she's a mess of gorgeous chaos

just breathe

[achingchest]

it still feels as familiar as it did the last time, years ago— curling up in the car, putting on sad songs to get rid of this emptiness, trying to cry until the tears are flowing so much I can’t breathe, sitting on the grass, throwing up in the backyard, staring at the stars, wondering how things got this way. I am so tired of fighting for things that will never be mine, trying to explain how special people are to people who will never see them in the same light as I do, loving people in ways I am scared to say out loud— I want you to know how badly I miss you the second I leave but I don’t think telling you would change anything. I don’t know how to change anything. I don’t know how to make you want me. I keep fucking up because I don’t know how to be anyone else but me. I feel inferior. I wish I could change things. I would do literally anything to make you feel the same way as me.

[achingchest]

i love waiting until

things are broken bloody bruised shitty fucked up horrible

before i choose to leave. i

stay and i stay and i stay and i

stay until i don’t remember what the other person

even looked like when they were smiling happy so

this time, i am trying to leave on good terms.

it’s a foreign thing to me,

remembering how it felt to kiss you

and never feeling the kiss turn black

and coat my lungs with smoke. it’s

feeling numb instead of chasing you

down the stairwell crying my fucking eyes out

just to feel alive, being the crazy girl

even though god it felt so good at the time,

but i am thinking in future tense and

i know i don’t need the adrenaline rush

to know i deserve better and

if this is the last snapchat story i knew you’d view,

i’d never post another one again,

because it hurts that you’re gone but

i don’t want to let another memory

be tainted.

[achingchest]

“We used to ride with all of the windows down and scream until our throats were sore, our hair tangling from the breeze in a mess of laughter and warm cheeks. We used to touch each others’ backbones until we crawled inside of each other; we opened each others’ throats and pulled out words that were so far down our abdomens, we did not even know they were there. What happened to us? We used to drive through rainstorms, parking when they stopped to watch the rainwater evaporate from the sunshine like paint drying, waiting for rainbows to appear through the clouded skylines. But I remember that last car ride: I lit your cigarettes for you as you chain-smoked on your way to therapy, hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly, I was sure you had lost yourself. And I thought about when we laughed so hard we collapsed in the middle of your kitchen floor; now I only see you collapsed in the bathroom with scars lining your wrists like strikes against you. One time, at a party, a drunk girl told me, “This is what depression looks like,” and with no warning, she flipped her arms upside-down and revealed her scars. And that’s when I realized you want people to tell you you have a valid reason for every mark you scar on your wrists with a kitchen knife. You want them to tell you that you are too depressed, you cannot help it, it is an addiction you are not strong enough to fight off. You want an excuse for this pain, but baby, God, there just isn’t one. And you hate me because I have more faith in you than they do: I know you can beat this, you do not need their sympathetic soothing voices in your ear to stop hurting yourself, to stop crying every night. You do not need their bodies to fill the emptiness in yours. Because you have enough hatred for yourself that you snap your bones in half. Every day, you break the strongest part of your body with bare hands and still call yourself weak. You hate me because I know you are better than this and you don’t want to be better because you have found too much comfort in being worse. But I lay awake and love you, I lay awake and remember when we disguised our sadness as an excuse to be alive, I lay awake and miss the way you used to smile like this was all worth it. And I write you letters in my diary, letters that only ever consist of the same three words: Please come home.”

—

[achingchest]

“i. One day you will pull the blankets over your head in the morning and realize all of the time you have wasted. It will not make you less wasteful, just sad. You will listen to people laugh about hooking up with people they never even cared about, you will listen to people laugh about the times they spent with one hand on the wheel and the other on a handle of vodka, you will listen to people laugh about being so high that they didn’t even think about you or what you thought. You will listen to people laugh about times a story will never do justice, times you have never experienced, and frankly, will never experience. You will wish you were included instead of thrown aside. You will never be able to fight hard enough to push yourself back into those times. ii. One day you will pull your head over the blankets in the morning and realize all of the time you have tucked in your wallet like a saved paycheck. It will not make you sad that people have experienced things that you have not, because you have always had too much self-respect to waste yourself. You will realize just because someone is laughing does not mean the memory was worth it, and just because someone is laughing does not make it any less stupid. You have always taken the fall for everyone else. And that makes your life that much more meaningful. iii. I know your heart has been thrown across the pavement so many times that you have looked at it and not even recognized it, but you have to turn your head sideways and try to. I know you think the day will never come, but 180 days from now, you will sit in a parking lot and laugh so hard at the things you have done that you will not be able to breathe. Those days are worth waiting for. And when you are so used to waiting on everyone else, remember this: you are worth waiting for.”

