fact or fiction
Is it fact or merely fiction? Fact or Fiction explores the myths and beliefs we hold about women's health issues, sexism, gender roles, and the female experience.
Notes from the Mind Palace
There are people who ask for your truth gently, like they’re cupping water in their hands. They make space for your shaking voice, your half‑formed thoughts, the parts of you that don’t look pretty in daylight. They tell you it’s safe to set things down. They tell you they won’t let anything spill. And for a moment, you believe them. You believe that someone finally sees you without flinching, without judgment, without the instinct to turn your vulnerability into something they can use.
By Syl De'Vilabout 6 hours ago in Viva
Notes from the Mind Palace.
I’ve lived enough lives for three people, and somehow I’m still here trying to make sense of the noise in my head. Some days it feels like I’m stitching together scraps from every version of myself. — the military kid standing gate guard in Turkey, the cop who learned too much about people’s worst moments, the semi pro football player who hit like a freight train, the gas station attendant who learned everyone's secrets, the 40 year old pool lady and the writer who can’t stop turning her own chaos into stories, the sister who loves too hard, the friend who carries everyone else’s weight even when her own knees are buckling. And somewhere in the middle of all that, I’m still just me — loud music blasting, brain vibrating, fingers typing like I’m trying to outrun my own thoughts. Half the time I’m rambling, the other half I’m building something out of the rambling. It’s messy. It’s real. It’s mine.
By Syl De'Vil3 days ago in Viva
Notes from the Mind Palace.
There’s a strange transformation that happens when your kids become adults. You think you’re finally done with the chaos — the sticky hands, the mystery stains, the “is it POOP or chocolate?” or "why is this wet" moments. You think adulthood means peace, quiet, stability.
By Syl De'Vil3 days ago in Viva
Notes from the Mind Palace.
There’s a special kind of stupid that happens when your brain decides someone is the sun. Not because they are the sun, but because your neurons have staged a coup and declared, “This person? Yeah, we’re gonna obsess over them like a skunk who found an un‑locked trash can.”
By Syl De'Vil3 days ago in Viva
Notes from the Mind Palace.
There’s a point where you stop pretending that certain people are good for your nervous system. You stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. You stop waiting for them to show up differently. You stop handing out access like it costs you nothing. Today was that point.
By Syl De'Vil5 days ago in Viva
Notes from the Mind Palace.
There are people you meet once and forget by morning, and then there are the ones who leave fingerprints on your nervous system. The ones your brain files under “important” even when your life is on fire and you’re too young to understand why something matters. I’ve been thinking about those people lately, the ones who slip out of your life but somehow stay lodged under your ribs like a splinter you never quite remove. Not painful enough to scream about, but impossible to ignore.
By Syl De'Vil6 days ago in Viva
Notes from the Mind Palace.
And then there’s Justin — the quiet, absurd, infuriating, hilarious, unexpectedly reliable force in my life. He laughs at the most ridiculous things. He can piss me off in five seconds flat and have me laughing ten seconds later. He’s wonderful with our daughter, and he’s good with the boys too — even taking one of them overnight sometimes on his last night with Cyndle before he brings her home.
By Syl De'Vil10 days ago in Viva
The Day the Router Died
The glowing blue light of the living room router did not just blink out; it felt as though it took the literal oxygen from the room with it. For Marcus, the silence that followed was immediate and deafening. His thumb instinctively scrolled against a completely dark smartphone screen, frozen mid-swipe on a social media feed that would no longer refresh. Across the room, his teenage daughter, Maya, stared blankly at her tablet as her high-definition video feed froze into an ugly, pixelated mosaic of unmoving colors. In the kitchen, his wife, Sarah, paused mid-recipe, her smart-screen refrigerator suddenly refusing to display the next culinary step. The smart home had gone completely dumb in a matter of seconds, and the family was left stranded in the quiet aftermath.
By Asghar ali awan4 months ago in Viva
She Who is Relaxed, is Free.
“Growing up, I never knew a relaxed woman. Successful women? Yes. Productive women? Plenty. Anxious and afraid and apologetic women? Heaps of them. But relaxed women? At-ease women? Women who don't dissect their days into half hour slots of productivity? Women who prioritize rest, pleasure, and play? Women who aren't afraid to take up space in the world? Women who give themselves unconditional permission to relax? Without guilt? Without apology? Without feeling like they need to earn it? I'm not sure I've ever met a woman like that. But I would like to become one.”
By Alys Revna5 months ago in Viva
The Street Artist
How One Woman Uses Art to Make the Homeless Visible THE CHALK OUTLINE OF FORGOTTEN LIVES 🖍️ Maria Alvarez does not sell her art in galleries or display it in museums because her canvas is the sidewalk and her subjects are the homeless people who sleep on those sidewalks and who are walked past by thousands of commuters daily without being acknowledged or even consciously perceived, and Maria's art involves creating life-size chalk portraits around the actual sleeping positions of homeless individuals during the early morning hours before they wake, so that when morning commuters arrive they see vivid colorful artistic representations of human beings in the exact spots where they would normally see nothing because they have trained themselves to look through homeless people as though they were part of the urban landscape rather than human beings deserving of acknowledgment 🌆
By The Curious Writer6 months ago in Viva
