SO I’VE DECIDED THAT MY WI-FI WILL BE MY VALENTINE. WE JUST HAVE THIS CONNECTION.

What do you do when you’re no longer the hero of your own story?

everyone has that one bra that makes everything okay

Some things, once you’ve loved them, become yours forever. And if you try to let them go, they only circle back and return to you. They become a part of who you are, or they destroy you.

Loss isn’t an absence after all. It is a presence. A strong presence right next to me. I look at it. It doesn’t look like anything, that’s what is so strange. It just fits in.

I aim to be
lionhearted,
but my
hands still
shake
and my voice
isn’t quite
loud
enough.













The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.

Even lost in the darkness, my heart will find you.

Like a missing tooth, sometimes an absence is more noticeable than a presence.

Jodi Picoult, Lone Wolf

For a moment amongst the crowd, I saw you. I’ve since found out it’s common for people separated from someone they love to keep seeing that loved one amongst strangers; something to do with recognition units in our brain being too heated and too easily triggered. This cruel trick of the mind lasted only a few moments, but was long enough to feel with physical force how much I needed you.

*knocks you out with a calculator* bet you weren’t counting on that

And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.

Emotions are supposed to be raw, ugly, brutal…you don’t want someone to ‘sorta’ love you. You want that love to be a bursting flame, not a candle.

he was special and unique because unlike other girls she read a book and drank a tea and didnt talk about a clothes

#And she didn’t wear makeup but it was okay because she had flawless skin anyway

In the end we had the pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how we put them together, gaps remained, oddly shaped emptinesses mapped by what surrounded them, like countries we couldn’t name.

Cause sometimes things just don’t turn out as you meant for
And that’s what late night city lights are there for

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain. I always choose pain.







Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.

Love is a sickness. Some kind of a pathogen existing above all explanation.

Change is like that: you are no longer where you were; you are not yet where you will get; you are nowhere exactly.

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

This life
is built almost entirely
of love

and losing,

isn’t it?

Be realistic: Plan for a miracle.

_{I wish I had more nice things to say
But I was raised not to lie}

Sometimes I wonder if my whole life will pass by this way: me waiting in the shadows, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for someone else to make it happen. Something new or different or crazy and amazing. I‘ve been there for so long, letting everyone else figure it out for me, floating along without much direction or conscious thought. Reacting.

Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.

I understand, all right. The hopeless dream of being—not seeming, but being. At every waking moment, alert. The gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone. The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace. 

Life trickles in from the outside, and you’re forced to react. No one asks if it is true or false, if you’re genuine or just a sham. Such things matter only in the theatre, and hardly there either. I understand why you don’t speak, why you don’t move, why you’ve created a part for yourself out of apathy. I understand. I admire. You should go on with this part until it is played out, until it loses interest for you. Then you can leave it, just as you’ve left your other parts one by one.

I listened as the words became sentences and the sentences became pages and the pages became feelings and voices and places and people.

Who isn’t crazy sometimes? Who hasn’t driven around a block hoping a certain person will come out; who hasn’t haunted a certain coffee shop, or stared obsessively at an old picture; who hasn’t toiled over every word in a letter, taken four hours to write a two-sentence email, watched the phone praying it will ring; who doesn’t lay awake at night sick with the image of her sleeping with someone else?

Jess Walter, We Live in Water: Stories

It’s like you’re screaming, but no one can hear. You almost feel ashamed that someone could be that important, that without them, you feel like nothing. No one will ever understand how much it hurts. You feel hopeless, like nothing can save you. And when it’s over and it’s gone, you almost wish that you could have all that bad stuff back…so you can have the good.

The desire to never leave your side, the desire to never see you again. The desire to see your face asleep on the pillow beside my face and to see your eyes open in the morning when I lie next to you—just watching you, waiting for you to wake up.

John Irving, Until I Find You

come to me with your smoky mouth, raindrops fall on this old town, its been me and you who’ve been fallin round.

Scars are just a treasure map for pain you’ve buried too deep to remember.

You know that only thing that has made the whole thing worthwhile has been those few times that I was able to truly connect with another person.

