Wonderstruck

Hayley Maree. 27 years old. MrsStylinson on Ao3. hayley.maree on Instagram. Aspiring writer and/or editor. I am a type one diabetic, a shameless Swiftie, a shipper of such ships as Larry, Malec, Destiel and Colliver and a loud, LOUD supporter of LGBTQ rights and relationships 🏳️‍🌈 If you’d like to support me and my creative endeavours, tip me here :)

[lovehoperomance]

The Curse

You abandoned me inside a well filled with lonely

The depths of which I struggled to fathom

I thought of you not thinking of me

Never thinking of me

And I foundered

I was chained to a myriad of haunted memories

The way you made me feel that I was odd and unloveable

The way you raged at my need and starved me of affection.

In that moment the plural pain that you all inflicted became one devil

A single obstacle I needed to overcome.

You imagined I’d be too defeated to climb out

To scale the dark walls

Slippery with moss

Scaly with grime

Too intimidated by the darkness of rejection

The emptiness of unrequited love

But I wove the rags on which I slept into braided rope

And I climbed my way to freedom

Exchanging the skin on my hands for each inch of progress

No light to guide me but the faintest glow of hope

It would soon evolve into certainty that I deserved better

Years later I sit in a crumbling cottage

While you preside over a palace

Thinking yourself large

Making others feel small

Riding a wave of avoidant confidence that never hears its own echo

Arrogance that doesn’t see the wrecks it leaves behind

I keep the journal entries from those days

And the little trinkets you gave me

Right there on my bookshelf with my prized possessions

They ward against the charisma that once seduced me

The unkindness that produced the tears with which you filled your moat

These totems take me back to the moment I escaped

The moment I finally grasped the earth around the well

Cold blades of grass sliding through my shredded fingers like cold spaghetti

Sweat and blood comingling on my tear stained face

While the stars greeted me with open arms

And the gods lit the path to a new world

I began a new life

Reborn

Your names are tattooed on my chest

But I don’t feel the sting of them like I used to

I sleep in a lumpy bed with a broken frame

Propped up with the books I wrote about your crimes against me

This bed is warmer and softer than your thousand count sheets

The sleep finds me sweeter and deeper than yours

Knowing I loved and did not lie

Knowing I could never have loved you correctly, only honestly and unselfishly

As I always did

Knowing that the deepest, most precious love I have ever given lives on inside me

And not in the hands of those l gifted it to

You do not remember me

It is not just the mark of sinful pride

But the majestic nature of karma

For you will never learn the lesson that might have saved you

The same one that saved me

The lesson that we are all consigned to deliver heartbreak at some point in our lives But we need not deliver it without the seriousness it deserves

We need not hurl it across battlefields

Nor tiptoe around

Secretly silently selfishly planting in our loved ones gardens

Destined to become a plague upon the people we vowed to protect

But I am not merely your wounds and your lessons

I am frilly white socks

And sandwich triangles

The crisp sound of a page turning

And the laughter that collects like a bubble in my throat

I am all the pieces of happiness I collected for you recycled into new joys;

The handcrafted compliments on a silver platter

The buffet of ego-stroking sentiments to which you always returned

The commiserations and celebrations of someone who truly adored you

The things you enjoyed for a moment but not a lifetime

The repackaged treasures you left on my doorstep

Return to sender

And oh how grateful I am that you did!

No, I am not the school gate latching

The empty seats at the dinner table

The lazy the weak the slovenly

You deemed me to be

I am not the excuse to be cruel

I am not a sponge

Soaking up your vitriol

Anymore

I am the ocean pulling away from the shore

A sunflower growing up up up

And away from the cold, unyielding mud of the earth

I am the sherbet the gold rush the waterfall

I am soft and bold and irreplaceable

I am not the in between moments I cannot fill

The cratered skin and flares of white hot rage

The shutting down of my system in a revolt against the senses

I am the persistence of health within illness

Of happiness within the greatest sadness I’ve ever felt

I am a person who resigned herself to dropping burdens and playing dead until the threat had passed

I am the woman who found the strength to continue through hardest winters and soul crushing droughts

Over and over and over and

I am the forgiving and the faithful

The parishioner on her knees

Making oaths to be better

To be present

I am keeping them

I am the reimagining of a classic childhood tale

Bursting from the pages

I am becoming and becoming and becoming

Real

Realer than the naïveté and euphoria of my dreams with you

Realer than the person I dreamed of becoming

I am a changing wallpaper

A glow in the dark puzzle

A paint by numbers

Dot to dot

Slow reveal

I am for the patient

And the kind

I am a mile wide rainbow stretching over the enchanted woods

A pot of good for those who wait

For who study me as I study them

So that we may become experts on each other

In a world where feeling known is rare.

