oh my messy mind.

amber. thirtyone. bisexual. amsterdam bound. caution: this blog is a mess. as am i.

[pynklemonade]

2022 was an odd one. 

in the past 24 hours I stopped and started this entry multiple times in different word processors, and all of them started with a variation of that sentence. I guess that means it really was a year I don’t really know what to make of. 

even writing this feels… redundant, in some way. because who am I doing it for, actually? why am I doing it, if I don’t know what to write about and all I can think is “that was weird”? still, I’ve been doing this January 1st thing for the past five years now, and I think I owe it to myself to figure myself out as I go. 

so.

2022.  like I said — an odd one. a chaotic one. furthest bit removed from a boring one. at the start of it I was still terrified to even hug a friend, and then I made the conscious choice to go out into the world again and put myself in situations I was uncomfortable with after having been cooped up in my home for two years. actually — uncomfortable doesn’t begin to cover it. I was scared out of my mind, and was constantly put in situations which asked something of my very panicked brain that felt insurmountable. 

it wasn’t. I did it, and it went well, and I felt a buzzing and contentment I hadn’t dared to feel in a really long time. everything felt exciting, albeit terrifying. and then I caught covid, and the terror came back in tenfold. all of the fear I had felt the entire past two years were then condensed into ten days that felt like hell in so, so many ways, and from that point on, somehow, everything got more hectic than before. I’m not sure I processed any of those things. I’m not sure I actually moved past that fear from two years ago until now. I don’t think I did — I just had no time to let it grow, because there were so many things. 

things like orchestrating a whole office move, when you’re the least organised person you know, and discovering you can do whatever you set your mind to. things like going abroad for the first time in years, despite your brain shouting terror, and finding excitement there you had missed for years now. things like going to a congress outside the country for work, knowing you’ll have to impress more than you have ever before, and giving it your all and having it be seen. things like forming a bond with people who need to trust you for your work, and watching it pay off. things like facing your darkest thoughts in therapy, and going through the treatment you spent your whole life trying to avoid. things like re-evaluating what’s important to you and fits in your life, and what doesn’t, and being honest with yourself about it. 

things like letting yourself have your feelings, and not running away from the scary thing you always used to flee from, but facing it head-on and sitting with it. moving past the fear, despite it paralysing you. letting yourself be, the way you want to be. allowing yourself to reach out, when you need to. allowing yourself the little pleasures, just because. 

all the feelings I didn’t feel in 2020 and 2021 came back to me in tenfold in 2022. not because there was room for them, not at all, but because I knew I had to stop hiding from myself and allow them back in, room or no room. in my brain, there were all these islands I had stored all my past feelings on, all the things I didn’t want to revisit, and they were safely removed from each other, lakes and seas and oceans separating them all. it worked for years. it allowed me to function and get to where I am now. 

but without warning they stopped serving me and started holding me back instead. I needed to island-hop faster, switch back and forth quicker, and found I couldn’t. I found distance where closeness should be. 

and so I spent this year reconnecting all these islands slowly, and very, very carefully. and at last, I allowed myself to be me. wholly. fully. all these islands have now drifted back to each other and have suddenly formed a continent I need to relearn how to rule. 

what the new regime includes, I’m not sure yet. I’m still figuring that out as I go. but I do know it excludes intense self loathing, punishment and a deep feeling of not being enough. that set of basic rules used to feel like a friend before, but suddenly started to feel redundant. I grew tired of the laws, let alone how the people around me must feel about them. the land needed a new king, and the only one who could make that happen was me.

and funnily enough, the feelings I had stored away proved necessary in this new kingdom. so in 2022 I felt, and I felt, and I felt. it was exhausting. never before have I felt more raw or vulnerable, but the difference this time around compared to the vulnerability of years ago is that these days, I know who I am. I know where I stand. most of the time, I know my worth (solidly, without faking it like I used to do the whole previous decade). 

I’m not there yet. I know I’m not. currently I’m facing a decision that’s been simmering for at least twenty years now, and I’m finally allowing it to become real in my mind, whether I go through with it or not. I have learned that my only protector is me, and it’s a tough pill to swallow. 

but no matter what happens, my islands are no longer islands. 

no matter what happens, the decision is mine, and it’s time I start behaving like it, because this? 

this is my kingdom. 

and I’m the one who gets to rule it.

