when someone enters our life, and begins to meet certain needs for us, it can be tense and scary

as they begin to fill a hole we didn’t even know the size of, and we want them to never ever go away needs like being seen. listened to. heard. romantically talked to

needs like being around a person we find beautiful, or being listened to so beautifully

one of the hottest, richest girls i was ever with kind of broke my brain in how she related to privilege

to her, it wasn't something to be ashamed about, or performatively guilty for. it was a gift made to her life, and she saw to it that it spread i didn't know you could just leave the fear complex of the liberal america. you could just have your own compass and act on it as if people were already real and stakes were already real. i learned that from her

https://x.com/AskYatharth/status/1769448090535342135?s=20

when i first came to america for boarding school, i was so confused why so many people here were depressed and suicidal. especially since they were upper middle class liberal kids. they had none of the money or gender restrictions of where i came from over time, i came to understand. souls will commit suicide if they can't feel themselves. and some environments systematically raise kids who couldn't feel their soul

their economic output was good, and their knowledge was impressive, but they were dying at the soul

i once took my friend out to teach her surfing

to my dismay, all the tips and tricks i had spent weeks (two months!) accumulating meant she was as good at the end of day 1 as i was by week 8 she knew to start on the white waters. the board didn't hit her nose a hundred times

it seemed effortless

but damn, it took me a while to discover those things

sometimes water rushes into the cave of the heart. fills it up, this cave that was so parched, so dry.

and i want to freeze this water. so joyful it is! to have a companion. i beseech the feeling to stay. "stay! it's been so long without you. i'll make a bed" and that is the first heartbreak, and first initiation of the water, that that feeling is not here to stay

that feeling, of the inhale, filling our lungs up. that clench, at the top of our breaths, wanting to substitute the clenchednes of no breath with the clench of full breath

the number one rule of animism is start with what you can touch and see

if you're not living by the ocean, don't... start with the ocean. start with the phone you can see because you can see it. touch it. this is what animism is. normative consciousness. it is not some thing over there

you have been in non-negotiable contact with objects and their forces your entire life. it's not been an option for your body to not be

im beginning to articulate what it is i don't like about youtube/phone/scrolling reveries. it feels like a whole different universe. it's not that the universe doesn't feel good, it's that it's not connected to the rest of my life when i am in those reveries, i am not with my financial needs for today, my somatic needs, my emotional state from yesterday

there’s this dynamic of clinginess that goes—

1. initially many positive interactions that bring you close

2. person moves a bit away

3. this makes you panic and cling

4. the focus isnt on positive interactions anymore. its on inventing whatever pretext keeps them interacting slowly, the number of interactions that actually feel positive to both people go down

and people can tell, they’re not natural, organic positive interactions like before

repeat 🔁🌀😵‍💫

codependency is mutually installing programs in each other so you don’t leave there seems to be a form of choosing each other that does not involve fear, shame, and guilt, and it’s frankly kinda new

https://twitter.com/askyatharth/status/1601420745590308864

i liked it when i didn’t have to be with my feelings every morning in such excruciating intimacy. why did god give me this challenge. well time to meet the moment and swim in it it’s scary to be met by the next wave of feeling. sometimes it’s the kind of feelings i told myself i wouldn’t feel at all. it’s also the thing that helps more than anything else

it’s tough to believe people like you for the you that you are when you don’t like yourself very much you begin to look for other explanations, you think it’s because of this, or that, because their actions are causing 𝘩𝘶𝘳𝘵 and dissonance in you and you want it to stop

the most anguishing part of jealous was that no one would care. they wouldn’t care, and i wouldn’t care…

i’d ignore/hide/consider threatening/dismiss. anything but take it seriously “do i still have to do that?” that is the question. to look at my environment. to look at myself and my resources. to look at the other person. “do i still need to do that?”

the way out of a codependent relationship with your parents is not to try to change their behaviour. it’s to put more distance between you and them so they can keep having the feelings they’re having while you have space for yours as i spend more time with my parents, im realising i was trying to control their reactions, because they were interfering with my mine

im realising the secret is to not try to to control their behaviour, to make them stop doing my triggers, but rather to *internally move away*

“Here is the one commandment.

Care about your partner. Care about how they’re feeling. Keep track of what they like and don’t like. Try to keep doing the things they like; try to stop doing the things they don’t like.” “If you can do these things, your relationship will not explode. If you can’t do these things, [it will]… The relationship will be deeper and better if you have good sex, good communication, etc—but none of these can override the one commandment.” Caring.

sometimes i feel confused why i’m jealous. it feels confusing. it reminds me of feeling equally confused when people expected me to be jealous and i wasn’t

in this situation, there are actually two things to pay attention to. the jealousy and the confusion hi confusion. i see you. what do you think? what do you want? *happy wiggles*

hi jealousy. i see you. i know you. we’ve become friends over the last month

https://twitter.com/askyatharth/status/1605098851370618880

i had this thing where i thought if i had to ask for it, it meant less. it didn’t mean anything if i had to ask

https://twitter.com/petrichor_lull/status/1608177331834687489

this was clearly coming from somewhere. a place where i felt people said yes out of obligation and it counted against your relationship debt meter. a place where i tracked where i fell in other people’s stack-rank of intimacy

giving more of your energy to someone than they give and being upset about it is just a lack of social skills inspired by

iconography (of gods, etc.) literally summons the energy of the thing into the room midwit rationalist me thought how dumb, they’re praying to things that didn’t even exist, i didn’t notice the thing was already here, i didn’t notice my experience

someone called me a good traveller today. i disagree, i am a great traveller

https://twitter.com/AskYatharth/status/1607364744566169600

there’s little things, like the way @AnneSelke plucks fruits from trees, or @relic_radiation invites fellow humans to stretch, or @petrichor_lull makes the sounds and emotions she wants, that linger like welcome ghosts in the soma of my memories

i don’t like my body. i am my body

https://twitter.com/askyatharth/status/1602253303026679808

that living breathing horny thing? i identify with it now. i have friends from that place now. i trust them, i love them, i live with them

excuse me, can you use an I-statement here—excuse me, I see you’re already using one. ah, well

https://twitter.com/parakeetnebula/status/1608338149570392064

no amount of I-statements will mask that language is not just communication, and the most important kind for human relationships isn’t

it’s setting boundaries, wanting people to come closer, inviting people to do things, accepting — all the things besides making understanding