tumbledtoast - Tumblr blog

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Two favorite sweaters

Pencil sketch by me

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“When someone could show you heaven, that person could show you hell too.”

— Unknown

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when kafka said ‘you wouldn’t believe the kind of person I could become if you wanted it’ and when brontë said ‘if you ever looked at me with what I know is in you, I would be your slave’ and when Sartre said ‘if I’ve got to suffer it may as well be at your hands’

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they are on a date

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playlist 1, playlist 2, playlist 3, playlist 4, playlist 5, playlist 6

just what i’ve been listening to

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spotify playlists i made that i love:

for instantly inducing sadness and depression

for losing sight of what love means to you

for feeling present in the current moment

for deep-rooted loneliness

for the pure excitement of having a crush

for sleeping

for the person who left and would ruin you if they ever came back

for a love that rages like a fire

for your pride & prejudice hand flex moment

for feeling dreamy

for your radiohead fix

for crying while still bopping along

for drinking warm spiced milk on a rainy day

for feeling like you're an indie coming of age film

for the nostalgic emo phase

for feeling wretched

for when you're walking the streets of a new city by yourself

for daydreaming about moving to new york city with your best friends

for bangerz only

for wearing bold lipstick

for your bollywood fix

for allowing yourself to change

for feeling like you're floating on your back in a swimming pool at night in an indie movie

for your gracie abrams fix

for when you don't recognize yourself

for my desi diaspora kids

for my desi diaspora kids pt 2

for traveling and being present

for feeling like a smashed vase, or for smashing vases

for the jungle

for your james blake fix

for managing the aux cord

for feeling like the color orange, or perhaps the fruit. either one

for late night car rides surrounded by the open sky

for seeing the end of the world but smiling ridiculously

for your ridiculous bestie

for dying of love

for gradually falling into sleep

for your joji fix

for watching bright orange sunsets while hating yourself

for feeling the first warmth of summer hit you

for feeling like the weird kid in class again

for learning to live without the heartache it gives you

for playing breath of the wild

for realizing that romantic love will not be the thing that heals you

for whispering secrets to your best friend

for the kids who grew up on the internet

for love, or the lack thereof

for when you want to move to a new city but something is keeping you where you are

for your morning walk

for sitting in a field of marigolds

for beat drops that make you go feral

for traveling to see your best friends

for not allowing yourself to feel ridiculous anymore

for feeling like a perpetually open wound

for risk-taking

for your coke studio pakistan fix

for waiting for better days

for haunting

for being afraid that this is all there is

for texting them to get home safe

for falling in love in the summertime

for your hallmark movie main character moment

for your slowcore fix

for studying

for eating heartshaped jam cookies

for an espresso shot of joy

for feeling like an empty well that has nothing left to give

for love-filled days

for your ariana grande fix

for web-weaving

for your commute

for losing grip of your dreams

for setting this whole year on fire

for feeling like a pakistani uncle drinking chai on the porch

for isolation

for kicking anxiety in the face

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"Your grandfather and I've been together for 56 years", said my grandma one night while showing some tattered photographs from her shabby album. Her eyes sparkled as she went by each page, narrating their first meeting and reliving her girlhood. I picked up one and asked after some time, with a thrill of stupefaction, "What held it, what helped the love between you and Grandpa last so long? ..." "What shall hold love", she chuckled, her eyes still glued on the photographs, as if trying hard to forget about the ephemerality of young romance. "What shall hold love", she continued after a pause, "when love's supposed to hold us? At first, I thought I loved him. Well, I did, perhaps not once but countless times, in a multitude of ways. In fact, he loved me with the same sincerity. But what's more essential is that each time we loved one another, we felt we were loving ourselves. When I trusted him, I felt I was trusting myself; when he promised he would make my dreams come true, he worked all night to make his dreams come true. His pains were my pains, and my insecurities his. When I thought I'd lose him, I felt I'd lose myself; every time he found I was contented, his joys would know no bounds. Throughout our lives, we were busy saving ourselves and ended up protecting each other". 

Shayan Das

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and it always comes back

to your willingness

to destroy yourself

for the slightest chance

that someone might

care enough to stop you.

-mars

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I will be hard to love.

Not because I will be cruel to you (know that I would die all the little deaths that come your way, pressing them to my chest like stolen letters, inhaling the pain to spare you discomfort) but because 

I will be cruel to myself 

And you will have to watch.

I stumble into sabotage 

So like a ballroom: my lying assurances 

Dancing the night away —

my love, you will have to pull me off the bathroom floor.

