I fall past, remember me.

- Andrew Hudgins

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i have an angel and a devil on my shoulder and also a third other guy who looks just like my dad. i try not to look at him but i know he's there.