soft smiles & schmaltz

seventh child / traveler / navy brat / writer / nerd

[theramblinggypsy]

new glasses + working on natural hair

[theramblinggypsy]

morning vibes

[theramblinggypsy]

run to me, I’ll wait for you

(I wrote this in 2017 and hehehe)

I want to tell you about all these thoughts about you I have swirling in my head right now. Ever since that sun-soaked Monday night you walked over to my table and started talking to me, my heart has not stopped soaring.

I thought about you this entire summer. I wondered every day what you would do when you saw me again, how our friendship would play out, how D would affect you and I. I harbored my small affection for you in my heart and dreamt of the times we could have, if only opportunity would arise. Every day I asked God to give me patience to wait, to grow me in the waiting, but every day, I asked Him to stop making me wait.

You made my heart light up with the look in your eyes when you suggested we study the CP together. When you said “dammit!” and hit the chair because you weren’t signed up, I took that image into my skull, when you looked back over your shoulder as you left and said, “We should do that,” I wanted to melt.

I want to tell you how I get anxiety every time I go on campus because I might see you. It’s the type of anxiety that desperately wants the thing to happen, but is terrified of it happening: but you dissipate everything in me except for the moment when I see you.

It puzzles me that I can’t remember in detail every conversation we have, every interaction. Normally, I can trace the flow of my conversations with friends, remember word for word what they said, why the conversation shifted from one subject to another. I think when I’m with you, all I know is your eyes, your laugh, the way you use your hands, the intelligence and humor that show in every word you speak. Every time I’m around you, I adore you a little more, even while telling myself we are just friends, the torture of small talk with someone you’re dying to love.

I want to tell you how you bedazzle me. I want to have the courage to flirt with you, to let you know that I like you, but if it doesn’t shine out in my eyes I will never be able to tell you because you leave me tongue-tied. 

listen: for a year now, I have watched you, for a year, I have known that you are not just anybody. I hate the idea that I lost my heart in such an unobjective, unrealistic way, and yet from September 16, 2016, I have known that I will never be objective when it comes to you.

I pray constantly that the Lord will help me to love in such a way as He has appointed. He has given you to me as a brother, as a friend. I know that’s all there is. I don’t want to romanticize my own feelings for you to the extent that I can’t treat you the way that I’m supposed to, to act as if our relationship isn’t anything except what it is. But I need God’s strength not to grab you, to cup your face in my hands, and to tell you, “I have never had any doubts about this: I want to marry you. Let me know when you’re caught up.”

[theramblinggypsy]

it's been a while

i wrote this nearly four years ago:

"It feels strange to mouth the words “I love you” about a man who I haven’t talked to since who-knows-when, but it feels stranger to deny that there’s some type of soul-bond between us. I wonder every day if you know it, too."

and I would like to report that we are now dating 🎉

[theramblinggypsy]

principles of being

whenever it’s sunshine and pretty outside I begin to feel as if I, too, am awakening from sleep. I have never loved spring before I moved further north, where it unfolds with new, sweet surprises each day. In the south, everything bursts into bloom with an explosion of color, and spring can only be differentiated from summer by the intensity of the heat and the coolness of the waters. Most days I miss the south with a slow ache, but sometimes the north surprises me with little gifts of living like spring.

I think a lot about things that bloomed and died before winter. I know death is a cycle of life, that winter kills in order to bring new life again, but this has been a hard truth for me to accept. I have loved you for a long time, and accepting that the death of this love is a good thing is near impossible. 

Even if I can’t love you in the way that I want to, you have taught me a lot about loving and living. I’ve learned that you can’t always choose how people love you, but that learning to accept the love they extend is necessary. I’ve learned to take every day at a time and to choose to be happy with what’s in front of me. I have said before that I live in the future and that you are the realest thing I have ever experienced: you have given me the gift of learning to appreciate the now. 

[theramblinggypsy]

oh memory, where’d you go? I’m in a constant state of waxing nostalgic these days. My time in my adopted town is slowly driving toward its end, and though I’m excited for the things that are next, I already ache for my now. how do you write about feeling sad about things that haven’t yet ended? what do you do with nostalgia for things that are still thriving? what do you say about the inevitability of endings? i think a lot about the cold late nights we spend together. the darkness is marked by laughter, inside jokes, shared grins. swapping beers back and forth, secret smiles, our favorite bar. maybe people hear us being loud for miles. maybe the reverberation of our joy ripples in the world like a stone in water. I know that all of life is shaped by change. Just because a thing is good doesn’t mean it should stay the same. how, though, do you move past good things? how do you move into the fear that the next thing may not be better, but it could still be right? I fear change a little less since you already left. I thought for a time there that I was over you, but I suspect that was just wishful thinking. in one sense I’m glad you left for the summer; it’s easier to feel like I’m over you when you’re not here. In another sense I’m left heartbroken. I feel your absence like a sharp pain every time I spend time with our other friends. the worst part of you leaving is the absence of possibility, too- there is no possibility for me to see you anywhere, no possibility for me maybe to tell you I love you, no possibility for you maybe to return these feelings. In my head I know that had you loved me back you’d have said something by now, but when have my head and my heart ever reconciled with each other? as I face the rest of these warm summer nights without the hope of seeing your smile, here’s what I’m left thinking. Thank you for everything you’ve taught me. You’ve helped me be the version of myself that so far, I like the best, and you’ve also given me the gift of love. It’s not the way I would have chosen this love, but it has helped me grow into a better person. So thank you, and finally, this: no matter what our futures hold, there will always be a small part of me that belongs to you. I don’t think you can love someone for so long and not leave them with some kind of claim on your affections. auf wiedersehen, lover.

