journal excerpts

elle - 25 - nyc - ❤️💜💙

[ellesjournalexcerpts]

a connect-the-dots sort of conversation

drawn in invisible ink and spoken in shorthand speak

our tangent train of thoughts derailing sentences

striking words of flint against rusted steel promises

sparks skipping against this fluent terrain

tumbling us upon this familiar topographical map

hanging on to an old-slacked tension no longer held by taut by two

[ellesjournalexcerpts]

Sunken priceless memories trapped in the river of time.

What use do you have for the fossils of my youth?

The remnants of which barely prove its existence.

That we may have once soared through the skies,

Wind grasping at our clothes telling us to slow down.

Spilling ourselves unapologetically on the streets we ran through,

Every crevice, nook, and cranny painted unmistakably by us.

Our crystallized moments frozen in perpetuity,

Suspended amber animations in saccharine honey,

The wisps of the words that left our lungs, haunting spectres;

Barest crumbling traces of the past, ancient proof of life.

Excavating the evidence in my mind wondering,

"Did any of this actually happen here?"

[ellesjournalexcerpts]

there isnt a word or string of words that exists in any language past or present that can encapsulate the depth of the love i have for you

[ellesjournalexcerpts]

“We have all the time in the world,” I said, sitting in the passenger seat of your car— mere platitudes under the guise of a joke. But I meant it as fact, As if I were the ruler over time and space– Unbound and unfettered From the damning threads of fate. I’m the spinster weaving the threads of time– Stretching the seconds we share into infinity. I’d fold the cloth planes of the earth Over and over to close this distance between us. But you’re in the driver's seat, Listening as the GPS says, “Your destination is on the right.” You drop me off at the Terminal, Grasping at the fleeting seconds on the curb, Teasing us on what should and can be, Before we let go, once again, Washing ashore in the chasm of the universe.

[ellesjournalexcerpts]

We've grown apart and I know we both can feel it. I find myself starting to not care about what you're doing or what you're thinking or what you're up to. And maybe that's how I know it's going to end now. It's time to put it to rest. You were special, but in the same way that my gold medals from my childhood were special. You meant something then, but you don't mean anything now.

[ellesjournalexcerpts]

I wonder if getting to see you again means that I have to learn to read you again. I wonder if I still can still read you, though maybe I'm scared that I can't anymore

[ellesjournalexcerpts]

I hope one day we'd stop exchanging happy birthdays so that I don't have to feel bad about never wanting to see you again.

[ellesjournalexcerpts]

the universe turned my favorite person into a lesson

[starlightacademia]

one day you think: I want to die. and then you think, very quietly: actually. actually. I think I want a coffee. a nap. a sandwich. a book. and I want to die turns day by day into want to go home, I want to walk in the woods, I want to see my friend, I want to sit in the sun, I want a cleaner kitchen, I want a better job, I want to live somewhere else. I want to live.

- via duckbunny

[remanence-of-love]

[ellesjournalexcerpts]

i think coincidences are kinda cute. it’s like the universe lines something up for you when you least expect it kinda like the way you stop on your way to see your friend to get that thing that’s been sitting in their shopping cart for months.

[ellesjournalexcerpts]

10/17/2020

Shelly–the nickname that my mother gave me as a child. Taken from the second syllable of my first name: Michelle. Me-shell. Shell. Shelly. It’s cute. Childish. An innocent grin on a cloudless, blue spring day. Giggles and laughter and sweet honeyed fruit. At twenty-one years old, an image like that would spin the heads of anyone that remotely knew me. It felt wrong for anyone to call me that (except my mother, of course; she gifted the name to me) more so because it didn’t feel like the me that was growing to like dark roasted coffee beans, curated liquor, cleaning products, or nice glassware. 

Shelly–a name that I had outgrown, that tightened over my broad shoulders and my wide hips, just coming up short on my calves and my forearms. Yet, I let it lay forgotten in the back of the closet with the other things I was too sentimental to get rid of but too protective for the privy of the world. Only when that name flew jokingly off her lips with a tinge of a joking smile did I let her privilege a look–a short glance. 

