not enough people talk about traumatic friendships. how you had a best friend that made you feel like shit any time you got into a relationship. how your best friend now makes jokes but you can’t let them go because of what you felt before. you just want to be a good friend and be happy, but you feel selfish and that’s not right.
i shouldn’t feel selfish for wanting to be happy and start my life. i’m nearly 26 and ready to move into a house with the person i love. what’s insane is it’s not happening for another literal year. i’m not going anywhere in the mean time and she’s not moving in now.
and i don’t want to feel like i need to work overtime for this friendship now that i’ve spoken on my intentions to move out next year when the lease ends. that’s not fair to me, but it’s also entirely possible that my best friend is just messing with me. the problem is, i can’t see that.
because i had a best friend who would pull me down for years. if i got into a relationship, i was “putting them on the back burner” though i’d hung out with them the entire week. they wanted all of my attention all of the time though they’d drop me once they met someone they wanted to date.
basically, what i’m saying is i hope that people who have experience traumatic friendships know that they’re valid. i see you and i hear you. it’s painful and i just wish more people would open up about this topic.
I love desire paths. There’s something so wonderous about seeing an echo of humanity. Depending on it’s location, a desire path can mean so many different things.
In a city, like the pic above, they represent rebellion, and efficiency. The messiness of humanity. We like to imagine we’re oh so logical and neat so we design our cities to be logical and neat an then real humans literally trample on that idea. The ego required to think you can design something perfect that checks every box. Life is all about compromise and patching stuff when some new problem arises. Though people have certainly tried! Ohio state univeristy let students carve their desire paths, and then paved them over. It looks pretty artsy.
Some people will try to discourage desire paths, but this is almost always going to fail.
Eventually, people just have to accept them. Humans are too dang stubborn.
Certain desire paths are just adorable. A 0.5 second time saver. You just can’t design for maximum efficiency, humans will always find shortcuts!
Though on occasion a desire path can actually be the least efficient way…especially if you’re superstitious.
In a wilder area, such as below, they show us the curiosity of humans. A desire path somewhere natural often tells you there’s something interesting just ahead. (Though remember some ecosystems are fragile and will suffer if trampled! Stick to paths in these sorts of areas)
And how about desire stairs? I always think these look so cool. We get see humans determination to climb, to traverse every kind of terrain.
And for something really crazy…a desire path used for centuries will create a ‘holloway’
All of these pics are off the Desirepath subreddit, check them out for more examples! And many thanks to the users who submitted these photos.
I always wondered if these had a name. Now I know. :)
No matter how progressive or well-read you are, there are always going to be moments in your life where somebody pushes back against something that’s so culturally ingrained you never even considered it before. And you’ll say “Huh, it never occurred to me to challenge this but you’re right” and that doesn’t mean you were “morally toxic” before, it means you’re a non-omniscient human capable of growth.
