dear diary

please help me. [ ooc unless page is given ic ]

[snapsicle]

advice from a dung beetle 

[skyphobe]

people always try to say that the happily ever after is the best thing you can look forward to in your life.

they never tell you just how wonderful what comes after it is.

[eiruriofidkewoeeifjjdis374738-d]

[horreurscopes]

one of the most important things i’ve learned in therapy is that when you’ve experienced prolonged trauma in your childhood, pleasure feels uncomfortable. like, not that you don’t feel it, but that when you do feel it there’s an impulse to make it stop, because it’s extremely unfamiliar. and pleasure can mean many things, as simple as feeling cozy, and as complex as feeling loved. the neural pathways for feeling good have not had a chance to develop, and the neural pathways for feeling bad are quite practiced. feeling good, too, takes conscious practice.

[inkskinned]

Actually life is beautiful because the sound I make while trying to breathe around hot food sounds like my dog trying to eat an apple. When I yawn my cat tries to put his face in my mouth like a little dentist man and when he yawns I put my finger in his obligate-carnivore trapzone and we both know he will not hurt me. When I do not fold my clothes, they do not hold it against me.

I am demonstrably sad, and lonely, and full of fear. But there are other people who will hold my hand, who will point out the hawk overhead, who will give you That Look in a public place. The other day at a coffee shop a child said "look! It's snowing!" so all of us strangers went to go look out the windows. It wasn't the first snow and it won't be the last but wasn't it lovely like that?

How wonderful to live in a world where birds and frogs both say beep! How wonderful to have an ocean of beautiful sharks with their dinosaur teeth! How wonderful the moon and her changing face, how wonderful the bees and their dancing to communicate, how wonderful shrimp and their forbidden layers of vision! How wonderful, you, and what you will give the world! The way we love things enough to spend entire blogs devoted to them? How people will let me explain my Pokemon team to them? How we will both jump at the scare in the movie, how we laugh so loudly, how it feels to give someone your baking? How wonderful to be alive. I am sorry for forgetting.

This is the process of getting better. With wonderful people and wonderful strangers and wonderful friends: I am getting better, slowly. Thank you, whoever you are. In some way, you've been wonderful, and left a wonderful place in the world to ripple out to me. In some small way - isn't it beautiful - I promise, you've been helping.

[oozins]

words from @normal-horoscopes

[jovan]

me flirting: I don’t want you to die

[self-healing]

recovery is not ‘soon i will be untouched, perfect, and in a permanent state of bliss. i will be healed and all will be well, forever.’

recovery is ‘i will continue to survive despite what happens, i will find ways to cope instead of continually tearing myself down. i will recover and will see myself in a light that i never thought was possible.’

[kilterstreet]

Reminded of this excerpt from Getting Through the Day: Strategies for Adults Hurt as Children by Nancy J. Napier: “It also helps to remember that healing occurs in a spiral. We swing around again and again to the same old issues, but at different turns of the spiral. Each time we confront a similar feeling or reaction we have yet another opportunity to learn and to heal. Each time, we bring with us whatever new understanding we have gained since the last time we cycled through this particular difficulty.”

[iguanamouth]

anyway bye

[skyphobe]

🤗😊🤗

[ohbutwebestmakepeacewithit]

[anxietyproblem]

[a-time-for-speaking-out-blog]

I feel like so much of trauma recovery for adults who’ve been traumatized is “you are not the only one who feels this way, this is normal.”

But for adults who were traumatized as children, there is an important experience of learning that it is in fact, not normal. It’s good to not feel alone, to find people who get it and to not feel crazy, but the process of going through who you are and picking out the things you had accepted as normal that are definitely not is so important.

I’ll never forget the moment that I realized people have happy dreams, like frequently. Or the day I realized that most people sleep through the night like almost all of the time. Those were really sad moments, but they were really important too, because they made me understand that I am not crazy. Something bad happened, and it changed me.

It’s okay to be different, it’s okay if the trauma changed you, but if you are running a race with a broken legand beating yourself up because you aren’t as fast are the other runners something needs to change. Realizing you are different is the first step to figuring out how to heal

[skyphobe]

it's been a while since i've had to use this for sad things and it's. still an amazing, lucky feeling.

i am surrounded by love and blessings and i want to devote myself to cherishing them completely.

my heart aches to find new ways to worship you.

loving you is an endless quest of constant returns, and the only rest i need is with these arms around you, my lips pressed to your heartbeat.

[justavpdthings]

I once said to my therapist after a particularly hard week, “I wish I could just fix all of my problems and move on to live a normal life” And he looked at me and said, “There is no finish line”.

Those words felt like a stab in my heart, but they were words that I desperately needed to hear. There is no finish line to my problems. It’s not possible to get through a certain point in life and have my problems simply disappear. And it’s unhealthy to think that way. Up to that point in my life, that’s what I though recovery was. I thought it was like working your way forward until it seems like your problems never existed in the first place.

The finish line does not exist. Instead, everyone has a capacity for recovery. You may never completely rid yourself of whatever causes you pain, but you will move miles from where you started. Don’t set your expectations too high and create that theoretical finish line in your life, or you will only end up chasing it. Instead, focus on your own capacity for recovery, and be proud of yourself for every step you take.

[justavpdthings]

Just saw Eighth Grade and reblogging the heck out of this bc wow it gets so much better if you just take it one step at a time

[mintedwitcher]

Okay but I cant help but hear “there is no finish line” and immediately respond with “then why am i running the race?” What is the point*? Where is the benefit of putting in the effort if its not going to ever end? If i am always going to battle I would rather just give up the fight.

*(Im not saying recovery is bad or whatever ppl wanna reach for, this is my personal view)

[dalniente]

That’s the thing, though: it’s not a race. It’s a garden.

No matter what your garden looks like in the beginning, you have to weed it before it can grow into what you want it to be. And when your flowers are planted and growing, you still have to keep up with the weeding. You have to keep up with the weeding even after your flowers are tall. A garden can’t survive on its own. There will always be weeds.

But there will be flowers, too, if you give them space to grow. Give them room, give them time, and keep checking in to make sure the weeds don’t get too tall. You will always have weeds, but you will also have flowers.

And maybe your garden doesn’t look exactly like you imagined it would. Maybe you aren’t sure how to get rid of that one big thistle in the corner. Maybe you’ve got bindweed and nutgrass (which will always, always come back). Either way, you’ve got flowers now, and it’s a nice place to sit and look around, and it looks nicer than it did before, and it’s yours. Keep going with it. If you miss a few days, or months, or years, that’s okay. Pull up the weeds when you’re ready, uncover your old flowers and plant some new ones, and keep going.

Gardening is a process, not a project or a problem that can be solved. The same is true for your mental health. Weeds will grow, but you’ll get better and better at pulling them, and you’ll grow flowers, too.

[luxmoogle]

[skyphobe]

not to be gay or anything, but are you ever in a place where you find yourself gifting the stupidest smallest things to your lover, all pretty pebbles and leaves and feathers and bug wings, just because all you wanna say is “i’m yours i’m yours i’m yours i’m yours”, there’s nothing more beautiful in this world than the reality of my existence bound to yours.