Green Ribbons Of Light Danced Across The Darkened Rural Sky To The Song Of Stringed Instruments Coming

netflix… if i see you in the streets…

the trolley problem vs. systemic oppression: a comic.

"you do not owe friends instant responses to every social message, and anxiety over not receiving the same is something for the anxious person to work on, not your responsibility to totally change for"

AND

"you have to put some effort into friendships, which can include open communication with your friends about how to make both of you comfortable re: messaging. expecting other people to do ALL of the work ALL of the time, in terms of getting in touch and carrying on the conversation, may make them feel ignored and/or and leave"

are ideas that can and should coexist

one thing no one ever teaches you is that you can just make things nicer and more intentional- you can take your energy drink, pour it in a rocks glass over ice with a slice of lime on the rim, and sip it slow. and you'll think, "wow i am the biggest faggot to have ever lived". and you know what? you're right.

Was there another way?

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, to listen to doctors and get my flu vaccine and any shots i could because they remembered Before.

then they started fighting Covid precautions.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that the ozone was disappearing and the earth was dying and we needed to recycle and save the planet.

now my parents think climate change is a myth.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that racism was a plague, that we had to love and accept everyone, that we should never judge before walking a mile in their shoes.

then they told me that protesting for my Black siblings was wrong.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that we needed to give to the poor. working at soup kitchens. making quilts. collecting food and money and supplies. building houses. because it was the christian and just plain right thing to do.

now they look at me, on food stamps with their grandchildren, and lament the "welfare state".

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and that any rich man, especially an immoral one, should never run our country.

you can guess who they voted for.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, so very much.

when did they forget?

So, uh. This is real:

This is 100% a a thing that has happened.

What even is this timeline?!

I'm dying. Oh my stars.

it’s literally homophobic that it's almost the end of pride month and I still don't have a boyfriend

~~PROPERTY OF RAY SMITH~~

Memories are the foundation of what we base our perception of reality and even our own selves off of, and those memories ultimately make up who we are and how we interact with our external world. Recently, I feel that I've been forgetting many of mine. You always expect that when you forget something like a major memory, you can feel that something is missing. I've learned that often times you don't even notice you're forgetting something until something comes up to suggest that you should know what it is, but you simply don't.

Like waking up in a bedroom you don't recognise after a night out of drinking. You can remember going out to the bar with your friends, you can remember talking and laughing, and you remember this person you didn't know coming and talking to you. You know you keep drinking with them, but you don't actually remember much past that point. You can assume you slept with whoever you were talking to before your memory runs a blank, but you don't know for certain.

Next comes what I tend to think of as the most terrifying part of the process.

Later in the day you talk to the friends you went out with again, and they fill in some blanks for you. You now know you actually went to a hotel with someone else who wore an outfit absolutely blindingly neon orange, definitely not the person you remember talking to. You look through your phone, checking your camera roll and texts. You see a couple videos of yourself very drunkenly dancing with your friends and someone wearing neon orange, but there's always too much movement and poor lighting for you to recognize a their face. You also see some texts from an unknown number talking about how wild last night was, and how they are they ran into you. Based on all the information you collected, you assume this unknown number is the person who was wearing neon orange, the two of went back to the hotel and slept together, and they left before you woke up.

When you retell this story in the future you say that you were talking to this really cool person who you got bored of after 10 minutes before your friends, being the saviors they are, dragged you away from them and you all started dancing. It didn't take long after that for this really attractive person with admittedly bad clothing taste started dancing with you. One thing lead to another and you ended up sleeping with them in the hotel, giving them your number before they left.

The actual events of that night looked more like this: The person you remember talking to got wine spilt on them and left the bar in a huff. Shortly after your friends dragged you up and you all started dancing. Next, you see your brothers ex in the bar, and drag them up to start dancing too (you had always liked this ex). The two of you leave the bar together and stumble drunkenly through downtown as you talk about your brother. By pure bad luck your brother spots the two of you while driving, pulls over, astounded to see the two of you together. His ex says they have a hotel room booked, and your brother agrees to give his ex a ride there, and offer's you his couch to sleep on. By the time you get to the hotel your brother and the ex don't seem to be very broken up anymore. The ex gives you the room key, and you stay in their hotel room while your brother and the ex meant to go back to your brother's place first, but don't quite make it that far. The text you receive the next morning from an unknown number is your brother, who's number you never saved out of spite.

The human ability to completely forget memories without a trace and rewrite memories scares me more than death; more than life.

I am no author, but I need to get this written down. I don't want to forget who I am.