Charles Bukowski, "hurry Slowly," From Come On In!

i love your posts did you forget to take your meds

You know what people don’t talk about often enough? Playing catch up in life after spending your teens or early 20s suicidally depressed. There’s so many more layers than just being able to say “I don’t want to die anymore.”

The difficulty in academia or a career after spending years thinking you wouldn’t be alive long enough for any of it to matter.

The exhaustion that comes from self awareness and self soothing, with the constant voice in your head saying “don’t go backwards.”

How lonely it is to watch the people your age starting families when you’re just barely learning what stable relationships are, and the sudden societal pressure of being “up against a clock” for these kinds of things.

The judgement from others if you change your image or interests this late in the game just because you finally figured out who you really are under the demons.

Be kind to those who are developing and blooming after years of not planning on being here long. We are living a life we absolutely didn’t think we’d have, and it’s hard enough without society reminding us there’s expectations of our age.

We didn’t get to be young; we were too busy fighting battles few know.

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rotten from the inside

It would be simpler if conviction burned away everything else. But it doesn’t make consequences disappear; it just straightens your spine when you force yourself to look at them.

— Leslie Jamison, Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story (Little Brown and Company, February 20, 2024)

aneur. gouache watercolor

Prayer

something old from my journal that i like

[Thanks Ruth]

* * * * “The secrets of evolution are death and time—the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations.” ― Carl Sagan, Cosmos