it looks like you've found my secret journal page. proceed with caution!! lots of messy rants ahead.

july 4. 2026 i did the most american thing possible today and went to work on a national holiday. and the sheer amount of obviously AI generated america 250th bullshit shirts i have seen people wearing today.....i might need a smoke AND a beer @_@ i just.....do not understand why everyone is committing to these levels of pageantry for this absolute hell hole scam of a country. it actually makes me feel crazy that people...are satisfied? happy? ...proud? about anything going on here. it's not normal. everything here is deeply unwell.

july 2. 2026 i'm getting a new tattoo tomorrow and even though i have ....over 20 (i'm not going to count them all, but just know this includes my whole back and asscrack). i still get nervous. lmao.
another thing i feel the need to document rn is that i was recently going through an identity crisis. and it's very silly, but i need you to understand that it was *not* silly to me, i was genuinely about to be depressed about it. it's okay to laugh though because while i WAS crashing out about it, it is very funny. so i'm giving you permission to laugh with me about it now that i've pulled through to the other side. for about ~3 weeks, dr. pepper- my fav drink. my life's water. was tasting weird to me. it's hard to really explain but for some reason it was tasting extra syrup-y to me. thick. and to be fair, i think it has always been that way. people have always remarked to me about how it tastes like medicine to them. but it didn't taste like that to me. but then suddenly, it did. i still can't quite figure out why. but i was off-put. and since i have made drinking dr. pepper a fucking cornerstone of my personality...it made me feel not good :( about myself :( lmao i truly was experiencing embarassment and SHAME around it/was nervous to tell my friends. instead of dr. pepper, i was craving diet coke/diet pepsi instead. was this my version of a mid-life crisis? were my taste buds just changing? is it the aspartame? did they change the formula or some shit? i was joking that all but one of my close friends have quit/started new jobs within the past month and that because i drink dr. pepper like it's my job this was my version of that. one of my coworkers was so kind and bought me some diet dr. pepper to try. that was better. but without explaination, i tried it again and now it doesn't taste weird to me. i'm not craving the diet drinks either. i'm 100% back in action. but man was that weird.

april 4. 2026 idk why but i was really thinking hard today about one of my ex boyfriends from college. and like imagining scenarios of like what i would say to him if i ever saw him again. how i know all his secrets. how i helped him pay for probation so he could keep it a secret from his parents. i wonder if they ever found out. he (obviously) never paid me back. which is truly fine. i never lend people money with the intention of getting it back lol. and how even though that seems like it was a lifetime ago i can remember all sorts of little details about him. and i wonder if he remembers anything like that about me. he's married now i think. does his wife know i lent him money LMAO and to be clear, this is not a 'i miss him' (or really any of my past partners for that matter) type of thing, this is more me wondering like....how do i live in other people's memories. what do they remember about me? or do they remember anything at all? have i changed or grown at all as a person since those memories? what would they think of me now compared to who i was back then? truly, it doesn't really matter. but i can't help but wonder.

nov 24 . 2025 i work in a plant/garden supply type store. i do really like it. at the end of the day it is still retail. but i get to care for plants, so i guess it is okay. but the store i work at does prefer to hire people who are specifically interested in plants and that is sort of the benefit of shopping at our store versus other retailers who are cheaper- because we only hire "experts" (i say this with some reservation, as i do think they use that term loosely. most people do not have degrees, myself included, or even any cerifications. and the attitude is that we may not be experts necessarily, but we know more than most of our customer base, and so we get to call ourselves experts anyhow.) and i don't think i consider myself an expert necessarily, i do have my state certifications, but i did not go to school for horticulture or botany and instead i think i just have a very specialized knowledge and a brain that is fortunate enough to be good with memorizing taxonomy. but there are definitely metrics to this, because in comparison to other people working alongside me, i would consider myself fairly knowledgable. (i can tell i will be going on several tangents before i get to the main point of this, because i think laying out all the background information to this is kind of important.) anyhow.