I am a midnight picnic beneath the stars

The sound that soft rain makes on a canvas tent

I am a strange and stubborn endurance

Who will love you always

In ways you do not return

I am the wisdom and the kindness that this makes me

I am a student of love and loss

And you were my teachers

I keep the cruel things you said to me in ancient jars coated in dust

Spelled close with white magic

I bring them out every full moon

To remember the spell you cast

The curse you enacted on my youth

And the day I finally broke it

A young witch finding her power

In the hands of those who took it

Attempting to vanquish her

Unaware that the attempt would only embolden her

You are my compass

You are the threads of wisdom woven through my self esteem

You are the waves of the ocean carrying me to better things

I will always miss the way we ran with hearts and legs pumping

Laughing as hard as our straining bodies would let us

I’m never too far from the crinkle of fish and chip wrap

Yet always too far from the way it made ne feel

I will always miss the wilderness you planted inside me

And will forever mourn the day it began

The overgrowth

The misuse and neglect

Kindling

One day we were holding hands on a playground

The next it was aflame

I never breathed as shallowly as I did then

In the aftermath of you leaving

A burning utopia

A shattered snow globe

Strands of pink feather boas and the leaves of our once evergreen tree

Littering the blackened landscape

A hopeless wildfire

Where once grew roses and lillies and the strands of a trust I never thought would be broken

Yet I watched as it collapsed with the heat of the fire

Never to be rebuilt

I carry these little reminders of how tenderly I loved

And how bravely I lost

Reminders of the way that these ships sail,

Into that long dark night

Carrying the cargo you once shared

Never to appear upon the horizon again

I peer out the window of my cottage to see the clouds swirling

The purplish black of the bruises you continue to leave on this world

Thunder rumbling as you tread on hands and hearts

A careless giant

A smiling assassin

But I am safe here on the outskirts of the kingdom you took

I am happy here in a valley of new friends and family

The likes of which I found in the ashes of a kingdom just like yours

I tended to them as they tended to me

I made bandages from the letters I wrote you

Elixirs from the tears I shed in your name

We were victims of different plagues united together in healing

And we have built a life of careful words and gentle hope

I nurture these people as I was not nurtured

I love them as I hope to be loved

Here roses and lillies and evergreen trees bloom once more

The sounds of crackling fire and bubbling brooks reign supreme

With the smell of barbecues and salt water on the breeze

And the taste of caramel in my mouth

I am whole

There is music by the river in the evenings When the sun hangs low and heavy in the sky

Full and glowing as the faces of those around me

Whose souls shine through like silken gold

Acoustic guitar and a soft summer rainshower sing to my once beleaguered senses

I am soothed by the twinkling of the same stars I used to looked up to and pray to

I count every smiling face and every blade of grass and every word I write in this poem

I tally them in a notebook titled blessings

And read them like a lullaby just before bed

They are the magic with which I created this hidden valley

And the deep joy with which I expelled you all from my heart

They are the karma I earned while I was making you feel special

And the strength I found when you cursed me to believe that I was nothing

I am not nothing

I am the first blessing and the sixth and the one thousandth

I am not nothing

I am free

[lovehoperomance]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 4/8 Fandom: One Direction (Band) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, brief harry styles/omc, Even briefer Louis Tomlinson/OMC Characters: Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Jay Tomlinson, Anne Cox, Liam Payne, Yaser Malik Additional Tags: Best friend’s brother, Friends to Lovers, Smut, Bottom Louis, Misunderstanding, Miscommunication, slight age gap, Younger Louis, Author Harry, Flirty Vibes, Fluff and Angst, HEA Guaranteed, Jealousy, Pining for days, louis worship Summary:

Zayn is Louis’ best friend. Harry is Zayn’s older ‘evil’ stepbrother. Louis is not the type of boy to fall in love with his best friend’s brother. Especially when that brother is a seemingly straight guy who used to babysit him when he was a kid. …..Or is he?

Aka the one where H and L flirt like school boys, communicate like mutes and do that sweet thing where they become obsessed with each other between semi serious talks and absolutely embarrassingly obvious displays of affection.

[lovehoperomance]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 3/8 Fandom: One Direction (Band) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, brief harry styles/omc, Even briefer Louis Tomlinson/OMC Characters: Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Jay Tomlinson, Anne Cox, Liam Payne, Yaser Malik Additional Tags: Best friend’s brother, Friends to Lovers, Smut, Bottom Louis, Misunderstanding, Miscommunication, slight age gap, Younger Louis, Author Harry, Flirty Vibes, Fluff and Angst, HEA Guaranteed, Jealousy, Pining for days, louis worship Summary:

Zayn is Louis’ older best friend. Harry is Zayn’s older ‘evil’ stepbrother. Louis is not the type of boy to fall in love with his best friend’s brother, a straight guy who used to babysit him when he was a kid. …..Or is he?

