[ofsunrays]

strawberry blonde, mitski. / tallahasseemp3, tumblr. / ishana, gor3fairy on insta. / fleabag, by phoebe waller-bridge. / love freely, E.C. / richard silken. / girl, SYML. / fleabag, phoebe waller-bridge.

[inkskinned]

oh, this feeling again. you put so much energy into this moment, into this relationship, and it gets eaten and devoured rather than turned back to fuel you. how many times, little sun? how many times can you dance around like this in your warm skin, saying: i'm fine. i'm fine! i love trying so hard.

let yourself be consumed on the stage. why not. nobody is really looking anyway.

[inkskinned]

i have been thinking about the way we, in love, give power to others. this sense - i am allowing you enough room that you could set the house on fire.

when i was younger, people used to tell me it was going to be different after-your-first-love. it has been. it's been easier, most of the time. i know who i am. i used to think it was romantic to say i gave him everything i am. now i know that the right people will not ask for that - they don't want to take from you, only to help you build. i used to think it was lonely, the way adults said we have our own lives. now i know what it is to have that other-life be separated - how wonderful, to have someone i can share with, and someone who celebrates my life and the way i have grown into it.

people said: after you have been hurt, it will be different.

this is true about most things, after all. my experiences were branded on my body. i don't talk about the scars, and you're too smart to ask, and we're both healing. i used to be able to do certain gymnastics tricks - but i fell once, and i haven't been able to get over the mental barrier since then.

the thing is - we learn these stop-measures because someone took advantage of us first. we learn how far is too far because someone forced us too-far. as a kid, i thought there is no too far was romantic. i didn't know better.

it took me a very long time to rebuild parts of my life after him. it took me a very long time to rebuild parts of my character. i think i probably still have rooms without any floors. places that only go down. ceilings full of spraypainted warnings.

i have been thinking about the ways new love comes in. and we crack open each sealed door together, one-at-a-time. and i hear myself in front of her, nervous, saying if you start a fire, please keep it contained in here, it's a place i can afford to lose.

and i hear her, time and time again, utterly confused: why would i do that? it's beautiful in here. i don't want to hurt you.

the way we know it can hurt, and we love anyway. the way we walk the thin ice and say - the risk is worth the skating.

[inkskinned]

watch for the silence they expect out of you. watch for the silence you feel around them. it will show you more, often, than the things they have said.

[blossomfully]

Sue Zhao

Instagram

[blossomfully]

“If I could have done it all again, I would have loved you better. But I could not have loved you more.”

— Sue Zhao // “I loved you in all the ways that I could”

[blossomfully]

“It’ll be weird seeing her again. It’ll be like revisiting a memory that you thought you’d forgotten. Her hair will be longer, or shorter, her hair will have changed; hair always does. Her eyes will be the same. Hearing her voice will be like going back to the place you used to live and noticing the new curtains. Being close to her will be strange. She’ll say something like, “you look well,” and you’ll reply with a, “thanks, you too.” And it’ll feel like death, like an iron fist around your heart. And then she’ll point to your shirt and say, “is that new?” and you won’t have the heart to say you bought it seven months ago after she left, so instead you say, “I haven’t worn it around you before.” When she emits a small laugh you’ll feel the tiniest ounce of pride. She still finds you funny. When she’s telling you about her new life you’ll find your mind wandering into places you didn’t think mattered anymore. Places like, was she in love now and was she being treated well? Places like, did she ever miss you, and in and amongst all of her living did she ever consider coming back?”

— Sue Zhao 

[blossomfully]

“Maybe I wanted to cause you the same hurt that you had caused me. Maybe that was the awfulness of it all. Or maybe I just wanted to forget. Forget the way that you had taken my joy and twisted it into something ugly. Maybe I wanted to relearn to hope and love and to not be scared of it all. Maybe I just wanted to move on and let go of whatever was making me hold on.”

— Sue Zhao

[blossomfully]

“So what?“ she said. “Maybe I wanted to feel love. Maybe I wanted it to burn me. Maybe I wanted to hurt, for once, from a good thing; to feel so much of everything that it hurt me. Maybe I wanted to give in to every emotion that I’d ever felt, let it take me to the woods and shoot me in the chest. Maybe I was tired of fighting to maintain my numbness, tired of fighting against vulnerability. "Maybe I was sick of being ambivalent, of being sceptical, of not believing in love - or at least the notion that it could last. Maybe all I wanted, all I really wanted, was for someone to knock me out so I could forget every little piece of cynicism I’d ever swallowed, and allow myself to be consumed by everything kind and good and light.”