I didn’t know who she was, but I had this fire inside me for someone I knew existed.

If you could go anywhere in the world right now would it be to a “where” or to a “who”?

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

You’re so busy trying to be what everyone else wants you to be that you don’t know who you are.

She knows who she is.
She just forgot for a little while.

Donald Miller


It may seem like I’m a sarcastic asshole 24/7, but I’m actually only a sarcastic asshole 18/7 because at night I actually have feelings.

I sat in the dark and thought: There’s no big apocalypse. Just an endless procession of little ones.

"I’M JEALOUS OF THE STARS BECAUSE THEY SEE YOU MORE THAN I CAN."

HEY BOY, FEEL MY SWEATER. KNOW WHAT IT’S MADE OUT OF? GIRLFRIEND MATERIAL.

ISN’T IT WEIRD TO THINK THAT SOMEONE MIGHT HAVE CAUGHT YOU IN THE BACKGROUND OF A PHOTOGRAPH OF SOMEBODY ELSE AND YOU DON’T KNOW THEM AND THEY DON’T KNOW YOU, BUT MAYBE THAT PHOTO IS FRAMED ON A DESK OR STUCK IN A PHOTO ALBUM AND YOU WERE JUST GOING ABOUT YOUR LIFE THAT ONE DAY, BUT NOW YOU’RE ALSO SOMEHOW A PART OF THE LIFE OF THIS STRANGER ALTHOUGH YOU’VE NEVER MET, FOREVER CONNECTED BY THAT ONE PHOTOGRAPH?

ME: I LIKE YOUR SHIRT! 
BOY: THANK YOU, I GOT IT FOR FIFTY PERCENT OFF. 
ME: I COULD TAKE IT ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OFF. 
BOY: 

I NEED A SIX-MONTH LONG SUMMER, TWICE A YEAR.

SANTA SAW YOUR FACEBOOK PHOTOS. HE’S GETTING YOU CLOTHES FOR CHRISTMAS.

MAYBE FOR CHRISTMAS I’LL BUY MY BOYFRIEND SOME EXISTENCE.

I WONDER WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF I WENT INTO MCDONALD’S AND ORDERED A ‘SAD MEAL’.

THE NUMBER OF FOLLOWERS YOU HAVE DOESN’T MAKE YOU BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE. HITLER HAD MILLIONS, JESUS HAD TWELVE.

I’m not here to save you. I’m the main character of my life.

Remember yourself as a little girl, she is counting on you to protect her.

you asked why i never smile anymore, what could be so wrong

and I hoped you couldn’t see the tears down my cheek

but instead could understand the silence of my breath

but your eyes met mine and you whispered,

the only thing you’ve ever done wrong

is not love yourself at all.

What wonderful thing didn’t start out scary?

Having regrets is the only sign that you’ve done anything interesting with your life.

Call, break it off 
Call, break my own heart 
Maybe I would have been 
Something you’d be good at 
Maybe you would have been 
Something I’d be good at 
But now we’ll never know 

Memories no matter how small or inconsequential are the pages that define us.

The future is now. It’s time to grow up and be strong. Tomorrow may well be too late.

I searched for myself
everywhere,
except underneath
my own skin.

If you never saw the stars, candles were enough.

The loneliness you feel with another person, the wrong person, is the loneliest of all.

We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it.

There was something in her movements that made you think she never walked but always danced.

It all meant something. Until it didn’t.

"People like us, half of them think it will never work out. The other half believe in magic."Beginners (2010)

Please do not understand me too quickly.

If you ever see a bad picture of yourself just think about sunsets
Have you ever tried to take a picture of a sunset with a crappy camera? It turns out like shit.  I mean that could be the most beautiful sunset you’ve ever seen in your life and the photo looks gross.
That doesn’t mean the sunset  isn’t breathtaking, it just means the camera can’t contain it’s beauty.
You are a gorgeous motherfucking sunset never forget that

You never see a gay actor getting asked what it’s like to play straight — to my knowledge, at least, there is no difference in how heterosexual and homosexual people fall in lov


I saw you walking down the street the other night. You were by yourself, with your hands in your pockets and something clearly on your mind. I didn’t mean to see you, but this town is smaller than it seems, and suddenly there you were, illuminated by all of those holiday lights people string up on their fire escapes and fences. And it wasn’t until that moment that we nearly passed each other that I’d ever felt quite so alone.