I looked bewildered at my agony

And knew only what I was afraid to lose. 

You will hold me and I will apologize again

And again, and again. You kiss my apologies on the forehead 

And send them kindly on their way. 

I will be hard to love 

Because I have made it that way. But

I squeeze your hand in the parking lot

And know that difficulty is nothing, nothing, nothing 

Nothing to a adoring soul. 

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Random pieces of advice

The world is less scary and chaotic if you lie down on the floor

Noticing different kinds of light (stars, candles, sunshine or city lights) can bring back the feeling of wonder and hope

If you can’t shower, washing your hands and face will help you feel better and cleaner

If you can’t clean anything else, changing and/or washing your bedsheets can do wonders

Fresh air and being outside in general can help with depersonalisation

Spending time around animals can help you recognise what’s important and calm anxious thought cycles

Techniques for emotional regulation in children can really help adults too

Putting random asortment of food on a plate without creating an actual dish still counts as a meal

Drink something warm

Delete that app

Treat yourself as if you were a kid. Buy yourself a toy, play around, learn about cool new things

Fast paced life isn’t morally better and it’s not good for everyone

There is no good reason to keep yourself hungry

Singing to your full lung capacity can be a great way to let out built up emotion

Tension in the face can cause headaches. Try to massage your face regularly

Nothing is as important as your health

You are a whole person on your own, you don’t need someone else to be there to deserve love and attention. Your life can be full as long as you are present

You should cry things out whenever you feel like it

Slow walks are still movement and they do count

It’s never as bad as you imagine it

Try changing your toothpaste flavor if you hate brushing your teeth

Anything can be a stim toy - one of my favourites is a heavy dragon necklace that has a complicated surfice. It’s fun to touch and hold and it’s not even “actual” stim toy

Procrastinating and feeling bad about it is true waste of time. Learn to truly rest. It takes the same amount of time but it is useful

Sometimes you have to force yourself to do the things that make you feel better

Don’t trust the thoughts you have after not sleeping for a while

Friendships don’t have to be forever to mean something

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one of the things about having an unstable parent is that it can so easily ruin your future. you want to get out, but getting out takes having agency. it takes the resume and the grades and the stellar community service history.

but you have to choose your battles. you know if you sign up for an after-school activity, it'll be okay for a while, so long as the activity is parent-approved and god-fearing. over time, like all things, it will become an argument (i can't keep carting your ass to these things) or a weapon (talk to me like that again, see if you get to go to practice). sometimes, if you love the thing, it's worth it. but you also know better than to love something: that's how they get you. if you ever actually want something, it will always be the center of their attention. they will never stop threatening you with it. telling you of course i'm a good parent, i came to all of those stupid events.

you learn to balance yourself perfectly. you can either have a social life or you can have hobbies. both of these things will be under constant scrutiny. you spend too much time with her, you should be at home with family is equally paired with you're acting like this because you're addicted to what's on that goddamn screen. you cannot ever actually win, so everything falls within a barter system that you calculate before entering: do you want to learn how to drive? if so, you'll need to give up asking for a new laptop, even though yours died. maybe you can work on a computer at the library. of course, that would mean you'd be allowed to go to the library, which would mean something else has to bleed. nothing ever actually comes free.

and that bitter, horrible irony: you could be literally following their orders and it still isn't pretty. they tell you to get a job; they hate that your job keeps you late and gives you access to actual money. they tell you to do better in school; they say no child of mine needs a tutor. they want you to stop being so morose, don't you know there are people who are really suffering - but they revile the idea you might actually need therapy.

you didn't survive that fall the way other people would. you've seen other people scramble and get their way out, however they could. maybe you were made too-soft: the answer didn't come to you easily. it wasn't quick. it was brutal and nasty. some people even asked you why didn't you just work hard and escape during school? and you felt your head spinning. why didn't you? (they control your financial aid. they control your loan status. they love having that kind of thing). maybe in another life you got diagnosed sooner and got the meds you needed to actually focus and got attention from the right teachers who helped you clear hurdles to get up out of here - but for now? here?

the effort of trying. the effort of not-dying. that kind of effort was absolutely agonizing.

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they should make a version of my life where everything didn't go horribly wrong when I was 14

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CoUP4RLJjbf/

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Every single day I feel so desperate I just want to tell someone I love how they smell or I am in love with their handwriting but we are not supposed to say these things to anyone I just want to be close to people and for them to want to be close to me everything feels like a charade or a carefully choreographed play and we have to keep our distance and act a certain way there is always this gap between us but I just want to jump over it