It's already past midnight folks.

12/01/2024

12/01/2024

as soon as you think you got me figured out, i become more to understand

12/01/2024

(*ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ꕤ*.ﾟ༝༚༝༚

12/01/2024

i see you

12/01/2024

°˖➴ ( ၴႅၴ 𐀔 ࿔ 𓏲๋࣭࣪˖

10/01/2024

☆ violentwavesofemotions

10/01/2024

This is your reminder that your energy is a privilege. People don't get into your life without earning their spot. You can love everyone, but that doesn't mean they get to sit at your table.

09/01/2024

When you remember me, it means that you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart.
For as long as you remember me, I am never entirely lost. When I'm feeling most ghost-like, it is your remembering me that helps remind me that I actually exist. When I'm feeling sad, it's my consolation. When I'm feeling happy, it's part of why I feel that way.
If you forget me, one of the ways I remember who I am will be gone. If you forget, part of who I am will be gone. ~Frederick Buechner

(Book: Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter's Dictionary [ad] https://amzn.to/3tIic9g)

(Art: Photogravure by Clarence H. White)

08/01/2024

Buffalo 66 (1998) dir. Vincent Gallo

Production Companies
Cinépix Film Properties (CFP)
Lions Gate Films
Muse Productions

08/01/2024

I wish she could find some ways to easily go back with her former self and start behaving sensibly and reasonably again.

04/01/2024

The emotionally intelligent person knows that love is a skill, not a feeling, and will require trust, vulnerability, generosity, humor, sexual understanding, and selective resignation. The emotionally intelligent person awards themselves the time to determine what gives their working life meaning and has the confidence and tenacity to try to find an accommodation between their inner priorities and the demands of the world. The emotionally intelligent person knows how to hope and be grateful, while remaining steadfast before the essentially tragic structure of existence. The emotionally intelligent person knows that they will only ever be mentally healthy in a few areas and at certain moments, but is committed to fathoming their inadequacies and warning others of them in good time, with apology and charm. There are few catastrophes, in our own lives or in those of nations, that do not ultimately have their origins in emotional ignorance. ~Alain de Botton

(Book: The School of Life [ad] https://amzn.to/4aIVXAW)

(Art: Photograph of Paul Newman and wife Joanne Woodward)

03/01/2024

06/12/2023

"To Eyes Grateful Heart"
My heart still beats,
Forever now from this hot paper
of words my death
I lost my last breath
The fog creates boundaries between the ground and my eyes
The darkness dips its finger into the inkwell
and writes its vows to the sun
I witness the moon's tears
Stabbing the air as she cries
The fog now buries my horizon, too late for any hope
Now the darkness helps me write my eulogy
I then carve it into my heart, to which the blood pools
I then dip in my tongue to write my will
The world, you, yes the seasons fooled me into believing
in four quarters, new life begins, slower the rhythm now lives
inside of me
A rose for the darkness
A sunflower for the sun
I leave my everything to the child of the old crows
So shall my death leave wings for my words to escape
From the pen
To eyes grateful heart
GHW
https://www.facebook.com/LoudandDark
image: hicherry

30/11/2023

All we can do is give ourselves the time we need, the break we need, from people, from work, to figure things out; maybe to remind ourselves what really matters, who matters.

28/11/2023

What Kardiner called "traumatic neuroses," today we call posttraumatic stress disorder — PTSD. Kardiner noted that sufferers from traumatic neuroses develop a chronic vigilance for and sensitivity to threat. His summation especially caught my eye: "The nucleus of the neurosis is a physioneurosis." In other words, posttraumatic stress isn't "all in one's head," as some people supposed, but has a physiological basis. Kardiner understood even then that the symptoms have their origin in the entire body's response to the original trauma.

(Book: The Body Keeps The Score /
Author: Bessel A. van der Kolk, M.D.)

Maybe what you *assumed* was just bad behavior or bad manners was actually a trauma response? Maybe what you judge yourself for doing is a response to untreated trauma?

I’ve done a few podcast episodes on identifying & healing childhood trauma, PTSD etc. You can find all my podcast episodes on all podcast platforms- just look for Cleaning up the Mental Mess wherever you listen to podcasts or visit: https://anchor.fm/cleaningupthementalmess

Image by

27/11/2023

You hit the spot, that's exactly the viewpoint I
was searching for, just having some trouble
putting it into words.

It’s easy to feel uncared for when people aren’t able to communicate and connect with you in the way you need. And it’s so hard not to internalize that silence as a reflection on your worth. But the truth is that the way other people operate is not about you. Most people are so caught up in their own responsibilities, struggles, and anxiety that the thought of asking someone else how they’re doing doesn’t even cross their mind. They aren’t inherently bad or uncaring — they’re just busy and self-focused. And that’s okay. It’s not evidence of some fundamental failing on your part. It doesn’t make you unloveable or invisible. It just means that those people aren’t very good at looking beyond their own world. But the fact that you are — that despite the darkness you feel, you have the ability to share your love and light with others — is a strength. Your work isn’t to change who you are; it’s to find people who are able to give you the connection you need. Because despite what you feel, you are not too much. You are not too sensitive or too needy. You are thoughtful and empathetic. You are compassionate and kind. And with or without anyone’s acknowledgment or affection, you are enough. ~Daniell Koepke

(Book: Daring To Take Up Space [ad] https://amzn.to/3QnE4Oz)

(Art: Painting by Frank O'Meara)

27/11/2023

Let's keep on yearning towards
empowering ourselves ladies.

