well

let's explore neurodivergence

https://don-fisher.com/collections/bags-1/products/moonfish

https://troyputney.substack.com/p/when-love-is-a-stray

Although she isn’t the only one, Tala is a soul mate with whom I know my heart is eternally linked. I’m certain we’ve met before, and I’m certain we will meet again. That’s just how love works.

https://www.bustle.com/wellness/dont-see-a-future-with-my-boyfriend

Love isn’t enough. It’s tempting to view it as everything. No offense to Lennon-McCarthy, but it’s not all you need, in life nor in a relationship. It’s a lot. It’s the good sh*t. It’s the stuff that binds us all, it’s the space between moments and atoms and any other poetic thought you can have. Love lives up to all of the art that’s made about it and the songs sung about it and the chicken noodle soups made with it. But it’s not simply enough. Which is, of course, an excruciating and often unacceptable truth. What do you mean, it’s not enough? I love this person. OK, but you can’t live with them. You can’t be happy with them. You can’t be fully alive with them and only them as your partner. That doesn’t negate how you feel about them. (Even though it feels like it does.) It just means you need something else, too. Not more, not better, just different. You’re not evil for having needs in a relationship that your partner cannot meet. It’s devastating, it’s depressing, it’s gutting when that happens. But it’s not your fault. There are all kinds of common explicit examples of when love isn’t enough — one person wants kids, the other doesn’t; one person wants to live in rural Idaho and the other can’t be more than two miles from a Zara without getting hives. Love can’t bridge those gaps; it can’t make two people want the same things. And you might find that this is the case with you and your partner. If you choose to leave, there will be moments where you both question if you could have done more to make it work. You’ll ask yourself that question. And you’ll find the answer in the new, full life you build afterward. You’ll find it in the new people you meet and the new experiences you have. In the meaning you create and make, and in the things you miss and adore about your ex. The truth is you can’t have it all in life; you can’t have this partner and this life and another one later that you try a different way. You only get one. I’m not saying I’m in favor of you leaving. (I’m in favor of you working hard to make life what you want, and you will get it wrong a couple times along the way! I promise!) I’m telling you, though — promising you even — that you will have laughter and love and joy again. First, it will feel like you got your insides scooped out like a pumpkin, sure. But you’ll get through it, like all of us do when we lose love, or have to let go of it.

You should walk away when you think you have nothing left to give to this relationship.

https://www.bustle.com/p/how-to-feel-more-comfortable-asking-for-what-you-need-in-a-relationship-59044

If you are in a healthy relationship, your partner will be excited to meet your needs, not angry that you have expressed them.

https://www.bustle.com/wellness/worried-about-being-single-forever-advice

I want to tell you something, though, about relationships. It’s very easy and therefore very common to fall into a pattern of believing and living as if your partner is one unchanging entity and that you are also one unchanging entity. That the future is pretty set, that at Hanukkah you visit your family, and in the spring, you clean out the garage, and that in three to five years, you’ll start trying for kids, and he’ll be a banker until he dies, and you’ll be a carpenter until you die, or she’ll always be a little bit bossy, and you’ll always be a little too withholding. Often we believe we have set futures and we buy into them, and having a partner can add a sort of pressure to stay on that path aiming for that future. It takes a lot of effort as half of a couple to shake yourself out of that belief, to live as if anything could (and might) happen, as if you could make anything happen.

Do some sh*t that feels uncomfortable or scary right now that isn’t about love or impressing someone. Do some sh*t that’s about impressing you. That’s about looking back at your life and knowing you tried things that you wanted to try. It doesn’t have to be scary to anyone else. It can be “boring” from the outside. Pick three things that you really, really want to do and try to do them by the end of the year. Maybe you hate one, maybe one is simply too much work, maybe you can’t believe you waited this long to become a cheesemonger.

https://www.bustle.com/wellness/should-i-break-up-with-my-boyfriend-cant-stop-thinking-about-it

If there were an easy, obvious, morally correct choice guaranteed to bring you the most future happiness, you would have made it already. Please trust yourself enough to know that.

Your youth doesn’t have to be dedicated to chasing wild flings and new relationships. Almost every single person I know who grew up quickly or who “did the right thing all the time” as a kid is now obsessed with getting to relive and re-create their youth. They want to get the chance to be reckless, to go wild, to make bad choices. There is something acutely painful about feeling like everyone else got to mess up and you didn’t and now you’re on track to… keep doing the right thing…?

Life is not about setting yourself up for a good future — despite what every adult made it seem like for the first 18 years of your life. The present is your life, too. You are allowed to make choices for yourself in the present because they work for you now.

