[remanence-of-love]

[quotefeeling]

“So much of what we learn about love is taught to us by people who never really loved us.”

— r.h. Sin

[remanence-of-love]

[paper-wounds]

[sirarxen4]

Yes this time.

[aaaangel444]

[legendarytragedynacho]

Sophia Loren as Catherine Hubscher (known as "Madame Sans-Gêne") in Madame Sans-Gêne 1961 Dir. Christian-Jaque

[mythologyofblue]

But when you lose someone, you don’t lose them all at once, and their dying doesn’t stop with their death. You lose them a thousand times in a thousand ways. You say a thousand goodbyes. You hold a thousand funerals.

-Sara Seager, The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir

[redstonedust]

the worst part about grief is that it feels like the world should be horrendously earth shatteringly changed, and to an extent it IS but its also the same. to everyone else it's just another tuesday. the world moves on. you have to go grocery shopping.

[houseofwitches123-deactivated20]

To anybody else it's just another day of the week.

But for you it's like the world stopped and sped up its rotation all at the same time.

[soberloves]

via @mattking

[fandomsandfeminism]

Grief is so fucking wild. It sinks into your muscles, forces itself to be felt. It steals your appetite, floods your brain with cortisol. It makes you so, so tired.

If someone you know is grieving, telling them "just let me know what I can do" means nothing. They can't. They don't know. And the small things are too embarrassing to ask for.

Bring them a cheese platter. Pre-Cut fruit. Peanut butter pretzels. Protein shakes (like slimfast) Food that requires no prep and does not create dishes.

Do the dishes. Take out the trash. Sweep the floor. Vacuum the carpet. They won't ask you to do this, but it will help.

A bottle of acetaminophen honestly might help more than flowers. Grief really can cause muscle aches.

[remanence-of-love]

[thewordporn]

[vexheart]

Life finds a way, even in the cracks of concrete.

[esotericsnob]

It always finds a way. 🌼 🌸

[remanence-of-love]

[thoughtkick]

“Time you enjoy wasting was not wasted.”

— John Lennon

[peek-mag]

The Art of Healing Part V: Return

If you had seen him sitting there you’d have first noticed his bouncing knees – an anxious habit – that threw the ceiling lights off kilter and caused an eerie pulsing of the bulbs. 

He was nervous, it was palpable. Perhaps something stronger than beer would be advised. Then again, likely not. 

She breezed through the door, late. She had terrible stomach pains and kept fixing her top. The place was familiar to them both. Didn’t the guilty always return to the scene of the crime? 

She drank martinis, needed something strong. The smile they exchanged was not forced. 

If you’d had seen them sitting there you wouldn’t look away. It wasn’t an easy situation to read, they didn’t blend into the background. There was familiarity, but it was tense, like pushing through water – smooth and resistant. 

Why return to the bar, the page, why return at all? 

They say living in the past is what causes depression, so have no past. She was choosing to have no past – to not let a person exist only in a former state of her being. Because then she was locked there too, stuck also in that intangible place. Some version of herself a “back then.” A version she couldn’t determine if she still or ever really was. 

That night she was honest in a way that she hoped would create comfort, but may have been disarming. She hadn’t always been that way. 

Two years had passed between when they had lived at the apartment around the corner and this conversation. There was a lot to catch up. A lot to get straight. 

If you had seen them sitting there you’d determine he liked pale ales, she was getting tipsy and was trying to be restrained. He had a lot to unload. A lot of untruths to untangle from the headlines. And she had always been a good listener. 

They are old friends you’d conclude. Only old friends with a lot of lost time would sit here till closing. Neither had anything to prove, though they each urgently needed to be understood. 

They didn’t touch, or did they? Perhaps she had tapped his elbow when the bartender was attempting to get his attention, but you can’t remember.

You’d feel as though you knew them just from watching the words bounce between them. You’d know their history, understand that of course they were meeting in summer. You’d sense that the story was not over, but certainly was in a different chapter, and that their plot lines had forever diverged. 

She spoke protectively about a new love. He spoke resolutely about a past love, having tried artificial sweetener and determining, ultimately, he preferred the real thing.

In some sense they owed their lives to each other, were living the after shocks of the decisions they had once made. And in that sense you’d suppose the past does always remain a part of your present, that it all at once surrounds you like air and gravity – real, invisible, necessary. 

When they left the bar you’d notice you hadn’t touched your drink. 

[perfectfeelings]

“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche