Discover Top Posts Tagged with #ryan o connell

It's mortifying to be the one who remembers.

Ryan O’Connell

Truth

Here’s how I look at it: there are so few people you really connect with in this world. There are so few people with whom it really makes sense so you can’t let your fear get in the way of going after someone you love.

#ryan o connell #thoughtcatalog

Your mother, your father, your grandparents: they all look at you like you’re some prized jewel and they tell you over and over again just how lucky you are to be young and have your whole life ahead of you. “Getting old ain’t for sissies,” your father tells you wearily.

You wish they’d stop saying these things to you because all it does is fill you with guilt and panic. All it does is remind you of how much you’re not taking advantage of your youth.

You want to kiss all kinds of different people, you want to wake up in a stranger’s bed maybe once or twice just to see if it feels good to feel nothing, you want to have a group of friends that feels like a tribe, a bonafide family. You want to go from one place to the next constantly and have your weekends feel like one long epic day. You want to dance to stupid music in your stupid room and have a nice job that doesn’t get in the way of living your life too much. You want to be less scared, less anxious, and more willing. Because if you’re closed off now, you can only imagine what you’ll be like later.

#thought catalog #20s #growing up #Ryan O Connell

"The second time you fall in love with someone, you’re going to feel so relieved. When you get your heart broken for the first time, you can’t imagine loving someone else again or having someone else love you. You worry about your ex finding love before you do, you worry about being damaged goods. And then it happens. Someone else loves you and you can sleep well at night."

I am in love with this post.

#thought catalog #the second time you fall in love with someone #ryan o connell #love #2nd love

"Read this quote by Harvey Milk. Go after her. Fuck, don’t sit there and wait for her to call, go after her because that’s what you should do if you love someone, don’t wait for them to give you a sign cause it might never come, don’t let people happen to you, don’t let me happen to you, or her, she’s not a fucking television show or tornado. There are people I might have loved had they gotten on the airplane or run down the street after me or called me up drunk at four in the morning because they need to tell me right now and because they cannot regret this and I always thought I’d be the only one doing crazy things for people who would never give enough of a fuck to do it back or to act like idiots or be entirely vulnerable and honest and making someone fall in love with you is easy and flying 3000 miles on four days notice because you can’t just sit there and do nothing and breathe into telephones is not everyone’s idea of love but it is the way I can recognize it because that is what I do. Go scream it and be with her in meaningful ways because that is beautiful and that is generous and that is what loving someone is, that is raw and that is unguarded, and that is all that is worth anything, really." "Let’s go after the things we want, let’s love each other brutally and honestly, and not worry about the consequences. Let’s release the feelings inside of us and let them land somewhere special. Otherwise, we might have a lifetime of longing in front of us."

#thought catalog #ryan o connell #want #you need to go after the things you want

You Deserve to fall in Love

You deserve love. Not just any kind of love but, like big “I think I’m going to puke if you touch me (in a good way) and regress into a 16-year-old psycho if you don’t text me back” kind of love. You deserve to feel like a sexual being and have someone around who wants to see you naked all the time and doesn’t mind that you have cellulite or that your stomach has terrifying pockets of fat because bodies are flawed and you better deal with it, bitch.

You deserve to be proven wrong, to be brought back to life by someone’s kindness at a time when you thought that no one would ever love you again. The song does not remain the same. Lo and behold, the person you like actually wants to date you and now you know that you’re not the hideous monster you thought you were. Your faith has been restored. You’re lovable. You have the relationship to prove it.

You deserve to have high highs again, even if that means experiencing the occasional low. You forget the euphoria you often feel when you fall in love. You know on a certain level that it feels amazing but you forget the specifics. Like, how your life immediately becomes a stupid Taylor Swift song and your heart does somersaults over something as simple as a sweet text message or phone call. Every ounce of maturity and pride you’ve carefully cultivated over the years disappears and suddenly you’re just another person who’s fallen in love and is acting like a smitten teenager. It’s totally embarrassing but you’re too happy to care.

You deserve to do annoying couple-y things like making each other mixes, walking down the street hand-in-hand, making out in bars, and posting stupid pictures of the two of you on Facebook. Yes, everyone will hate you but, screw it, you’re in love! You’re owed this experience. You’ve never been that annoying person in a relationship, or at least you haven’t in awhile, so why not just go for it and let everyone know you’re in love? Your internet presence will suffer but who needs validation from the internet when you have a real life person giving you a scalp massage before bed every night?

You deserve compassion, understanding, oral sex, long, lingering make out sessions, and spooning. You deserve to feel safe and spoken for. Most importantly, you deserve passion. Big, messy, disgusting, and beautiful passion. Having that means you’re living and loving with a capital L. You’ve unlocked the secret. You get it now.

You only live once so why don’t you love a lot? Time is too precious to sit around and deny yourself this kind of romantic fulfillment. When you think of all the time you’ve wasted closing yourself off from human connection, doesn’t it make your heart sick? We were built to love. Go do your job, dammit!

#ryan o connell #love

Your mind is like a giant outdoor music festival filled with dentists who are holding drills and you keep running into old best friends from middle school and running out of things to say and, oh my god, is that your ex over there? Why are there giant families huddled in a food court? YOU’RE TRAPPED. AND EVERYONE HERE IS RICH.

9 Places That Will Give You Major Anxiety (Ryan O'Connell)