I choose you over everyone.

 had a dream last night, and in my dream, you needed the leg, and everyone in the world was trying to give you that leg, though I really wanted you to have mine. In my dream, you picked my leg. It made me so happy, and it was the best dream in history for years.” 

Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt.

Someone holds you for the first time in a long time and you are bound to think it is true love. The thing that it takes years to learn is that isn’t anything close to love. Love happens when they aren’t holding you.

It happens when they are washing dishes while whistling pop songs, or chewing on the end of a pen doing the crossword, or falling asleep in a chair reading a book. It is stories told in the dark, at 3 AM with your eyes closed. It is hating the way they say your name when you are fighting, how they tell you everything can be fixed when you are convinced it can’t.

Love is what happens when you aren’t touching but your heart still swells for them like a wave in a storm. Love is what happens during all the moments you blink.


She just seems different, you know? I don’t know, I just got a feeling about her. You know when a song comes on and you just gotta dance?

"She wrote me a letter. No one else wrote me a letter."

That having sex with someone you do not care for feels lonelier than not having sex in the first place, afterward.

why and when did you run
when I’m right here?

I want you. All the time. No one else.

I’m coming up only
To hold you under
I’m coming up only
To show you wrong 

Sometimes,
I wake up
at four in the morning
and taste smoke
in the back of my throat.

I swear to god,
you’re still burning
somewhere inside me.

Solange

SHE'S ME. YOU'RE YOU. LET'S GO LIVE.

sext: I tell myself I don’t miss you anymore, that the wind between my fingers isn’t you, but here I am in a garden full of soft breezes, wondering how you are.

 sext: Your name is a word I only dare to say in the dark.

Wish you were here. Wish I could kiss you. Wish you could see the sunset today, how the sky looks like it’s on fire. Wish things didn’t have to turn out like this. Wish I didn’t have to be sorry. God, I am so sorry. Wish you were with me. Wish you were the summer breeze. Wish you were here, love. It’s such a beautiful evening.

Because loving you is like a sunrise in Arizona. Because you are a paint chipped mirror in the bathroom and a glitter stain that will never come out of the carpet. You are kissing a lot of wrong people and a rainy day where the windows fog up. You are a scar on my middle finger. You are a tree in the front yard and a sidewalk that only knows of bruises. You are a hole in my heart the shape of a fist. You are soap bubbles and rope burns, cracked glass and dust dancing through sunlight. You are a sunset at the beach. Loving you is like falling into bed after a long day, like finally coming home. 


 The first and only time we ever spoke on the phone, you gave me silence.

You gave me so many beautiful words, now the only think you give me is not so beautiful silence.

 Today, it’s raining and all I can think about is the color of your eyes.

Every time he kisses me, I remember how much softer your lips were. Today I am missing you when I shouldn’t be.

Even if I saw you again, I wouldn’t know what to say. Time has turned us into such strangers.

Hey, sweetheart. I haven’t talked to you in awhile, but I just wanted to let you know that I still think about you sometimes. And I know that that’s unfair. I know I’m going to sleep in the arms of another man tonight and that I’ve never even held your face in my palms or kissed you or heard your voice over anything other than the phone, but it’s true. There’s always going to be a piece of me that loves you. Right now, it’s 1 AM where you are. I hope you’re looking at the stars.


Once there was a time when I smoked cigarettes with boys in parking lots, when I talked openly to the moon, when my eyelids felt so heavy on my face, when I fucked people just to feel something. Once I tried to kill myself in pieces. Once I was so lonely that I wanted to die. Today, I walked through a field of flowers. Today, I kissed someone so deep. Today, I felt the sun in my hair and I guess what I’m trying to say is that everything takes time to become something better. Everything takes time to become.

 can’t help but look for your face in crowds.

