“People look at you and say ‘you changed’, as if you worked that hard to stay the same”

 Jay Z (via samanthalisette)

Some people are born with tornados in their lives, but constellations in their eyes. Other people are born with stars at their feet, but their souls are lost at sea.

Perspectives, Nikita Gill (via thatkindofwoman)

Leaving parties without a word. Leaving bars without telling your friends where you’re going. Chewing on “reckless” and “stupid” as you say, “Another shot of tequila, please.” You don’t even like tequila. You don’t like throwing up in bed either, but here you are, with a bowl in your lap, convulsing. You stare out the window until your brother angrily asks you if you are looking at him, and you see him, as he is, for the first time in your life. You hadn’t even noticed that he was standing there. You see him, and you wonder why your family walks with resentment hooded around them. Why you are still digging problems that arose six years ago out of your thighs. Why you keep trying to prove yourself, as if there is a point you can reach that will grant you clarity. Or self-acceptance. Or silence. You’ve felt like this for so long that it has become normal. This. This stumbling in the dark. This heavy well. This sea of noise. What you want is womblike silence. The quiet of a place where nothing exists, where you don’t exist. You want to wrap yourself in the stillness of it, let it works its way in through your ears and paint over what’s inside you. Shhh. Quiet game starting now. Whoever breathes first loses.

Quiet Game Starting…Now, Lora Mathis (via lora-mathis)

All I wish to do is touch you; by that I mean touch your heart in a way that will make you forget all the people who have reached for your body instead.

a 365 poetry project entry // Haley Hendrick (via stolenwine)

I wanna crawl into bed with you and tell you every time I laughed at a stupid joke running through my head  and how it happens far too often, to the point where people are constantly rolling their eyes, saying "there she goes again, lost in her own world" and it's true.  I don't have a little world resting in my palms but somehow, I make my own room another world and it's like  I'm breathing different air, and you are too, and when we exchange words, I don't just wanna talk I wanna know you.  I wanna crawl in between the spaces of your empty silences, the slurry side glances, the heavy eyelids when you're drunk and it's 2 am  and I want to hear you tell me, it was me. It was me all along.

 Because it was you. it was always you.

I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me.

Jorge Luis Borges (via rauchwolken)

Forgiveness looks beautiful on everyone.

Angel Nafis (via andrewgibby)

Amy Winehouse - Valerie

Stop making a fool out of me

Couldn’t tell you how surreal yesterday was. It was like bathing in salted cotton candy • Amongst the Grampains

The rape joke is that you were eight. The rape joke is that at the time, you didn’t know people had sex to express love. The rape joke is that the only other person who’d seen you naked was your mom. The rape joke is that he called you ‘beautiful’ first. The rape joke is that he held your hands together and told you to ‘try harder’ when you struggled. The rape joke is that you believed him when he told you were overreacting. The rape joke is that your grandma called him a nice boy and asked him to stay for dinner. The rape joke is that he winked at you when you apologized to your parents for not coming downstairs the first time you were called. The rape joke is that his friends high-fived him for “getting some.” The rape joke is that you still don’t feel like you’ve regrown the pieces he stole. The rape joke is that he was conceived when his dad slapped himself into his snoring mother. The rape joke is that her friends told her she was lucky someone wanted her. The rape joke is that each year in the United States, 32,000 other women’s bellies ripen with life against their will. The rape joke is that he never learned to touch without scarring. The rape joke is that your classmate thinks ‘have you seen what asses look like in yoga pants?’ is an argument. The rape joke is your new boyfriend kissing you and telling you he ‘raped’ his math test. The rape joke is that ‘Why are girls so scared of rape? Y’all should feel pride that a guy risked his life in jail just to fuck you’ is a popular Tweet right now. The rape joke is that you wake up to the memory of him laughing, “now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” The rape joke is that it’s been twelve years and you still quiver when someone touches you. The rape joke is that he hasn’t stopped laughing. The rape joke is that you forgot how to.

Lora Mathis, The Rape Joke (via thespinstersquad)

That night I lost you, I lost something inside me. Or perhaps several things. Something central to my existence, the very support for who I am as a person.

Haruki Murakami (via durianquotes)

People who truly love us can be divided into two categories: those who understand us, and those who forgive us our worst sins. Rarely do you find someone capable of both.

Jonathan Carroll (via rauchwolken)

When I think about beauty, a lot of different aspects form in my mind about this roller coaster ride life of mine. When I think about beauty, I think about mountains so tall and  skies so large, clouds scattered about looking like stepping stones in a great river, an endless trail of serenity. I think of Yosemite at 1 in the morning with 5 good friends and  looking up in awe at the stars that hung like lanterns in the sky, so convinced that  God himself lit them. I don't think of lips or eyes or curves that dive in at the sides I don't think of big thighs or acne or  the "wrong" way to look. I think of how everyone has a different laugh, and the way their smiles are lovely, or fake, or wholesome, overbearing, true. 