They keep saying that beautiful is something a girl needs to be. But honestly? Forget that. Don’t be beautiful. Be angry, be intelligent, be witty, be klutzy, be interesting, be funny, be adventurous, be crazy, be talented - there are an eternity of other things to be other than beautiful. And what is beautiful anyway but a set of letters strung together to make a word? Be your own definition of amazing, always. That is so much more important than anything beautiful, ever. ~Nikita Gill

(Poem: Don't Be Beautiful / Book: Your Soul is a River [ad] https://amzn.to/3tVBp7k)

27/11/2023

Easier said than done but let's try to live
in the present moment sometimes.

It is very important to go out alone, to sit under a tree—not with a book, not with a companion, but by yourself—and observe the falling of a leaf, hear the lapping of the water, the fishermen’s song, watch the flight of a bird, and of your own thoughts as they chase each other across the space of your mind. If you are able to be alone and watch these things, then you will discover extraordinary riches which no government can tax, no human agency can corrupt, and which can never be destroyed. ~Jiddu Krishnamurti

(Book: Think on These Things https://amzn.to/3F4XjXS)

(Art: 'Distant Thunder', 1961 by Andrew Wyeth)

27/11/2023

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could. ~Louise Erdrich

(Book: The Painted Drum [ad] https://amzn.to/3uHWmTi)

27/11/2023

The emotionally intelligent person knows that love is a skill, not a feeling, and will require trust, vulnerability, generosity, humor, sexual understanding, and selective resignation. The emotionally intelligent person awards themselves the time to determine what gives their working life meaning and has the confidence and tenacity to try to find an accommodation between their inner priorities and the demands of the world. The emotionally intelligent person knows how to hope and be grateful, while remaining steadfast before the essentially tragic structure of existence. The emotionally intelligent person knows that they will only ever be mentally healthy in a few areas and at certain moments, but is committed to fathoming their inadequacies and warning others of them in good time, with apology and charm… There are few catastrophes, in our own lives or in those of nations, that do not ultimately have their origins in emotional ignorance. ~Alain de Botton

(Book: The School of Life [ad] https://amzn.to/3uAJRZI)

(Art: Photograph of Paul Newman and wife Joanne Woodward at home in their Greenwich Village apartment, New York, 1961 by Louis Goldman)

27/11/2023

To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. The people they're too exhausted to be any longer. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out, to become speedily found when they are lost.
But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way. Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame. Sometimes it will be a flicker that temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness. ~Heidi Priebe

(Book: This Is Me Letting You Go [ad] https://amzn.to/49Oe089)

27/11/2023

I am teaching myself how to take up space. How to not apologize constantly for the way I live and breathe. How an apology isn’t something I am supposed to say before I speak in a conversation. How I’m so sorry, isn’t something I have to say before I just allow myself the basic right of speaking about anything.
I am teaching myself that I am allowed to exist on this planet without thinking of myself as a burden. How to not apologize for things that are out of my control. How to understand when people are trying to manipulate me into thinking the worst of myself and most of all how to stop thinking the very worst of myself as I deserve better than that from myself.
I am teaching myself that humans can exist without assuming the very worst about themselves and how the people around them perceive them. How to not apologize when someone bumps into me and I immediately assume it is my fault. How to not apologize when I ask a question because I think others will think I am stupid. How to love myself for these flawed bits of me no one has ever wanted to love before.
I am teaching myself that all the lies my abusers told me about myself were so very wrong. How I am allowed to make mistakes. How as long as I apologize and amend things, anything is fixable if I still have love in my heart for the other person. How not everything that has ever gone wrong in every relationship is my fault.
I am finally learning how to take up space as a human being. It’s taken a long, long road to get here. And I still have a very long way to go before I am done understanding that it is my job to take up space, that I am not just an afterthought or a secondary character in this gift of life I have been given. That who I am is not an apology, that who I am is not wrong. ~Nikita Gill

(Book: Wild Embers [ad] https://amzn.to/3Re3nmP)

(Art: 'The Sw***er', 1969 by Andrew Wyeth)

27/11/2023

Women have another option. They can aspire to be wise, not merely nice; to be competent, not merely helpful; to be strong, not merely graceful; to be ambitious for themselves, not merely for themselves in relation to men and children. They can let themselves age naturally and without embarrassment, actively protesting and disobeying the conventions that stem from this society’s double standard about aging. Instead of being girls, girls as long as possible, who then age humiliatingly into middle-aged women, they can become women much earlier — and remain active adults, enjoying the long, erotic career of which women are capable, far longer. Women should allow their faces to show the lives they have lived. Women should tell the truth. ~Susan Sontag

(Book: Against Interpretation [ad] https://amzn.to/3RgBg7J)

(Art: Photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson)

27/11/2023

The world is increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn't very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more?
How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind.
To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business. ~Matt Haig

(Book: Reasons to Stay Alive [ad] https://amzn.to/47OGZXx)

(Art: Painting by Lesley Oldaker)