Turn The Paige Burn The Book

A collection of the intrusive thoughts, unpleasant feelings, and the deepest, darkest secrets that I’m too afraid to share. A montage of self loathing, self reflection, and silent cries for help. This is what the devil on my shoulder whispers in my ear when I crave self destruction.This is what the angel watching over me soothes me with whenever I lose my way.This is the love that eats me alive every day.This is the depression that weighs me down like a weighted blanket draped over my shoulders.These are my dreams turned nightmares. Whenever I get tired of yelling, I come here to whisper. No one knows me here. This is where I come to be alone.

[turnthepaiiige]

Just writing myself a little note that I can pin to the top of my profile… A note just for me.

While I may have moments of overwhelming weakness, I can always find strength hiding behind my unwavering stubbornness and underneath my sheer willpower. I was cursed with defiance but blessed with resiliency. I may be anxious, but I am never afraid.

Throughout the endless self sabotage, I have somehow survived.

[climbingthefloors]

[stood-onthecliffside]

[turnthepaiiige]

A letter to the version of myself I love the most…

The first time I saw her, I thought—no, not thought, recognized—like catching my own reflection in a window I didn’t know was there. Not just her face, though that would have been enough. The same tilt of the eyes that look like they’re always asking a question they already know the answer to. The same mouth that hesitates before smiling, like joy is something to be considered before it’s given away.

She looks like me.

She acts like me.

She carries my smallest, most invisible habits as if they were heirlooms.

Sometimes she turns her head a certain way, brushes hair behind her ear with the same absent-minded grace, and it feels like watching a memory move freely outside of my body.

When she sings, it undoes me a little.

Songs I used to hum quietly to myself, songs that lived in the back of my throat when I was her age, come spilling out of her—but brighter, lighter, like she found the parts of them I never reached. She sings them in her own voice, and somehow they sound more like me than I ever did.

She does her makeup the way I would if I did mine every morning—careful but effortless, like she’s not trying to become someone else, just gently outlining who she already is. I watch her and wonder if this is what it feels like to get a second chance at being seen correctly.

She looks at the world the way I wish I did.

Open.

Unflinching.

As if disappointment hasn’t yet introduced itself properly.

And I am jealous of her in the quietest, most reverent way. Not a jealousy that takes, but one that kneels. I envy her enthusiasm, the way it spills over the edges of her life without apology. Her grace, the kind that doesn’t even know it’s being watched. Her loyalty, fierce and uncomplicated. All the love she has to give, offered freely, without the calculations I learned somewhere along the way.

I watch her play sports and feel like I am on the field next to her getting wind cramps from running but cheering her on nonetheless.

My body remembers things hers is just learning—how to push, how to fall, how to get back up without making it look like it hurt. And I am there with her, in every step, in every breath she doesn’t notice she’s taking.

Her smile is dangerous.

Infectious in a way that feels almost physical, like it passes from her to me without asking permission. When I look at her smile I feel like I am smiling myself, like joy is something we share a bloodstream for.

She used to crawl after me everywhere I went.

Little hands on the floor, determined, relentless, as if distance itself was unacceptable. I couldn’t leave a room without her finding me, as though I was something she needed to orbit.

Now she is taller, louder, her world wider than just the space I occupy—but when she jumps on my back, sudden and laughing, I feel it again. The weight of her, familiar and sacred. I feel like I am carrying my baby again.

Time collapses in moments like that.

Folds in on itself like a letter reread too many times.

She is so creative it almost feels unfair.

Her hands paint the pictures my mind daydreams.

Things I never said out loud, never knew how to shape, appear in color and form through her like she’s translating something I’ve been trying to say my entire life. I watch her create and feel both exposed and understood.

We are the same in simple ways—shared expressions, mirrored gestures, the rhythm of how we speak when we’re excited.

We are the same in extravagant ways—how deeply we feel, how stubbornly we love, how we both walk into the world as if it might either break us or become us.

She is my twin, but not in the way people expect.

She is not my copy.

She is my continuation, refined.

And the strangest, most humbling truth of all is this:

I am proud to be like her.

Not the other way around.

[paper-wounds]

[elisabethel]

please do not repost without credit

[havingapoemwithyou]

it’s just a city, darling by Lonard Cohen

[loserpumpkin]

I want so deeply to spend a lifetime with you.

It doesn’t matter where we are. It could be a crowded city, a quiet village or even a room with nothing but our laughter.

It doesn’t matter how, with grand plans or no plans at all. What I truly want is the certainty of your presence close to mine.

What I crave is not adventure on distant shores but the simple rhythm of us breathing in the same space. The ordinary miracles mean everything to me.