— It is worth waiting for one day

[achingchest]

“we were never perfect. we let our insecurities lull us to sleep. we let ourselves believe that our hardships will always consume us and maybe we were right. some nights, i sit and wonder if you will ever be mine in the way i want you to be. but nights like these, i realize you are exactly where i need you to be. you are sitting on the corner of my heart as if it were a balance beam and nights like these, i want you to know that even though we don’t say it anymore, there is so much love between us that some nights, it makes me want to explode. and it’s difficult to accept that with so much love, we are only friends now and a part of me believes we don’t deserve this but another part of me knows it doesn’t matter. because even if we are never together again, we will always have each other. even if we are never together again, i am lucky i have someone who never leaves, even on the nights i tell them to go. i am lucky i have you. i am lucky i love you. i am lucky you love me. i am lucky that no matter what changes in my life, no matter what we go through, the love we share will always remain.”

— in any capacity, your love is always enough for me (via achingchest)

[achingchest]

“i give so much of myself to others that i don’t have anything left. you got my ears, my eyes, my skin, and my breath. i gave my body to the first guy who touched me like he meant it. my lips went to the boy who bit them shut. my blood ran through my lovers, friends who faded like ink dries in the sun. i have flashlights in my hair that i use to search for the girl i gave away. when you’re not looking, when it’s 2 a.m. and your song is playing. the song that has been tearing the sadness out of me since i was 17. i’m looking for me and i find only the heartache i hid in the piano i stopped playing. i don’t know how to hold all of this inside of me, so i crack my ribs and shove them inside of people’s skin to leave room. it’s temporary happiness. it’s happiness that sits on your window sill and watches your tears fall through the cracks in the tornado you are wearing around your neck. i will never be whole again and that terrifies me. i give myself out like take-out menus and you always forget to tip. i’m listening to your song and i’m thinking of that time i told some guy at a party that i wanted to take his virginity, but you were the only one who got anything. and now he’s with a girl who loves him for more than just the way his hair falls on his face. and i’ve been thinking about how everyone i know is either dying or having children, and it’s a cycle i can’t bear to watch unfold in front of the movie theatre that we hooked up in. i need you so much closer. i need you only when you’re the furthest away. now i can’t feel like i used to. i don’t have the weight to carry you. i don’t have a life because i gave it away to everyone i knew. i’m thinking about how far you are and remembering that we are black holes; we can’t be replaced. nothing is permanent and nothing can be re-claimed. not actions, not time, not lovers, not friends. not even ourselves.”

— transatlanticism (via achingchest)

[achingchest]

“I know you think this hurt won’t fade, that you’ll keep making the same mistakes, but one day, you will let go. You’ll say it’s the last time and it probably won’t be the last time for a few more times. And that’s okay. That’s okay because it matters to you now. That’s okay because one time really will be the last time. So focus on now, because this won’t last forever.”

— Something a really good friend told me (via achingchest)

[achingchest]

“This is a letter I never wanted to write. This is a letter about how when I was younger, I looked at you like a hero; I looked at you like you were the answer to all of my problems; I remember begging you to save me. This is a letter about how perfect you were: I drew constellations from you to me, from our pasts to our forever, from our families to trees. I planted seeds and clung to the roots, so much that I wasn’t there to watch the flowers grow. I remember the first diary entry I wrote about you, the one with my fist against the page, ink smudged all over my hands. I wrote that I loved you over and over again. I didn’t know what love was yet, but I knew you were it. This is a letter about how you were all love. No hurt. No pain. All sunrises and sunsets, cheekbones made of stardust, your spine curving like a crescent moon. This is a letter about how strong you stayed for me. How straight-faced you thought you had to be. How you drove your friends around at night and I stayed up late and wondered who you were and why you stayed at all– You, with a love for saving me. This is a letter about how you gave up. No one wants to save someone forever. No one wants that kind of pressure. This is a letter about how you taught me to save myself. This is a thank you letter for all of the times that I couldn’t breathe enough through my tears to tell you how much you meant to me. This is to all of the cuts I gave you when I shattered across your bedroom floor. I remember the last diary entry I wrote about you that said only, “He left.” I found your eyelashes all over my car and let your love lull me to sleep. You found only the glass shards to remind you of me. This is a letter about how I thought the world was ending when you broke my heart. This is a letter about how you fucked my hurt. This is a letter about how you hit me where I already had bruises and turned them black. This is a letter about how I never felt good enough when I was in your presence. When you left, I tried to convince myself that I was better than you. I did everything I could to make you feel as worthless as you made me feel. And now I’m writing this letter about how vindictive and self-obsessed you have made me. How I correlate sex with self-worth now. How I think giving you hickeys will keep you away from other girls. How I think I’m coming out on top because you told me I was the only person you would die for. But you are the only person who has made me want to die this hard. This is a letter I never wanted to write. This isn’t a see you later letter. This isn’t a call me when you’re six shots in letter. This isn’t a knock on my door when the other girls break your heart and you realize what you had letter. This is a goodbye letter. This is a letter about how I cried the whole drive home. This is a letter about how I’ll never find anyone that feels this much like home. This is a letter about how I would have given up all of the people who treat me right for someone who can’t. This is a letter to you, telling you that I can’t keep giving you pieces of me, because after a while, I will have nothing left.”

