Letting Go. Holding On.

"How long is forever? Sometimes, just one second." There are things I am no longer prepared to lose. This is me, finding me.

[unwelcome-ozian]

[comemorningslight]

“Today little sister cracks open a second egg and mom’s eyes dart across the kitchen. ‘You are not supposed to eat more than one egg a day you know that is far too much cholesterol.’ The first meal I ate at the hospital was a two-egged omelette drenched in cheese. My mother sat across from me while the nurses and social workers retaught her how to feed me. They told her I was not allowed to hide cheese under my plate, or pick off the tortilla shell and avoid the egg yolk. They told her there were new rules, now 3000 to 5000 calories a day, every day no more sugar-free jello egg whites and tea That night we went to the grocery store and felt the world tilt upside down We walked passed the low fat, no cholesterol sugar-free Until we hit the goldmine: poppyseed muffins, ice cream bars whole milk full fat butter. Foods that would make my heart beat regularly again and put life back in my eyes. Today I tell my mother I think it is fine for little sister to eat two eggs, cholesterol be damned. But she looks me in the eye and says “It’s different for you.” This is the same phrase she repeats when I ask her why she does not want us to cook noodles for mother’s day dinner or why she is not eating sugar this week. It is a phrase which means: because you showed so much control that you grew out of control You are Hereby Exempt from the Dieting Culture It is a phrase which means, ‘I am drawing a firm line between the South Beach diet The No-Carb diet The No-Sugar diet The Atkins diet The You Are Inherently Flawed and in Need of Fixing Diet and illness.’ Because nobody likes to think about the fact that perhaps we are all playing with fire that perhaps The American Dream (and by this I mean weight loss) is nothing but a smokescreen. That perhaps shrinking oneself successfully does not actually move mountains, paint your soul in bright gold, or part the seas. That perhaps making ourselves disappear won’t fix the real problems our good intentions will never pave the path to heaven. Tomorrow when I wake up I am going to breathe in the morning air and thank the universe for poppyseed muffins, ice cream bars whole milk full fat butter I am going to change the world and fry two eggs for breakfast.”

— Sarah T, Two Eggs

[brutol]

i owe my body so many apologies

[flowerytale]

Virginia Woolf, from a diary entry featured in “A Writer’s Diary”

[weltenwellen]

V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

[resqectable]

“I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.”

— Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

[perfectquote]

“Life is messy. Be brave.”

— Unknown

[onlinecounsellingcollege]

"Everything's a risk. Not doing anything's a risk. It's up to you." - Nicola Yoon

[resqectable]

“Because once you hear something, you can never return to the time before you heard it.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer // Everything Is Illuminated

[perfectfeelings]

“May I never lose that terror that keeps me brave.”

— Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn: Poems; “Solstice”

[quotefeeling]

“We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.”

— Unknown

[weltenwellen]

Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

[boykeats]

[ID: text reading,

"I am still alive, knowing there were once days when I didn't want to be and knowing that there might once again be days I don't want to be. I don't mean to prop up the idea of wanting an exit, but for me, not to imagine it as foolish means that I am, by default, tasked with taking it seriously. [begin blue highlight] I can't live as I once did, telling people I was doing fine and desperately wanting them to wade through the language and see that I was in pain. [end highlight]"

/end ID]

[stay-close]

“To build up a library is to create a life. It’s never just a random collection of books.”

— Carlos María Domínguez

[thoughtkick]

“The best kind of people are the ones who come into your life, and make you see the sun where you once saw clouds. The people who believe in you so much, you start to believe in you too. The people who love you, simply for being you.”

— Unknown

[remanence-of-love]

[weltenwellen]

Anne Carson, from “The Glass Essay”, Glass, Irony, and God

[weltenwellen]

Jenny Slate, An Interview with Jenny Slate