800 ft². Hardwood floors we used to dance on. Do you remember that? Too many bottles of wine and and slow-dancing to Otis Redding at three in the morning. 1 tiny bedroom. 1 room filled with memories of your shoulder blades, your eyes opening in the morning. 1 bathroom with a slightly cracked mirror, a leaky shower head. White tiles. A large spidery crack in one of them from when we tried to have shower sex and I slipped and almost broke my ass. 1 wall we painted bright blue to remind us to keep dreaming, even when we gave up. Full kitchen. Dishwasher. A hole in the wall from before we got here. Water, trash, electric included. Smells like lost love, old love, dust on every windowsill. We used to love this place. You used to call me “baby” after you came. Coin-op laundry. A tree with pink flowers. A couch where we used to fall asleep sometimes. A light that never comes on. We used to love each other here.

We don’t live here anymore.

If I believed in reincarnation,
I’d want to come back as the soft
imprint you leave in the bed.

On nights like this,
I wish I still smoked cigarettes.

I wish I could still die quietly with you. 

But the thing is I haven't ever smoked at all...

When you told me you ran into your ex outside of your class,
my heart dropped,
bruised its way down every single one of my ribs
like a plum falling
from the heavens.

We’ve talked about her before.

Her name leaves a blood stain on my tongue.

The pan burns on the stove
because I can’t stop picturing you
bending her over a desk.

Her eyes are in my head.

They’re the color of the sky, of the way I used to feel alone.

I can even see her smile.

I can see her carving her image into your stomach
with her tongue,
her hips dancing on top of yours.

The only time I feel good these days
is when I picture her face
molding around my fist.

Jealousy is a hungry beast inside of me.

It feeds on the way you used to talk about her,
the way you once held her name like a promise,
like the sun.

I just
don’t know what’ll happen
if I lose you to her.

It’s strange.

Every time I think of you,
I dream of drowning.

I’m sorry I burned you alive,
that I swallowed you whole.

You were a love that I couldn’t keep
in my palms.

Sometimes
we just have to let
our bodies
embrace
the knife.

Once my friend died
wanting to go home.

I wonder if I’ll die wanting
you.

Sometimes I dream of you.

Those are my better nights.

I have loved you since the moment I saw you.

What
did
you
see? (and why didnt you see THAT?)

ometimes I feel like apologizing
for things that I cannot change:
the silence that stretches
between our phone calls
like a tightrope,
the distance
of our hearts
placed too far apart,
the ache in your voice
when you call
and there is no moon out,
your father
and the way he holds you
like a stone.

I’m sorry that I cannot give you my everything
when it is all that you need.

I’m sorry that I do not love you
when I say I do.

I’m sorry for the heartache
and the soft confusion,
the broken sighs,
the wanting looks.

I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.

I am.

Today the rain feels like
you’re kissing my shoulders again.

It only took a few of them
for me to realize that
I miss you more than I hate myself.

I’m so sorry.

The next time the sun sets
over a California ocean
and you are more than just a shadow,
I will stay
in more ways than the scar on your bottom lip
or the bruises on your back.

I will stay
if you ask me to.

I will stay
this time.

If you keep your eyes open long enough,
everyone will leave you,
everyone will go to sleep.

If I hold myself close,
I can kiss them,
remember where your
hands held my hips,
remember how you looked at me
that first night on the beach.

I can remember every tattoo
on your body.

I can tell and retell the story of
the scar in the middle of your chest.

The phone number you wrote along
my forearm doesn’t work anymore
and somewhere out there
your eyes are half closed.

You are looking at the sky,
a cigarette dangling from your lips.

I can only hope that you
close them
and think of me
every once
in awhile.

I cannot remember what
it is like to kiss you.

I am the apology you keep,
the one you have not yet
learned
how to say.

I listen to his voice over the phone
and wonder if his heart
is just as quiet.

Sometimes
I wonder
if I haunt you
the way you
haunt me,
like a slow song
that is played
through an empty
house.

Dear Lovely,
I am still waiting
to be yours.

