just a kid from the 269.

leslie rae.

[wolfythewitch]

This too shall pass but like holy fuck

[inloveforevr-deactivated2025041]

U can grieve and still live life. U can miss loving someone and love others. You can hold onto the good moments and simultaneously the bad moments. You can take the learning from a person you let go off and use it for the better. You can love someone and they may not be the right person. You can wish someone the best and love them from a distance. You can think fondly of someone and never talk to them again.. mysteries of the world…

[krazycrafter421]

As my theater professor said, “Smart people can hold two opposing ideas in their heads at once.”

[weltenwellen]

Maggie Nelson, Bluets

[latibule-e-deactivated20231012]

— Mary Shelley, from “Frankenstein.”

[movedtofailhag2]

you need to be earnest. you need to tell people that you love them. you need to speak on how you’re feeling honestly. you need to be sentimental. you need to stop letting the fear of other people laughing at you have so much control over how you express yourself. you need to get over yourself. you need to be embarrassing but true.

[fromdarzaitoleeza]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gentle Spirit

[fromdarzaitoleeza]

Jamie Anderson/Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

Grief and love are interconnected

[orpheuslament]

Ritual Is Journey, Chris Abani

[flowerytale]

Wendy Cope, "From June to December: Summer Villanelle"

[firstfullmoon]

I made it through April, May, June; it seemed I had outsmarted grief but pulled the hanged man card repeatedly—the self-same sorrow said a different way.

— Maya C. Popa, from “Signal”

[surqrised]

“I think you lost all interest in this world. You were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your physical body. You went to a world apart and you’re living a different kind of life there. In a world inside you.”

— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

[orpheuslament]

Listening to The Mountain Goats while on public transport, Dante Émile

[luthienne]

Jack Gilbert, from Collected Poems; "Waking at Night"

[metamorphesque]

“I knew when I said I love you that I was inventing a new alphabet for a city where no one could read”

— Nizar Qabbani, Between Us

[hwhwgwhnwnwbwbwg-deactivated202]

“They call you heartless; but you have a heart and I love you for being ashamed to show it.”

-Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus spoke Zarathustra

“I’m quite chocked with tenderness for you, my love , it makes me a bit pathetic to love you so much.”

-Simone de Beauvoir, letters to Sartre

[latibule-e-deactivated20231012]

— Aldous Huxley, from “Brave New World.”

[inkskinned]

something bad happened to you, and you died, and you came back wrong.

not wrong all the way. the little ways. you forget important dates, stopped going out with friends. it's harder to make you smile. you're apathetic towards things you used to love, afraid of places you used to go to cheer up. quieter. flinching. different.

you came back for love. you're still here for love. what pulled you back was a brightness so loud that even death couldn't outshout it. death heard the call and smiled at you and said okay. go home. somebody is waiting for you.

but you came back different. like lot's wife; you've turned into salt. you used to chirp through life in hops and skips; but now you lose skin just standing up. you have to move slower, skimming across this world without-touching-it. most things feel dull - until they're suddenly all-too-much. life, and being alive just rushes up and over you and you get hopelessly crushed.

you try to explain it to them: it is ugly, but this is what you are, now. the huge golden hoop of your halo now a little bronze ring. you are still watering your plants and wearing the same clothes. after all, you worked hard to come home. this life; so odd and off-color, now that you are wrong.

but they waited for you - it's just that they wanted the "you" that happened before this. the "you "that could sing in the show and hug people tight and look at a blade without breaking down to cry. the you with a smile in pictures. god, holyshit, it's like looking at a completely different person, isn't it. that other-you; the one they actually wanted.

you are the consolation prize. you are the body that forgot the ghost. you are the memory of the bad thing, and the death after; like you are wearing that memory as a banner. you are a fragment, an assembly. simulacrum. you don't make eye contact in mirrors, afraid the light will glance off and your true nature will flash back at you.

you hear them talk about it in their hushed, desperate whispers. sometimes they even admit it to your face; harsh and violent, acid thrown at christmas dinner. god, can you just fucking be normal again. you do not remember what normal is. you had to climb so far to get back here; you are far too exhausted. you want to open the glass door of your heart and show all the gears. can you help resolve whatever got messed up?

you try so, so hard. you came back for them. because you believed they would love you, even when you were so horribly broken. because you believed they would be patient. because you believed unconditional meant "without exception." you cannot do things the same way. you just get tired too quickly these days.

you want to put them on a couch and pour them the tea with hands that shake more than they remember. you want to line them up and draw them a map of where you have had to wander. you want to show every bruise in a backsplash; the little helpless ant of your soul carrying all that weight, over and over. you want to say: yes! it is different! but i did it for love!

you want to say: "i'm not the same, but i'm yours and i'm here. can that be enough?"