Anonyme a demandé: can you give me some advice? i feel like i'm going through a phase. it's not self-loathing, but i just feel sad all the time. like i'm disappearing from my life. my thoughts are suffocating me. what people expect of me. self-hypocrisy and selfishness. uncertainty. i don't need happiness i just want to stop feeling weighed down all the time. i don't know what to do.

I know, I know, I know. No one really knows what to do. I definitely didn’t know what to do. You just feel like you’re drowning and you’ve forgotten how to swim, and every day is just another sunrise and another sunset and it all feels so insignificant. It’s horrible, all the pressure is horrible and you just don’t even know what’s making you sad. All I can tell you is that this phase will end and it is necessary to feel lost and confused at times, otherwise we wouldn’t learn certain things about ourselves. I think people who have been through periods of suffocating sadness end up with a sort of self-wisdom that other people don’t necessarily have. 

In the mean time, try reading novels. Read anything. Read poetry, read nature field guides, read an atlas, a fairy story, a travel guide to an exotic country. Write out what you feel (often the best writings come from tortured minds, have you noticed?) or paint, if you’d rather. Go for a run, or a nature walk. Take pictures of flowers or candles or trees and tape them to your mirror. Blast Britney Spears and dance around your room by candlelight. Everything’s going to be okay. <3