This is for the people who didn’t party in their teens and twenties. For the people who didn’t have that “coming of age” movie experience with shenanigans and revelations. This is for the people who mostly keep to themselves. Who maybe prefer things to be quieter and gentler. This is for the people who don’t feel like they belong in a culture that values loud parties and flashing lights. I see you. And you are valid.

Or did you simply forget? That to be loved doesn’t always mean forever. Forever is subjective. Yours doesn’t mean its theirs and that’s okay. Out there, someone’s forever matches yours.

LEO💕

Drawing practice

being in your twenties this being in your twenties that--

being in your twenties is getting separated from all your friends as they all choose different life and career paths and all of you being collectively miserable across the world and missing each other and crying every single day

Most of being in ur early twenties is just like this:

"Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti" painted by Tamara Łempicka, 1929

It’s so fucked up to be 20 and feel like everything’s already over

your early twenties are so fucking relentless.. i know no one has it figured out, and we’re all fucked together but it doesn’t feel like it. 

i remember hearing rudy francisco say “i am trying to convince my shadow i am someone worth following,” and i feel that in my soul. it’s exhausting to cycle through this period, doing your best every single day and still feeling like it’s all wrong?? to look at others and feel embarrassed at yourself for existing incorrectly as if that’s even possible?? are we not exhausted?? i am. i am so tired of being unkind and critical of myself. i give all my “bad traits” a disappointed glare. and all my “good traits” a cringe... i’m studying to be a psychologist and i feel bad for being emotional and soft as if the world isn’t trying to rid us, esp women of colour, of that. there is so much to be cynical about, and i am disgusted at myself for the way my heart sings when a friend checks up on me?? ridiculous. 

i watched s3 ep5 of ted lasso, and ted’s speech made me sob. specifically, “the belief that i matter...regardless of what i do or don’t achieve.” i am a perfectionist and i know it. but nothing embodies radical self-love than such a statement, for me. that speech broke me and healed me at the same time... to receive such grace, kindness and love?? to challenge yourself to offer that grace and love to yourself?? 

the fact that i am a person.. deserving and worthy...with value.. regardless of what i do not accomplish and regardless of what i will accomplish... i know this sounds so fucking basic but i feel like someone has simultaneously cradled me and my inner child. 

the fact that i matter simply because my heart is good, my intentions are pure, and i am alive. i think the greatest thing i will do in this life is challenge myself to offer myself love and grace. and that will be enough. i will be enough. 

being in your early twenties is comprised of debt payments to your student loans and to the people who took care of you two years ago and to your friends who love you now and to the guardians that caught you when you fell and to the elderly neighbour across the street who has always said good morning to you since you were 13 and to the sun for keeping you alive and to the moon for giving you a reason to live

me as a teenager, daydreaming what I'm gonna do in my twenties: have a fiancée, my own flat, get best grades at studies, lots of pets...

me in my twenties now: *ordering chew safe silicone beads for babies to make chewelry with my autistic girlfriend*

Me sleeping 🍦😍🙈✝️🩸💋👁️🧚🏼‍♀️💅🦨🐈🌶️🥛🧸🎀❗️

Added to the collection

I've just realized that 20 years from now, when my kids ask me how I spent my twenties, I'll have to be honest and tell them that I spent most of my time talking and playing chess with strangers online. I'd have to admit that my life was rather uneventful. I was mostly at home, perhaps spending too much time on Facebook. I had over a thousand friends in total, or at least I thought they were friends, because I assumed that if I was nice to someone, they would reciprocate, and that's what friendship meant to me. But in the end, I still felt lonely.

Yet, behind the facade of connectivity, a truth lingered. I was known. Maybe I'll be remembered too. Despite the illusion of a bustling social sphere, my physical reality remained unknown in solitude.

My old friends barely reached out, and every time we met, I felt I was straying away from them. Maybe it was for the best, at least that's what I thought. I don't want to be remembered by people who don't know me. Time was fluid. Boundaries blurred. I ached. I ached. I ached. It's like everyone around me had the currency of human connection, and I was, well, I was broke in my twenties.

this year I turned twenty two