[hobisexually]

it’s been twenty-seven years since you left us.

around the time of year that the sun has deserted us seemingly permanently, the dark creeping in instead — around the time of year my entire body freezes up in preparation, feeling your absence like a fist wrapped around my oesophagus. a mist clouds my thoughts and clogs up my veins, and it’s like every day we creep closer to a grief we’ve never been able to properly let rest. somehow, my body always knows way before my brain can play catch-up.

it’s not just you that my body prepares itself for like a soldier going to battle — it’s all of december that’s built of trauma after trauma, a new one added to the mix year after year, to the point that my shoulders felt so heavy even my feet couldn’t hold them up anymore. until this year, finally the dam broke, and I decided something had to give.

all of these images push themselves to the forefront of my mind when I let them.

the first ones, and the core ones at that, unfolded in 1995, the year you crashed to the bathroom floor, and I asked hopefully when you were coming back. the indescribable devastation that followed when I found out you would never hold me again. that same year, not even three weeks later, when my mother critically ended up in the hospital, missing all the moments that are supposed to bring a festive light in the sullen darkness: Christmas, my birthday, New Years. and there four-year-old me was, not only left without you, but also without the one sense of safety I still had left, desperately clutching a piece of fabric she had given me that was supposed to tide me over until everything was back to normal. and normal came briefly, when I met my little sister, but it’s vaguer than the rest of it. did I hold her tiny, rosy hand? my memory tells me yes, but she was so small and fragile, surely I wasn’t allowed to — I might as well have conjured it up myself to make the transition easier. and then, four days later, when she, too, left us. shamefully, I have to admit that the pain I had felt for you wasn’t there this time around, but naturally I did see it in the downturned slump of my parents’ eyes. to this day, I still don’t feel that grief, and I wonder what’s wrong with me because of it. I also wonder what you would’ve thought, meeting her. would it have been as hard as it was when meeting me, or my older cousin? was it for the best you were spared from that grief one last time?

other images wrangle their way forward of events that happened later on: the times in 1997, or was it 1998? fitting that I can’t remember, as it felt like I had no solid ground beneath my feet, like I didn’t even exist on this planet, so scared of life itself that I screamed into the loud, bustling wind by the beach with such a deeply guttural noise I made my mother cry as my plea for help echoed through the dunes. the times when my medication made me so paranoid I genuinely thought my own mother was trying to poison me, even though she was the only one able to calm me down. seeing my best friend play a game in my living room and knowing with a certainty I wasn’t real to begin with, so surely he wasn’t either. when I was in the hospital myself, hooked up to a machine as they were trying to figure out exactly how bad off I would be for the rest of my life, and then having to carry a mini-version of it around for twenty-four torturous hours, year after year, as I knew the rhythm of my heartbeat was written onto paper with every move I made.

2001, crying and screaming in my bed, begging to not have to go, not without my mother. and even then, I didn’t know what I know now — she wasn’t forced by health reasons to not go, she chose not to, a double betrayal burning my trust so deeply I can’t even begin to describe it. I was forced out of bed by his arms and put on a plane to the other side of the world, and the week that followed was the unsafest of my entire life. the memories are blurry — a sharp, nauseating smell, dust in all my crevices, a dark, cold house, and a language I did not speak. the laughter of a six year old child was my only relief in the panic. other than that, I don’t remember much. it’s probably for the best, as when I came home I spent my entire birthday hunched over a toilet bowl, emptying myself from the entire experience. (you would’ve been furious.)

2006, years later, when the bubble burst, and there was no love in that car. no love at the big family holiday get-togethers, either. instead, a beautiful charade to keep up pretenses, followed by a stifling pressure closing down my throat in a cold, chilly car, driving towards nowhere in particular, and not fully grasping why all I wanted was to jump out of the backseat, pack the fully prepared runaway bag I had mentally packed a million times and set off to the other side of the country, to flee to a friend I knew was sure to not tell anyone about my whereabouts. (I wish you could’ve been that friend, but I had to make do with what I had.)

2013, when I had to perform all sorts of gymnastics to “celebrate” my birthday, as the entrance of a new man was enough cause to be told I didn’t have a father anymore. “have a wonderful life from now on, but I won’t be in it”. that day was the point of no return.

you would’ve understood. put him in his place, even, as you were the only person he respected enough to listen to, but I never got the time I needed with you to grow up and grow into the language to discuss it properly. but the happy moments are missing, too: you would’ve cheered, and held me tight as you would’ve been the first to hear I was bisexual. you’d have dragged your queer friends over to your house to sit and talk with me, ensure I felt safe and knew what was happening to me. you’d have understood all my demons and you were the one who, even when I was a tiny four-year-old, protected me from his iron rule and approached it with humour and rebellion, the way I still do now.

so it’s selfish to have wanted to keep you here any longer than you were. I know it is. you had a harder life than anyone of us could ever have imagined and it plagued you even when it didn’t. but still, it’s the anniversary of when you died. when my biggest protector, biggest adventure buddy, my partner in crime and the shield against everything I needed protecting from left me to fend for myself.

you needed to go, and that’s alright — you’re at peace now. and, you’d be delighted to see: with the lack of your presence, I have become my own protector these days. I do it fervently, the way you taught us to, and I am proud to say I’m built out of all the best parts of you.

once, years ago, my therapist said she had never met anyone my age before who had been through so much and yet approaches it with such a strong sense of humour, even in the darkest times. it made me smile, because if I know one thing for certain, it’s that I get that from you. the diary entries from the darkest time of your life are heart wrenching, raw in their vulnerability, and somehow still so, so incredibly funny. I thumb through the frantically-scribbled-on pages and feel strengthened by your blood coursing through my veins, knowing that if I am made up of even 1% of your DNA, I’ll be alright.

