foggy suggestions

Eighteen year old me, she sits in greener pastures and sees it as the next stepping stone toward survival, nothing more. She does not stop to see how the color shifts when the light shines through it.

She sits in greener pastures / Helena Ducusin

In the spring I emerged slowly and then all at once. I have spent every day since getting used to the prospect of being okay, telling my jaw to unclench and shoulders to drop for good. I hesitated to let myself believe it would last until belief dripped in through the covers I had pulled over my head. The defense was never impenetrable but I marveled at the first inkling anyway—Maybe it will stay okay.

This inkling, now having been swallowed, sits in my stomach as the year swings around to September once again. Does this mean the dread has nowhere to go? Am I allowed to tell it I’m not hungry, I am full enough with life and there is no need to stay?

trickle down orange / helena ducusin

It’s crazy and fucked up that being yourself is actually the solution.

It’s like. When I was told to “just be yourself” as a kid I thought it was a passive thing. Like oh easy I just have to sit here and be myself. but the reason so many people think that “being yourself” is bullshit advice is because you actually have to make active choices to do this and it WILL make your life way more fun. You have to wear t-shirts of bands that were popular ten years ago because you like them. You have to do your hair in a way that you find cute or comfortable even if it’s “so nineties”. If your friend says a food you enjoy is gross to them, you can’t be afraid to admit you casually disagree. You have to do hobbies that you’re interested in even if you’re bad at them and you cant feel like you have to get good at something before you tell people it’s an activity you do. You have to read manga and comic books in public and get piercings your relatives think are unattractive. You don’t have to tell people you dislike that you dislike them, but you don’t have to give them your time and attention either. You have to rewatch that kids show you’re nostalgic for even if you’re in your 30s. You have to change your name if you hate it, even if only a few close friends can know. You have to get fun girly drinks at the bar. You have to order hot chocolate when you don’t like coffee and black coffee when you don’t like sweet things. I am still bad at practicing this but it is the only way to make it all tolerable.

— eugenia leigh, “post-traumatic stress disorder with han (한/恨),” bianca

i used to walk where something clung to the periphery, hung in the corners of the room, snaked across the ceiling and the ceiling painted like sky. fell down in curtains of rain from clouds that didn’t darken the sky.

how did i not fear it, when it was always within sight? i suppose i saw it as some sort of protection, even if i could feel eyes tracing the back of my head as i looked both ways before crossing the street.

it has receded, now. i expected to feel infinite, a cherry tomato over heat about to burst open. free from the confines of heaven and hell and the ladder that will take you either way.

i suppose it is some sort of loss—the realization that there is only as much of a higher power as you want there to be. but it isn’t any more or less lonely. it is just wider, larger.

- divining / Helena Ducusin

she could only bear to have soft things around her, gentle touches, dim light, muted sounds.

Ocean Vuong, from “Deto(nation)”, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

it has receded, now. i expected to feel infinite, a cherry tomato over heat about to burst open. free from the confines of heaven and hell and the ladder that will take you either way.

i suppose it is some sort of loss—the realization that there is only as much of a higher power as you want there to be. but it isn’t any more or less lonely. it is just wider, larger.

Helena Ducusin / divining

That’s how it goes, don’t you get sick of it?

I have written the same thing every Friday for months. There isn’t anything else to write about because we have no other choice but to go on. We are stuck in a loop like it’s a dream—we will make the same lunches and watch the news and too easily believe it is all out of our control, there is nothing we can do to stop it, there is no pinch sharp enough to wake us from the world so deceptive they’ve convinced us it isn’t worth trying to save.

That’s how it goes, it’s so repetitive

Going, going / Helena Ducusin

yall ever just yearn? ever get filled with the most profound sense of longing for something you cant understand? yall ever crave? ever have an unexplainable ache?

wow i miss your face

I CAN'T LIVE LIKE THIS ANYMORE!!! continues not only living like this but in fact gets actively worse with time

sometimes i wonder what love would be like if i hadn’t first known fear.

blind spots / hindsight, helena ducusin

do u ever get that feeling where its just “oh my god i love that person so much they make my life so bright and bring me so much happiness what did i ever even do to deserve them”

childhood was so crazy. my parents were kind of young. a meal seemed to last forever. i could run for ages. everyone was alive