[theramblinggypsy]

an anniversary

• I remember kneeling in my room, hands spread open, crying and asking God why.

• I remember thinking, "This will make me strong," holding that like a promise, and then a whimper in the back of my mind: "But I did not want to gain strength this way."

• I remember the days when I stopped remembering. I did not notice the relief then because the slow warmth of happiness creeping in was subtle, but I notice it now.

• What can I say I have learned from this? I have learned that I want to have a heart that's wide open, but that there should be chainlink fences around my soul. I want to think the best of others, but that doesn’t mean disbelieving bad things. I have learned of the joy one can find in pain, and that pain leads you to One greater than pain, heartache, greater than yourself.

• Strength is such a strange concept. I always thought that to be strong, you could never show weakness. Yet now I know that strength is found in weakness, a paradox I do not know how to understand.

[theramblinggypsy]

September 2017, 35mm: eating jambalaya in the park with a group of kind and funny people.

[theramblinggypsy]

how the light gets in

Hemingway is said to have stated, “We are all broken. That’s how the light gets in.”

what I'm realizing tonight is how many different types of brokenness there are. I always think that being broken means a complete shattering of a soul, and that therefore my pain is not as acceptable because it is not as sharp as others'.

being shattered is so hard. a rock through a window, shards of glass, shreds of heart everywhere. I think this is the type of brokenness you never truly recover from. you put a new sheet of glass in the frame, but if someone taps on the panes of your heart you still feel the shooting pain of what happened before.

but it is painful, too, to be fractured, splintered. a cracked bone, a sprained ankle. any weight put on it reminds you of the pain. it doesn't look as broken but there is a constant ache reminding you that you are human, you are hurt, and you need to recover. You don't have to be shattered to feel that splinter of ache.

My teacher used to tell me, "Pain is your body becoming weak so that it can grow stronger again. You must become weak to become strong." I believe he is right, but you weakening and fracturing my heart feels more like a slow torture than an exercise in strength. These cracks spiderweb inside of me, each tendril asking a different question: "Was I too much? Was I not enough? Am I pretty? Why am I not likable? Will I ever be good enough for someone to choose me? How could anyone want my mind?"

I know this will heal over. I know that there is glue that fixes this, the glue of friendship and joy and being happy by myself, of hot coffee on chilly nights, the warmth of a favorite sweater, and contentment in ten thousand tiny joys. But right now there is pressure on this weakness in my heart for you and I am splintered with an ache for hopes and dreams that will never happen with you.

[theramblinggypsy]

let me learn you

I have always lived with my head in the clouds, my mind on my dreams, my heart in the future. reality has always been subjective to me. but you: you are the realest thing I've ever experienced. it takes my breath away that when I'm with you, I live in the present and drink in every moment like I never have in life before. You are a magnet to every part of me and I cannot take my eyes off of you. I have always wanted to have a house to myself, a little space that is all my own, I wanted to be independent and share nothing with anyone. you changed my dream. now all I can dream about is sharing this couch with you, sharing this kitchen, sharing this life. when I see you I live in the moment, but later when I'm alone, I dream of a future with you. twice now, people have told me that I have "love eyes" when I look at you, but how can I not love your brown eyes? I could look at them forever, the way you furrow just one eyebrow when you're thinking, the depth of your stares. How could I not love your dimples and the laugh that rings out at all the same things mine does? how could i not adore your overall dorkiness, the shape of your hands, the manliness of every bit of you? I want to believe that you are electrically charged when you're around me, that the sparks in the air, the fire in my eyes means you feel this too, but instead I find myself thinking: if every action has an equal and opposite reaction, what does that mean about the way I fell for you?

[poetryforplebs]

every time i see your wounds, i wish i could have prevented them. they’re half healed already. you’re working past the my fault and the what if i had. i’m so glad to see you there. i wish you didn’t have to be there. and we both know i was never part of that battle, but i still wish i had been a shield for you. and i catch myself chasing what if’s and might have beens. but that battle is ended.

so now, now i want to give you salve. now i want to tilt the mirrors so you catch all of the light possible. for you, i will hang prisms and bring color back into your life,

as you bring so much color to mine.

