“It’s a brilliant, and quite rare, way of thinking but it makes such perfect sense. That we have an instinct, driven by our shared genetics, to love our children and family – for some, this is a duty love – but, when we focus our love on our friends, we’re actively choosing to do so. We’re taking our precious time and energy, and consciously committing it to them, so important are they to us.”
[…]
“Friends can be our sources of intimacy and nonjudgmental support, they can be our life’s companions, they can be our family and our co-parent. Put bluntly, they’re our survival. But this means that we must decide to actively nurture and invest in them to benefit from their many rewards. Our unique ability to love many beings in many ways means that we all have the opportunity for love in our lives. We just have to lift our eyes to the horizon and broaden our perspective to see all the love that is on offer. And for many of us that will mean celebrating, treasuring and reasserting the love we have for our friends.”
Anna Machin, “Treasure Them” (via Aeon)
Nov 22, 2024
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Cherish them. Thank them. Write them. Invite them to parts unknown. Share music, art, and food. Celebrate together; cry together. Share your hopes and fears; the mundane and extraordinary; the minutia and the barrenness of your life as it occurs. Savor every single moment you have together.
And don’t forget to tell them you love them — to the point you feel silly. The quality of your friendships dictate the quality of your life.
Mar 18, 2025
♥️
Maybe even too much!!
I’m really big on platonic declarations of love and devotion. I love my friends so much and it is truly such a joy to know each and every one of them and I never want any of them to doubt that for even a second. Like, love and friendship are genuinely all we have at the end of the day and how beautiful is it that we get to love and be loved???
Mar 19, 2025
✂️
a queer ethos of intimate friendship is so beautiful to me. my friends are hot, i trust them, i love them. i don't feel the need to limit the ways in which we can feel safe and known and held if we're all into it.
long conversations can evolve into sex -- two kinds of intimacy, one not held above the other.
challenge:
feel and do not hold on to jealousy. feel and grasp tightly a boundless love.
Mar 4, 2025
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I meant to post this yesterday. Absolutely beautiful morning for walk.
This morning is also beautiful but in a spring rain kind of way.
Mar 23, 2025
⚧️
Prescriptive gender is a prison. Rather than gender being a form of self-expression, gender is treated as a pass/fail test for how well you can conform to cultural expectations.
Since I was young, I remember feeling a great deal of pressure to conform to these expectations around what “men” are meant to be. You like sports, cars, womanizing, aggression, and not having feelings. I felt so distant from this ideal. I was sensitive and shy, and I preferred spending my time being creative in some way
For a long time, I felt like I was failing at “being a man.” In many ways I was! Because I didn’t need to bea man. All I needed to be was myself.
It’s taken me a long time to separate myself from prescriptive gender, sharpening in on which aspects of masculine energy I identify with and which I don’t. I’m not done yet. Maybe I will never fully be. The self continues to evolve over time, and I suspect aspects of my gender will too.
Mar 15, 2025
Mar 15, 2025