double black, a rare moment of peace
Rho Ophiuchi cloud cluster
~Happy anniversary to the James Webb Space Telescope~
K so not to be dramatic or anything, but there's a free vintage French pattern book available on antiquepatternlibrary so if you like to crochet/weave/make pixel art/tie epic friendship bracelets don't walk- RUN.
It has scenes from aesop's fables! Cherubs doing things! Beheadings! Greek muses! Little farm people! Intricate floral pattern! Goth stained-glass window like patterns! Fun little corner pieces! Eeeeeeeeeeeeee
https://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/html/warm/C-TT008-180.htm
Anonymous asked:
im having a particularly terrible night with urges and imagery that i dont know how to handle. i gave in to some things. held back on some others. but im barely holding on, dear internet stranger.
you do not owe me your time or your words.. but if you could write some hope into existence for me.. i would be unendingly grateful to you.
please. tell me how you do it. tell me how you survive. because im not so sure i can get through the fifteen days it'll take to get to my seventeenth birthday.
could you please give me something to place my faith in? i dont think the universe is watching out for me anymore.
inkskinned answered:
i don’t usually answer these, because i am not a professional, and you deserve professional help. when i was 17 i was terrified of the idea of professional help, because my household was extremely unsafe, and made it clear that if i ever chose to get help, i would be punished for it.
i hope this is not your case. i hope that you can call someone, and they can take you where you should go.
but i will give you the advice that i wish i got, when i couldn’t get help at 17, when i was so bad that years later, i literally don’t-know-how-i-survived it: what you want is peace, not death. your brain is sick. it has romanticized an ending where there are no consequences. where effort isn’t necessary. where you can just… forget.
you want peace. that is a normal, human thing to want. maybe it feels more like you want quiet. or just… to take a break for a second.
here is what i will say: to end yourself means you never get to experience what it’s like to actually be happy. i thought i knew what it was like, and i was bitter about it. i’d say - i’ve been happy, it’s not worth it, because i didn’t know what i was missing. i thought that happiness meant having a partner or having a job or money or a college degree. it sounded like effort. it sounded like something that had to happen to me.
for the first time in my life, just this week, i was able to go to a concert and just-enjoy-it. no liquor, no drugs. just stomping my feet and getting caught up in it. i didn’t feel nervous or self-conscious or overwhelmed. i just had a good time. these days have a lot of these firsts for me - it is the first time i can eat cake without crying. it is the first time i can be around an exacto blade without supervision. it is the first time i have too many people to call when i am crying.
i can’t tell you where you’ll run into happiness, only that, for me, it started once i was out of that fucking house. it started once i figured out where the pain was coming from. once i figured out that i was not possessed, something medical was wrong with me. that i am not stupid or lazy, i have depression and adhd. the first few years were difficult. at 19, during my efforts to recover, i actually got worse by a considerable margin. and then, with time and patience - i got better.
happiness doesn’t feel like what you think it will. in movies it’s so golden and all-encompassing. but it doesn’t fly into your hands when you buy your first car nor does it arrive in the arms of a partner nor does it require passing your classes. happiness came to me on a tuesday in the form of a red-winged blackbird, and i looked at her, and she looked at me, and i said - oh. the whole world suddenly filled itself in with color. like i had been forever-asleep. like every corner of every room was suddenly glistening.
it ended quickly, back then. it just stopped in to check in on me. but it was enough - this thing i had never experienced, but that i knew (logically) could happen. before that, i was only staying because it would make my mom sad if i died. that was my only reason. and then the happiness came, so strange and brilliant and lovely that for years i couldn’t even look at it directly.
these days, things are so different. life is so much easier. i don’t wish for death because so much of what i have is already at peace. my boss understands when i need a mental health day. people in general are less prone to high school drama. entire communities hold my hand and have my number. i have a car and a dog and a little apartment garden and candles on all available surfaces and today i bought myself a little cake just-to-celebrate-nothing. my body is my own and we are both dancing.
