If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person? // I love him more than sharks love blood.

They will always ask
if it is still you.
I will say no.

I am lying.
It is still you.
It was
always
you.

I have learned
that you cannot
love
a woman like a
little girl,
nor can you
expect
a boy
to act like a man.

If this
were a war,
I think I’d be winning.

A battle
does not exist
if both people aren’t fighting
for something.

She laughed when there was no joke. She danced when there was no music. 

Rain fell as a glass
breaks,
something suddenly everywhere at the same

There are too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.

 

You were so gone for him, and nobody noticed.

You deserve to look for love, if that’s what you want, and be ready to accept it when it comes your way

You deserve a life that is filled with its own successes and triumphs, that is carved out in the image you desire, and that is not effected by the perceived victories of others. Sometimes others may get things that we wanted for ourselves, but you deserve to be confident enough with your own life and journey that someone else’s achievement is not directly detrimental to your own desires. You deserve to see success not as some finite pie from which we must all take exactly one slice, but rather a constantly evolving and growing garden in which we can all flower and reach the sunlight.

Sometimes two people need to fall apart to realize how much they need to fall back together.

What I need is a new story about who I am. What I need to do is fuck up so bad I can’t save myself.

 

because this is what you do. get up. blame the liquor for the heaviness. call in late to work. go to the couch because the bed is too empty. watch people scream about love on Jerry Springer. count the ways it could be worse. it could be last week when the missing got so big you wrote him a letter and sent it. it could be yesterday, no work to go to, whole day looming. it could be last month or the month before, when you still thought maybe. still carried plans around with you like talismans. you could have kissed him last night. could have gone home with him, given in, cried after, softly, face to the wall, his heavy arm around you, hand on your stomach, rubbing. shower. remember your body. water hotter than you can stand. sit on the shower floor. the word devastated ringing the tub. buildings collapsed into themselves. ribs caving toward the spine. recite the strongest poem you know. a spell against the lonely that gets you in crowds and on three hours’ sleep. wonder where the gods are now. get up. because death is not an alternative. because this is what you do. air like soup, move. door, hallway, room. pants, socks, shoes. sweater. coat. cold. wish you were a bird. remember you are not you, now. you are you a year from now. how does that woman walk? she is not sick or sad. doesn’t even remember today. has been to Europe. what song is she humming? now. right now. that’s it.

People fall in love with a person, not a gender.

Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.

You can only hold a smile for so long, after that it’s just teeth.

Love is not rare. Unconditional love is.

Amy Shock

I want to feel my life. I want to stop agreeing to things I don’t really want.

 

I think anybody who falls in love is a freak, It’s a crazy thing to do. It’s kind of like a form of socially acceptable insanity.

There’s so much more to life than finding someone who will want you, or being sad over someone who doesn’t. There’s a lot of wonderful time to be spent discovering yourself without hoping someone will fall in love with you along the way, and it doesn’t need to be painful or empty. You need to fill yourself up with love. Not anyone else. Become a whole being on your own. Go on adventures, fall asleep in the woods with friends, wander around the city at night, sit in a coffee shop on your own, write on bathroom stalls, leave notes in library books, dress up for yourself, give to others, smile a lot. Do all things with love, but don’t romanticize life like you can’t survive without it. Live for yourself and be happy on your own. It isn’t any less beautiful, I promise.

Sometimes you need to burn bridges to stop yourself from crossing them again.

Whatever it is you don’t want them to see or hear or know, you can bury it. You can bury it so deep, you won’t find it yourself anymore. But you’ll wish you hadn’t.

 

There are so many people we could become, and we leave such a trail of bodies through our teens and twenties that it’s hard to tell which one is us. How many versions do we abandon over the years?

Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.

You shouldn’t try to stop everything from happening. Sometimes you’re supposed to feel awkward. Sometimes you’re supposed to be vulnerable in front of people. Sometimes it’s necessary because it’s all part of you getting to the next part of yourself.

People are supposed to fear the unknown, but ignorance is bliss when knowledge is so damn frightening.

Fear of what other people think should never dictate whether or not you do something.

I will never be what you want to see now.

That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed.

The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.

It’s easy to convince men to love you. All you have to do is be a mountain they have to climb or a poem they don’t understand.

I am good at walking away. Rejection teaches you how to reject.

 

It’s easy to look at people and make quick judgments about them, their present and their past, but you’d be amazed at the pain and tears a single smile hides. What a person shows to the world is only one tiny facet of the iceberg hidden from sight. And more often then not, it’s lined with cracks and scars that go all the way to the foundation of their soul.

All my life
I’ve never known where you’ve been
There were holes in you
The kind that I could not mend

I was kind of hoping you’d stay. I need you to stay. Oh, god, could you stay? I need you to stay. I need you to stay. I need you

We say of some things that they can’t be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do―we do it all the time.

I will float until I learn how to swim.

