sometimes quiet is violent

"You must allow yourself to outgrow and depart from certain eras of your life with a gentle sort of ruthlessness." I saw this quote today, from a book by Katy Maxwell, and it brought up some things I have been thinking about for a while. These thoughts are mostly about letting go of people, and simultaneously letting go of that 'version' of you that you try to cling on to and pretend to be when you interact with these people. Discussions about letting go of people in your life that may be harmful to you in some way or another are often made to be more serious than they should be. Words like "toxic" and "cutting people out" are thrown around and it makes it seem like only people who are actively abusive towards you, be it emotionally or physically, "deserve" to be cut out of your life, whatever that might mean. This is insinuating that something extreme has to happen in my relationships for me to have the right to "cut them out...

Y'all 12-year olds are probably giggling at the word intimacy but really it just means closeness so hah joke's on you this post isn't about sex. Something I've noticed in myself recently (or like, in the last year or so) is that I've very much begun liking to be close to people. This depends HIGHLY on the person and my level of comfort (in a physical sense) with them, but still, I've noticed I really enjoy being close. Even if I'm otherwise really close to you, I might not be fully comfortable hugging and being otherwise close to you and that does not make our friendship any less worthy, it just has a lot to do with my personal comfort and feelings. I rarely hug my best friend and we're still incredibly close on other levels so its not like physical closeness is the only way to have a meaningful friendship or relationship with someone. Anyway, I'm all for casual closeness. Like, if we're sitting on the couch together, I like to be either righ...