THIS DIVINE ALCHEMY OF THE SELF

There are ten images in this post, seven of which are white text on a simple black background. Each image is credited to @m4ryzj on Tiktok. The poem reads: 9:00AM. I am born in a cardboard box on the back porch, writhing and wiggling among my three siblings. 10:00AM. My siblings drink their fill from our mother but I am not hungry.

11:00AM. I lay still next to my mother, wrapped in the comfort of her warm fur while my siblings crawl and meow. 12:00PM. I am not hungry. I just want to sleep.

1:00PM. I am wrapped in a towel, my lips pried open and the lukewarm formula sitting in my mouth. I am not hungry. 2:00PM. I am not hungry. I meow and meow but I cannot eat.

3:00PM. Wrapped in the towel still, I meow and whine. My back is rubbed and I am gently placed in a warm bath. 4:00PM. I am not hungry. I don't have the strength to meow anymore. I only have the strength to lie still and force my heart to beat.

5:00PM. My heartbeat slows and I lose the strength to take strong breaths. I am pressed against a larger body with warm air being blown onto me. 6:00PM. I am not hungry. Sugar water is dabbed onto my lips instead of the formula, but I don't have the strength to lick it.

7:00PM. All I can do is lay. I hear the faint echo of a voice singing and feel the vibrations as I'm pressed to her chest. She is singing to me but I don't have the strength to listen. 8:00PM. I am not hungry. I barely have the strength to breathe. My heart slows and my mind blurs.

9:00PM. I can no longer hear the singing voice, and I can only barely feel the vibrations and the warmth as my thoughts slow to a stop. I don't have the strength to keep my little heart thumping. I don't have the strength to keep my little chest rising and falling. I don't have the strength to push past my first day on earth. I only have the strength to be twelve hours old forever. This is the final slide of the poem.

A light grey newborn tabby kitten is swaddled within a purple blanket. He is on someone's lap. His eyes are closed, and he is so small. It's clear that the poem was about him. He is twelve hours old, forever.

The same tabby kitten, gently cradled within a pair of hands. His paw pads are pale.

The kitten again, this time his face to the camera. His lips are wet, and his eyes are shut tight. A purple blanket covers everything but his face.

I wanted to share a poem I saw today that gutted me.

Alt text included.

teathattast:

WIBTA for sabotaging my boyfriend's hookup with his girlfriend by filling his sex playlist with DJ Crazytimes

I (28NB, they/he) have known my boyfriend (call him C, 29M, he/him) for some 15ish years now. As long as I've known him, he has been on and off again with his girlfriend (call him T, 29NB, he/him). Respectfully, and with love, C and T are two of the worst and most annoying people I know. I want to marry them both specifically so that I can study them under a microscope like a parasitic virus.

Technically they're monogamous, but they're both hooking up with other people (myself included), usually the same people, because they have the same taste in lovers (bad). I have suggested that they give actual polyamory a try, and they reject the idea wholeheartedly. I think they get off on their dynamic, and far be it from me to try more than the bare minimum to dissuade them from it.

A couple months back, they got into a fight and broke up (again) because T (who was unemployed at the time) stole $50 from C (who works at GameStop) so that he could pay for a tank of gas (using C's car) to go hook up with another guy a couple states over. C was not upset that T was hooking up with another guy (because he was Also hooking up with that guy and knew he would not have a leg to stand on), but because of the stolen money + car.

C and I currently live together, because you can't afford an apartment on a GameStop salary, and also, like I said, he's my boyfriend. I'm making carnitas tacos next Friday, and T is coming over, because despite everything, he has nothing else to do on a Friday night. I know that C and T are going to get into a huge fight, and I know that it's probably either going to end with them getting back together out of spite or with someone's vehicle getting keyed--I'm betting on both.

Here's where I think I might be the asshole. I would really like to get inbetween them. Not in a "I don't want you to date each other" kind of way, but in a "holy shit you are both so insufferable i would like to get in on that" kind of way. I currently have my thing with C, and I've hooked up with T once in the past, but I would really like to make it official with him as well.

My plan is as follows: C and T are going to be in the same space again next Friday. They're going to fight, then hook up, then get back together again. C is one of those cybersexual "i built my own computer and run it on Linux" people, which is to say, he thinks tiktok and youtube are evil, and he he thinks spotify premium is supporting megacorporations. So, his sex playlist for T (we do not have our own sex playlist) is just an actual folder of mp3 files.

While C is at work, I'm going to log into his computer and change several of those mp3 files to DJ Crazytimes' Planet of the Bass, which I play often, and he is frequently annoyed by. My hope is that he'll realize it was me, he'll come and yell at me for ruining their hookup, T will take my side to piss him off, and the tension will get to the point where they let me join their hookup, and I can ask to date both of them after that.

To be clear, I recognize that I'm also Incredibly Toxic for enabling and encouraging this behavior. That said, I feel like I'm justified in this scenario considering C and T are both Also toxic, and furthermore, it is a known fact that I'm dating C right now, so for them to hook up, C would technically be cheating on me. I asked C's sister (a childhood friend of mine) for her take on whether it would be funny or just annoying, and she just told me that we all deserve each other, so I think I should be good. Am I being uniquely shitty here?

Anonymous

am-i-the-asshole-official:

AITA?
YTA
NTA
JAH
NAH
ESH
INFO
What are these acronyms?

daisywords:

the fear of sharing your work not because you’re worried people will hate it or mock it or think it’s terrible…but instead that it will elicit nothing from them. that it will be unremarkable. that it won’t matter to anyone but you

pflugy17:

identifying-cars-in-posts:

sacred-portal:
2003-2014 Saab 9-3 Convertible

doomed-bythe-narrative:

some people are taking “doomed” to mean “dead”. this is actually a misconception! you can be doomed even if you don’t die! it’s sometimes worse if you don’t die!

thyrell: