Greyscalegrey - 🦥

do you know how to fill a void? sometimes i feel empty inside and the feeling does not go away

I don’t think you need to do things with the intention of filling the void but instead do things with the intention of bringing yourself joy and meaning. If you can focus on experiencing good things as fully as you can that will take you away from the emptiness. Voids fill up in their own time while you are giving yourself love. Emptiness is not always a bad thing. It has something to teach you if you can listen every once in a while and be still with it, meet it, write with it. Have a conversation with this emptiness. Then treat yourself to openness with life, something new, something gentle. Even a small thing. Fill yourself up with lots of small loves for the world.

you have seen, many times, the phrase love your body! and every time, like rainwater, it glides off you. not because you cannot love it - you mostly, like, tolerate it - but because of the word "your".

is this your body? when you were 11 you had to start shaving your legs because other girls found it gross you were hairy. when you were 12, you had to stop wearing v-necks because of your chest - people were staring. your mother didn't let you dye your hair. your first boyfriend makes you dress up in skimpy clothes for him, then hated when other people coveted you. what you wear and how you present determine whether or not people find you funny or annoying or arrogant. other people get to determine if you are pretty, a court of opinion so loud it blots any good intent.

when is the body yours? magazines and instagram and tiktok endlessly advising you to "take care of" (starve) your body as if it is a weed. you must hack and slash at it, defend yourself from its wanton desires. it is a shameful, greedy thing. it is more like an art piece. you are keeping it or being kept-in-it.

you try to language it to your therapist - it's not that you don't recognize yourself in the mirror, it's more just that the thing that is in the mirror - it isn't you. that's why it's so easy to take apart: you're vaguely aware of the shape, but it feels like you are an animal hiding in the back of this cavern, snarling.

obviously you're like stuck in it. it often hurts a lot, buzzes with pain and a strange numbness. so it is your body when it's painful. that makes sense. otherwise - how many times have you been told to save yourself (your body) for marriage. for someone else. you are just borrowing it.

love your body! is so funny. somehow, without meaning to, the phrase reminds you - it isn't you. you're just inside it.

I think adults need summer vacation. Like let's just close down all our jobs for three months and play outside. Please. I'm so tired.

i want to get a master's degree i want to take a cake decorating class i want to dance i want to sing i want to write and remember how to think i want to swim i want to be free

Being a young adult is so strange. You enter a coffee shop. The 20 year old girl waiting behind you cried all night because she just came to a new city for university and she feels so alone. That 27 year old guy over there works a job he is overqualified for, he lives with his parents and wants to move out but doesn't know what to do about it. That one 24 year old dude already has a car, a house, and a job waiting for him once he graduates thanks to his dad's connections. The 26 year old barista couldn't complete his higher education because he has to work and take care of his family. The 28 year old girl sitting next to you has no friends to go out with so she is texting her mother. That couple (both 25 years old) are married and the girl is pregnant. The 29 year old writing something on her laptop has realized that she chose the wrong major so she is trying to start all over. We are not alone in this, but we are actually so alone. Do you feel me