birthday

summary: mid-september reflections on where I'm at now. growth and maturity abound. gentleness and love. what I want, what others want.

birthday

28 comes to me like a decorative knife that was never meant to be sharpened, one that can't hold an edge. used for spreading butter rather than holding my better selves hostage, like every year before. it feels like there's nothing but struggle awaiting me, but in spite of this, and through love, I maintain some kind of hope and optimism. the great mother in the sea brings me new connections constantly. I tie nets to be closer to my god in the abyss. tenderness and gentleness is waiting for me around every corner.

it would be so easy to despair, but I've become so tired of it. tired of feeling crushed like garlic beneath your blade or your thumb. this past week has been tough. I was broken up with, I confronted my father for once, I felt sad and alone and isolated, I worry for the future. but my bond with my friends is unmatched. I'm surrounded by love. I connected with a poet I highly respect whose work has influenced me and apparently my work has influenced her, too - I'm over the moon about this.

it would be easy to slip into despair, too easy to fall back into a worse place. but I feel myself maturing and becoming more resilient. it hurt like hell, don't get me wrong. I've had to wrestle with some difficult things about myself. I can figure anything out though, I think. I can realize that I fall into unhealthy dependence on others once certain parts of me open up. I can remedy this by doing the opposite of my impulse to isolate -- I can keep seeking out connection and love and kindness and friendship and care. and everything will turn out alright. I'm sure of it.

selfish

I’m having a birthday party and my friends are planning it. I’m letting them be in charge and, in fact, I asked them to do it. I want to be touched by everyone who’s comfortable with it. I want to be kissed by everyone and told, “I love you.” my friends say these are normal birthday activities. I’m still working on internalizing that and a part of me expects that none of it will happen.

I don’t remember the last time I had a birthday party. recently I was in bed with a friend and took time to prioritize myself. I’ve been cooking for myself for often, and healthily, too - lots of fish and greens and vegetables. I’m running religious service and delivering sermons. I’m advocating for myself. I’m thinking about what others can do for me and trying not to feel guilty for asking anything.

acts of love for yourself? is that something you’re allowed? there’s some affliction amongst weird god-touched girls that makes them shrink like plastic over a lighter when exposed to their own desires. I’m finding lately it’s not cruel to know what you want, and in fact, it makes everyone else’s lives easier.

I saw this thread recently on how confidence allows you to be better to others while insecurity is a breeding ground for toxic festering resentment. I think a year ago, I would’ve bristled at this thought and become defensive of my attachment to uneasiness and the minimization of the self.

self love and selfishness being the same thing? maybe they’re just different lenses of the same thing. some people who were very cruel to me in my life were selfish, even if a couple of them believe they’re the polar opposite. if it’s someone I know and love and cherish, I admire their ability to care for themself. the selfishness was never the problem, it’s the other poison they carry with them. I can be selfish and carry no harm.

poison

when I see it, I contort in disgust. I prepare for the worst. individuals who seek disciples for personal worship. I don’t want to yuck anyone’s love for the adoration and worship of another, but then, the same face I see over and over again I’ve only heard the same things about.

it’s poison to wish for someone’s exile and banishment. it spreads and harms you. a charismatic cult of personality, no matter how steeped in identity or therapy language or “intentional acts of care” is poison too. I always come back to the same thought. I think about how the sea swallows the arrogant. I so wish that you would take that plunge into Atlantic waters and that she would take you.

enemy of the faith. poison thought every time the phrase passes through. you’re human too. you are regretfully so human. you have the same hollow spaces in your brain and heart and lungs and other organs as I do. you are perhaps steeped in magical bullshit, as I am. maybe you have love and hope and wonder for the world. you know how it feels to feel refreshed. you can feel worry and relief.

you can feel it in my eyes when I will see you for the first time. our world is small enough, so it’s bound to happen. I will recognize you in an instant. I hope you feel fear. not because I carry some supernatural power or because my faith in the abyss is so strong that it overpowers you - these things don’t work like that and you don’t have a genuine connection to it besides.

but you will feel that I can read you in an instant. that your charisma is immediately unmade. what a weird fantasy of mine. I think you’re dangerous. I think you can get better. I think I am drinking poison bottle by bottle if I perpetuate a toxic culture of accusation and exile. I will do my best by caring for friends who you’ve hurt.

toothbrush

I love you. I love the feeling of brushing my teeth. I think I started really getting into brushing my teeth a few years ago. before then, the depression was too bad and I couldn’t be bothered to do this little chore every single day. at some point I tried very hard to make it a habit, and some time after that, I began to eroticize it.

sometimes I think about my crushes and how it’d feel for them to put their fingers in my mouth. sometimes thinking about brushing their teeth for them is enough. I’m coming around to being selfish and vulnerable. I want to be vulnerable.

I want to look up at you with my big doe eyes while you hold the handle. my mouth is wide open and you’re performing this act of intimacy with me, in my private parts - the gums. who do you share those with? those are yours. they’re ticklish. they’re a kind of erogenous zone. maybe you’re ashamed of it.

you don’t share it with anyone, really. nobody brushes your teeth for you unless you’re very small or at the dentist or you can’t do it yourself for another reason. giving someone else a turn is unthinkable. maybe it makes you blush. maybe next time you brush your teeth, you think about it, and you pretend that’s someone else’s hand on the handle. maybe you’re afraid of what enjoying it means. I’m not. I’m scared of how much it’ll mean to me if I let someone else do it again.

sleep deficit

I feel like a slug. I feel like gloom. I feel like a chasm. it’s like a kind of storm. it’s like a thunderstorm warning on TV or your phone. it’s like the weather radar. big globs of red passing through. the inevitable is coming and in the meantime, everything is already wet and uncomfortable. nothing gets dry these days.

surfactant

Quoted from this publisher:

A surfactant (aka a surface-active agent) is a substance that, when added to a liquid, reduces its surface tension, thereby increasing its spreading and wetting properties.

These are substances that create self-assembled molecular clusters called micelles in a solution (water or oil phase) and adsorb to the interface between a solution and a different phase (gases/solids).

To show these two physical properties, a surfactant must have a chemical structure with two different functional groups with different affinities within the same molecule.

A common example of this in practice is a detergent. When a detergent is added to a liquid, it causes a reaction that reduces the surfactant’s surface tension, which increases its spreading and wetting properties. Other examples of surfactants are germicides, fungicides, and insecticides.

full moons until September 2026

7 September 2025. 6 October 2025. 5 November 2025. 4 December 2025.

3 January 2026. 1 February 2026. 3 March 2026. 1 April 2026. 1 May 2026. 31 May 2026. 29 June 2026. 29 July 2026. 28 August 2026. 26 September 2026.