take it easy

[faronmckenzie]

[olearypoetry]

[phalms]

6th grade love notes

[daisiedasie]

“Anyone who cares about you has to realize that you need a little looking after, nothing else really matters.”

— Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena  (via hollowstimulation)

[lesbianartandartists]

Gay Block, Underwear, 1992-1995

[lauramakabresku]

[elizabyss333]

“An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other. It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity. It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us. It isn’t that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know, beforehand, everything I need to tell you. It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you. That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive, to me. That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us. The possibility of life between us.”

—

Adrienne Rich, from On Lies, Secrets & Silence (via violentwavesofemotion)

After spending a year and a half with somebody who has an alarming lack of self-awareness and no desire for insight or self-reflection I can tell you that this is extremely true. If someone is unwillng, or even unable, to analyze their behavior in the third party their conflict resolution and communication skills will be pretty much nil. It is unfair and infuriating to their partner to be trapped in the same repeating unresolved arguments. Inevitably, this will lead to the exhausted partner making compromises they’re truly uncomfortable with just to end the fight. The partner’s one-sided  self-sacrifices collect resentment like interest over time. It slowly poisons the health of the relationship beyond repair. If you’re with somebody who can’t reflect on themselves honestly and aware enough to take accountability for their actions, run. Pride stunts growth. Emotional intelligence is important. Vulnerability is necessary for establishing closeness in relationships. You can only ever superficially know someone who doesn’t know themselves. That’s not a true shared human experience. It’s not a worthwhile way to use your time or energy. Being able to articulate your emotions often and well with your partner is so important.  

[books-n-quotes]

“Something in me wants more. I can’t rest.”

— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (via books-n-quotes)

[nemfrog]

Queen Anne’s Lace. Nature’s garden. 1900.

[meaw2032]

[gasstation]

Nan Goldin

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Cold November nights, poignant sensations, deep, resonant silence,

Virginia Woolf, from a diary entry ft. in “Diaries,” written c. November 1940 (via violentwavesofemotion)

[equatorjournal]

[inkskinned]

i keep coming back to this place even though it makes my skin crawl. a poison place wrapped in peace. i keep my eyes down. it is amazing what you can see/unsee/know/unknow. that’s a good couch i’ve slept on. that’s a bad window i watched through, waiting for him to come home. that’s a good garden, an away space. that’s a bad driveway, a slammed door. brown is a softness of dirt. brown is his hair and the bruise on my arm.

it’s time to go home again. i have been tearing pieces of paper like flower petals. this time it will be good. this time it will be bad. good, bad, good, bad, good,

“are you still coming home?” my mother’s voice sounds distant. old. static in the line. is that my home, i want to ask. am i even invited or am i intruding. aren’t you doing better without my footprints. i don’t want to answer about my love life and my failed expectations and my tried-my-best-ness. at the same time i want to tell you absolutely everything about my love life, and how it felt seeing her again and how her hair still smells like that and how sometimes my trying actually leads to doing and how i’m setting better, more specific expectations, and i’m actually meeting them. 

i tear the paper. in one future you’re proud of me. pass the wine. in the next, you’re sighing. is that what you’re doing? pass the wine. in some we’re not drinking. in some we’re not talking. in some, i come back and the house is warm and garlic is in the air and we’re all laughing. in some, i come back, and everything we haven’t said is rotting in the air.

“are you coming home?” she asks. i close my eyes. 

home? home? where exactly is that?

[millionsknives]

please make sure that wherever you’re at in life, you don’t treat it like a transitory period. don’t waste your college years wishing to already be graduated & have a job. don’t waste your single years wishing for someone to be in love with. if/when those things come, they will come in due time and they will be good. but there is nothing like looking back and feeling empty because you wasted literal years ignoring what you had because you were hoping for something better. while it’s important to better yourself and reach for your goals, don’t neglect the present because that’s where you are now and it’s your now that determines your future. 

[veliseraptor]

when you can sense a Mood incoming and feel like a farmer standing in a field looking out at the horizon as the storm approaches like “looks like it’s gonna be a bad one, boys”

[sophi-aubrey]

“I did not stop thinking about you, I would like to tell you so much I would like to write that I would like to come back, that I miss you and that I think, but I do not seek you Do not even write to you I do not know how you are You do not have any plans? You smiled today, what did you dream, that you went out, where you go, you have dreams, you have eaten, I would like to be able to look for you, but I do not have the strength, and you do not even have it, and then let’s wait in vain, and let’s think about it. And remember that I think you do not know, but I’m living you every day, that I’m writing about you, and remember that looking and thinking are two different things, and I’m thinking of you, but I’m not looking for you. ”

Charles Bukowski