the fundamental ambiguity of being human

abby | 29 | sometimes running, sometimes bouldering, always forgetting to stretch | microbiologist, environmentalist, vegan | drinking lots of coffee, collecting plants & quotes & tattoos & experiences, studying microbes that can save the planet, moving mountains, and recovering, for real this time

[yellowplumfruit]

[everything-changes-once-again]

As I slowly ease back into running this summer, I’m feeling so fucking frustrated with myself and my choices. This time last year I was running 12 mile long runs at sub-8 pace, sometimes sub-7:30. I had (not to brag) pretty impressive quad muscles. I was doing track workouts. I ran a 1:35 half.

And then I threw it all away bc I’m a little bitch who couldn’t handle being unemployed for a year and not feeling productive or whatever.

I know it’s more complicated than that but on some level it’s not?? Like I can’t deny the fact that I noticed old patterns creeping back in and instead of shutting it down I thought to myself ah yes, the perfect way to not feel my current misery so acutely. And then I destroyed my body for 3 months.

You live and learn I guess. But I can’t stop feeling like I threw away a year of progress for nothing.

[scorpionlafemme]

[gaslit-dipshits]

[appalachian-werewolf]

PoweredByWho — Who's Building Data Centers in Your Backyard?

Follow the money behind America's data center boom. Track 2,300+ projects, PAC spending, and the politicians who sign off on it.

[boobookittenartblog]

Lake Superior by Jef Bourgeau 

[subaru-copilot]

im so sorry that you're doomed by the narrative but i really need you to answer my message on Microsoft Teams

[muttgirl]

I am not that fifteen year old girl anymore.

[beardedmrbean]

[lovesicklobotomy]

[metal-autistic-coven]

Happy pride month to him

[desultory-suggestions]

It turns out that you can become the person you’ve always envisioned but you’ll still have the person you were before inside of you and you have to treat them with as much forgiveness and love as possible

[hauntedearth]

[louisegluck]

Sylvia Plath, from “Poem for a Birthday: Witch Burning.” [ID in alt text]

[number-1-soup-fan]

[lifeinpoetry]

“[after a half-hearted suicide attempt at age 13] When Daddy comes in, he carries you to bed. Is there anything you feel like you could eat, Pokey? Anything at all? All you can imagine putting in your mouth is a cold plum, one with really tight skin on the outside but gum-shocking sweetness inside. And he and your mother discuss where he might find some this late in the season. Mother says hell I don’t know. Further north, I’d guess. The next morning, you wake up in your bed and sit up. Mother says, Pete, I think she’s up. He hollers in, You ready for breakfast, Pokey. Then he comes in grinning, still in his work clothes from the night before. He’s holding a farm bushel. The plums he empties onto the bed river toward you through folds in the quilt. If you stacked them up, they’d fill the deepest bin at the Piggly Wiggly. Damned if I didn’t get the urge to drive to Arkansas last night, he says. Your mother stands behind him saying he’s pure USDA crazy. Fort Smith, Arkansas. Found a roadside stand out there with a feller selling plums. And I says, Buddy, I got a little girl sick back in Texas. She’s got a hanker for plums and ain’t nothing else gonna do. It’s when you sink your teeth into the plum that you make a promise. The skin is still warm from riding in the sun in Daddy’s truck, and the nectar runs down your chin. And you snap out of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yourself, not so long as there are plums to eat and somebody-anybody-who gives enough of a damn to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance. That’s how you acquire the resolution for survival that the coming years are about to demand. You don’t earn it. It’s given.”

— Mary Karr, from Cherry

[everything-changes-once-again]

thinking about the plums story again. some fifteen year old version of me is always thinking about the plums story.

[everything-changes-once-again]

*googles* how to communicate to my nervous system that I’m reading constrictive feedback on my writing, not being hunted for sport

[forbearing]

thank you anais nin