wordaholic.

[none-for-gretchen]

falling into something new is funny.

not haha funny but funny in the way that my brain doesn’t understand why we’re doing this again, and she thinks the rest of me is so silly.

“don’t you remember last time?” she asks me.

and i do. i remember heartbreak. and my gut wrenching. and not getting out of bed until my mother had to drag me out. i remember that falling out of love is infinitely more painful than falling into it.

but my heart whispers. “one more time.”

and the optimist in me can’t help but fall.

[none-for-gretchen]

hi.

i am learning how to become soft. in a family full of hard women, that is no easy feat. growing up, my mother ridiculed me to her sisters for telling her “i love you” one too many times. one of those sisters told me that love is a fool’s game, and only fools believe they have won at it. the other told me that a woman who gives away her heart will only wind up alone, and that, even in marriage, a woman can never truly let her guard down.

however.

i am learning to become soft because life is full of too much feeling to feign indifference. i want to love deeply and, conversely, that means i will have to be hurt more deeply. i want to know how it feels to give my heart away without knowing that it will be returned to me. i want to wear my emotions on my sleeve and bear the consequences.

but to do that i have to learn how to be soft. and that is proving to be a difficult but worthwhile task.

s.d. // undoing family curses

[none-for-gretchen]

not to be dramatic (because i know you’d hate it), but i’ve just remembered what breathing feels like.

you’d call me silly if i told you that. and then you’d ask me what i meant, and, after i’d explained, you would nod. but when i’d turned my back, you’d raise your eyebrows and shake your head at me like, again, i’ve proven how little i deserve to be truly understood.

well. you’re not here, but i’ll still explain to the best of my ability. with you i felt suffocated. no, suffocated isn’t the word. i felt like when we kissed you pushed your tongue so far down my throat that part of it got stuck in my lungs and lodged itself there until i decided to finally let you go.

s.d. // and when i told you you took my breath away, i meant it.

[none-for-gretchen]

i’ve been to this rodeo before, that’s the sad thing. i knew how it felt when someone uses your shine to warm themselves, i knew how it felt when someone uses up your best parts to grow themselves. and i knew —i knew— how it felt to cling to someone who truly did not want to be kept.

but here i am. my heart never grew up with the rest of me, never learned to be skeptical, pessimistic. never learned to vet people before giving itself away, and now the rest of my body is paying.

s.d. // why couldn’t i make you stay?

[wnq-writers]

“I’ve seen beauty everywhere I look. under bridges, in my mother’s laugh, in garbage, in art, and in my own work. sometimes, I dedicate hours to finding it. but now that you sleep next to me every night, I don’t have to look as hard.”

— S.D., and you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen

[none-for-gretchen]

i am weak.

i’ve known this for a while, actually. i have soft spots for quite a few things: puppies, my two-year-old nephew, thunderstorms, the color blue, words arranged in such a way they cause the pit of my stomach to ache. the list is endless. i’m used to aching for things, used to yearning after them.

but you. you. you are a different soft spot. so different that i wonder if i ever had a choice in the matter. you simmer with emotion, and you hold me so tightly. you crashed into me and i was done for.

[none-for-gretchen]

i still miss you. there, i said it. i still think about you. and it’s kinda pathetic because you left me because something about me told you not to stay, something about me told you that this was not a safe place for you. and when it comes down to it, it’s our atoms. no, listen to me. it’s our atoms. i know you hate cliches, but listen. i learned about it in chemistry. you see, when two atoms have different charges, they pull together. and that’s why i always pulled you by your belt loops and smiled into your kiss. i wanted to pull you into me.

and yes. i know this is pathetic. you left. you decided this, me, wasn’t for you. maybe the pull wasn’t as inmistakable as i thought. you see, we were. magic. more than science or logic could explain. which was convenient because you weren’t a big fan of either. but i thought. i just. i thought. i thought this was it. but when i was pulling you toward me (with the atoms, remember?) you were pushing against me.

and i still write about you. maybe because part of me hopes you’re reading and that. i don’t know. that it may help your atoms realize that they’re pulled to mine. and that chemistry — our chemistry — will pull you back to me. because my atoms. my atoms. my atoms really, really like yours.

s.d. // stream of consciousness about you

[none-for-gretchen]

how sad it is that i can’t show you the way i really feel about you.

i want to create earthquakes that shake the earth itself to its very core and break all the windows, like, ever. i want to create typhoons that wipe everything away, so that we can rebuild. together. i want to move mountains to shape this landscape the way you want it. i want to make the sun shine on you always because i know the darkness scares you.

but. all i can do is christen you beautiful. play with your hair when you lie across my lap. love you when you feel unloved. hold you when you lean into me. kiss you until everything stops. and hope that that is enough.