— Sue Zhao // Numbness v Light

[blossomfully]

S.m.zhao

[blossomfully]

“I love you but I do not feel safe to love you. Do you understand? My heart, it does not feel safe. It feels as though it has the tip of one hundred knives pressed against it. One wrong move and it will be sliced to pieces. So it beats ever-so quietly. Loves you ever-so silently. It buys you mangoes. Kisses your cheek. Reaches for your hand but does not grasp it too tightly. It waits for the knives to recede.”

Sue Zhao

[blossomfully]

Yesterday’s post in my notebook ❤️

[inkskinned]

gotta be okay with the ways you hurt me. how you walked away and left everything burning. gotta be okay with how you made a living hell. my doctor says learn to relax, it’ll do wonders for your health.

gotta be okay with this. i go to therapy. i do online pilates where women in tight pastels tell me to just have fun with it. i download another relaxation app.

sometimes i spend hours trying to find the words for it. how agonizingly angry i am. you fucked me up so badly. the worst part is that it wasn’t even about me. it was all to further your own story. i picture getting you in a room and holding a little slideshow party. now, on slide sixty, things are getting juicy,

the worst part is actually that i still find myself making excuses. you didn’t know what you were doing. the worst part is actually that i still stupidly love you, a little bit, in some sick kind of way. the worst part is actually -

gotta be okay. my mother says that the best revenge is a life well-lived. i meal-prep and start new projects and live as well as can be managed. 

i fold each fucking thing i’d say to you and i discard it. i tell myself it wouldn’t make a difference. i find little places in my heart where there’s still something on fire, and i watch it throw a little fit. and then i go and get a big old watering can. and i fucking quench it.

[inkskinned]

we were listening to the radio and singing along and talking about stupid things and later i’d go home humming that same song before realizing: this song used to burn me. it used to be his song or the song that hurt. the song where he broke my heart. the song that watched me open my own heart up.

and i’d just. forgotten about it. about him. about stuff that used to cause me to weep in supermarkets. stuff that was real.

but this is real too. this is more real, somehow. im more real, and more myself. my happiness is real. my life without him is real. 

and the song is just a song again. and my life is my own, and worth living.

i didn’t notice, in all that time - i was healing.

[inkskinned]

i am reminded by a professor - once a person leaves, you will never love like that again.

how wonderful. i will love in a new way each time, then, for new reasons. i will find out that my heart never had a limit on joy. i will know new things.

he says - we can never find our way back to loving the same way twice.

i am not the same person from before, though, am i? why would i want to take a tour of my life through the same eyes? why would i want to hold the same figure-eight? why would i come back to what has already been shoved through my throat? why wouldn't i want to walk in a new garden, with new stones?

it is also never the same sunset twice. the same thunderstorm. the same birdsong. life, in little chaos, holds no ghosts. i will love again, and thank god, it will be different. i move on, and the world says - you will meet someone else, who knows a different way to listen. and when i put my ears against the music again, it will feel like i am understanding a new set of secrets.

how wonderful. my love does not run out. it is remade and recolored and unstained in doubt. gold hair, coffee, the shape of her mouth.

[inkskinned]

how pathetic it feels. to wish someone misses you the way you miss them. you fill your minutes-hours-days with this noise to drown out their memory. you listen to podcasts and try new hobbies and write new poetry. you take up yoga and reading theory.

and it's so hard for you, because not-thinking-about-them is still, in a way, thinking about them. because you are trapped in a cycle - fine see if i care/why don't you love me/i can't shake you/why do i care again. and foolish, you wait, like this time the effort will be different. like this time they'll remember you or think of you or take a moment.

and the whole time they're fine. and you know that. they'd probably tell you - i just am busy - or something like that. but that's the problem, in the end. you are also busy, aren't you? because you're busy thinking of them.

[blossomfully]

People are impermanent. The love of your life will leave you. On a Sunday morning, they’ll kiss you for the last time.

You won’t know it’s the last time, of course. You rarely do.

Later, when thinking back to it, you’ll try to remember whether they lingered for just a moment before they broke away. You’ll try to remember the placement of their hands.

Much later still, you’ll become stuck on the memory of how you met. How you fell in love with their mind. How they surprised you. How they challenged you to become a better person.

You’ll spend Friday evenings trying to disentangle them from your psyche. Like finding an endless array of their socks at the bottom of your drawer. Wishing they would disappear yet being unable to throw them out.

On bad nights, you want to scream. How could you? Of all the people in the world, you were supposed to stay. Out of all the temporality, all that transience - you were meant to be the exception.

You think about calling them, if only to receive a reminder of their voice on the answerphone. You almost do, but something stops you. You remember a poem you read a long time ago. It went something like - 

People are impermanent. The love of your life will leave you. On a Sunday morning, they’ll kiss you for the last time.

Sue Zhao | Nothing but Strawberries