General Song Liu Duan Duan!

i found a loophole i will just make everyone dislike me so it's not a burden for anyone but me after all why should anyone have to suffer cause im not okay i should be capable of dealing with my trauma

get okay with being some level of burden on others, seriously

evening sky, paint exercise.

after watching cql i just never think ill ever be able to experience love cause like, imagine having someone love you the way wangxian did,,, pretty impossible

he’s an irredeemable villain to you. he’s my special little princess though

My brother cracked my rib one morning and gave me half of his orange in the evening.

I remember being younger and sometimes wishing to be a single child, to have all the attention and gifts and time but when he was away from home for the first time, I remember crying and stroking his side of the sofa as if blurting out my first wish- for him to be home, without thinking twice, without a shadow of doubt. Even the genie cried. Growing up with a sibling is like being the only people on a stranded boat, constantly figuring out how you can live with them and questioning how you could ever live without them.

One evening, in a fit of anger, I told him how I never wanted him to be my brother and he yelled that he didn't ask for it either. The air smelled like kerosene and my chest was filled with arsenic. I was raging and threw his favorite toy aeroplane down the window, 7 stories of guilt and shame. He cried all night and I wanted to cut off my right hand, the hand that hurt my baby brother. I didn't know if he was ever going to forgive me or even talk to me. The next morning at breakfast, he didn't look at me or say a word, I felt like my chest was about to explode and guilt clouded my vision. But then, I felt a hand quietly holding half of an orange my way.

The only people on a stranded boat. How do you live with them? How could you ever live without them?

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire

Edit: I added a visualizer for this on my YouTube channel. Check it out here

im just scared like everyone else i'll just end up being toxic and overbearing to them

I think a fundamental part of online friendships that people ‘outside’ fail to understand is how comforting it is to have friends right there in your pocket who will keep you company in good times and bad, listen to your rants, let you vent, be supportive whilst offering outsider perspective…

Need to be alone but need support too? Pocket friends.

Something awful just happened and there’s nobody around for you to tell? Pocket friends.

Need to let your feelings out but don’t want people to see you ugly-cry? Pocket friends.

Keep being amazing, pocket friends. You couldn’t possibly imagine how important you are.

hope wei wuxian realised that he's loved and cared for after all

(insp)

‘So everything sucks’ mental health toolkit

Hello everyone, I lost half my family last year between March and November, three of whom were elderly, and it was Not Much Fun Actually BUT I have had the horrible thought that many people this year are going to be in the same boat I was in in 2019, so here is how I coped:

Write everything down. I mean it. Anything you’re feeling; the grief, the worry about their health, how much you love them. Put it down on paper. Exorcise it. Don’t just let the bad feelings and the sadness fester. It doesn’t have to be exquisite poetry, just catharsis. 

Call your relatives! Especially the elderly ones. After the first 3 bereavements I got much closer to my grandma. Her passing wasn’t made harder by the fact of having spent more time speaking to her; it was eased because I knew that she knew how much I loved her. 

BE SENSIBLE. You want to see your family now. I get it. My uncle was given 3 weeks to live and I caught norovirus. I couldn’t see him for a week. It sucked. But I had to stay at home, because if he caught it, he’d die. Covid-19 is the same principle. Phone them instead. 

Talk to your family and friends about how you feel. Grief is a really, really lonely place sometimes. I didn’t know anyone going through what I was going through. This time, we’re all in it together. Share your feelings. Reassure each other that you’re valid and heard. 

Be kind to yourself. There’s going to be days, especially with all this social upheaval, where you just can’t. This is OK. You’re a human who has worth beyond your productivity. Let yourself feel sad if you have to. Eat a bit of chocolate. Have a bath. Then do the laundry.

Keep being human, in all the ways you can. Keep cleaning the house. Get up every morning and get dressed. Go to bed at a sensible time. Eat healthy, regular meals. Keep yourself strong, not just in case you get the virus, but to remind yourself that you can and will endure. 

As clichéd as it is, remember that you have survived everything in your life up to this point. You can get through this. There will be a time when it’s over. I thought 2019 would never end. It was funeral after funeral. I thought I wouldn’t make it out the other side. I did. 

Check in with people and ask them to check in with you. My friends literally got me through 2019, even though I wasn’t always up for seeing them in person. We phoned and texted. Build a support network. Being socially isolated doesn’t mean being lonely. 

I think that’s pretty much it, but a final reminder that we humans can endure so much more than we think we can, even when it feels like it’s relentless and it will never stop. It will. The only way through it is, well, to go through it. I hope everyone is staying safe and well!!

Gifs Show How Mushrooms Grow

Mushrooms are fast-growing organisms that quickly pop up after the rain. These mesmerizing time-lapse gifs record the mushroom buds bursting through the soil and elegantly expanding their caps.