If I lick my lips real slow,
I can still taste how rough your
skin was beneath mine.

Forgive me for saying your name out loud,
for letting you slip out of my mouth
and never saying goodbye.

I didn’t mean to.

Sometimes, we create accidents
instead of endings.

Most of the time,
you make me forget to
exhale, make me stay
awake at night,
wondering if I’ll ever
breathe the way I did before.

Remember how much
you mean
to me. 

Sometimes,
when it’s late at night,
when there is nothing,
but dark and still,
I wonder if you were ever
real,
if there was ever that damn black
t-shirt or the curve of your
shoulder blades or crooked teeth
or soft singing or love songs that were kept in a box
or kissing on the beach
or cigarette smoke and sun
in the way we fucked
or waiting for the quiet of winter
or dark
or still.

Were we ever really still?

Did we ever really love
with the way we touched,
the way we said “Goodnight,”
real somber, real soft?

Were we ever really real?

Sometimes,
when it’s late at night,
when there is nothing,
but the lonely of the dark,
it’s better to pretend
I made love to a shadow,
that I fell for a
dream. 

To the boy who broke my heart the first time,
I’d let you do it again if you spoke to me as softly as you did long ago.

Goodnight.
Goodnight.

I miss you. 

I wore a white dress for you once. You never even noticed.

When I loved you, I didn’t even know it. Now I know it too well.

You broke my heart. I will always love you because of that. 

 once fucked a boy I didn’t love. No, scratch that. I fucked four boys I didn’t love. The first never used a condom, making my back ache on the wooden floor. I never looked into his eyes. I always stared at the walls, praying for the TV to be a little bit softer, for his hips to be a little bit gentler, for my shame to stop drenching me in the form of his cum. The second boy fucked me in the dark, on a mountain, my teeth grinding leather, his shadow loving me beneath the stars. The third was a friend, a boy who wanted to love me, but never would. He kissed me like he meant it. I wish he still did. The fourth got tangled with me in hotel sheets, his hipbones bruising my inner thighs. I still miss his clavicle, his deep set eyes, his quick draw tongue.

Goodbye,
goodbye,
goodbye.

I never loved you.

I never will.

One of the strangest things I have ever known is the feeling that no matter how hard you love someone, no matter how strongly you care for them, how deeply you will always breathe them into your breath, sometimes they will just look at you and feel absolutely nothing back, but a bitter and unending sense of loneliness and despair.

(I wish I could help you.
Even more so, I wish you would let me.) 

You saw something in me that didn’t exist. Or maybe it did.

“And what happened?”
“The world happened.

When they ask me about my future wife, I always tell them that her eyes are the only Christmas lights that deserve to be seen all year long. I tell them that she has a walk that can make an atheist believe in God just long enough to say, ‘God damn’. I tell them that if my alarm clock sounded like her voice, my snooze button would collect dust. I tell them that if she came in a bottle, I would drink her until my vision is blurry and my friends take away my keys. I tell them that if she was a book, I would memorize her table of contents. I would read her, cover to cover, hoping to find typos, just so we could both have something to work on, because aren’t we all unfinished? Don’t we all need editing? Aren’t we all waiting to be read by someone, praying they will tell us that we make sense? She doesn’t always make sense but I swear to God, her imperfections are the things that I love about her the most. I don’t know when I will be married, I don’t know where I will be married, but I do know this: whenever I’m asked to describe my future wife, I do so as best as I can and every single time, she sounds a lot like you. Every single time, she sounds a lot like you.

There comes a time in every life when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your heart.

People so tired,
mutilated
either by love or no love.

Charles Bukowski

Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder. To search for the truth.

Albert Einstein

Confidence is being able to say ‘Fuck you, I’m the shit’ without opening your mouth, say it with your walk, with your smile, say it with your entire being.

Learn to fly,
Learn to fly,
Show the world
How you try.

The way you glance at me when you think I might be looking your way is one of my favorite things in the world.

Life is so damn short, for fucks sake, just do what makes you happy.

Compliment people. Magnify their strengths, not their weaknesses.

