I don't know where you are exactly, but I know you're looking at your phone, I know you're probably alone. So am I. It's nearly 10pm and I've been scrolling through Instagram reels all day, I haven't eaten or gotten up. But I've cried over people singing in the park to passers by, one women lost her mother and felt comfort in the songs. I've cried to family reunions and mother's singing lullabys to their babies, Ive felt this weight of grief for the things I want to experience, which is to not be so alone. But I still lay here day after day, I still like videos about things I hope to do someday. I'm not okay but I will be one day.
List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the ask box of the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals and followers. β£οΈ
It's probably a bit sad that I can't think of 5 off the top of my head. But the quiet moments when there are no worries or things to do hiding on the back burner. When it's raining so heavily outside it feels like the safest warmest place on earth is your bed, and so you lay there with only that thought and feeling for a little while and it's enough. Enough to make the hard things worth it.
I stole a bible a few years ago, I browsed the shelfs not looking to steal but to pass the time and then I saw it, black cover and pages edged in gold. I wasn't religious, more agnostic or an atheist that dabbled in Buddhist ideas, I felt the Christian narrative or at least the one I heard about was always about who would pay. How jesus payed for your "sins", and if you didn't believe then you'll pay in the after life, so hold on to guilt and carry your strife , but I also knew that I wanted , needed something. I wasn't looking for misplaced shame only hope and I wanted to have it tangible in my hands.
So with my stomach empty and my shoes hole ridden, I ignored the fashion magazines with diet tips and beauty tricks and filled my emptyness with something close to hope, if only to cope. I grabbed it from the shelf and I left the store. I was too afraid to steal food , I didn't dare even with my hunger, but possibility of having something bigger than life to cling to on cold and lonely nights seemed worth the risk.
During that time I wasn't doing so well, my mother was drinking and taking drugs with her friends god only knows where and the cupboards where completely bare. I would wander around town, I would wait for the days to pass, I would wait for something to meet me in my loneliness. I wanted so desperately for something like god to reveal itself to me, my mother wasn't someone I could lean on and my father wasn't around so I think naturally I wanted something to believe in, to sustain me when food and family couldn't.
Last year my brother and I where almost homeless, we slept on the hard floor in a cold empty room for three years, we spent every day waiting. I would wait for the stores reduced items at the end of the day, wait for the sun to dry my clothes, I would walk for hours round and round, my shoes didn't last long, I tried ducktaping the soles but the pavement wore through that aswell. When I wasn't waiting outside food banks, staring at white walls or writing, I sometimes would visit the church in town. It's a cathedral and I still have no idea what denomination it's under, but I'd walk around and admire the marbal pillers and stain glass windows, I would try to remember how people hundreds near a thousand years ago carved angles into stone and placed their hope in something other than themselfs, that back then a church may have been the only place you could go if you had no where else. I reminded myself of all the people who would have prayed there, that would have stood where I stood and cried, wished and waited as I did. I would light a candle and I would wish for a better tomorrow, I wasn't asking jesus or a god, I was asking the universe, I was asking subconsciously myself to keep going.
What do you think of religion? (Are you religious?)
Excerpt from wip Dead above
Let's be honest.
Let's be truthful.
When you meet your own eyes in the mirror
Can you recognise or a least reconsider
The apathy
That you let cling to thee
It's carefully downing you
It feels a secure embrace
But you're afloat
You've lost the boat, to passion, to joy, to meaning
It's calling out
ahoy
Where did you go
I see your eyes meet mine in the mirror
I see what once was starting to flicker
Are you but a ghost
A lost dream turning thinner.
A Reminder to take care of yourself, drink some water, get some sleep and do something that makes you happy.
They say write what you know so I will. I want to tell the story of loss and hope. How quickly everything can fall apart , how you can be looking at misery and then suddenly living inside it. How hopes and dreams are a shield against dirty looks but they don't protect your cold hands or feet in the winter months.
I want to tell the story of the forgotten, the ignored. The people sitting against storefronts that are always asked to move move where?
I want to tell the story of the tired, the burdened. The children raising their siblings while their parents buy more scratch cards because maybe this time we'll win some money will they snap out of it then?
I want to tell the story of the desperate, the lost. The young person that left everything behind , that sits in cafes but never orders. That uses the free WiFi to check social media accounts of old friends, but can never bring themselves to do so, afraid that they realise they've been forgotten how much longer can I can they hide?
What story do you want to tell?
you don't have to post this or respond to this ( and I don't even know if this will get to you cause tumblr ask boxes are dumb), but I saw your Jan 12 post and I just wanted to tell you to hang in there. know that you are seen and cared for (even if it's just us randoms on tumblr). your number isn't getting pushed back. the line's just a little longer than you realize. the sun will come out for you soon <3
(p.s. feel free to ignore this if it makes you uncomfortable / you think it's useless, but I'm praying for you random tumblr stranger. )
This kind messege was hiding in my ask box amongst alot of troll asks and I'm so touched. Anon, thank you for this. I'll keep what you said in mind, I really appreciate you taking the time to send this, I'm sorry I found it so long after you sent it. It means alot, I'm asking the universe to send you joy and there's nothing random about you , you're very kindπ
Okay so I'm not American and I don't live there but I still decided to download xiaohongshu (rednote). The only social media I actually use and post on is Tumblr but I wanted to have little nosey lol.
First of all it was really quite funny and heartwarming to see the interactions between the Americans and Chinese rednote users, there where so many Chinese internet slang cheat sheets and memes being exchanged and taught, like the American tiktok refugees where so ready to learn a whole new language so they could participate in meme culture and I love it, lmao not to mention how there's a Chinese saying where it basically means cute aggression, but for when they see a cute cat and when you translate it to English it reads as I want to lick your cat and that was definitely a bit of a funny misunderstanding lmao.
But overall I kinda love how petty the Americans from tiktok where, they literally said we are going to go straight to the supposed source. ngl not the finest moment when asked for help on English homework the answers given where wrong lmao, it's apparently being agreed upon that when asking for English homework help on rednote, it's best to ask a British user instead of an American one lol.
But it is nice to see people exchanging culture and joy even with a language barrier and the Chinese users where and are so welcoming.