The birds may know about the heaven
we look for with ladders,
but I’ll never know unless I jump.

I don’t want people to matter to me too much. Sometimes it hurts too much to think about them. Ones you love who don’t love you, ones who are dead or hate you, ones who you think about but never get to be with. I like people but when I get too close, it fucks me up and I can’t get things done.

I need to keep telling myself that I need to keep wanting something, something nice, something warm, more than just a fur coat because I can make other people happy. I can understand other people’s pain because I can love even after all that is left of me is gone because I have that strength.

ome people, no matter where they look, they see themselves. 











“Good night”
“Can you come over?”
“Can I come over?”
“Can I see you?”
“Can I call you?”
You don’t have to hear “I Love You” to know that someone does. Listen carefully. People speak from the heart more often than you think.





I am what you need when you can’t find it somewhere else. I am what you want when you don’t want anything else.


You fear the world,
I fear myself.
In theory
we’d make
a perfect pair,
but I am too busy
conquering my demons
and you are too busy
running from them.

u think i am walking around the house with a blanket around my shoulders because i cold but in actuality it is my cloak and i am on an adventure

i’m scared that i’ll never love anyone or anything as much as my black AM pullover

you made the ocean feel alive when it touched me,
you didn’t like it when i asked too many questions,
said i shouldn’t look like that at people, shouldn’t
say those kinds of things in public, you told me that
girls like me eventually end up insane, said you’ll
probably see my novels in bookstores one day, said
that they’ll be written about boys who smoked too
many cigarettes, who wore cologne and drank whiskey
and didn’t realize how much it hurt when they left, i lied
and told you that it wouldn’t be me, i’ve read too much
Charles Bukowski in my life to fall in love, in ten years
you’ll invite me to your wedding and i’ll be wearing lilac
and you’ll sneak away for a couple of minutes before,
you’ll tell me you’ll think of me on nights when it rains
and that red lipstick makes me seem that much more
older, and i’ll kiss you and your tongue will feel like rocks
hitting the waves of my soul, i’ll cry and you’ll tell me
to stop, pull myself together, we’re not the twenty-
something year olds anymore, we were much too different,
you’ll say my hands feel like broken mirrors when i touch
your face,when i let the blue veins of your wrists curl up
against the crook of my thigh you’ll whisper “i’m sorry”
and i’ll laugh and tell you that my husband doesn’t ever
apologize for things he can’t control and i think that’s why
i don’t love him and still think of you on nights when it rains

i’m sorry it had to end like this

I think we like the idea of scars you know, because they’re healed you know. They are not like wounds necessarily, but they’re still kind of a road map of where you been, and sometimes kinda point to where you want to go.

If I have to ask for your attention, then I don’t even want it.

Maybe one morning I’ll wake up and step outside of myself to look back at the old me lying dead among the sheets.

HOW TO BE THE GIRL HE WANTS:
the first time someone tells you these words I hope you stick out your hand and catch the letters in the air I hope you crunch them in your fist I hope you shove them back into the mouth they flew out of I hope and pray you are not eight years old and hanging off of a shopping cart and groaning about how bored you are, I hope you were not young like I was the first time I read a magazine on a shelf underneath the candy I hope you weren’t young because I still thought everything I read had to be true - but better yet, I hope these words never find you.
They tell you to be strong but it’s the little things like this that sit on our hips and tangle in our hair and feel like bees when the night gets dark. It’s the little things we could never ever shake off because the minute we tried, we discovered there were more waiting for us.
HOW TO LOOK GOOD FOR SUMMER:
smile more often. I hope the first time someone calls you fat, you shimmy your shoulders and wink and feel like a goddess and take it as a compliment. I hope you are not the new kid in a fifth-grade class, glasses on your nose and your hair in tangles. I hope nobody ever touched your tummy and asked if you were embarrassed by the way it jiggles. I hope if you ever hear those words, you reach out your beautiful fingers and touch the temple of the person talking and ask, “Are you embarrassed your brain works like that?”
See, I have not gained weight since the eight grade and I’m twenty. I have had about four hundred people tell me I’m skinny but it’s only the two or three voices about the thickness of my thighs and the fat on my hips - these are the only voices that stick. Don’t give them that satisfaction. Take a bath. Stare at your reflection. Count the flecks beside your iris. Promise yourself you’re not going to ruin your life - you won’t let them win. Don’t let that moment cause ripples. Yank out the cruelty from your system.
HOW TO HAVE BETTER SEX:
stop faking it. Stop engineering your body to be a call-and-response of bruises and shots. I hope you are not fifteen the first time a boy kisses you hard. I hope you do not go home with a bloody mouth and spend the rest of your life thinking love is stained with iron. I hope you are not swallowing your sanity to be with somebody. I hope the first time you let someone touch you, they are someone worthy of your trust - I hope that nobody tries to force you into a label like “frigid” or “slut.”
In the animal world, most males have bright plumage so they can attract mates. In humans, we expect ladies to look a certain way. When you break out of the norm, suddenly you’re rattling chains. How dare you not want sex and still look this way. Maybe people are scared of admitting your body has power - it can turn heads in a baggy sweatshirt. Your body doesn’t need a magazine’s confirmation. Your body’s been through hell and still keeps on living. Put on your heels and stalk down the sidewalk. Take off your makeup. Do what you need to feel awesome.
HOW TO BE COMFORTABLE IN YOUR OWN SKIN:
ignore everything they tell you. Don’t let them in.

