you know how there are moonbeam girls? the soft ones with curves and a smile that makes everything feel safe. the ones you could hug all day and be warm forever. the ones who have those eyes that feel like coming home and a voice like a warm cup of tea and a blanket

and the sunshine girls? the ones who know themselves inside and out and are just comfortable in their own skin and make you feel wanted and beautiful because them even looking at you makes you feel special because they’re so amazing and how could someone that radiant even exist

and then the stardust girls? they’re just so ethereal and every way they move makes the world a little more brilliant and everything they do is perfect and makes you gasp because they’re too good for this world and they can’t possibly be human and there’s just so much in their mind and all you want is to climb inside and revel at their brilliance

and the galaxy girls? their laughter is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen and when you make eye contact and they start to come towards you it’s like you finally know where you belong and they’re colorful and amazing and god how are they even here

and the sunset girls? all you really want is for them to hold you and sing to you and tell you stories because they have so much art in their souls aching to come out and all you want is to see them shine like you know they can because the world doesn’t deserve to see their creativity but god does it need to

girls are amazing and i love them

moonbeam: taurus, cancer
sunshine: aries, leo, libra
stardust: gemini, virgo, pisces
galaxy: capricorn, aquarius
sunset: scorpio, sagittarius

i want a soft connection. i want to be asked how my day went and if i need anything. i want forehead kisses. i want the back of my hand kissed at red lights. i want to be asked how i’m mentally feeling. i want to hold hands everywhere we go. i want romantic gestures. i want my hair played in at the most unexpected moments. i want silent eye connections that lead to smiles. i want to take random walks.

Natalie Díaz, from “exhibits from The American Water Museum”, Postcolonial Love Poem

My dad and I once had a disagreement over him using the adage "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

I said, "That's just not true. Sometimes what doesn't kill you leaves you brittle and injured or traumatized."

He stopped and thought about that for a while. He came back later, and said, "It's like wood glue."

He pointed to my bookshelf, which he helped me salvage a while ago. He said, "Do you remember how I explained that, once we used the wood glue on them, the shelves would actually be stronger than they were before they broke?"

I did.

"But before we used the wood glue, those shelves were broken. They couldn't hold up shit. If you had put books on them, they would have collapsed. And that wood glue had to set awhile. If we put anything on them too early, they would have collapsed just the same as if we'd never fixed them at all. You've got to give these things time to set."

It sounded like a pretty good metaphor to me, but one thing I did pick up on was that whatever broke those shelves, that's not the thing that made them stronger. That just broke them. It was being fixed that made them stronger. It was the glue.

So my dad and I agreed, what doesn't kill you doesn't actually make you stronger, but healing does. And if you feel like healing hasn't made you stronger than you were before, you're probably not done healing. You've got to give these things time to set.

by francescagrima

I’m reading The Deviants War: The Homosexual vs The United States of America and the entire point of gay pride as a concept comes from police raids on bars, clubs, public restrooms, etc where gays were humiliated and outed in the newspapers (sometimes with their addresses!) and had careers ruined and lives upended by being associated with perversion and vice squads and all that and they responded by going “no I’m proud” and took that pride to the streets in defiance of the huge mechanism of shame that existed to oppress the gay community into obscurity and so the fact that people are now trying to apply conservative dogma to pride parades to make them “safe for children” or in other words “safe for people with oppressive conservative values” is simply insane

To phrase this more clearly: “public indecency” laws were the primary tool for brutally enforcing gender and sexual conformity, so applying a “public indecency” lens to pride parades of all things is a slap in the face of everyone who ever suffered under gender & sexual oppression and took their anger (and yes their pride!) to the streets. If it makes you uneasy or uncomfortable maybe you’re not on the side you think you are!

Jelly fish.