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https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/upon-reflection-andrew-haigh-on-all-of-us-strangers

The moments you realize your relationship is working with someone are when they get something so profound about you that you just want to keep hidden. They pull on that thread, they don’t judge it, and they’re soft and kind with that understanding. That’s the moment when you feel you can love this person, because they have compassion for you and you have compassion for them.

https://www.madewell.com/rawsontrade%3B-vintage-architect-shirt-N8486.html

https://theheatherhogan.substack.com/p/a-roadmap-for-a-queer-happily-ever

I've written so much about the idea of "queer time" over the course of my life. About how it moves differently than regular time, than heterosexual time; about how we’re on our own schedule; about how we exist outside the rigidity of the patriarchal space-time continuum. Despite what we've been told, over and over, there’s actually not a cosmic clock counting down the minutes we have to meet someone and fall in love and build a life together. The hours aren’t melting away for us to choose our careers, or uncover our desires, or chase our dreams. There's no finish line; we never really arrive. We grow up, we get better, we fall down, we learn, we grow up even more. Being a grown-up, for real, is choosing to do the hard work. Not once, but perpetually. It’s unpacking the way our experiences inform our behavior and how that behavior rubs up against the people we love in good and bad ways. It’s figuring out when and how to put other people's needs and desires before our own, and figuring out how to accept the grace of other people doing it for us too. It’s not getting what we want sometimes. It’s not getting what we need sometimes. It’s making ourselves trustworthy and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable enough to trust in return. It’s respecting the people in our lives enough to constantly take extra care with our words and our actions. It’s tough but gentle honesty, especially with ourselves. It’s especially apologies and it’s especially forgiveness. There is absolutely no way human beings with their own insecurities and longings and pain and hopes and fears and ambitions and trauma can join our lives together — in any way — without an enormous amount of friction. And there’s no way to ease that friction without a constant commitment to keep showing up, to keep working.

https://brandyjensen.substack.com/p/dear-fuck-up-should-i-tell-my-friend

It just sometimes happens that you will look at a face you’ve seen countless times and suddenly have the urge to bring it much closer to your own. You will find that a new sense of wonder attaches to a person who is also beautifully familiar. You will realize, in short, that you are in love. There is nothing particularly gendered about this. I refuse to cede the territory of Being Someone Who Yearns to men. ... For every anecdote about relationships ruined I could give you one about relationships changed. “We were friends for years before we started dating” is so common a story it’s often told quasi-apologetically, like it’s not exciting or interesting enough to count. But in every version of that story there is a moment when someone who had long been living between fear and hope had to pick one.

https://brandyjensen.substack.com/p/from-the-archives-oh-shit-i-think

I won’t lie to you, it is sometimes very horrible. I was most recently rejected so thoroughly — met with a kind of blank astonishment that I had imagined my feelings were returned — that it felt as though everyone else could surely tell. Like strangers on the street could smell it on me, like my dogs walked slightly farther ahead to avoid any association with such a pitiable, unloveable creature. Yes, it was humiliating. Yes, it was painful. Yes, it was still worth it. Because for some brief, however misguided few weeks there was nothing in the world that was boring to me. I started looking at the things that mean the most to me, things I often take for granted, in the new light of wanting to explain them to someone else. I felt present and eventful, flush with the unfolding thrill of revelation (this is how I see things, do you see them this way also?), alive to the gentle pleasure of knowing and becoming known. The alternative to suffering is not its absence, just suffering in a different way, and I would rather suffer for being a fool than a coward.

Do not love half lovers Do not entertain half friends Do not indulge in works of the half talented Do not live half a life and do not die a half death If you choose silence, then be silent When you speak, do so until you are finished Do not silence yourself to say something And do not speak to be silent If you accept, then express it bluntly Do not mask it If you refuse then be clear about it for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance Do not accept half a solution Do not believe half truths Do not dream half a dream Do not fantasize about half hopes Half a drink will not quench your thirst Half a meal will not satiate your hunger Half the way will get you no where Half an idea will bear you no results Your other half is not the one you love It is you in another time yet in the same space It is you when you are not Half a life is a life you didn't live, A word you have not said A smile you postponed A love you have not had A friendship you did not know To reach and not arrive Work and not work Attend only to be absent What makes you a stranger to them closest to you and they strangers to you The half is a mere moment of inability but you are able for you are not half a being You are a whole that exists to live a life not half a life Kahlil Gibran. "Do Not Love Half Lovers."

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"it's very easy to be cynical about love, but this, tonight, this is hard. so to allan and nicole, who make the hard way look easy."

https://snakecharmerinc.com/angelodeaugustine/moon-cap

https://twitter.com/iambrillyant/status/1743366440130838732

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