The walnut tree. Its leaves are dense so it casts a cohesive shadow, perfect for shelter from the sun. I LOVE how it smells, especially when developing walnuts, and green walnuts are entirely unique in how they taste!

Thank you so much! Yes, thankfully those days are far behind me and only the scars remain.

Whoever said “suffering builds character” was talking out of their ass - it doesn’t, but it does reveal the character that was always there.

Honestly, I don’t know! I’ve chewed on this pretty much ever since I had it, but I couldn’t put my finger on any particular occurrence.

The closest I can come to explaining it is that it was my subconscious’ way of assimilating my fear of my family? I had a… complicated childhood amongst some very specifically toxic personalities and always had the instinctive drive to not be like them, because it was shitty behaviour. I also feared them, because, like… I was a baby. They could literally crush me if they wanted to, and I knew it - none ever got THAT violent or crazy, just to be clear, but they were very on edge pretty much all of the time.

Maybe it was just the fear of getting caught up in that, of becoming that, but expressed abstractly, shapelessly because I didn’t have the conceptual or contextual tools with which to shape it yet. And this is also sustained by the fact that that… thing felt very familiar.

Or maybe I’m reaching and this is utter nonsense, I have no idea!

I remember it as being my first dream ever, think I was around 1-2 years old when I had it, but everything’s very fuzzy timeline-wise up until I was around 5.

It was wholly abstract, I dreamt of myself as an amorphous mass of… something. I wasn’t panicked that I had no limbs or defined shape, and was fully aware of myself as said mass.

I was floating in a void, and a much, much larger mass of the same something of which I was made started drawing nearer and nearer to me, almost painfully slow.

I can’t begin to describe the sheer terror I felt when I realised I couldn’t retreat fast enough to not get caught. I was… moving my ass off away from the thing, and it seemed to just be strolling its way closer and closer - the fact that it seemed entirely relaxed in its pursuit somehow made the feeling of terror even worse.

Then, it finally caught up with me. The first thing which struck me was its size. To say it was towering over me is an understatement, the thing was incomprehensibly vast.

It was all over in a flash. The thing just… advanced “through” me, it simply assimilated me into its mass and I was gone. That was when I woke up. I still remember that terror, never felt anything close to it since.

I am of the opposite opinion, I LOVE winter for the exact reasons you’re describing!

I have some inherited photosensitivity, so nighttime’s my favourite time! I also handle the cold waaay better than I handle heat, and my organism just feels like it starts coming back to life once autumn shows up!

Summer pretty much always makes me wish I could sleep my way through it.