Maybe one day I’ll make a list of every single terrible magazine I’ve read. I think I’m gonna start an advice column called “If it makes them money, it’s probably not good.” /// r.i.d

I know you have feelings left somewhere. But they’re all so hard to reach.

Just because you kissed
someone with scars
doesn’t make you 
a hero.

I wasn’t yours and you weren’t mine 
Though I’ve wished from time to time

I feel like I’m playing chess underwater. The pieces keep floating away. I don’t know where things are. I can’t figure out tomorrow.

Honest is how I want to look. The truth doesn’t glitter and shine.

The problem with wanting,” he whispered, his mouth trailing along my jaw until it hovered over my lips, “is that it makes us weak.

Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars.

I think she was afraid to love sometimes. I think it scared her. She was the type to like things that were concrete, like the ocean. Something you could point to and know what it was. I think that’s why she also struggled with love. She couldn’t touch it. She couldn’t hold on to it and make sure it never changed.

_{I will find you. Love you. Marry You. And live without shame.}

You’re so easy to read but the book is boring me.

hat’s what really scares me.

Falling in love is easy. Having sex is easier. But bumping into someone that can spark your soul - that shit is rare.

You could fuck four, five, all the people in a god damned room and you’d only feel a connection with one. Or none at all.

And what sucks is despite the undeniable real magnetic pull between the two of you, more often than not, you don’t end up together.

I’m afraid I won’t meet anyone else I can connect with.

I’m scared it’ll be just you.

Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story.

Instead of believing you’re stronger, it’s so much easier to imagine you’re weaker.

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

Even as I hold you, I am letting you go.

But you know all about that, being sorry and having no words to say something when you know you should but you just can’t.

I know how difficult it can be when the image you’ve had of something doesn’t match its reality; when the friend beside you turns into a monster.

But will you miss me? More importantly―will I miss you? Does either one of us really want to hear the answer to that question?

Be careful what you wish for, ‘cause one day she will come, like the day when I saw you and my past was gone.

I want to forget everything you told me. I want to wash away how uncertain you made me. How scared I was of losing you. How I lost you anyway. I don’t want to know how your hands feel or what makes you smile. I don’t want to see you in photos, familiar like a dream I had once or a book I never finished. I don’t want to speak about you in snippets or think about how I behaved. Or know that I still think about it. Or know that you’re not just a lamp or a blade of grass, indistinguishable from the rest.

Opening up to the wrong person is like putting ammo in their hands.

I laugh at people like you, who pretend to understand.

Love, I realized, was something your spine memorized. There was nothing you could do about that.

I’m not strange, weird, off, nor crazy, my reality is just different from yours.

It sucks when someone you have feelings for doesn’t share those feelings; it happens to women all the time, too. We hear “I just want to be friends” and “you’re like one of the guys” and “you’re like a sister to me” just as often. But you’ll never hear a woman complain that guys just don’t appreciate a Nice Girl because we’re taught it’s our own fucking fault when we’re rejected—we aren’t pretty enough or thin enough or sexy enough, we weren’t sexual enough or were too sexual, we put out too much or too little or too soon or not soon enough, we didn’t wear our hair the right way or our skirt the right length, we’re “too tomboyish” or “too butch” or “too feminine”, or we’re “not their type”, or we’re otherwise not good enough in various ways to entice the man to grace us with his affection.

But when we’re not interested in someone, we’re vilified. We’re the bitch that lead them on, the bitch who let them buy us dinner but didn’t want to date them, the bitch who doesn’t appreciate a nice guy, the bitch they were nice to and then got nothing in return from.

And, frankly, fuck those people. Showing interest in me, being friendly with me, getting close to me, or eating a meal with me (even if they paid for it) doesn’t obligate me to open my heart or my legs. And anyone who doesn’t appreciate my friendship sure as hell doesn’t deserve my love or my pussy.

You should show encouragement whenever you can. People try harder when they know that someone cares about them.

I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

 

 

My hobbies include trying to close the elevator door before someone else gets on

I like airplanes. I like anywhere that isn’t a proper place. I like in betweens.

Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.

You should never be surprised when someone treats you with respect, you should expect it.

I’m always leaving, but I never have anywhere to go.

I did not know him, I knew my idea
of him.

We are dancing in the hollow of nothingness. We are one flesh, but separated like stars.