Not everything has to be beautiful

I’m find myself subject to my fathers subtle shame in the way I have chosen to lead my life

He doesn’t understand it, or perhaps even recognize it

But it shows itself in the white lies he tells about my future when talking to extended family

In the words he chooses to slice through me during arguments

Words that are really just projections of his battle to understand

How a man as great as he

Could raise someone so unworthy of his pride

Someone so unstructured, so unbecoming,

Someone so free

Sometimes I struggle to stop his shame from establishing itself as my own

It’s taken a long time to recognize that all the ways he failed to make me feel safe were essential to develop the person I am today

The things I see as core values have been lessons from the failures of my fathers

My fathers arrogance taught me humility

His harshness showed me the value in being kind

His hasty judgement granted me an unfaltering neutrality

And a willingness to understand

Without him I would know a fraction of what I do

Although he may be responsible for a lot of the weight I still carry,

He has taught me things I couldn’t imagine living without

5/27/2021, 6:26 am

Good Bones by Maggie Smith

the night taught me so many things

moments

that’s all anything is ever for. moments like these

moments you can never get back

even now as I try to capture this experience in words

little human words

the night speaks volumes

the ocean sings it’s song

never quits not even for a moment

but I sit there knowing it’s right

nothing else needs to be heard or said

or thought

it’s all there in the moment

nothing to be chased after

it’s as real as anything ever gets

all the knowledge i’ve collected suddenly makes sense

as if in a strange sense it all goes together

just keep collecting knowledge to know things better

It’s all you can do

It’s all I can do

what stops me?

I wish I

You can’t hold onto things. They’ll be ripped out of your grasp anyway

Thank you to the night I can never get back

When I think about you it feels like I’m choking on all the love you refuse to receive from me. I can feel it rise up to my throat and leave me breathless I can feel it pouring out of my body, filling up the walls around me and one day I am going to drown

2018-09-01

“There’s a corner of my heart that is yours. And I don’t mean for now, or until I’ve found somebody else, I mean forever. I mean to say that whether I fall in love a thousand times over or once or never again, there’ll always be a small quiet place in my heart that belongs only to you.”

— Beau Taplin

cigarette cases, 1870s - 1910s

Sometimes I wake up with vague memories of you and I know we met in my dreams. Those morning when I wake up and I can almost still feel what it’s like to hold you are the hardest to get up from. I think my heart is too heavy for my legs to hold, so I have to lay here for a while, trying to scrub the manufactured i love yous off of my brain. we are approaching more time broken up than we spent together, and that is very scary for me because you are still so fresh in my mind. sometimes I wonder but I know I shouldn’t.

Komako Sakai

Ariel: ‘The Rival’ by Sylvia Plath

I’m not in love. That’s the only thing I know for sure. They say when you are in love you just know, that it is an undeniable feeling in your whole body for this person, and for me, all I’ve ever done is question and deny. I don’t know where this leaves me. It feels like a limbo. Somewhere between “happy?” and “too empty to know the difference”. The way I would describe what this relationship is to me is a dim source of happiness, a mild attraction that would leave a black hole if it was gone. That would leave a rampant emptiness in my heart. It would be extremely damaging but for all the wrong reasons. I need to feel cared about. I need to feel loved. The absence of the most consistent stream of affection I’ve ever had would destroy me, especially now. I feel so lonely. That’s selfish. I’ve never considered whether that love is completely reciprocated by me, I’ve never really cared to. How much longer do I just sit on my thumbs? How much longer I am allowed to before I’m just a fucking asshole? I do love him. I love him in the way that I love pomegranates or a nice breeze or the number 3. A thing in life that makes it more enjoyable, that brings me comfort. I love him the way I love someone I love. And in the same way, I don’t want to hurt him. I want to see him happy and I like the exchange of affection and I like his niche in my life, but at what point is it too much? When have I let it go on too long? I feel guilt when I look at him. When I hold his face in my hands and I look at his sad eyes and I see myself in them. Sometimes we sit in the same room just away from eachother. I can feel the slight tension in the air and the longing in his hands as he twiddles his fingers hoping that I’ll get up and plant myself on him, and I do, but I always hesitate. I always wish I could sit away for just a little longer and I never know why. Apart from the fact that this relationship is not sexually satisfying for me, I have no real issues with him. He is nice to me, he’s patient and understanding and accommodating. And I recognize that. A part of me wishes we had stayed friends. I don’t remember why I pursued this, I don’t remember what my motivations were I don’t know if it was curiosity or just sheer boredom but I know that it was not love. And I will never stop being sorry for that.

July 5th 2019

I don’t even care anymore

My life is going by so fast I can’t afford to keep wasting my time on you. How long can I be in love with a memory? Yearning for something that can never exist

The world where you love me is gone.

The boy in my dreams who holds me tight does not exist. The jaw I clutch so longingly for comfort is just an illusion like the beach wave hair I can almost still smell

I don’t know you anymore. I will never know you again.

you are just a collection of the memories I have of you. A manifestation of warm touch and pillow talk...You are not real.

The ghost of our love haunts me everywhere I go

I’m ready to mourn my dead.

“If there is a God, He will have to beg my forgiveness.”

— A phrase that was carved on the walls of a concentration camp cell during WWII by a Jewish prisoner. (via h-dehbashi)

Mitski, cop car / art by @ink-the-artist / Nicole Dollanganger, dog teeth

You grew your hair out. It looks nice.

It was really beautiful, being part of your life.

Please stop by my dreams tonight so I can say hello