I thank whatever higher power is out there that I am.

the holidays are supposed to be bright, but understandably, the years have darkened them considerably even if I try my hardest despite it all every single year. my moody, self-indulgent december playlist is currently playing in the background, but there is no song in there for you, as you passed before I started assigning memories to music. I hate that there’s not a single song I can put on that makes me feel closer to you, apart from dutch schlagers that remind me of the neighbourhood you lived in when you were young.

except then I look in the mirror, see the mischievous sparkle in my eyes I’ve been told is always present no matter how I feel, and I know with an absolute certainty —

— that sparkle is you, and you’re here in every song I listen to.

every book I read.

every word I write.

all I can do is hope that you like them.

[marauders4evr]

Ohoho, I am a Big Fan of this!

Source: x

[gayteensupreme]

Btw if I say things like “by god” or “good lord” in posts please be aware I don’t mean it in a catholic way I mean it in a 1950s scientist reacting in horror after they create an evil creature in the lab set in the distant future year of 2005

[queeranarchism]

Over a 1000 people have already died in Europe’s heatwave and the worst day is just starting, so now might be a good time to mention that the politics of who suffers from a heat wave is highly intersectional. We’ve already talked about how global warming hits the poorest parts of the world the hardest.Right now I want to talk more about the local politics of heat.

Poor people can’t afford air conditioning. Cheaper houses have less insulation. Cities contain more heat and poorer neighborhoods have less grass and trees, which absorb heat. Playgrounds in poorer neighborhoods are more likely to be composed of low-maintenance materials like concrete, rubber tiles, and sand. All of which make these places hotter. And when heat becomes deadly, poorer neighborhoods often have access to fewer and slower emergency response services.

Meanwhile, people in poorer neighborhoods are often criminalized for using the escapes available to them, like sitting in public fountains and swimming in city canals, and filling a kiddie pool with water on the sidewalk in front of their houses. During the last heat wave in the Netherlands, desperate neighbors in overheating city blocks opened fire hydrants to give their children some much needed relief from the heat. The result? A police crackdown on poor people.

And of course everywhere people of color, immigrants and other marginalized people are more likely to live in these conditions than white people and to suffer more criminalization.

And then there’s work. Who is more likely to work a physically demanding job? Who is more likely to work outside? Who can afford to take their lunch break in an air conditioned restaurant and who must do so on the side walk? You guessed it.

Finally: if you want to put advice under this post about how to stay cool, I understand. But be aware that putting individualist responses like that under a post about a systematic problem can be very jarring. This will not be the last heat wave and they will get worse. Wet towels and cooling pads alone will not save us. We need to understand that surviving heat (and cold, and floods, etc) is political and it requires a collective political answer.

[andibear]

Tessa Thompson Street Style <3

[thesevenumbrellas]

Tumblr gifmakers are better than $1mil worth of marketing. I’ll see endless ads for a show and be like meh but I’ll see one good gifset and suddenly I’m on s2 ep10 finding blorbo from my gifs

[audiorkive]

Visit Original Link

[zackisontumblr]

do you ever sabotage your own free time? like wtf is that about? i want to play this game or read or do something specific but instead i will just stare out the window or scroll mindlessly???

[radiofreederry]

Statistically your child is infinitely safer with a drag queen than a catholic priest

[dvnyaaa]

“She did not want to move, or to speak. She wanted to rest, to lean, to dream. She felt very tired.”

— Virginia Woolf, The Years (via seelengekritzel)

[elierlick]

I think about this a lot.

[visit-ba-sing-se]

my fellow queers, if i ask nicely, will you reblog and put in the tags a thing younger you did that looking back was obviously fruity? I will even go first, I kept getting jealous at the male love interest in any media i consumed

[lionfloss]

Lauterbrunnen–Mürren Mountain Railway Mürren, Switzerland

[theavengers]

Chris Evans during the “puppy interview” for BuzzFeed (June 2022) 

[perfectquote]

if you cannot forgive, then don’t. you do not owe pain anything, you only owe yourself peace.

shelby leigh (via noorshirazie)

[forestgreenlesbian]

Uncertain Light, Jonathan Moore