Nightmare dressed like a daydream

Have courage and be kind.

[inkskinned]

i don't really have the words for it but i'd come home from school and watch my mom sort our mail - junk, junk, junk, bills, junk. it used to pile up on our counter; day after day. i remember how much of it went right into the recycling bin.

email was huge when it really started being available to us all. i know that's wild to say to someone who was raised after AOL but "checking your email" used to be a big deal. i now have 2,521 unread messages; and that's after a deep clean last january. most of it is just spam. it just sits in my inbox, unanswered and unopened - draining whatever arbitrary amount of digital space i have in this world.

i don't check my voicemail, it's usually a scammer. i don't check my instagram notifications either - half of them are someone trying to sell me something from a pyramid scheme. the other half are bots. a girl recently held my phone for a fraction of a second and almost passed out - how do you have 356 unopened texts? i shrugged about it. how many of those were just the average i have a job opening for you scam-type shit.

discord now forces an ad when i open it. youtube forced me to uninstall my adblocker (yes i switched to firefox). i hate "smart" versions of things; but you can't always escape them. why is my own computer pushing me advertisements for things? why is my TV trying to get me to download a gambling game? why do i need to see an ad to fucking access my fridge?

i block, unsubscribe, avoid. i cannot tell you how many times i have entered [email protected] as my email so i can view one particular recipe on one particular blog. i cannot tell you how many times i reply "STOP", i refuse to give my number - i am a master at this infinite dodge. and still. still!

it's just... clutter. it isn't sitting in my brain, glistening. it's just noise.

for a long time i used to open and read a newsletter from a community center down the street - it used to have fun tips, announcements. cute things. recently they must have gotten a new copywriter. it's all just - while you're here, have you thought about purchasing?

yesterday i went out to collect the mail; most of which will end up in the recycling. a single piece blew out of my hands; i had to chase it down the street. i still have no idea what it was even for. it means genuinely nothing to me.

[loveridden1999]

i miss my ex bestfriend & everyone else that i have ever loved but don't want any of them back either

[loveridden1999]

what the fuck man

[soft-lovely]

midnight musings

[soft-lovely]

imagine finding these polaroids in a flea market

[helnight]

small things we should appreciate more

the chirping of birds in the early morning

the way the sun shines through the trees

nature after it just rained

constantly learning new things every day

libraries, bookshops, bakeries and coffeeshops

[soft-lovely]

[superkursunaskr]

[superkursunaskr]

[liefst]

march

[yingtan]

THE FIRST FROST 难哄 (2025) dir. Chu Yu Ning .

[da-man-si]

I remember when I saw the Sun, I couldn't help but hug it.

[thethirtyproject444]

i love being up early but i love being up late. and i love getting lots of sleep. what now.

[soft-lovely]

sleepy

[inkskinned]

the tradwife movement is the same as it has always been - back in the kitchen, back to breeding - it just has better branding.

when i was younger, i hated pink. i was not like other girls. this is now something i'm embarrassed of - this was not me being a "girl's girl."

but it was expressing something many of us felt at the time: i literally wasn't what girlhood was supposed to be. this is a hard thing to explain, but you know when you're not performing girlhood correctly. it isn't as easy as "i liked x when girls liked y" - because there were other girls that liked x, too - but i never figured out exactly the correct way to like x, or to be interested in y.

now there is the divine feminine. this is the same rhetoric it has always been: women are biologically driven to like pink and ribbons and submitting to our husbands.

the problem is that the patriarchy found a better PR team. because yes, actually, i want every woman to have the choice to be a homemaker. i also want her taken seriously for her legitimate home-making labor. i want her to be recognized as also having a job, just unpaid. i want men to have this opportunity, too.

but it is no longer "i made this choice and I love it." instead it is a sixteen-paragraph rant about how selfish it is that my generation isn't having kids. instead it's long videos about how if you feed your children processed foods, you're going to kill them. instead it is "this is what womanhood is supposed to be. i feel bad for any other choices you're making."

the shame spiral is just prettier. it is large houses devoid of personality. it is the implication: if you don't have this, you aren't happy. the solid, everlasting assurance: women are actually supposed to be submitting. this is the default. this is the natural state of things. all other attempts inflict suffering.

but you can no longer say i'm not like other girls. you can no longer reject this image completely. you cannot find it revolting, even if you know that the underbelly is toxic and festering. sure, it is the same repackaged patriarchy. but the internet does not have shades of grey. you should support and reward other women! your disgust is actually internalized misogyny. not because you are seeing a vision of yourself the way they're trying to train you to be. not because you feel her ghost pass within an inch of your earlobe. not because your father will eventually ask you - why can't you be like her?

because they figured out how to make it beautiful: women will sell other women on this idea, and we will find the singular loophole in feminism. sure, she's shaming you in most of her videos. sure, she implies that a different life is obscene. but she just wants you to be happy! you'd be happier if you were listening!

and the whole time you're sitting there thinking: i'd actually just be happier if i had that kind of money.

[jariten]

ホワッツ マイケル？(What’s Michael?), Makoto Kobayashi

[superkursunaskr]

[petaltexturedskies]

I need silence, and to be alone and to go out, and to save one hour to consider what has happened to my world,

Virginia Woolf, The Waves