Not everyone is going to want, accept, or know how to receive your energy. Make peace with it and move on.

Kindness. It doesn’t cost a damn thing. Sprinkle that shit everywhere.

Slow down, calm down, don’t worry, don’t hurry. Trust the process.

Spend more time making yourself a better person and less time worrying about what everyone else is doing.

Find a way, not an excuse.

Religious freedom doesn’t mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs, and you do not have to endure this from others either.

We are not our failures.

You can’t live a positive life with a negative mind.

The more you close yourself the unhappier you’ll be. You’re not alone, open up to people.

People come and people go. That’s the way the world goes. Live and learn, don’t live and regret. The best is yet to come. Look forward.

When you lose yourself in what you love, you find yourself in what you are.

Forget everything you’ve been told and open your mind.

Forgiveness is the greatest indicator of strength. Admit when you’re wrong, but if someone makes you feel like shit for the mistake, move on. Similarly, when someone makes a mistake, be good enough to understand why they did. You don’t attack people because of a mistake. People learn.

You screw up, you try again next time and so on. You’ve got a whole life to succeed.

I crave someone knowing me so well that they can tell what I’m thinking.

For the first time, I saw what was in his heart, and I wondered if he might ever want to look deep enough to see mine.

when I call someone perfect, it doesn’t mean I think they have no flaws, it doesn’t mean I think they’re the most attractive person on the planet, it doesn’t mean I think they’ve never made any mistakes. when I call someone perfect, it means I love them wholly and entirely despite anything and everything, and that, to me, is perfect.

My favorite moments in life are when I get lost in them

1. You would never tell a little girl that she isn’t beautiful enough, you would never tell her that she isn’t worth the skin she was given, you would never tell her to take up less space. There is still a little girl inside you, she can hear you when you say these things to yourself. 
2. Some boys will kiss you just so they can get rid of the dust in their mouth. Your lips were not made for this. Don’t breathe these people in. They will suffocate you.
3. Mirrors can cut you without even being broken, but only if you hold them the wrong way.
4. There will be darkness some days. But how else are you supposed to see yourself glow?
5. Airplanes take things away all the time, but they also bring things back. Don’t be sad when you see them soaring in the clouds.
6. Just because something is pretty, doesn’t mean it won’t hurt you. Flowers have thorns, don’t they?
7. Skin wasn’t made to define people, it was made to protect the universe inside. 
8. Don’t forget the sky is full of light that is passed on from stars that have long since died. Their light has guided thousands. Just because they are dead doesn’t mean they aren’t important. People can be the same way.
9. Oceans can drown you, but you’ll never learn how to swim when you spend your whole life running from the tide.
10. Don’t wait for someone else to call you pretty for you to believe it.
11. We all bleed the same colors, we are all made of the same stars.
12. There may be nights when you want to sit home to drown in whiskey and Frank Ocean. It’s okay, but be ready for the hangover in the morning. 
13. There is a difference between finding something beautiful because it is broken and finding something beautiful despite its brokenness. Never find calm in the way something crumbles.
14. Don’t fall in love with someone who has a voice like shattering glass. They will break your name when they whisper it and then leave because they are too tired to clean up the mess they made of you.
15. I will always love you, even if I am not there to say it.

If you’re good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can’t be wrong.

I knew he was out of my league, but I didn’t know just how much.

Maybe she’d always been there. Maybe strangers enter your heart first and then you spent the rest of your life searching for them.

I want to have more sex, travel more, drink more wine and love life.

One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else.

I was always attracted not by some quantifiable, external beauty, but by something deep down, something absolute. Just as some people have a secret love for rainstorms, earthquakes, or blackouts, I liked that certain undefinable something.

He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.

I am here in your heart

I was here from the start

But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.

Dave Eggers, What is the What

Where are you going?"

“It’s hard to explain, but if you get there, come find me. Nothing will be able to tear us apart then.

You don’t want to go anywhere, and that’s why the same shit’s going to keep happening to you, because you want it to.

