#lorensjournal

[itsloren-notlauren]

With strong belief, I truly don’t think I have ever been loved. I’ve been sought after, i’ve been undressed, i’ve been unraveled and I have been property to the ones who deserve me the least but in this life atleast, love hasn’t been something my body has been familarized with but i’m okay with this truthful tragedy. The closest thing to love I have known is walking in the door and seeing her cheeky smile from the couch and her arms wrapping around my waist welcoming me in, once again. When she puts her hand in mine and brushes her fingertips back and forth in the pattern of my palm, I know it isn’t love but it is the closest thing to even beginning to understand the 10,000 meanings of what love actually and unapologetically is. When she rolls over on Saturday morning and pulls my body to hers attempting to get me up for breakfast at 8 am, it feels like home, it feels like fresh air and it almost feels like love everytime but what do I know about love? When she’s falling asleep and her smile falls to a soft smirk as she fights the tiredness to keep me drawn in conversation for a few minutes longer, i’m almost convinced everytime that this is more than infatuation. Hearing her say “5 more minutes,” when I try to force a goodnight out of her is what any normal person would deem as love but its different. We don’t love eachother. We’re just there. Always on the other end. I wouldn’t dream of my clothes falling off my shoulders, I wouldn’t {in my wildest dreams} ever feel the need to decompress into another human as I do her. It’s not love, maybe it’s not close but it’s something and that’s worth everything.

// and then some

LM

[itsloren-notlauren]

When I was growing up, my mom was always unbearably realistic with me about the truth of love. She would always say that no matter how desperately in love you were with someone, sometimes love just isn’t enough. There would always be that chance. Loving you was exactly what she warned me about. I was the happiest I had ever been, we were so in love. My soul rested so surely in yours I thought we would always be as we were in those moments but here we are a year later so broken from the history of our short candlelit flame that burnt out so slowly I barely remember you ever leaving {me leaving}. I still reach for you in the middle of the night when I can’t keep your memory off my head that has been pounding ever since the day I saw your face for the first time after I ripped you to shreds. (i’m sorry). The coldest I have ever been was choosing my freedom to dance around the world with no one to answer to when I happened to be in love with the one person who let me be the most free I had ever been. Her love was freeing. I still look for her on the tip of every mountain but all I see is this waterfall. It seems to flow a little quieter without you here with me. Even the trees around me seem to hang a little closer to the ground without our cheeky smiles filling the air with that word we can’t seem to speak into existence anymore- love. Her heart is still the home all of my faith is nestled in. She cut her hands picking up the broken pieces of the person I used to be but I can’t help being in love with the thought of a human being my saving grace. She is the only reason I am still here, the only reason I didn’t end it when I rushed to her house hours away at 4 in the morning- she always had her little ways of saving me when she didn’t even know it but even still, sometimes the bad days cloud the sunshine that fell perfectly around her shadow and just like mom said..sometimes love isn’t enough.

// maybe one day

LM

[itsloren-notlauren]

I would be okay with you leaving, I would bloom once again after all the ashes had cleared and embrace the love that is still left within me. I would go about my day and when I reached your side of the city I would admire it for what it once was and turn away {if my smile fades and the tears start to roll, I apologize for missing you a little more than I should}. If you ever called, I would wish you a life full of love and luck but I wouldn’t beg to be in it. If the day came where we bumped into eachother and another girl wore your hand in hers, I would only pray to God that you give her the love you both deserve because I had to live with the notion of never knowing. I would survive losing you. I have lived through the suffering of going on without you before and if I have to walk through life with clouded faith once more, away i’ll go. What I can’t make sense of is the mess we’re entangled in. You let me go and you draw me in. You write me off and then you scribble my name back in your life at your convenience. Your voice is the calmest thing I have ever known but it is also the most destructive storm flowing in and out of my ears. I shouldn’t have to fear you leaving when I am giving you every piece of me and praying for only a fragment of you in return. So leave me or be with me because I am too engulfed with love and life to let you drain me of all I am throwing at you.