Aka the one where H and L flirt like school boys, communicate like mutes and do that sweet thing where they become obsessed with each other between semi serious talks and absolutely embarrassingly obvious displays of affection.

[lovehoperomance]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 3/8 Fandom: One Direction (Band) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, brief harry styles/omc, Even briefer Louis Tomlinson/OMC Characters: Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Jay Tomlinson, Anne Cox, Liam Payne, Yaser Malik Additional Tags: Best friend’s brother, Friends to Lovers, Smut, Bottom Louis, Misunderstanding, Miscommunication, slight age gap, Younger Louis, Author Harry, Flirty Vibes, Fluff and Angst, HEA Guaranteed, Jealousy, Pining for days, louis worship Summary:

Zayn is Louis’ older best friend. Harry is Zayn’s older ‘evil’ stepbrother. Louis is not the type of boy to fall in love with his best friend’s brother, a straight guy who used to babysit him when he was a kid. …..Or is he?

Aka the one where H and L flirt like school boys, communicate like mutes and do that sweet thing where they become obsessed with each other between semi serious talks and absolutely embarrassingly obvious displays of affection.

[lovehoperomance]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 2/8 Fandom: One Direction (Band) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson Characters: Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Jay Tomlinson, Anne Cox, Liam Payne, Yaser Malik Additional Tags: Best friend’s brother, Friends to Lovers, Smut, Bottom Louis, Light Angst, Misunderstanding, Miscommunication, slight age gap, Younger Louis, Author Harry, Flirty Vibes Summary:

Zayn is Louis’ older best friend. Harry is Zayn’s older ‘evil’ stepbrother. Louis is not the type of boy to fall in love with his best friend’s brother, a straight guy who used to babysit him when he was a kid. …..Or is he?

Aka the one where H and L flirt like school boys, communicate like mutes and do that sweet thing where they become obsessed with each other between semi serious talks and absolutely embarrassingly obvious displays of affection.

[lovehoperomance]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 2/8 Fandom: One Direction (Band) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson Characters: Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Jay Tomlinson, Anne Cox, Liam Payne, Yaser Malik Additional Tags: Best friend’s brother, Friends to Lovers, Smut, Bottom Louis, Light Angst, Misunderstanding, Miscommunication, slight age gap, Younger Louis, Author Harry, Flirty Vibes Summary:

Zayn is Louis’ older best friend. Harry is Zayn’s older ‘evil’ stepbrother. Louis is not the type of boy to fall in love with his best friend’s brother, a straight guy who used to babysit him when he was a kid. …..Or is he?

Aka the one where H and L flirt like school boys, communicate like mutes and do that sweet thing where they become obsessed with each other between semi serious talks and absolutely embarrassingly obvious displays of affection.

[lovehoperomance]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: One Direction (Band) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson Characters: Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Jay Tomlinson, Anne Cox Additional Tags: Best friend’s brother, Friends to Lovers, Smut, Bottom Louis, Light Angst, Misunderstanding, Miscommunication, slight age gap, Younger Louis, Author Harry, Flirty Vibes Summary:

Zayn is Louis’ older best friend. Harry is Zayn’s older ‘evil’ stepbrother. Louis is not the type of boy to fall in love with his best friend’s brother, a straight guy who used to babysit him when he was a kid. …..Or is he?

Aka the one where H and L flirt like school boys, communicate like mutes and do that sweet thing where they become obsessed with each other between semi serious talks and absolutely embarrassingly obvious displays of affection.

[lovehoperomance]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: One Direction (Band) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson Characters: Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Jay Tomlinson, Anne Cox Additional Tags: Best friend’s brother, Friends to Lovers, Smut, Bottom Louis, Light Angst, Misunderstanding, Miscommunication, slight age gap, Younger Louis, Author Harry, Flirty Vibes

[lazyflan]

Please tell me that I’m not the only one who will refuse to call facebook “meta”.

I literally live in fandom spaces, if I search “meta” somewhere and facebook appears first I’m going to personally go kick zuckerberg’s ass.

[castiel-j-winchester]

Okay okay but here’s the thing.

MetaCompany put out a PUBLIC CEASE AND DESIST.

[lynati]

Facebook: “Our first step in rebranding to try to hide the fact that we’re an absolutely shit company will be something to make it REALLY, REALLY CLEAR that no matter what our name is, we’re still an absolutely shit company!”

[porterr-robinson]

[azuretheshitposter]

i almost fucking gagged laughing so hard

[princesstigerbelle]

[garecc]

IT’S A CHUMBY BUMBY

[princesstigerbelle]

@mysticalgalaxysalad

[kitty-cat-neko-chan]

If I do not reblog this, assume I’m dead.