Stop. You can’t love me because you’re lonely, or because I am the only one who doesn’t piss you off. I want to piss you off, I want to get on your fucking nerves. I don’t want the responsibility of always being your rock. I will try, but I’m a mess, too. I lie, I sleep too much and I don’t like children under the age of 6, really. I don’t even know if I want kids because I’m selfish, and mothers can’t be selfish once they decide to carry another life.
I’m always looking for the rain to come so I trip over my own feet. I know exactly what the air smells like before a storm.
Before you fall in love with me, I want you to know that I cry a lot because it feels good, and I masturbate at least 4 times a week, and you might fall out of love with me before either of us are ready for it.
I have no experience with this. I’m trying to be brave and smart but its almost impossible to be both at the same time.
You can’t love me like a fire escape. Sometimes I will be the match, or the smoke under the door. I don’t know what I’m doing, all I know is that we all catch fire sometimes, before we even get warm.
Before you fall in love with me, I want you to know that there’s a 50% chance that this won’t work, that one of us will wind up hating the other. I will try to keep your head above water, but sometimes I’ll need help, too.
I can’t be your savior, and I don’t expect you to be mine. Just watch me unfold and I’ll watch you unfold, too. We’ll get drunk and tell each other everything. I know that’s cheating but maybe it’ll be alright. Maybe we won’t wake up embarrassed.

I am going to fall in love with you, too, feet first. Maybe we’ll slow dance off a building together, maybe we’ll have forgotten each other’s names by this time next year. I don’t care, the sky is gray with or without you, so I’m not going to look up anymore, I’m going to look ahead .

Delete her number.
Stop ringing her. Stop messaging her. Stop making excuses to see her, to drop by her place.

Erase her name from memory. Remove yourself from her life, more completely than you would like but as completely as she deserves. Move on, so that you can allow her to also move on. When you close your eyes, you don’t get to see her face. Not anymore. You don’t get to think about her lips, the warm glow of her skin when she rests next to you, or how she squeezes your hand in her sleep. You are not allowed to remember the smell of her perfume, that she only drinks mint tea (with two dollops of honey), or that she loves you.

She loves you.

She has been in love with you for too long.

So, forget how she says your name. Forget how she calls your name. Forget how she screams your name. Forget that time you got sick and she stayed up with you all night, letting you lay your head in her lap and holding a cold compress to your forehead. Forget how her hair feels in your fingers. Forget how she looks in your sweatshirts.

Forget her.

Know only that she existed at one point in your life, but relinquish all hope that she could exist at another point — sometime in the future that you are unwilling to specify because you don’t know what you want. Yet. It is not fair for you to swoop in and out of her life as you choose. It is not fair for you to say that you are satisfied with “things as they are” and you will have time to “figure it out” later. Let her stop investing emotionally in you. Let her pour that love and care into the people who deserve her.

Don’t tell her that you think about her all the time. Don’t tell her that it bothers you to hear about her with other people, but that you’re willing to understand as long as she likes you more than them. Don’t tell her that this isn’t the right moment but that there will be a right moment. There is not going to be a right moment. She shouldn’t have to wait for the right moment.

Don’t tell her that you can’t handle ultimatums, that you don’t like the idea of finally adding finality to your relationship — whatever still remains of it.

What you are telling her is that you want to keep her on as an option, that you are taking her for granted, that you want to know she will be there, that you can depend on her at the end of the day. When you find that no one else has stuck around or that those who have are less interesting, less thoughtful, or less doggedly loyal to you.

Doggedly loyal to you.

That is what she has been to you, for you almost as long as you have known her: a constant emotional crutch, the guarantee of stability, a safety net while you reach out to grasp objects that sparkle and shine far greater than she does. All that glitters is not gold, haven’t you heard?

She is fire. You are ice, and you are afraid that her slow burn will smolder your cool, hard demeanor. That’s what has driven your decisions, your actions all along: fear. You are a coward. You are a hypocrite. You are terrified to let her go, but you are afraid she is too good for you, that she could drive you wild, that you would choke on her flames. That she is too much for you to handle right now.

Right now.

But if you choose not to love her now, you can’t choose to love her later.