// love or leave

LM

[itsloren-notlauren]

7 months ago, we were just two strangers on the phone playing a game of who said what. 7 months ago, you were just a name to me, you were just a face in a crowd of people I got lost in every Friday night. 7 months ago, you were just an energy in the air that I felt on my shoulders every time you walked  by, 7 months ago you were just another person.  Now? You’re the person I want to lay next to at night and talk about all of the worlds worries with until one of us passes out and the other can’t help but crawl closer and press our bodies up against each other and drift away too. You are the person I have shared the most simplistic of mornings with {but my most cherished}. I use to pick on you about your reputation and all of the things I had heard through the grapevine. You would just laugh and tell me to find out for myself. So I did. I paid close attention to how you held my hand in traffic and how soft your kisses were when you left for work. I listened to how you talked about people of your past {how you never had a bad word to say about any of them}. I could almost swear on the days I woke up next to you, I saw your halo before my eyes could even open. 7 months ago, I only knew what I heard. Now, I know what I feel and that makes up for all those times I didn’t take the chance sooner. Now, you’re not just a face in the crowd that I happened to run into on occasion, you’re the only face I ever search for in a sea of hundreds of faces.

LM // then and now

[itsloren-notlauren]

“You will find pieces of yourself in the people that were meant to be in your life.” No, no, no. You find yourself with the right people. There is no “missing piece” waiting to be found. You have always been you but now you radiate under the essence of love in it’s finest form and now you feel like someone. You feel it in your bones that now, maybe just MAYBE you can wake up everyday and feel that your heartbeat isn’t pounding out of your chest wondering how many times your heart can be broken in a span of 24 hours. When you’re not with her, you crawl in your bed at night and wish that time could slow in her presence. You look at the stars from the corner of your window and you grin because you feel it in your chest that the night sky has ahold of her eyes as well. “What do you think stars are?” man, oh man. “..dreams, everyones dreams are simply a set of stars that follow them around. See, over there- those aren’t our stars, they’re someone else’s.” What about you? Who sent you? How hard did you fall? How was the sky? Was it anything like earth? Did the moon say that I was rambling on again? Because you, you’re a fallen star and you’re the dream that has followed me around for countless days and nights. You are what I have been talking to at night, you are my entire set of stars. Everything they stand for, they make us whole. Maybe the stars are the "pieces." You think? // when we’re apart, look up

@itsloren-notlauren

[itsloren-notlauren]

More often than not, I found myself moving along with the motions as if they were apart of my identity. The same people-pleasing routine, with a smile plastered along my face that weighed my head down after a long day of pretending to enjoy those 12 hour shifts. As much inadequate human contact I encounter in the “working industry”, you would think I would have found purpose by now. So many wandering souls with their own set of perks and demises- but no. I haven’t found purpose. Better yet, the little dignity I did have has been stripped from my core by the power of business. When asked, “What do you want to do with your life?” I’ve always said the same thing with my shoulders broadened and the exact convincing tone each and every time and their responses have never failed to stray in different directions. “Do what makes you happy.” I almost laugh because I know, from experience that they don’t mean an ounce of that sentences weight. Why don’t they say what they mean? “Do what makes you money.” We all know they’re thinking it because truth is, know their corporate jobs aren’t an exciting adventure that awaits. So I have promised myself to never settle for the purpose of a dollar. With nothing to show for any money ever titled with my name, this society of wealth has drained who I am and I won’t uproot the wholeness of my heart to be corporally inclined. We don’t have to settle just to make a buck. We have soul and passion and that’s got to be more of value than any check i’ve ever signed.

loren mclelland // I don’t need money, I need heart

[itsloren-notlauren]

“How does it feel to know where you should be without having the ability to be there?” Well, it feels empty. Like the days aren’t adding up to equal some grand masterpiece. It’s dark and bland. It’s knowing my purpose and not being able to fulfill it. It’s being years ahead of education systems, it’s watching others live your dream while you stay up all night to submit that assignment that’s due at midnight. It’s knowing everything and doing nothing. It’s living without a meaning but holding onto a thread of hope that whispers in your ear each night, “Be gentle with yourself, your time is coming.” It feels meaningless right now, without a doubt but that’s not it. “Well, What does that feel like then?” It feels like the future is a little too mesmerizing so today keeps repeating itself like a forecast of bad weather until it’s time. “Time for what?” "Time to show the world who I really am.

(via @itsloren-notlauren )

[itsloren-notlauren]

November 27, 2016