Cause fuck all those that tried to grasp it in their fingertips, holding it beside me as if to judge if I still fit the name, if the me that existed now was anything like my childhood self. No, on her lips it settled softly–an untouched snowflake on fresh soil. Gentle. Gently easing next to me, placing it by her heart. Oh, how lucky am I that she sees the ‘me’ my mother gifted it to. The childish me before the wind ripped me up, the storm drowned me, the earth fissuring beneath, opening to cold, sharp obsidian before settling in the ashes. 

Shelly, the name that’s allow to leave her lips and her lips only. How I longed to be called that again by someone who knows who I am.

[ellesjournalexcerpts]

i’ve never felt so loved or seen or understood by another person before. before i met her, i never knew what it was like to have someone pay attention to every detail about me. to remember what i said in passing. to keep a running list of my likes in the back of her mind. do you know what it’s like when you can communicate volumes from a glance across the room? when someone knows your tells; verbal, physical, or otherwise to the point that no matter how much you try to hide, she already knows because you already let yourself be known and to be seen? do you know what its like to fully believe with every bit of your being when she says ‘i love you’ that she means it in the only way that she can love you? 

i guess that’s why i don’t understand how our texts became so sparse, our conversations nonexistent. why it feels like i’m reaching to the void every time my thumbs hover above your name when i know you’re not going to respond. i guess i’m struggling to reconcile all those mundane moments in our living room, those silly ‘what-if’ conversations, or those moments late at night when we could only rely on each other with the ‘forwarded to voicemail’s. it hurts wondering if i even cross your mind at all, if letting go of me was as easy as you made it seem. 

i’ve stopped reaching out since then, but baby, how could i just forget someone who turned my burning red into a sunrise orange when i became close to you?

[ellesjournalexcerpts]

Whats the difference between this friendship with her vs all other friendships? With some friends I'm content with meeting up every 1-2 years if we're lucky and just catching up with whats going on in their life. Short, sweet and kept in the loop. I'm fine if I don't see or hear from them for months. So, why is she different? Why do I want her to text me? Why am I upset when she doesnt respond to my text messages? Why am I so insistently trying to be in her life? Is it because I love her as more than a friend? Is that why every text without a response hurts harder because my brain is treating it as rejection from someone I love? I've realized that I'm processing this like a break-up, a heartbreak. I've already started to move on, but I haven't accepted that the love and affection I have for her will be diminished almost completely. It'll still be there, just dormant in the back of my mind. Like a box that will get dusty tucked in the attic. I'm trying to let go and move on, but maybe I'm scared of letting go of these emotions. I've never liked or understood someone like that before. I've never been understood or known at such a level either. She's pierced my walls in a way thats different than my childhood best friend, who's slowly walked through the front door, the foyer, and to the center. But she's pierced through the wall, though pierced is too aggressive if a word. It's more like she through my walls. All except the wall that'd open my attachment and abandonment issues. But I can't let her in, but I want to let her in. And I can't let her in because I don't know her because she isnt responding to my texts or my bids for her attention. Other people can be vulnerable with me, but I can't be vulnerable with other people, and that's just one reason why this friendship is falling apart. But I think the main reason why I'm so hurt is because how can someone show such trust and vulnerability to call someone barely wrapped in a towel with glass embedded in their body just be a stranger again? How can someone who ran over at 11 pm and broke into your building to pull glass out of your body just scarcely covered be a stranger to you now? How can someone who held me like that after a nightmare that left me crying be a stranger go back to being a stranger? How can a relationship with subtle intimacy and trust just fade? I'm struggling to wrap my head around it and I don't want to accept it.

[ellesjournalexcerpts]

12/3/2022

People don’t really change. Their habits and their patterns stay the same. I thought I was special because who doesn’t want to be special to someone. Someone who would actually venture in their own mind on some quest to change their patterns for you. But people don’t change. And I was stupid to think that her problems in her previous friendships would go away because I was her best friend. Because I knew her like no one else did. Does that make me arrogant and naïve? Arrogant because I thought I was special but I’m not. Naïve because I saw her in her best light even when I knew how she looked like at her worst. First and foremost, we’re friends. Friends drift a part. They grow up. Their circumstance change. They live on opposite ends of the coast. Yet still, I wonder why I hold onto those 900-something days of memories. Why does someone I barely spent any time with garner such strong reactions to the point that I’m rationalizing myself out of emotions.