STILL ON THE PURSUIT

Of happiness, wholeness, and everything else.

[stillonthepursuit]

Maybe we don’t get a last time. There is no last time to tell someone you love them, to thank someone for damn well saving your life, to stop someone from ruining theirs. Maybe we don’t get to walk in our favorite place, sit down for awhile and thank it. We don’t get to say goodbye. Maybe the last time is just one of the times and it wasn’t perfect, it just was. The last time I saw you we ended on an unmeaningful silence and I tried to hug you. In my mind the hug was endless and it confirmed everything I’ve always known to be true about us. In reality, it was awkward and our arms didn’t interweave well. You told me you didn’t think we’d talk much in the future. I refused to believe you. And it all felt so final and definite and over. I'm not sure if I should say this out loud but I cried and I'm still not sure what that meant to me and if they would have meant something to you.

[stillonthepursuit]

The door bell rings and I want to answer but first I need to wash my hands.

Touch the door knob

Wash my hands

Sign for a package

Wash my hands

Touch my phone

Wash my hands

I call to to tell you that the rose bush has two roses on it, isn’t that incredible?

My hands touched my phone touched my face

Wash my hands

It’s almost midnight and I try to sleep

I panic

Wow this is messy

I wipe my eyes

I panic

Touched my face

Wash my hands

Try to call you

Touch my doorknob walk to the bathroom touch a tissue touch my eyes touch my face touch my phone touch my face

Wash my hands.

Wash my hands again because the first time is to get off the outside dirt and the second time is to cleanse my insides that can’t help but be in a fury.

Try to break free

Check to see if the oven is on

If the burners are on

If the door is locked

Check again

Wash my hands.

-Cyclic

[tylerknott]

“Wild hair from wild wind, and you grinning electric laughing all the while.”

— Daily Haiku on Love by Tyler Knott Gregson

[mooneyedandglowing]

I paint my nails. I apply for jobs. I build a web history of Google searches like: What can I control? I listen to Mercy Street over and over without noticing. I read some. I work some. I write a little. I think in pictures and sounds - see the way I feel. What is another terrible year? If not for all the other terrible years, surely I’d be worse off. But I never wanted any of this. And there’s no one to give it away to. There’s nowhere to go but in. And so I do. I side eye myself. I try to rationalize everyone’s actions and I’m good at it. This lessens your disappointment in them. In others. And it can almost always be done. The self-interest can almost always be rooted out. I love my little family. My mother wears a matching track suit and examines her skin after complimenting mine. I want to photograph her - the only way to keep another. I want to hole up with them, but tomorrow I have to go out and confront the corrupted world. And isn’t that everything now - isn’t everything pulling me and pushing me and I feel as if I have no say but to bow my head and complete the tasks. I get frustrated because I should be asleep. I get frustrated because I don’t have the patience to find the right way to say what I want to say now. I want it all simple. I want what is bent to be straight. I want to make it so. I want to roam a street at night again. I want to bluster around wild like the wind of my name. I want to thrash and scream and laugh and embarrass the timid with myself. I feel so suffocated. I feel so .un.free. and it’s not a unique experience, is it. It’s past midnight. And I don’t want to go to sleep. But for now, it is what it is. So much of this is a lesson in staying in place - living for a little with a slip of patience … a bite of silence.

[bnmxfld]

“You are helpful, and you are loved, and you are forgiven, and you are not alone.”

— John Green

[stillonthepursuit]

My chest

It crackles

When you put your ear against it.

I know you’re searching for my heart beat, but I haven’t been able to find it myself in quite some time now.

The crackling, it’s fluid in my lungs, just one more piece of evidence that I’m really out here drowning.

I wish I knew how to explain the way my brain wraps around a thought like a

tight hug.

No, a squeeze?

No, a death grip.

It resurfaces again and again like a pebble caught in these waves

These thoughts they drown me.

I think our one uniting factor is that we’re all looking for some air to breathe.

[thehopefulquotes]

When something bothered me, I didn't talk with anyone about it. I thought it over all by myself, came to a conclusion, and took action alone. Not that I really felt lonely. I thought that's just the way things are. Human beings, in the final analysis, have to survive on their own.

— Haruki Murakami

[stillonthepursuit]

Around 9pm every night my heart starts to thump.

It sounds like an ocean in my ears, swelling up into a wave

I don’t know if it’s the thought of you or my incurable insomnia or the threat of a sleepless night turning into burning daylight.

But for a few seconds I forget how to breathe.

[stillonthepursuit]

It’s been awhile since I’ve had the courage to write something down.

You see, it’s been awhile since I’ve told you the thoughts that sneak around the back alleys of my brain and pop out for a jump scare effect.

It’s been awhile since that night.

You know the one.

The one where the ghosts not only spoke to me but held me down until I didn’t have any screams or tears or words or sounds left.