— This is a letter I never wanted to write (via achingchest)

[achingchest]

“some people just make your life worth living.” you’re sitting on the floor again downing beers and cleaning the blood off of your thighs. it’s not right to say, you know. how you could ever think somebody else could always be the moon when the darkness lives inside of you. how dark your life lit up when nobody was home. how many split ends you had to go through to learn what fullness feels like and the way you confuse fullness with home.

when you’re alone all that’s left is the chains around your neck. do you ever wish for once they’d be strong enough to keep you in. do you ever wish for once you could know what it’s like to be dead. do you ever wish for once you wouldn’t confuse this pain with it.

some people just make your life worth living. some people are the reason i’m still here. some people are the reason i rot like a flesh wound. some people feel like veins flowing like a river. it’s the contribution and dehumanization of people that make or ruin this.

you touch me and it doesn’t feel the same. when you’re so used to your feelings not mattering you really start to believe it. i don’t know how to make someone else feel how it feels to feel worthless if they’ve never felt it. i wish i could scream that it feels like this.

one scar for each way we don’t get each other in the way i once thought we would. some people you can wear your heart on your sleeve with and they’ll still say they didn’t know you had a heart. a scar for not special. a scar for not important. a scar for every time your life became a barrier you had to break through.

people don’t like thinking like me. people don’t like different. like maybe because someone else wouldn’t feel the way i’m feeling that means i shouldn’t be feeling it. maybe if i were anyone else i wouldn’t still be collapsing over this. maybe i love harder than anyone you’ve ever met. maybe i just have a more difficult time showing it.

“here i am, this is it.” i’m here. sitting on the carpet. i’m not always the person other people are pleased with. i don’t need to put on a show. i just need to let go. but the truth is some people just make your life worth living. the truth is it’s so lonely to be on your own.

[achingchest]

maybe we all have that one person that we’d always take back. bruised mouth, bloody ribs, you’re screaming at me and i’m taking it because no matter how bad it gets, there is always good to follow. and that’s what a lot of people don’t understand, the people who ask me why i can’t see the signs of an unhealthy relationship, why i can’t just walk away - that the good days outweigh the bad ones. i would walk away from you screaming one thousand times just to fall into your arms at the end of the night. i’ve learned how to catch your punches. i’ve learned how to find the beauty in pain. and i know: i should find happiness within myself or at least within people who are good for me, but i can’t help the way i feel and i can’t just leave something that makes me so happy. i will take you back until you literally throw me away.

[achingchest]

like yeah, some days are good and i’m smiling at the little things and things don’t hurt and on those days, i know i’m gonna survive this. and yeah, it hurt so bad when you left, but it’s been a while now and most days aren’t rain clouds and glass shards anymore. i don’t cry every day or scream your name in my sleep. and i laugh. i laugh a lot. but then i stop laughing. and there’s still a knot in my stomach that only you can untie. there is not a day that goes by where you don’t cross my mind every five minutes. it’s like you live inside of me and i can’t get you out without burning myself to the ground.

