Hi I’m Julie ☮
est. 1992
I can be random at times, but I’m always reasonable.
I have no soul, but honestly, who does?
I hope one day I won’t need a fake smile.
I’m cheesy at heart.
I make up excuses for everything.
I’ve been told I’m cool, I’m sure they were just being nice..
Don’t knock it till you try it.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Delphinium Arrangement
Photo by Ashley Ludaescher
(Source: pnw-breakfast-tea)
I’ve spent most of my life chasing the person I want to be. Because 20-year-old me will have better friends, and 25-year-old me will land a killer job, and 30-year-old me will be madly in love. And me 6 months from now will be skinnier, and me a year from now will be more confident, and me some time from now will be better somehow. So much better. For years, this is what I thought. That if I could just wait it out, everything would get better.
It took me a long time to realize that life doesn’t work that way. Because older doesn’t mean happier or easier, and it certainly doesn’t mean better; it just means older. Life isn’t a well plotted screen play, or a checklist, or, God forbid, some waiting room. We have got to stop waiting. Because life isn’t about growing up to be all that we’ve ever wanted; it’s just about growing up.
It’s about love, and change, and crying yourself to sleep when it’s all too much. And working at a burger joint, and kissing your best friend even though he might not like you back, and calling your mom every Sunday because you miss her like hell. It’s fights, and promotions, and hospital visits. And then it’s this: another wedding of another one of your college friends, the third one this year, but this time you meet a groomsman who’s just as down on love and you dance all night. And this: he cries when you say “I do.” And this: a kid with your eyes and his dorky ears.
Or maybe not. Maybe it’s this: you write everything, everywhere, all the time, even when the prettier kids make fun of you, and the short teacher with the big nose tells you it’s good. Really good. And this: you’re living in a shoebox, by the skin of your teeth, but there’s a bar across the street that lets you read your poetry, and evey time you do, someone in the crowd finally knows what it feels like to be understood. And this: your words being published. Your words. Being bought by people who could be spending their money on anything at all. And you sit in your twin bed where you’ve written your entire novel, a dozen empty coffee mugs still dirty on the nightstand, and you scream until your lungs burn.
It’s all of these things, and bad things, and good things, and the raw realization that it doesn’t get better or worse, it just gets different. It just changes. Always, always changes. And somehow that makes it more wonderful. Because future you may have the friends, and the boy, and the job, but she didn’t get it by waiting around. She is a product of you. Right now, tomorrow, changing and growing every moment that follows. She is kind, and breathing, and beautiful. But she waits for the day she doesn’t have to worry about paying a mortgage bill, and she worries too often about what people think of her. She still doesn’t have her shit together.
And maybe that’s what I’ve learned after all this time: nobody has their shit together. We’re all just here, floundering around in pursuit of being something more. Broken, thoughtful creatures with too much time on our hands, desperate for the companionship of someone who reminds us that we are not alone. We don’t have our shit together. Maybe we never will. But more importantly, I think that’s how it’s supposed to be.
ramblings of an overthinker (via the960writers)
Flip-phone. Fur Coat. Hot Dog. Carrie Bradshaw. 1998.
Just a month ago, I got my first bee sting. My father was allergic
to bees and I have spent my entire life hoping to become
every bit his ghost.
So, I thank god for the little miracle
and my purple arm, swelling.
At night, I had to sleep with my hands in fists, so eager
to dig out the stinger.
I kept the stinger in, because I didn’t know you had to take it out
because I am tired of always taking things out.
This year, I said goodbye to someone I used to love
and there’s only an archived email to show for it.
I used to think that because my father died, I would never
have to experience loss again.
It turns out, there is no threshold for being a person,
no limit to what your heart can contain,
even my heart, with its hole and all the inconvenience
that comes with an off-beat pulse.
I had to pull the stinger out with my nails, left behind a red brown
wound. I thought the swelling would go down.
And it did, but the purple mark stayed.
Sometimes now, when I am trying to sleep,
I start scratching.
I don’t love him anymore, but it’s hard to forget everything.
Just a photo of his face and I’m thinking
of my fingers in his baby soft hair.
Just a feeling and I’m rubbing my fingers over my scar.
If my father was alive, he wouldn’t be able to help me
with this. He dated a handful of women before loving my mother.
Maybe he hurt someone and I inherited her pain.
Maybe someone hurt him and I inherited his pain.
Anyway, my father died.
Anyway, the bee died.
Yena Sharma Purmasir, “Treating a Bee Sting”
(via fly-underground)
Dirty Dancing (1987)
Wisteria // Sugura Baba