Your voice drifting through the room, your hand reaching for mine without thought, your eyes meeting mine in the middle of the day as if the whole world stopped for that glance.

I long to sleep in your arms, night after night, resting in the safety of you. In your presence, silence feels full and darkness feels kind.

I long to wake morning after morning to see your face, soft and unguarded, smiling like the first light I want to know.

Love, to me, is not measured in grand gestures but in the repetition of your nearness. It lives in the way one day folds into another, always carrying you within it.

It is in the way my heart learns the rhythm of your heartbeat as if it were my own.

So let the years pass and let the seasons turn. As long as you are beside me, I will have everything.

Because my deepest desire, my only desire is to love you endlessly. In every night. In every morning. In every quiet moment that eternity allows us to share.

I love you. Always.

[the-portrait-of-a-lover-deactiv]

— Carl Jung

[paper-wounds]

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

“I want my body to be his body, and inside his body, and for my skin to be his skin, and for me to be trapped under it, and slowly dissolving into him, and pulsating along with the beat of his heart, and I want him to grab me and shake me and say you're mine, you're my own, we are one in the same, come move into my chest, come rearrange what's left inside of me, I breathe for you so let me do it on your terms. Take my heart, take it, I'm afraid of it.

Replace it with something easier to understand. Maybe a fist. Maybe a stone. Etch your name into me. Be my soul, my hunger, my scream of longing. I don't know what to do anymore, my love.

I can't take this hurt, this violence, this anger any longer. You'll eat me alive and I'll let you because being a meal will absolve me of this guilt. Maybe my saviour is my executioner. Maybe my beginning with you was always meant to be my end.”

[giggleengine]

[thememedaddy]

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

[turnthepaiiige]

Which is a better way of asking to take the scenic route; pretending to be afraid of the highway or asking your passenger if they too miss the trees and the rolling hills and the sound of the quiet wind that whistles by when you roll the windows all the way down? I’d drive 12 hours just to have you place your hand on my knee while my foot rests on the gas pedal. If I set the cruise control, it’s to align how many miles per hour the car is traveling with the beats per minute of my heart. Each curve in the road spells out our own windy love story. The radio is playing our song on repeat but the volume is turned all the way down to a whisper. I see the glimmer of a cross atop a church a few miles away. As we get closer, I feel the weight of my own prayers - those that have gone unanswered as well as those that brought me here. If I believe in God does that mean that God believes in me? Because every time I stop to stare at the sky I feel completely alone. Sometimes at night I pretend the stars are staring back at me. If we drove straight across the country, we could stop at every farm stand along the way. We could Buy kumquats because they're called kumquats. We could fill baskets and baskets with apples and peaches, enough to make a pie for every stranger we meet along the way. I always forget to call home, so I Write letters and poems and stories that rhyme. I cannot place the voices reciting the thoughts rattling around inside my mind. Let’s go to bed late and rise early to hunt the moon. And then for breakfast we’ll Eat pastries whose names we can't pronounce. Spend the afternoons memorizing words from languages across the world. We’ll Astonish everyone we meet if we keep the meetings short and sweet. Sharing pleasantries outside of graveyards while we wait for the sun to go down, and when it’s dark enough to hide, we’ll haunt the hallways we’ve built inside of our minds. When the sun rises on fields of lilacs, we can sing, even if we sing poorly. We can dance through fields of lavender until the smell makes us dizzy. We should make each other promises to smile more… because We're nothing but brief bodies. Hearts, fragile as parakeets. Spit, lips, and longing. All we've got is this life is one and other and the clouds on the horizon. I remember what being alive feels like when the sun set is pink and purple and every hue of blue you can imagine. Why follow directions when we won’t know our destination until we arrive anyway. I’ll let the tires slowly roll to a stop and we’ll retire by the sea and fill our lungs with the necessary salt mixed in with the breeze. I’ll hear seagulls in my dreams, see tsunamis in my nightmares, hold my breath underwater just to try and stay awake. And as we leave footprints in the sand before we recline on the shoreline, will you still have your hand on my knee? I hope it stays there until the tide washes us away. Our heart beats will synchronize with the waves. And just to seal our fate, we’ll set the car ablaze and roast marshmallows in the flames. S’mores made with shells. And when you’ve had enough of me and I’ve had enough of you, we’ll build a raft made of driftwood and we’ll float into the abyss. The wales will sing songs about our love. Our bones will eventually wash ashore like a message in a bottle… a message I’ve sent to you in another lifetime where we’ll find each other again somehow. I’d recognize your eyes anywhere. Get in, I’ll drive.

[havingapoemwithyou]

One Heart by Li-Young Lee

[onthelearningtongue]

ideation