Can I Request One About A Lonely Childhood?

why be happy when you could be normal?, jeanette winterson // later: my life at the edge of the world, paul lisicky // untitled, abigail disney // the icarus girl, helen oyeyemi // in which i prefer to blast frank while the door is closed, hazem fahmy // indian killer, sherman alexie // the invention of solitude, paul auster // vesuvius, amber sparks // i threw an effigy-burning bonfire for my female rage, ash sanders // the brief wondrous life of oscar wao, junot díaz.

what is love if not a repetition of history.

Marguerite Duras, from The Lover

Text ID: I feel a sadness I expected and which comes only from myself. I say I’ve always been sad. That I can see the same sadness in photos of myself when I was small. That today, recognizing it as the sadness I’ve always had, I could almost call it by my own name, it’s so like me.

“Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (via noorshirazie)

there is this horror at being left behind

starting line, luke hemmings / fleabag (2016-2019); s1e6 "episode #1.6" / working for the knife, mitski / x / it chooses you, miranda july / ryan o'connell / x / via flickr / aristos the musical / x / the hours, michael cunningham

image descriptions below the cut

1. Black text highlighted in grey on a white background reads, "I wake up every morning with the years ticking by / I'm missing all these memories, maybe they were never mine / I feel the walls are closing / I'm running out of time / I think I missed the gun at the starting line".

2. Frame from the TV series "Fleabag." A woman with short, brown hair is sitting at a restaurant table in front of a window. She has tears in her eyes. Text at the bottom of the frame reads, "Either everyone feels like this a little bit and they’re just not talking about it or I am completely alone. Which isn’t fucking funny."

3. Black text on a white background reads, "I always knew the world moves on / I just didn't know it would go without me".

4. An empty playground structure illuminated at night, in front of an open field and the starry night sky.

5. Text on a grey background reads, in all caps, "all I ever really want to know is / [white text on a blue background] how other people are making it through life. / where do they put their body, hour by hour, / and how do they cope inside of it".

6. Black text on a white paper background reads, "about how you feel more and more alienated from your friends each passing day and you're not sure how to fix it. It seems like everyone is just better at living than you are."

7. Blurry and grainy greyscale image of silhouetted people walking.

8. Worm's-eye view image of two silhouetted people holding hands while scuba diving. Black text on a white background in the top left and bottom right corners of the image reads, "I often wonder if life is easier for other people or they're just better at faking it".

9. Black text on a white background reads, "[Patroclus]: Remember what you once said about growing up? How it's like running after someone, but always falling behind?"

10. Text on a white background. Black text reads, "he was more lonely than the rest of his friends, he thought." Blue text reads, "but that's just not something that you talk about."

Alain de Botton, Essays in Love [transcript in ALT]

self sabotage

“The Moon & The Stars” dress by Frieda Lepold

“I do exist, don’t I? It often feels as if I’m not here, that I’m a figment of my own imagination. There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock.”

— Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (Gail Honeyman)

“They said that it takes one to know one. The reason I can point out a person’s evil nature is because I have that same evil nature within me.”

—

Dazai Osamu, “A New Hamlet”