[achingchest]

“i finally realized you and i were never meant to last if we were, we never would have had to try this bad but i still write you love letters on paper plates and napkins and on paper from cigarette cartons at work when no one’s looking i still look back on when we were sixteen and nothing mattered when i told you i’d have your back no matter what happened and now i’m telling you to leave and i don’t think it hurts you as much as it hurts me now it’s all bruised and tired and ugly but what’s never been ugly was the space you filled in me and it’s still filled there’s still a place in my heart that you will always inhibit i still think you’re a magical human who just happened to make a few mistakes (that really fucking hurt more badly than i can say) and i know now that i never deserved what you did to me but i always deserved you in your sun-kissed glory and i guess i’m finally at the point where i really do wish you well i hope you end up happy but i am so jealous of the girl who will end up with you because she will be so lucky”

— still wish it was me (via achingchest)

[achingchest]

“i have this undeniable urge to kiss somebody else. to feel their body on my body. to lace my fingers in their hips. i don’t want to sit up with them until the sun comes up. that was your job and you ruined it. and i have spent too many nights heart in hand, chained to the floor. i have spent too many days trying not to cry in the middle of class, turning my body into a war zone the second i got home - it’s like i have forgotten how to live. so fuck, let’s throw out the razors. throw out the heartbroken poetry. throw out the sad songs and the driving fast and the wanting to die so bad. let’s pretend we never fell in love, get drunk on each others’ skin, stick our tongues down each others’ mouths where nobody would even think to look - in public bathrooms, in the middle of the fields we used to play in, in your parents’ bed when they’re not home, everywhere. on everything. let’s moan bible verses into each other’s throats and howl at the wind. you can use me - i don’t care. let’s feel wanted. let’s feel wanted.”

— touch (via achingchest)

[achingchest]

“when did we get so broken? so beaten up, so afraid to be ourselves. when did we start caring about everybody elses’ opinions more than our own? when did we learn to bottle up our emotions because we’re afraid having feelings makes us crazy? when did we learn to make ourselves crazy instead? don’t you dare think about quieting your heart down. send the text. post the draft. tell the boy you haven’t seen in two summers that you miss him. tell your ex that it’s too hard to be friends with him. that seeing him with his new girlfriend makes you crazy. that you still love him. tell people you love them when you feel it. tell people you’re mad at them when they did something to deserve it. or even when they didn’t. tell them why you’ve been so distant. stop ignoring text messages from people you don’t want to see. tell them you don’t want to hang out. tell them they hurt you too bad. tell them you’re busy reading a book in bed. tell them you’re sad. share your stories like wildfires. stop walking on eggshells. stop being so afraid to bleed. it’s okay to feel things. it doesn’t make you weak. putting your heart on the table, wearing it on your sleeve - that’s bravery.”

— eggshell love (via achingchest)

[londonfromparis]

We needed each other. For a while, we really did - and then we stopped needing each other. We stopped needing to know if the other person was okay, or happy, or even sad. We stopped making time for each other. We stopped checking in. We found other people to fill that space. We found other people to love us, and all of this hurt - but we needed to pretend it didn’t.

[achingchest]

“i. falling in love is a change of pace. it’s being accustomed to your own company and then suddenly letting someone else take charge of your happiness. it’s falling asleep with your foot on the gas pedal. it never ends, it never ends, it never ends. it keeps going even when you beg it to stop. ii. falling in love with you was like lighting a match and watching it devour my whole house. i didn’t mean for this to happen; believe me, i didn’t. but i was still the one who held the flame. iii. falling in love doesn’t mean you have to lose yourself in the process. falling in love shouldn’t hurt. pain doesn’t mean it’s real. pain is a stop sign. when you put your hand on a hot burner, your body jerks you away. remember you don’t have to stay. iv. sometimes you love and love and love and you are not loved in return. don’t let that stop you from loving.”

— four things i learned the day after i watched you walk out the door (via achingchest)

[achingchest]

i just don’t think i’m meant to be in a relationship.

i wish i could be. i wish i was the kind of person who gave up love so freely. but my love is caged in the mason jars of my heart and i don’t give it up easily. i don’t tell the people i love i love them until it’s too late. i don’t do small talk; i stare at my hands and pick the skin around my fingers and try not to tell people that when i was fifteen, i tried to end my life and it’s still hard to wake up some mornings.

i don’t know how to talk about the small stuff. i don’t know how to keep a conversation going about the weather or school or my parents. i don’t know how to keep a conversation going about anything, really. i don’t know how to get to know someone. i don’t ask the right questions or answer correctly. i go on one date and then i run away because it comes with too much anxiety. i don’t know how to give someone the chance to love me.

all of my relationships– all two of them– have been messy. they’ve drained the life out of me. because when i finally love, i love too deeply. i am invested to the point of obsession, can’t breathe without the other person, infatuated so badly i let them drown me. all of my relationships have drug me under, never rose me up. i think i’m addicted to the pain that comes with fighting for the one you love.

i don’t know. i watch everyone else starting to settle down and i wish it could be me. but i just don’t think i’m meant to be in a relationship. i’m just empty empty empty.