amaranths alcove

journal

May 26-27, 2025

How do you really know who you are?

I don't know if I know the answer to that question. I want to think the version of myself that exists is alright. I think of myself like a project car in a way, the bones are there, it just needs a little work. At least I'm trying to do the work, that's what matters I want to think.

For the past two years, I've been living with a song lyric in my head

"when you don't know who you are

you fuck around and find out" - boygenius, true blue

For some reason, I always look to music for advice. But I've yet to find a song that tells me: At what point do you stop fucking around and just know intrinsically? Is there ever a point where you just know intrinsically?

Unfortunately, this is probably one of those areas where faith or something that I don't have yet is needed to figure out the answer. I wish “having faith” in something, in anything--but mostly in myself--was as easy as Chrsitians and mediocre white men make it seem.

I wish it was as easy as it was when I was a little girl watching Bible TV. I think at some point she thought that Jesus would save her because of it. But now I'm older, and I know I'm the only one doing any saving.

i'm not sure if I don't believe in a god

or if he doesn't believe in me - retirement party, meet me in montauk

I think I turn to this site lately because I feel it's truly a place for me, whatever that actually means. Maybe writing is one of those things that still feels like it's my own. I love my art so much and so deeply, but sometimes it feels performative for an audience I don't even know. My art is so interconnected with so many other things, I believe it takes on a life of its own. In so many aspects of my life, I feel like I'm performing for some secret audience. Except my nervous system also thinks that performance is life or death.

I just want something sweet and calm, where I can let myself go and just be. I want to be all of me, the good parts and the bad parts, and be accepted for them.

I know that I am an imperfect person because perfection does not exist, it's unattainable, yet part of me sometimes thinks that it's only unattainable for myself, that everyone else has it so much more figured out than I do. I wish I had a better idea of what I was doing, of where I'm going. I feel like I'm just on a free fall trying to look for the occasional branch to cling to until it inevitably breaks. The branches will always break, and I know this, yet it does not make the reprieve from the fall any less so.

past posts

May 21, 2025

I count the months in packs of birth control, time flutters by and suddenly a four-month supply has run out faster than I expected, and the semester has ended, once again always faster than I expect it. I never notice in the weeks leading up to a last pack that it's my last, it's always a surprise opening the stupid plastic bag (I hate Walgreens) to find it's the last in there. I wish I could be more oblivious to endings, the way I am with running out of my prescriptions. I have so many memories I love with people I don't talk to anymore.

The summer has just started, and yet I can already anticipate its ending. I have to move again. How much of young adulthood is just instability I wonder, yet the illusion of control and stability deceive me into believing there is something unique to it happening to me. I yearn to live in the moment and yet the circumstances of life require me not to over and over again.

I feel like a part of me exists in every moment I have ever been in. I think to an extent that's true. Its a simultaneously comforting and disconcerting thought. That I am all the sadness I have ever been and all the happiness I have ever been, all the anger, all the soft moments, but all the prickly ones too, all the bad to all the good.

I think about Nona the Ninth a lot, about the quote, “It’s finished, it’s done. You can’t take loved away." and about everything about love and loss in that entire book. I cant put it to justice in pretty words how it effected me but it did. I think I got a little less scared of leaving my heart open after it. <--- am nerd moment tangent but its dubious related

I blast Newgrounds Death Rugby and try to remind myself I'm trying.

March 4, 2025

I feel like I am covered in blood, or like I've been crucified, impaled by with arrows like St. Sebastian. My heart is so gentle, yet I feel like I have an innate desire to get it ripped out somehow, maybe it's the 'tortured artist' cliché, or maybe it's the trauma. Possibly that's the same thing. I feel everything with viscera to it. Every emotion in my body is an organ, every organ an emotion or a moment. It is all bloody and bruised. I feel like they are the 'wrong' sections of what would be in a medical system. Like there are parts of me conjoined inside, or growing bone where it shouldn't be etc. etc.

I hate the nights where I feel like I'm so full of love that has no reasonable outlet, that I might explode. It of course exists for myself, but I feel like I love too much, that I care too much. To try to balance the scales is a constant mental struggle for me.