@theramblinggypsy

[theramblinggypsy]

walking through the streets of my adopted town this year has been, to say the least, nerve wracking, when every corner around here is a place that he and I stood, every park a place we went together. My school library is filled with stories, including mine: this town is pockmarked with memories that I'm remapping.

but here's the main difference between then and now: I took it upon myself to walk through that trial in silence and solitude, my pain and hurt only expressed to God during innumerable nights of gut-wrenching sadness, when I should have been surrounded by family. don't deprive your family - biological or Christian - of the joy of upholding you in your darkest times (Galatians 6:9).

thank you always to my sister for your inexpressible amount of generosity, your heart that feels others' pain, and your words that are tender, comforting, and sweet.

[vintagelounge]

[theramblinggypsy]

august 31st, 2015

i. I don't want to be the personification of someone's ideal. that has happened to me too many times. don't you know how that stifles somebody? ii. you are a brick tied to me that's dragging me down, but I will kick you off and swim to the surface where I can breathe. iii. i choked on you, on the thought of kissing your mouth. iv. these days, i don't exist to you anymore. "she's not who i thought she was," you say. "she's like a different person." "damn right," i whisper back softly. "i was never who you thought i was."

[theramblinggypsy]

prologue 
it seems right that our friendship mostly played itself out at night. it seems right that the last thing you gave me was a candle and a handful of songs. you told me in one of those songs to burn the candle along with you. I never meant to use you to light my darkness, but sometimes it seems as if that’s what happened.

i. twilight 
I want to tell you about how I remember the first night we hung out together. we went to the walking bridge and walked from one state to another: hung on the bridge railing, picking out the brightest city lights and telling each other our darkest secrets: felt like maybe there was someone else on this campus who understood. I went home and wrote about that night, how I couldn’t wait to see our friendship unfold. life was good.

ii. fog 
I remember the night you hauled me out of my room to see the fog that had furled its way across our campus. it was so thick we couldn’t see the lawn, so we ran all the way across it. eventually we walked to a ditch, sat on a rock, and I told you about the guy who had raped me. you made me feel human at a time when all I felt was darkness and pain. now I feel as if that fog rolling in was a sign of your feelings, which came in thick and fast and covered our friendship.

iii. night time 
“listen,” you’d always say to me. I wish I had listened to you better. I feel like I failed you. I can never forget the look in your eyes when you jokingly asked me what I would do if you jumped off the bridge right then. that pain shone in your eyes later when you asked me to wait with you, but then told me to go. I wish I had stayed, even though we both know that would have made it harder than it was.

iv. what color are memories? 
I think about you every day. I think about the time you told me you loved me, the time I had to tell you I didn’t love you like that. I think about how we ended the semester with you pretending not to see me and me pretending not to notice because we both knew that loving me was killing you. I put the candle you gave me into my car. it reminds me of you.

epilogue 
but listen. I guess after everything, this is what I most want you to know: you are not your depression to me. when I think of you, I don’t think of sadness. to me you are long walks at night, marked with laughter and secret sadness that someone else finally gets. you are drinking hot chocolate and watching sunsets. you are grocery store runs followed by long drives because neither one of us wants to go home. you are a Beach Boys CD in your Jeep because it’s the only CD you don’t hate but also don’t mind losing. you are every song you have ever written, melody and harmony and feelings you can’t quite put into words. you are depth, you are beauty, you are true, and you are the kindest person I have ever known.

[theramblinggypsy]

fade to blue

[theramblinggypsy]

get love, get adventure, get out there || inspiring street art and one of my favorite people

[theramblinggypsy]

lovin you was easy, waiting for you is hard

I've been thinking a lot about love recently. maybe it's the late smoky nights when I wish you were with me; maybe it's those weird times in the middle of the day when I think about the last person I loved; maybe it's just all the different types of love I see breathing into my life. whatever the case, love of all kinds has been on my mind a lot. maybe the main thing I've been realizing is that loving someone doesn't mean being just like them. I always want to form myself into your image and I never give you the opportunity to love me. to love what I love. to love the way that I love it, the way my eyes light up at something that I enjoy. It's funny because I love you like that. I love that you love different things, I'm always watching your face, eyes, body language, noting every single mannerism that shows me how you love something. I guess my idea of sharing it is to make it my interest also, to make myself over into your image. it's been on my mind a lot recently because I have this track record of letting myself be who I think someone wants me to be in order to make them love me, but it keeps coming to mind again and again - I want someone to love me, for who I am, for what I love. maybe compatibility is less about shared interests and more about interest in the person himself. I'm growing in this. I'm learning to be who I am and to be glad in it, to be willing to share it with other people, to accept real love. I'm learning to give it, to see people for who they are beyond just their surface. and I hope someday you love me for every messy, torn part of me, and I hope I learn to love you not for who you are to me, but for who you really are in every part of your being.