[none-for-gretchen]

i knew it was time to leave whenever i felt alone and i was right beside you.

s.d. // the leaving will hurt but is better than staying together

[once-upon-a-mistress]

I said you were the best thing that ever happened to me and then suddenly you became the worst.

— I hate that I fell for you // a.m.m, 3:53pm

[none-for-gretchen]

people say that breaking up is hard to do, but i disagree. removing something (or someone) from your life that no longer serves a purpose is simple. it’s learning how to live without them that’s the hard part. their smile, their laugh, those little i’m-thinking-of-you-do-you-want-me-to-pick-up-food-from-that-takeout-place-you-like texts. getting used to not having another body wrap itself around you at night. not smelling their smell, and oh my goodness it was a great smell. kinda oaky. it made you think back to thirteen-year-old you going to summer camp with no air conditioning and smelling trees all around. you were homesick, but the trees, they soothed you. and here you are without trees, laughs, texts, or that weird thing they did with their mouth on yours that no one does quite like them — you know the thing. no one does anything quite like them. but you know — you know — you made the right decision. the two of you weren’t growing and you were fighting all the time and there was no space for both of you.

space.

that’s what led to the breakup in the first place. “i need space,” you said. everyone knows space is just a means to an end. and here you are, at the end. you have the space you asked for, but for some reason you can’t sleep in that bed. you know, THAT bed. you febreeze your home constantly — a pine scent, surprisingly. and you constantly play music. you thrust yourself into strangers, but again. no one does it quite like them.

but the breaking up was easy.

[none-for-gretchen]

you always come to me in waves. one minute i’m laughing with friends and the next you’re just. crashing all over me. and it always happens when i think it’s finally out of my head. when i think i’ve finally forgotten, finally moved on. when i’ve just left a date or right after my tongue was dancing in someone else’s mouth, my someone who wraps their arms around me and makes me feel safe in a way you never could. but you still crash all over me and i don’t know what to do. and then i’m drowning and gasping — yelling — for air and that someone, that someone with the pretty mouth and wide open arms that wrap all around me and feel like the air right after a thunderstorm — you were that thunderstorm, the one that took the house i built around myself and tore it apart and i can’t even start looking for the pieces because i can’t forget how it felt to feel everything fall apart around me because of you — and the jokes that make my stomach ache and my heart almost forget. my someone can’t even hear me. and here i am, drowning in you, (you’re selfish even in your absence) and i just can’t breathe. until the memory of you starts to fall like the tide, until i wash up to the shore. only to be crashed into again. and no matter how far inland i go, i can’t stop it.

teach me how to forget.

[wnq-writers]

keeping others warm only extinguishes you. be your own fire.

s.d., writing prompt #65: write a ten-word-story (via wnq-writers)

[none-for-gretchen]

finding words to describe how i feel about someone has never been a difficult task. i put my pen to paper, and the words flow out of me. easily.

but now. now. now, so many words and thoughts and ideas are jumbling around in my head and i can’t put them together eloquently enough to express the exactness of how i’m feeling. how you make me feel.

to be frank, you make me feel as if i am not an inconvenience to you. my emotions are justified and beautiful. and speaking of beautiful, you make me feel as if i am beautiful. the most beautiful thing you’ve laid eyes on, as if my smile can blind the sun itself because i’m too bright, i cannot compare.

i find myself finding you filling my empty parts, my private parts that i told myself i wouldn’t open for another soul. but you..

you are it. simply.

S.D // how else could i possibly describe you?

[wnq-writers]

Maybe the problem was I looked at you and saw a home while you looked at me and saw a rest stop.

S.D. (via wnq-writers)

[none-for-gretchen]

when i was a child, i used to lay on my lawn and watch the nighttime sky. i would try to count them all, and i would write down where i found the brightest one in my Star Notebook. ‘west corner, near the dipper’, an entry would say. later, maybe days or months later, i would look for the star, and sometimes, i couldn’t find them, and to my puzzlement, it was always the brightest ones i couldn’t find. later in life, i learned about supernovas and black holes. the brightest stars tend to shine too brightly, and they disappear. you have an intense light, and i imagine that you are what happens when a star burns a little too brightly and too fast and all at once. you are the bright stars that i couldn’t find all molded together in human form. all of everything i’d been looking for in human form. and you shine brighter than all of those stars put together.

S.D. // please don't burn out

[none-for-gretchen]

meeting you was lighting a match. kissing you was dropping it on gasoline. falling in love with you was my world set ablaze. leaving you was my world covered in water.

S.D.