I'm terrified of true vulnerability.

I think I've only been able to do it platonically, and hence why my friendships cause me so much more hurt.

From my most recent heartbreak, reflecting on it, I feel astoundingly fine in regard to losing someone I cared about., rather I am just having a reasonable reaction to someone I deeply trusted being? Really mean to me? Crazy, wow that it would make you actually feel bad if you let it. I wish I could know better the line between my trauma and my intuition. I truly wonder if part of it is my own naivety. Or something that is perceived by men as naivety, but is instead just a want to truly believe the best in everyone. I wish men would not see me as a lamb or a fawn when I have sharp teeth.

I wish I could understand my feelings in a way that wasn't just entrusting song lyrics to do it for me. I think I only am truly in my brain when I'm high, have music on, and can let myself think.

I feel like lately I haven't had the time to be myself.

I wonder if I lost it because of that.

I feel like I exist in intermittent states of surviving and living, and whenever they switch, I never know how to deal with the other until it's time for them to switch again.

I'll end this with a collection of lyrics I've been resonating with lately:

we don't have to talk about it

i can walk you home and practice method acting

i'll pretend bein' with you doesn't feel like drowning

tellin' you it's nice to see how good you're doing

even though we know it isn't true -boygenius, cool about it

it is a cruel sensation, remembering that i am human

and i'm prone to accidents of heart

i regret sending you that email where i said i wanted to kill you

when what i mean is that i long to feel

you are still someone that i know well that i know dearly well like i used to

....

it is painful to age - babehoven, twenty dried chilies

i wanna be good

and i wanna cause no harm - bugsy, apathy

i never know exactly what to think of my life -wednesday, the burned down dairy queen

theres no glory in love

only the gore of our hearts - julien baker, bloodshot

February 26, 2024

Sometimes I think men see me as this stupid naive 'little girl'. Maybe add in a 'slutty' or replace girl with 'whore'.

But I fucking hate that combination of words. 'little girl' is a term that makes me feel so egregiously disgusting, like my skins about to slough off at any moment. And that encapsulates how I feel sometimes about the way that typically men will perceive me. It's also just blatantly wrong. I'm not stupid and I'm not a little girl. But I wish I knew if they were right about the naive part.

At times I wonder if I am in a way responsible for how men treat and perceive me. If I'm really that naive about it all.

I have two common experiences with men. There's the ones where I'm not directly involved with them and so, I immediately set off the misogyny in them. then theres the second one I just call 'human sex doll'. I'm treated like a person but only on the most surface level so they can try and fuck me. respect to my face but not anywhere else. I think I prefer the former experience.

I'd rather my dehumanization be blatant and to my face. When it's behind your back it feels more sinister.

I am not a piece of meat and I'm so fucking tired of being treated like I am.

January 10-11, 2024

When I started coding this silly little website, Milan was lively and walking over my laptop while I was trying to code. Now we've just gotten back from the vet and she sits on a heating pad with a pee pad on top of it because her body temperature is low and shes incontinent.

We've been together for about 2 and a half years, which is short but in that time she has been the most important thing in my life. When I had no one else, I had milan. I wholeheartedly believe that this old lady of a cat was a soulmate of mine. I've never loved anything like I love her. and it hurts me more than I've ever hurt to see her like this. To know whats going to happen soon.

Shes old but I always fully believed shed make it to her twenties, I thought shed be there when I moved out, when i had other big milestones. but she wont be and that elicits a pain in me that is truly indescribable. Milan and I have been through so much together, there have been times where she really was the only thing keeping me alive or the only thing that could make me smile.

I only believe in god when im desperate. Say what you will about that but right now I'm desperate. I just want my baby to be ok, more than I've wanted anything. I've said that before but this time is the first time I actually mean it. I know what love is because of Milan. I know myself better because of her. Shes made me a better person, a stronger person and I so desperately want her to be there for more. I want her to live longer than this. But if this is our end im so happy for the time we got to share with each other and I will remember her for the rest of my days.

12:26 january 11th

you passed in my arms

i love you

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this website was co-created by milan