there are so many things i’ve gotten to taste in the last 10 years. i know, for you, that is an eon, because it’s more than half of your life. but if it helps? in the 5 years between 17-21: i filled myself with laughter and love. i got to be a lead in a ballet and got my first tattoo and then my second and pierced my ears the way i’d wanted to (one of them professionally the other over a hot stove with a potato) and i discovered hozier is my favorite singer (i know. he was new back then) and i got my first real job and my first real paycheck and i hadn’t ever been seen as smart but then i started to actually treat my adhd as a condition rather than a burden and people started saying you’re like the smartest person in the room and my best friend met her husband who i will one day stand next to as maid of honor when he is her groom and i got to help people and make a stupid blog called “inkskinned” and find out that writing is actually my passion and that maybe i’m actually kind of good at it if i just practice and i got to meet my parents’ dog (his name is kaiju) and i slept on couches and kissed people and tried new things and learned how to breathe without feeling my chest tighten and that peace is here, on this planet, that peace echoes everywhere, it is in my hair and my homework and my houseplants, it is quiet and divine and mine because i fought for it and i built it and yes i lost hair over it but holy shit the whole world feels like it is shifted through a sunbeam
recently someone asked me if i could go back in time to 6th grade, with all the knowledge i have now, would i? and without thinking, i barked absolutely not. i know i should say it’s because i wouldn’t want to risk losing any of this stuff - but really it’s because i would never survive being a teenager again. it sounds incredibly lame and impossible, fake - but being a teenager was the hardest thing i ever did. i had no voice, no control, only fear and hatred.
but i did survive it. nothing about me is special. nothing about me is stronger than you or better prepared or more efficient. i didn’t survive it perfectly. i made a lot of mistakes and lost a lot of friends and harmed myself in ways that i’m still recovering from. but i did survive it. and there is a part of me looking at you in the past and saying - i’m you in the future.
and holy shit. every day. every goddamn day i’m glad we survived to see the rest of it. because you hit 18 and everything changes. like, everything. and holy shit, it is infinitely worth it.
Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.
Might I add:
The defeat of the wizard who made people choose how they’d be to be executed
The woman who raised the changeling alongside her biological child
The human who died of radiation poisoning after repairing the spaceship
The adventures of a space roomba
Cinderella finding Araura (and falling in love)
I don’t know a snappy description but the my nemesis cynthia story certainly lives in my head
hilariously, these are almost all in my fic tag. so, a compiled list from the notes (and some extras):
- The God of Arepo (graphic novel 1 / 2 / 3) (ebook)
- The Monster of Sentan
- The Witch’s Cat
- Raise Both Children
- Stabby the Roomba (honorable mention)
- Cinderella Marries the Prince (comic)
- My Arch Nemesis Cynthia
- Pirates and Mermaid
- Eindred and the Witch
- The Demon King
- The Cornerwitch
- Grandmother Beetroot
- Apocalypse Daycare Worker
- Grandmother Accidentally Summons a Demon
- New Year Saga
- A Story About Changelings
- Ranger in the King’s Forest
- The Difference Between a Hare and a Rabbit
- Goblin Men (Canines)
I am in love with you /p
guess I have to work my way through these at some point
i am writing a poem about the stars, on a computer made from earth materials. i am writing a poem about the metaphorical concept of the stars, using my real human body that has minerals from the big bang.
people often say - the brain named itself! and isn't that a wiggly little fact. the serpent that swallows itself. this is the name the brain wanted. the brain invented the language to name itself. invented communication to relay it.
i am resting my wrist bones because they hurt, and i experience pain with a brain that has named itself. not mine, though - someone else's brain named my brain, and then someone else's body taught my network how to refer to itself. at some point the electricity from one person's information encoded my matter into knowledge. if i think too hard about what it means to know something, i get vertigo.
there are pieces of each person floating around in the air, and will be for always, so long as there's atmosphere. and in the water, too. i like the word miasma. every so often i will catch a smell on the wind that reminds me of - something, like if i could just smell it again, i'd remember something important - and maybe that is evidence that some particles of myself have already floated off my past to find myself in the present.
i am writing a poem about stars in a body made from stars. so stars invented poetry. stars also invented how cliche it is to talk about being made from stardust. other stardust creations are bored of reading about how we are all stardust.
i keep thinking about images from telescopes and about space stations. i keep thinking - if we're the children of stars. well how about that? a tiny part of the stars named each star. we looked back at our ancestors - siblings? cousins? - and we realized we couldn't help but love the up. space, from whence we came. we found an echo in ourselves about the beauty of the moon - some part of us remembers what it was like, maybe, to be big and glowing too.
to paraphrase carl sagan: we are how the universe observes itself. how easy it was for us to love it. we invented poetry about it because it was so lovable and big even the brain-that-named-itself couldn't really grasp it. and even poetry can't touch the horizon of it. the universe has no shape and no edge.
but here we are, still: all of us. something the universe has managed to collect.