I think it took me a full year to wake up, just to notice that I can see all the bones around my sternum.

Is that normal?

[tylerknott]

“I know I struggle, wrestle with things you do not, I know I’m trying.”

— Daily Haiku on Love by Tyler Knott Gregson

[relatablepoetryandquotes]

“I am more sensitive than other people. Things that other people would not notice awaken a distinct echo in me, and in such moments of lucidity, when I look at myself, I see that I am alone, all alone, all alone.” - Henri Barbusse

[mayagsbooks]

"Because if you have the sort of brain that thinks and thinks and never stops, and a heart that feels and feels and never lets up, you have to distract yourself like you’ll die if you don’t."

"Why she left" by @kentonbartlett

[promisesofamazing]

“I’m trying really hard to be this person that has her shit together, that has some form of fucking control over anything that has to do with my life. I’m trying really hard not to be so god damn fucking angry at everything. At the world, at myself, at people in my life. I’m trying to mask it all with some point or validation or giving it a mean by saying “this has to happen for a reason. It had to.” But maybe that’s just it, that’s what’s driving me crazy. Maybe there is no reason why bad things happen or good things happen. Maybe there is no reason and it’s just that, a thing that happened. It’s just the universe being cruel and the universe giving you a break once in a while because if we’re being honest there is ALWAYS something. There will always be a time in your life where it feels like bricks are sitting on your chest and there will always be a time after the bricks when the light peaks through one small crack and you have that moment where you don’t feel like you’re drowning and you think “This is it, this is where things get better. This is where I get better.” And it’s true you do get better. You get better every time, but there will never not be a time when there isn’t bricks sitting on your chest and that is what is so goddamn heartbreaking to me. We are born and we suffer and we live and we are happy and sad and everything in between and then we just die. Our bodies go into the ground or get spread out somewhere that was once meaningful to you if your family or friends know you, if you’re lucky. If you’re lucky you might also find love. I’m trying, I’m really trying to find the goddamn crack in the pile of bricks but fuck. What’s the point? What is the god damn point.”

— Wednesday, March 25th, 2020 11:33 pm

[stillonthepursuit]

“I believe In second chances. I believe in third, fourth, and fifth chances. I believe in good people; that they exist& that I’ve found some. I believe in good people who stick to bad decisions like magnets. I believe time is a made up concept, But that enough of it can make you feel dizzy from propelling you forward. I believe in love, although I said it to boys when I didn’t know what it meant. I believe in letting go and moving the hell on, but I walk slowly sometimes. I believe in “meant to be” and karma and the circle of life bringing back the right hearts when it matters. I believe in the unfairness of life and the pounding of the rain even though both have the power to consume me. I wish things could be different. I wish I could believe that someone is watching over me on the nights where my dreams are several notches closer to hell than my reality. I wish I could believe in us even though I know it’s the beer talking, not your mind and my sober self should know not to brand myself with the words you say after 8 pm. I believe in myself and in my ability to stand strong even when the world shifts underneath me. I believe in you and your ability to fight the dragons in your mind and sweep the ashes in your heart. I believe in new beginnings once we force our bodies into sleep and wake up to the silence before the day has begun and the first 3 seconds where you think you can do anything. I believe that you can do anything. (k.m.)”

— This I Believe-(k.m.)

[purplebuddhaquotes]

“I am homesick for a place I am not sure even exists. One where my heart is full. My body loved. And my soul understood.”

—

[stillonthepursuit]

It's 4am and I'm wide awake listening to the screaming on the street thinking that you can't possibly love me the way I love you because no one ever has.i keep trying to explain how my heart beats irregularly, except at the doctor's so the only diagnosis for this crippling anxiety is hypochondria. I don't know if I can tell you about how my brain runs for no reason at all and I second guess every word I say to the number of times I've tucked my hair behind my ears. This sadness isn't acute but rather a longstanding dull whisper of a pain that lives under my diaphragm. Sometimes I can't breathe at night. I know you've been asking why I scream the way I do but my ghosts won't let me rest. It's all I can do to unclench my fists and give your fingers a place to rest.

You said you wanted to know everything-(k.m.)

[mingdliu-deactivated20210422]

“I want you at your drunkest night - when you cannot think straight and come tumbling through the doorway with a bottle in your hand and a cigarette between your lips. I want you in my bed when you cannot sleep and ask why God does not reveal Himself, and then proceed to wonder if there is an alternative universe out there, where nothing goes wrong and everything falls into its place. I want you when you are slamming the doors and punching holes in the wall out of frustration. Come to me when you are angry and scream, just scream all you want or do not speak at all. I want you when you are tough to handle and when you cannot take care of yourself. I want those rough hands with a soft heart when sarcasm takes over and the only color you can see is red. I will still want you then. I want you when you are drunk or sober (and everything in between).”

— Ming D. Liu