Everyday Is Harder For A Different Reason

inkskinned:

you’re in the habit of denying yourself things.

if someone asked you directly, you would say that you love a little treat. you like iced coffee and getting the cookie. you drink juice out of a fancy cup sometimes, and often do use your candles until they gutter out helplessly.

but you hesitate about buying the 20 dollar hand mixer because, like. you could just use your arms. you weren’t raised rich. you don’t get to just spend the 20 dollars (remember when that could cover lunch?), at least - you don’t spend that without agonizing over it first, trying to figure out the cost-benefits like you are defending yourself in front of a jury. yes, this rice cooker could seriously help you. but you do know how to make stovetop rice and it really isn’t that hard. how many pies or brownies would you actually make, in order to make that hand mixer worthwhile?

what’s wild is that if the money was for a friend, it would already be spent. you’d fork over 40 without blinking an eye, just to make them happy. the difference is that it’s for you, so you need to justify it.

and it sneaks in. you ration yourself without meaning to - you don’t finish the pint of ice cream, even though you want to. the next time you go to the store, you say ah, i really shouldn’t, and then you walk away. you save little bits of your precious things - just in case. sometimes you even go so far as putting that one thing in your shopping cart. and then just leaving it there, because maybe-one-day, but not right now, there’s other stuff going on.

you do self-care, of course. but you don’t do it more than like, 3 days in a row. after that it just feels a little bit over-the-edge. like. you can’t live in decadence, the economy is so bad right now, kid.

so you don’t buy the rice cooker. you can-and-will spend the time over the stove. you can withstand the little sorrows. denial and discipline are practically synonyms. and you’re not spoiled.

it’s just - it’s not always a rice cooker. sometimes it is a person or a job or a hug. sometimes it is asking for help. sometimes it is the summer and your college degree. sometimes it is looking down at scabbed knees and feeling a strange kind of falling, like you can’t even recognize the girl you used to be. sometimes it is your handprint looking unsteady.

sometimes it is tuesday, and you didn’t get fired, and you want to celebrate. but what is it you like, even? you search around your little heart and come up empty. you’re so used to denying that all your desires draw a blank.

oh fuck. see, this is the perfect opportunity. if you had a mixer, you’d make a cake.

thatbarricade:

noo don’t cry about july ending and the time passing, just remember the july poem :)

thoughtkick:

“Don’t allow your wounds to turn you into a person you are not.”

— Paulo Coelho

firstfullmoon:

firstfullmoon:

firstfullmoon:

anne boyer “the harm will come: it never doesn’t” / julia armfield “to watch a horror movie is to know that something bad is going to happen. to have a body is really the same thing” / hilary mantel “we don’t have to invite pain in, it’s waiting for us: sooner rather than later” / marie howe “you know how we’ve been waiting for the big pain to come? I think it’s here. I think this is it. I think it’s been here all along” / gregory orr “I want to go back to the beginning. we all do. I think: hurt won’t be there. but I’m wrong” / toni morrison “the hurt was always there” / torrey peters “pain that had to be endured, withstood, pain that was the same as being alive, and so without end”

#that one line from sharp objects … #do you ever feel like bad things are going to happen and you can’t stop them? you can’t do anything you just have to wait?

#THE lake mungo quote #I feel like something bad is going to happen to me. I feel like something bad has happened. it hasn’t reached me yet but it’s on its way

firstgrave:

dionysian-mystery:

The Jacaranda Years by Yiwei Chai

[id: black text on a white background that says “I could not stop wasting time. It was crazy. I wanted to do something with my life, but instead I went to sleep, or sung in the shower, or sat and stared at the wall. I couldn’t even tell you about anything that I saw. I didn’t talk to anybody. The cicadas kept dying outside, and as I dreamed, my mouth grew thick and venomous with silence.” /end id]

thatbarricade:

noo don’t cry about july ending and the time passing, just remember the july poem :)

pilgrimattinkercreek1974:

pilgrimattinkercreek1974:

summer of indulgences. takeout for dinner two nights in a row. glass after glass of cold peach juice. scratching mosquito bites for the sensuous pleasure of it. climbing past the point of my fingers giving out. taking the long way home. gently pressing the bruises on my heart just to feel the twinge

Regretfully i can no longer condone the scratching of mosquito bites. this has gone too far

metamorphesque:

ALT

— Van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

fromdarzaitoleeza:

Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

firstfullmoon:

ALT

ALT

Hanif Abdurraqib, in “Why this poet sees grief as its own kind of spiritual practice”