sometimes I wonder how we all survive and then I look at my best friends and I go “oh, I survive because I don’t want to leave you yet” and it makes sense. life is so hard a lot of the time, but I want one more bowl of pasta with you.
Samuel Beckett, Watt
transposons rule so hard. such a dumb fucking thing to exist. how does anything get done at all. how are any of us even alive
rb to give the previous person a fucking break because life aint life-ing the way its supposed to life and it fucking sucks.
The Doubling of Self: An Interview with Richard Siken by Peter Mishler
thinking about this
My best friend who died for no reason would have been 40 today. I think when people die it's tempting to make them into saints, which he certainly wasn't, but without exaggerating his qualities he was and is one of my favorite people, and if you met him i think he would've been one of yours. He was my favorite for a lot of reasons I can't imitate or match -- his intelligence, his kindness, his patience, his artistic daring. But he was also my favorite because he was interested in and curious about so many things, particularly other people, and that is something I or anyone can emulate, which is why Sept. 20 is my personal Curious About Someone Else's Area of Interest Day! In honor of my dead friend I would love for you to tell me something you are learning or doing that's taking up space in your brain. Are you learning a new language, did you write six pages of a novel, did you try linocut (!), are you studying gene expression, do you have a new pet lizard, did you visit an arboretum? I would love to hear about it. and so would your friends probably even if you think they wouldn't. before my friend died i loved hearing him talk about dramaturgy and would've loved to listen to him do it for 24 straight hours, even though i always made fun of him for having a pretentious job. i wish i had 10000 more conversations to remember about this thing he loved.
the responses to this post are sooOOO good that I think I will be revisiting them forever. I got predictably overwhelmed on this anniversary and uhhh still am and I don't know that I will be able to respond to everyone, but just know I am gaping at you all with awe and love and feeling genuinely inspired. yall are out here installing toilets and learning languages and setting up looms and playing new instruments and getting doctorates and raising livestock and building tables and learning to drive at age 44 (ASPIRATIONAL, i have to learn to drive and i am so scared, how did you stop being so scared). I want to do all of that! You are so fucking cool!!!
Y'all, I'm begging you not to be weird if someone turns you down or says no to pics/sexting/literally anything, even nonsexual things.
It's so uncomfortable when I'm like "no thanks :)" and then I have to spend 15 mins soothing you. Like it's okay if you didn't realize that was a boundry—now you know. It's okay if you misread signals—it happens. Just say "no problem, thanks for letting me know," and move tf on. Deal with that embarrassment in private. It's happened to everyone, and it sucks, I get it. Also, you need to deal with it without making it my continued concern.
I wanna take this further and say cultivate the same positive reaction you have to receiving a ‘yes’ to receiving a ‘no’. As stoked as you are when you get a yes be just as stoked to get a no. Be excited that someone felt comfortable enough to communicate a boundary to you.
if you're embarrassed and ashamed of being told no and realizing you stressed someone out, the best way you can demonstrate that you care for this person and their boundaries is to back off immediately, give them a reassuringly casual acknowledgment, and then demonstrate you can handle rejection cheerfully. groveling apologies don't make up for a transgression, they only compound it.
“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”
— James Baldwin, from “They Can’t Turn Back”
I kinda lived half of 2023 (maybe more) like a drowning rat in a bucket but this year I'll live like a normal rat. outside of a bucket
Sometimes it hits me that there’s just no way to avoid the pain of the ending of relationships. I have tried and failed to just not make connections with the people around me. I’ve experienced, according to my therapist and Google statistics, more than the average amount of deaths-of-close-loved-ones, abuse, shunning, and whatnot. Makes sense. But sometimes I look at new friends, old friends, potential futures, and all I can see is me sitting on my bathroom floor the night after my fiancé died, feeling so much pain I didn’t know if I would ever come out the other side of it at all. And I think, “that’s the price of this. That’s what you know this will end in, and you chose it anyway.” And as inspiring as that is (like: testament to the power of love that I’d choose it even when it’s so painful), it’s also just exhausting. Like, I’ve been through the funerals, and the angry goodbyes, and the email goodbyes, and the crying at the airport, and the sort-of-happy-crying over new babies and marriages, and the last outings with close friends before moving away, and the last Sundays before leaving churches, and the thought of doing it all again, worth it or not, is exhausting. It’s just exhausting. Like how grandparents just aren’t able to raise babies because they’ve already done it and they’re old and retired and tired now. That’s how I feel. I’m tired.
And yet
If I bump into your cart at the supermarket, I’m going to laugh and apologize and tell you I like your sweater and if you’re friendly and not on a tight schedule that day you might smile and strike up a conversation, and we might share a love of some item in both of our baskets and I’ll offer you a recipe that uses it and then two years later I’m texting you to see if you want to meet up for coffee at our usual spot and at that point I care about you and you care about me and we’re friends and if you tell me you have terminal cancer I’ll be fucking devastated.
There’s no way to avoid these things. There’s no way to meet a quota. As long as I’m alive, my heart is always at risk of shattering into a billion tiny aching pieces from one phone call, one conversation, one funeral. I love the ones I love now, and I choose love in my life. And I’m tired.