[lovehoperomance]

I am not comfortable looking at men’s or women’s breasts and that is ✨✨✨equality✨✨✨

Am I repressed? Probably. But at least it’s gender equality flavoured.

[lovehoperomance]

A quote from one of my fave shows (well...Kinda. Can you call it a favourite if you quit twelve seasons in?) popped into my head the other day that was particularly pertinent to how I was feeling. I didn’t think much of it at the time but later I realised it had been many, many episodes since I heard the quote and my memory’s not good at the best of times. I realised I had remembered it for a reason, even if I didn’t consciously know why. The quote was this:

You do what you can, when you can, while you can. If you can’t, you can’t - Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson), Grey’s Anatomy.

It sounds simple enough but it’s something I and a lot of people struggle with when perfectionism and a lack of self belief takes over. When you feel like you are a bad person or are bad at things in general, any time you feel overwhelmed or under the weather can be proof of that. Feeling like you need a break or to slow down stops being a warning system and starts to become a trigger for negative thoughts.

We live in a society of “push through” and “get on with it” and “don’t complain because someone always has it worse than you.” And there’s a time for that. There’s a time to challenge yourself and test your limits and achieve things purely because you held on the longest through the most amount of pain. But there’s also a time to step back, to say no, to forgive yourself for being human.

You do what you can, when you can, while you can. And if you can’t, you can’t.

She was talking about someone who didn’t want to have a baby and the guilt she felt about aborting it. But to me, it applies to any situation in which you feel guilt or shame or self loathing because you didn’t meet some impossible standard you set for yourself.

Here’s some things that have happened to me lately that I know were signs I wasn’t coping, and needed a minute to recuperate, but that I took as signs of weakness:

I had dreams that the world was ending every night for a week.

I let my blood sugar drop so low at work, I could barely walk up the stairs to get a hypo treatment.

I spent an hour of my shift feeling like I might burst into tears at any moment.

When someone told me I was being difficult and paid more attention to my mistakes than how hard I had tried, I not only believed them, I did the same.

I slept for hours and hours and still felt like I was carrying the whole world on my shoulders as I got out of bed.

I thought that it mattered whether my problems were objectively bad, whether someone else might handle them better, whether I “should” be strong enough to deal with them. But by telling myself that, I was pummelling myself so hard into the ground, I’d never get up if I didn’t stop. I needed to take a moment. I needed to forgive myself for not being perfect in order to let the things go that I couldn’t change and try again with the ones I could. Because you can’t make changes when you’re holding a gun to your own head. And you can’t take a breather when you’re convinced all the strongest people are holding their breath too.

You do what you can, when you can, while you can. And if you can’t, you can’t.

People will push you. They will let you be a perfectionist because it benefits them or because they can’t tell the difference between a high achiever and a broken one. And when they point out things you did wrong, or make a big deal of them, you won’t be able to cope because you’ve already been pummelled by your own brain. You’ve fought the wars of 10,000 men in your own head and they don’t see it. They can’t.

So stand up for yourself. Be your own navigator, your own spokesperson. Trust your inner voice when it tells you something is too much because the more you stop and and recharge, the better you’ll feel when it’s time to try again. Don’t be perfect. Be a phoenix, rising from the ashes. But only when you’re god damn ready.

[lovehoperomance]

If you can’t eat with your mouth closed, try not eating at all :)))

- sincerely, everyone with misophonia

[lovehoperomance]

Not having the energy to write about why you don’t have energy or the energy to write is a whole new level of cyclical hurt.

[lovehoperomance]

Praying I wake up without mental illness tomorrow.

[butterflypeaflowertea]

trees are very 🥺 because sometimes i’ll stand under the shade of a tree and look up at it and it’ll sway its branches about in the wind and i’m like oh my God i’m alive and YOU’RE alive. we are alive together and made up of the same starry stuff and standing right next to each other in this moment on this earth. do u feel it when i reach out and press my hand to your trunk? can you hear me? i think you’re so neat. and then the sunlight filters through its leaves just so and that lovely green color leaves me dazzled. it’s just very nice to be an alive thing next to a different sort of alive thing

[degenderates]

idk man, i just wanna write a fic that someone reads obsessively at 3am. a fic that someone loses sleep to finish because just one more chapter and tries to give multiple kudos. a fic that people will leave a comment on every chapter. i want to write a fic that people will recommend to others, that they think nails the characterization and relationship dynamic. i want to write someone’s comfort fic, someone’s favorite fic, or someone’s fic they read when they want to re-read something. i want to be that fic writer. i want to write that fic.