People who lose touch with friends in midlife often realize too late that the friendship never ended — it just stopped being fed, and a thing you stop feeding doesn’t die dramatically, it just quietly isn’t there one day when you finally reach for it
Tie in one hand, blunt in the other. 🚬
The grind is done, the pressure is gone, and it's finally time to relax. Just me, good smoke, and a well-earned moment of peace. 💨😌
I had at fever dream at Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto.
It was pouring rain, the kind that soaks you to the bone, and I’m huffing up those endless red torii gates like a lost tourist when this old lady in a bright yellow raincoat pops out from behind a fox statue like she’d been waiting for me.
Old lady: You! Tall one with the confused face! The foxes chose you today.
Quick, make a wish but don’t say it out loud or they’ll twist it.
Me: *wiping rain from my eyes* “Uh, okay? I just wanted some good ramen later.
She cackles like a witch and grabs my arm, dragging me deeper into the trails.
Old lady: Ramen? Boring! Last foreigner who wished for ramen ended up dating a vending machine. True. It proposed with a canned coffee.
We’re slipping on wet steps, foxes staring at us from everywhere, when her grandson comes running up, soaked and panicked.
Grandson: Grandma! Stop kidnapping tourists! Sorry mister, she does this when the rain spirits are active.
Old lady: *ignoring him completely* Listen kid, the foxes told me you’re running from something back home. Bad boss? Bad love? Either way, bow to the big gate and yell your real wish. I’ll translate to fox language.
I’m dying laughing but also lowkey intrigued, so I half-yell some nonsense about wanting adventure.
The twist? The grandson sighs and goes, She’s not even my grandma. She’s a retired shrine maiden who bets on which tourists will propose to the foxes. Last week a guy did it for real and now he lives here selling fox masks.
We ended up sharing umbrella space and cheap sake from her hidden stash while the rain pounded the gates. She made me promise to come back for “fox marriage consultations.”
Kyoto shrines don’t play, they pull you in and spit you out questioning your whole life.
The way neurotypicals can just decide to do something and then immediately do it. No 3-hour mental loading screen, no negotiating with themselves, no opening 17 tabs first. Yeah that’s it.