When I think about beauty, I think of the desolation, and how destruction is the very center  of creation.  How miserable it is to know devastation  like the devastation of losing someone  whether they left before you even considered them leaving, or whether they left because their own hearts refused to keep beating. Gone, and it's hard to keep breathing, like your lungs were internally destroying themselves through the pain of grieving. When I think of beauty, I think of these people who left holograms of their presence in my wake  like ghosts, I tried to forget the heartbreak  I tried to hold them again. But it was the biggest mistake I'd made as the lifeless images of all my yesterdays became so overplayed I forgot what it meant  to be here. When I think of beauty, I think of how hard it was to let you go to say goodbye to something I thought I would get to keep for the rest of my life When I think of beauty, I think about forgiveness and how I gave away second and third chances like it was nothing because I know what it's like to fuck up. I think of me, and how lucky I am to say that I made it out without bullet holes the way some kids have never known  I think about seeds of hope planted in my bones, and I think of dandelions cascading wishes across my ribcage. I think about people, and how their mouths form small o's when they're surprised I think about surprises and the uncertainty of life and how somehow, everything falls into place with a little time and how somehow, all the lows are completely canceled out by all the highs and somehow, along the way, the little girl in me died and became the woman I am today.  When I think about beauty, I think about  what it means to really be alive. What it means to look around and promise yourself that tomorrow, will be a better day even though today your city burned down,  you had to leave your throne and give up your crown, even though today you learned what it was like  to delve deep only to drown. When I think about beauty, I think about drowning  and how most people think of drowning as unbearable, uncomfortable but it's only because you're shedding your frail lungs to bear new ones, trust me tomorrow, you'll wake up completely reborn, the sunrise will mark your awakening and you  will be so beautiful.

holy shit this is important

Body Love - Mary Lambert

1. the first time I realized I was a body was when that man pulled into the dairy queen drive through in his shiny car after ordering two hamburgers and a shake and then ordered me too. 2. I can never get my hair to do what I want it to and I think maybe the girls I knew in high...

1. Your place is in the kitchen. If you somehow manage to find work outside of the home, it is because you fucked the interviewer. 2. You cannot participate in sports because no one will want to watch you play. Unless your uniform is a sports bra and spandex. 3. ‘You are not like other girls’ is the best compliment you can receive. Other girls are your enemies because they are your competition. Not in landing a job, but in landing a husband. 4. Homosexuality is okay in pornography. Love and marriage with someone that is of the same sex as you is not. 5. You were asking for it. Despite the fact that he was your friend, despite the fact that you were too inebriated to say ‘yes’, despite the fact that you were passed out. You were asking for it. 6. Wearing revealing clothes makes you a slut. 7. Don’t have sex because everyone will think you’re a slut. 8. The worst thing you can possibly be is a slut. 9. But you still need to be sexually alluring and available. Just not a slut. 10. It is your responsibility not to get pregnant and your responsibility alone. However, if you do get pregnant, you cannot get an abortion because that’s just being selfish. 11. You don’t want to have children? That’s not how things are done. You’re not living up to your role as a woman. 12. Being upset and cognizant of your feelings is a sign of emotional and mental instability. 13. Lose weight. 14. But keep your curves. You’re not a real woman without them. 15. You don’t own the rights to your body. 16. If you notice any discrimination based on your sex or gender, it’s better to keep quiet because you don’t want to upset anyone. Silence is better than making someone uncomfortable. 17. It is your fault for being born a woman. And you should be ashamed.

Things Society Will Try To Teach My 16 Year-Old Daughter (via pennythought)

So you have chosen aloneness. You have chosen the security and the relative freedom of solitude, because there is no risk involved. You can stay up every night and watch your TV shows and eat ice cream out of the box and scroll through your Tumblr and never let your brain sit still, not even for a moment. You can fill your days up with books and coffees and trips to the store where you forget what you wanted the second you walk in the automatic sliding door. You can do so many little, pointless things throughout the day that all you can think of is how badly you want to sleep, how heavy your whole body is, how much your feet hurt. You can wear yourself out again and again on the pavement, and you do, and it feels good. No one will ever bridge that gap and point to your stomach or your hair or your eyes in the mirror and magically make you see the wonderful things about getting to be next to you. And maybe that’s it, after all, this fear that no one will ever truly feel about you the way you want to be felt about. Maybe what you want is someone to make you love yourself, to put sense into all that positive rhetoric, to make it so the aloneness of TV and blasting music in your ears at all times isn’t the most happy place you can think of. Maybe you want someone who makes you so sure of how wonderful things are that you cannot help but to tell them your feelings first, even at the risk of being humiliated. Because you will know that, when you’re telling them you love them, what you’re really saying is “I love who I become when I am with you.

For When You Think That No One Will Love You (via 1112pm)