ALL THESE TWENTY YEARS TRYING TO FILL THE VOID

ALL THESE TWENTY YEARS TRYING TO FILL THE VOID

As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh by Susan Sontag x || Love Me More by Mitski || I’m Lazy, Reckless, and Addicted to Social Media. Help! by Heather Havrilesky || artwork by @blluish x || The Singing by Kim Addonizio x || My Solo Exchange Diary (Hitori Koukan Nikki) by Kabi Nagata || The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller, trans. by Ruth Ward || Remember My Name by Mitski || artwork by @blluish x || Humpty by Mitski

transcription under the cut

[ID:

1 : "I, in my corner, with my monstrous needs.", underlined in red

2: "I need you to love me more / Love me more, love me more / Love enough to fill me up / Fill me up, fill me full up / I need you to love me more / Love me more, love me more / Love enough to drown it out / Drown it out, drown me out". Dark red text on red background.

3: "You’re exhausted because [highlight-start] you’re looking for love every second of every day, in everything you do. [highlight-end]". Black on white; gray highlight.

4: Photograph of a ceramic sculpture of an anatomical heart. There is a big, roundish hole in its center. The heart is painted red and white to resemble the color of flesh; it darkens nearing the edge of the hole, which are black. The background is black.

5: "I don’t know what I want, only that I’m desperate for it, that I can’t stop asking." . The pic is a screenshot of an indented tumblr textpost, background set in dark mode.

6: It’s a manga comic strip that reads from right to left. It opens with a quadrangular text box: “Every part of me started going cold.”. In the middle of the strip are drawn three scenes of life, which depict a shivering woman with a bob cut (the protagonist) struggling to warm herself up: she hugs herself in a blanket near a heater (1), she bathes in hot water (2), she buries herself under a futon dryer (3). Near each scene there’s written, in order,: “HEATER” (1), “BATH” (2), “FUTON DRYER” (3). Over the third scene, with an arrow pointing to it, there is an additional text that reads: “APPARENTLY, YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THIS…”. The strip closes with another quadrangular text box: “No matter what I did, I couldn’t warm up”. The blanket, the hot water and the futon, all in pink, are the only colored parts of the strip.

7: “It is thus impossible for the grandiose person to cut the tragic link between admiration and love. In his compulsion to repeat [underline-start] he seeks insatiably for admiration, of which he never gets enough because admiration is not the same thing as love. It is only a substitute gratification of the primary needs for respect, understanding, and being taken seriously —needs that have remained unconscious. [underline-end]”. After a line of blank space, the text continues: “ [...]If his success the previous night only serves as the denial of childhood frustrations, then, like every substitute, it can only bring momentary satiation. [underline-start]In fact, true satiation is no longer possible, since the right time for that now lies irrevocably in the past. [underline-end]The former child no longer exists, nor do the former parents. The present parents—if they are”. Black on white.

8: “[highlight-start] I need something bigger than the sky /Hold it in my arms and know it's m

ine [highlight-end] / Just how many stars will I need to hang around me / To finally get somewhere I can be all done / Somewhere like heaven”. Black on white; pink highlight.

9: Photograph of a ceramic sculpture of the nude upper body of a woman. She has pale skin, black length shoulder black hair with bangs and closed eyes. Her expression is one of resignation, sorrow and hopelessness. Like in the heart before, there is a big roundish hole through the middle of her chest. It’s edges are red, though, and the color slowly fades on the skin. It’s the same shade of red of her cheeks (that goes up to her eyes, making her look like she has just finished crying), mouth, nose and chin. The background is black.

10: “I broke what you gave me / But you kept giving more / And I'm sorry for taking / [highlight-start] But I keep wanting more, more, more, oh [highlight-end]”. Black on white; dark gray highlight over white text.

/END ID]