I Don't Wanna Love Myself Like "buy This Feel Good". I Wanna Love Myself Like I Made A Sandwich For Later

i don't wanna love myself like "buy this feel good". i wanna love myself like i made a sandwich for later because i knew i'd be too busy. i wanna love myself like hang on take a breath do you actually like this. i wanna love myself like okay we're gonna set a reminder to get up and brush our teeth. i wanna love myself like - it's okay to say no, it's okay to take that nap, it's okay to go home.

i don't wanna feel sexy like tv. i don't wanna feel sexy like little black dress. i wanna feel sexy like high note during karaoke. like just got done writing 14 pages of poetry. like let me show you this scarf i've been knitting. i wanna feel sexy like hand on the back of the headrest while you parallel park. like did i tell you about that time i saved a baby bird. like don't tell her but i've been sneaking money into her purse.

i don't wanna feel pretty like expensive. like high fashion. like paid to be here. i wanna feel pretty like a bird in a puddle. i wanna feel pretty like streak of dyed hair. i wanna feel pretty like calligraphy, like new leaves, like a skinned knee bleed, like a dog running at full speed. i wanna feel pretty like lying next to you. i wanna feel pretty like the new album just dropped, i wanna feel pretty like a shower, i wanna feel pretty like a stone wall all covered in moss.

i keep saying body neutrality. that feels negative - no bad things, no good things, just body. but i mean - my body is neutral like a flower is neutral like an oil slick is neutral like a day is neutral, too. my body is neutral so a kiss can feel like lightning so a dance can feel like a hula hoop so a walk to get coffee can feel like - god, i'm so happy to just be around you.

my body is a site. not the source of the joy, just where i can find it. i don't wanna love like - finally got my body tight/forced myself through a diet/whatever trend is the current hype. i wanna love myself like - i go to this river and i find gold every time i shift around inside it. i wanna love myself like - i feel sexy because it's sexy to be alive, and laughing. i wanna love myself like - bitch, i could have died, and i didn't, and if that isn't the prettiest almost in the whole world, than i don't know what is.

one day I woke up and realised all the waiting and yearning was actually me living my life and it’s happening right now and it’s still good even if it’s not perfect and there is no moment when all your dreams get fulfilled and everything makes sense. like… this is it. this is life. you’ll waste away your youth waiting for some imagined future if you don’t love life for what it is now and make the most of it

PSA:

1. If you are not silly, it is vital you become silly

2. If you are silly, you must stay silly

2. If you used to be silly but have stopped, you must make all efforts to return to silliness

I think one of the most fun things about people’s writing is revealing the quiet, personal mythology of individuals.

I’m not talking about their spirituality or their religion. I’m talking about the things that evoke immense emotion in us one way or another that we struggle to explain why and- thus- the symbolism in our stories that to one interpretation is really only for us, if I write a scene where a character as a child eats an orange sherbet push pop that maybe to everyone else it will be an irrelevant detail, and I feel alone in the overwhelming nostalgia and softness of sun-soaked childhoods at a very specific park and a routine I used to follow for no particular reason- but I like to think it’s not, only for me.

I think that, while it’s a folly to presume to know the mind of anyone you’ve only read the work of, there is a kind of intimate exchange in storytelling. We talk often about obscure or strange trauma triggers, people whose minds have somehow condensed an abusive experience down to the sight of eggs on a plate or a particular song but only when it’s whistled- but these forms of trauma simply reflect a broader truth in human understanding. We make patterns out of the strangest things.

“Pareidolia” is the proper term often used, and, as I so often like to do with words, I chew it apart into its pieces and look for pretty fragments. Pareidolia is simply the way that we look for, and see things- patterns, faces, hands- where they do not factually exist. The things that are most important to us make soap bubble distortions out of our world. But inside of that word is ‘idol’, like an idol for a deity. I am sure that presence has other meanings, but a part of me imagines it almost as a personal pantheon. The strange gods of the life that only we have lived, and that we share at a thousand small places with others.

The god of my childhood is orange sherbet push pops, eaten in summer, earnest attempts made to lap up all the sweet sticky syrup before it drips too far but never successful, and the plastic ‘umbrella’ (really the pusher, but it was always an umbrella to my eyes) taken to play with and turn in my fingers long after the cardboard tube was gone. Perhaps, somewhere in the world, there are other people that know that particular god.

A curious thing to call divine. Just one memory among many. But whenever I see them again, it’s like turning over a page in an old yearbook and there’s your best friend who you haven’t seen, who you wonder what they’re doing now. The vocabulary of our most intimate and personal experiences are littered with ostensibly meaningless objects that held our hearts once.

If I read a story, and two people eat peaches together, lovingly described, gently rendered, I wonder if the author’s first love tasted like peaches.

What's that poem about the cockroach and the moth where the cockroach is like "I wish I've ever wanted anything the way that moth wanted to burn itself up in that lantern" because we had to read that in high school and it still fucks me up to this day

I love how different forms of art are all obsessed with each other. A book tries to capture the feeling of music, a painting tries to depict a scene in a book, a song tries to paint a picture. And it's always insufficient. No single form of art can encapsulate another form of art and capture the essence of it – but it tries, and its attempts are impossibly compelling. All the forms of art are in love with each other and spend so much time trying to express what makes the other kinds of art so lovely.