now, we live in the southeast USA, and people here tend to be religious generally speaking. my parents are both from the south and i was raised in a cult-adjacent christian situation, so i am not a stranger to this. but one thing that always fascinates? confuses? interests? sort of pisses me off? is when i am discussing facts about plants with customers and taking my time to break down the science of it, their immediate response is to declare that there HAS to be a god because of how fascinating it is. i find it so strange that anything they can't fully explain or understand is immediately met with- oh it MUST be divine. as if i didn't spend the last few minutes EXPLAINING the science behind it. that are based in FACTS. and at the same time, i guess, i do find it kind of poetic? like yes, nature is a big and beautiful, miraculous thing. something so miraculous that some people can only perceive through the lense of divinity. but why do we have to INVENT a god to explain it? why can't it just be miraculous and ethereal all on its own? why must it be an individual creation, explicitly designed and planned and meticulous? why not a collaborative web spun through time and space? like i agree, its not just happenstance that things are the way they are, but that's not because of heaven or hell, its because of the interconnectivity of all living things and their cascading effects upon each other.

the other thing is i really don't know how people expect me to respond to that. because i feel like anything other than agreeing will be perceived as rude. it feels like a trap. and i hate how christianity in america is so socially acceptable and people are very *loud* about it, whereas, if i as an atheist were loud about it, it would absolutely not be met with the same level of social acceptance. and yet i remember when i was younger being in church that people would regularly act as if they were PERSECUTED for talking about jesus in public?? and i have to say, i have yet to witness that. people are generally polite to christians when they casually talk about god in conversation. (i have only witnessed hostility towards christians when they are like screaming about fire and brimstone in people's faces or like showing up at people's doors uninvited to try to get them to go to church. i have never witnessed it when people just casually talk about god or creationism in public. and i feel as though i am uniquely qualified to speak on that because i have been on both sides of the door.)

i remember one time i was explaining to a customer that many species of calathea and goeppertia and other marantacae genuses have purple or darker toned undersides to their leaves as an evolutionary trait that has helped them adapt to lower light conditions- and the person literally FLINCHED when i said the word "evolutionary"- which side tangent- i remember growing up i was not really taught about evolution, and what i did learn about it was from asking neighborhood kids who went to public schools and then i had to play major catch up in college- but my ~christian~ curriculum often would use the word "adapted" in lieu of "evolved" but like, essentially that's the same thing? just a more palatable word?

and i just wish that the same christians who so quickly attribute divinity to anything about nature they don't understand- who take that energy and apply it to queer/intersex/trans/nb people. because i have observed when discussing the plants that they don't have to understand something to see the beauty in it and appreciate its existence. i work with a decent amount of homophobes and i think that it is WILD to be employed in any profession that has to do with biology (and one we are supposedly experts in) and not understand how deeply queer it is. i truly just don't think you can be in relationship with these plants and not realize the parallels. how interconnected and sacred it all is. how can you be so dense when you are standing next to a plant with a spadix type inflorescence? and even if i guess you do recognize that such varying sexual morphologies are present in plants, why do you believe that we as humans are seperate and incapable of that? why is your brain able to understand the limitlessness and omnipitence of god, but not the vastiness contained within yourself and other people? its so frustrating but also sad. because i think that a lot of people find solace in christianity and other forms of religion because it gives themselves a sense of peace around existing (and death and pain and other things) but i think i have found in my personal experience that it actually seems like so many of them are at war with existence and they don't fully understand or appreciate it because they've lived their lives tiptoeing around it, far more concerned with what happens in a fictional afterlife. i actually had a little bit of a laugh with myself because wouldn't it be funny to spend all that time worrying about ThERe'S oNlY tWo GenDerS and then your family sends a bunch of peace lilies over to your funeral. which have spadix inflorescences ;)

i'm not really sure what the central theme of all of this was now that i have typed it all out, but i think moving forward everyone should be growing plants. and you need to be raising them right so they grow up to be gay and atheist.