did u get my vibes man?

i think despite everything, there is still love

I think about the time I stood ankle-deep in the garden after the rain, my hands buried in wet earth, fingers curling around the roots of weeds I’d been meaning to pull for weeks. The soil clung to me, thick and dark, and for a moment, I hated how heavy it felt. But then I thought: this is how you hold on. By sinking in, by gripping tight, even when it’s messy. Even when it hurts.

La Charmeuse by Leon Hebro

Hope feels like that sometimes—like something you force yourself to keep digging for. Gritted teeth optimism. Not the kind of hope they write about in greeting cards or self-help books, but the kind that knows the world is a fractured, hollow place and still decides to say: “So what? I’ll make something of it anyway.” You bite and claw your way through the days because what else is there? Because meaninglessness is an open door, and the beauty is in what you choose to drag through it with you.

rebecca solnit, from hope in the dark

I’ve never trusted easy answers. Life doesn’t care if you’re okay or if you’re drowning. But I do believe there’s a kind of defiance in sticking your hands in the dirt and planting seeds anyway. In loving fiercely and without caution. In sharing a meal, watching the sky bleed itself into gold, or letting someone see the parts of you that still ache. None of it erases the void—but maybe it doesn’t need to.

Despite everything—despite the grief and the weight of it all—I think I’m grateful. Not in a soft, simple way, but in the kind of gratitude that burns. That says, thank you for letting me hurt like this, for letting me love, for letting me stay long enough to see another sunrise.

Orange Juice by Noah Kahan

and if I close my eyes long enough, I can almost hear it: the earth murmuring back, You are loved. You are here because I asked you to be. Just for a little while. So stay. Bite down. Make something of it.

And maybe that’s why I keep going—not because I think it’ll get easier, but because there’s a kind of savage beauty in wrestling with life and saying, I’ll take you as you are. There’s something holy about the dirt under your nails, the ache in your shoulders after a long day, the way your breath burns in your chest when you’re gasping from laughter or rage or grief.

forough farrokhzad, from “another birth”

I think about all the times I wanted to quit—when the days felt too heavy to carry, and every minute crawled like an eternity. But then there’s that sliver of something—a stray cat blinking at me from under a streetlamp, the way the light turns a cracked glass into a kaleidoscope. The smell of garlic and onions sizzling in butter, how it fills a room like an embrace. Those moments hit me like a gut punch, reminding me that even in this vast, absurd emptiness, there are things that make it worth staying.

twitter user @HiddenGemm

Because isn’t that it? Isn’t that the whole point? Not to find meaning but to make it. To dig it out with bloody hands and trembling fingers, to scream it into existence if you have to. To hold someone’s hand so tightly it feels like you’re stitching the universe back together, even if just for a second. To say, I don’t care if it all ends in ashes, because I was here. I was alive. And fuck it, I loved.

The truth is, the world doesn’t owe us anything, and it sure as hell doesn’t care if we’re okay. But every time I look up at a bruised, endless sky, I feel it: the quiet, aching love of something vast and indifferent that still lets us exist. The earth doesn’t promise forever; it only asks us to stay a little while, to feel its weight, to let it hold us even as it crushes us.

And maybe that’s enough. To know that, despite everything—the chaos, the pain, the suffocating silence—we were invited here. To touch, to taste, to ache, to laugh, to build something beautiful out of the shards. To make this fleeting moment ours, teeth bared, hands raw, hearts wide open.

sourced from Pinterest

---