You Ever Get The Feeling Of Holding Back Your Affection Because You Don’t Want To Overwhelm Someone

a few from lois dodd’s fire collection

One stranger shoots me a smile as I walk past and suddenly life is worth living and humanity is not for naught

having to come to terms with the fact that love is not an everlasting performance in which you attempt to retain the attention of your significant other but rather a release of control and putting faith into them and trusting them to choose to stay with you no matter what you have to offer

[transcript: 1. “any fear, any memory will do; and if you’ve got a heart at all, someday it will kill you.”

2. “survive what? you said. in the weak light you looked over your shoulder. you said, nothing ever survives.”

3. “because you want to die for love, you always have.”

4. “jesus: you think suffering is a one-way street?! it’s not! it’s the exact opposite of not!

judas: you got a lot of fuckin’ nerve—

jesus: —and you’ve got no nerve at all! where’s your heart in all this, judas? you think you were with me for any other reason than that?! it was your heart, judas. you were all heart. you were my heart! don’t you know that?!”

5. “he thought about wanting to feel like he had been made for something other than dying.”/end transcript]

rita dove, primer for a nuclear age/margaret atwood, roominghouse, winter/richard siken, planet of love/stephen adly guirgis, the last days of judas iscariot/maggie stiefvater- mister impossible

Normalise not being ready to face a day, not every day is supposed to be your best , and not every day is supposed to be the most productive , at times you’re just ready to wake up and not be up for facing the rest of your tasks and thats ok , sometimes all you can do is survive and that’s more than enough :)

~ ghosts of tulips past :: 💌

@/chloeinletters on instagram

Today felt long, today felt heavy, today felt strong, I wasn’t quite ready, and I think it’s ok if all I wanted to do today was wrap myself in a blanket, because I deserve to have a soft whispy sigh kept the leaf I picked up from street on the side of my pillow today

You know at times we do overlook the simplicity of a word, and that further leads you to letting it hold the weight of the life on your shoulders. Mistake, not disappointment, failure, agony, disgrace- you know the rest you’ve said it to yourself time and time again without a doubt. Yes you have. Now think about it again, mis-take. You. Missed. A. Take. No more, no less.

I made a mistake a year and a half back, it wasn’t the kind of lie where you hide a bag of chips behind somebody’s back. It was the kind of lie that broke somebody’s trust in you. Eventually it starts to grow on you etching all the way through the small of your back, upto your spine and jamming into your skull, ultimately making you believe that you MUST NOT ever live this down.

You see a reminder is a receipt of your actions and consequences in an event, but what you might not see is that the ink on that paper dries with time, it will go away, there will be a time where you’ll pick it up and you’ll see absolutely nothing,no trace.

You are going to have endless opportunities to beat yourself up over something, but allow yourself to keep it to the short stuff, maybe a brain freeze, or when you miss your bus, a paper cut, biting your tongue when you’re too excited to speak even, so technically it’s all word v0m1t.Now I’m not here to snatch that away from you, you do that all you want, but what about that one time, that split second where you know the night is colder than usual, that split second where you’re more restless than ever, that split second where you’re twisting and turning and the air around you seems to be holding a grip on your breath, and you so desperately wish the night were warmer, if only a little, where you KNOW you’ve got nothing but yourself to hold onto?

Why would you abandon yourself? We know we’ve spoken to ourselves before, we know we’ve sat with ourselves before, but did you make an effort to reach out to that echo inside of you and hold it tight to keep it safe and sound from all the intrusive thoughts peeking through? To keep yourself warm?

Surely you’ve heard “You know what you did back there, and don’t you forget it. This time won’t be any different. I just KNOW you’re going to make the same mistake again, and if you’re too stubborn to risk it again? Who am I to stop you” but what about “you did what you did under the heat of your impulse, neither of us could’ve controlled it. It has been a while and you allowed yourself to let the event sink in with time, you were afraid, and I’m not saying what you did was right or wrong, it was understandable because you were afraid. Give yourself that validation to forgive yourself” you are LEARNING and LEARNING and you LEARN and you LEARN

And maybe that will be your taking your from it, no trophy, no award, no nothing, but your accountability, and your taking, now that’s some fancy stuff right there. I did not deserve to be beat up over an event that happened years back, but I was allowed to be afraid and to let myself feel the pressure, I was allowed to find a way, to BUILD a way out. You are allowed to channel your faith on a belief that pats you on the back and kisses your forehead because that was a very hard time, but you DO get to push through, you do not need permission. You have a RIGHT to.

You get to have just as much liberty as anybody out there who decides to put themselves forth and move forward, always