A Place For My Thoughts

Em. She/Her. Graduate psychology student. Writer. Full time PSR advocate.

[kosmogrl]

[septemberkisses]

the fact that i'm no longer the same age as the protagonists of novels and films i once connected to is so heartbreaking. there was a time when I looked forward to turning their age. i did. and i also outgrew them. i continue to age, but they don't; never will. the immortality of fiction is beautiful, but cruel.

[writingandmybrain]

I crave poetry. I revile in the joy that someone else created through a few lines of words. I marvel as their stories slide off their tongues. And then I get sad. Because I’m never quite sure that I have something to say. Surely not something as long, or as lovely. Will my words ever mean as much to someone and theirs mean to me?

12.26.2023

-Em

[writingandmybrain]

You said you wanted space, and I’m trying to give it to you. But it is so hard when I still sense your pain. When I still worry about the war waged in your mind. I want to be there, I want to fight, hell I want to take your monsters and hide them from you. I would rather fight them every day than give them another shot at you. But you want space. And I don’t know if that is your way of protecting me, or if you don’t think I am strong enough. But either way, you are making me helpless.

So when you are alone, fighting for your mind, just know I am trying to respect you, and protect me. And I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

12.26.2023

-Em

[glowcowboy]

i hope if nothing else i am remembered for being kind

[quotefeeling]

“I’d love to be in love.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

[quotefeeling]

“All relationships have one law: never make the one you love feel alone, especially when you’re there.”

— Unknown

[writingandmybrain]

I’m sitting here begging my body to let me cry. Let me feel anything. I am empty in the worst way possible. I know I should feel. I miss missing you. But I’m alone here now, without your smile. And I don’t want this life. It should have been yours. But I’m so shattered by your loss that I can’t feel anymore. And that makes me feel like a monster.

12.24.2023

- Em

[thebluehairedgurl-deactivated20]

us fr

[writingandmybrain]

Conversations with my mother

I tell you I’m not meant for love. This is not a way of seeking attention. This is me attempting to make amends for hurting you. I tell you I’m not meant for love in the same way I am not meant to be an Olympic figure skater. I could work at it. I could practice, but there would be pain. I would get hurt. And I can’t sacrifice that on a chance. I tell you I’m not meant for love. This way you might understand that my decision to not have kids is not a personal attack but a warning “I’m not built for this”. I tell you I’m not meant for love the same way a speedboat isn’t meant to cross the Atlantic. I don’t have the energy to get all the way there. I don’t have it in me to weather the storms. I would crash and break long before I ever got to love. I tell you I’m not meant for love. Not for you but for me. I use these words to warn myself, remind myself, to protect myself. I am dangerous when it comes to love. I tell you I am not meant for love.

12.23.2023

- Em

[writingandmybrain]

I heard your name today. For the first time since we stopped talking. It was just some mom talking to her son in a store, but I was completely caught off guard by the ache it left in my chest. I miss you and you were never even mine.

12.23.2023

- Em

[writingandmybrain]

I have never loved, and I wonder a lot what that has to say about me.

12.23.2023

- Em

[writingandmybrain]

I’ve heard that love is a choice. But I don’t want to love. Not in the traditional way, at least. I want to love with patience. Like a pet waiting for you to come home. I want to love with kindness, like a mama duck waiting for her ducklings to waddle across the road. I want to love with wonder. Like a little kid learning to swim. I want to love in appreciation like a cat soaking in a sun spot. I choose pure love. Innocent love. Unrelenting love

12.22.2023

-Em

[acutelesbian]

A lot of people ask me what my biggest fear is, or what scares me most. And I know they expect an answer like heights, or closed spaces, or people dressed like animals, but how do I tell them that when I was 17 I took a class called Relationships For Life and I learned that most people fall out of love for the same reasons they fell in it. That their lover’s once endearing stubbornness has now become refusal to compromise and their one track mind is now immaturity and their bad habits that you once adored is now money down the drain. Their spontaneity becomes reckless and irresponsible and their feet up on your dash is no longer sexy, just another distraction in your busy life. Nothing saddens and scares me like the thought that I can become ugly to someone who once thought all the stars were in my eyes.

[fat-thin-skinny]

this fucks me up every single time

[acutelesbian]

I never expected this to be my most popular poem out of the hundreds I’ve written. I was extremely bitter and sad when I wrote this and I left out the most beautiful part of that class.

After my teacher introduced us to this theory, she asked us, “is love a feeling? Or is it a choice?” We were all a bunch of teenagers. Naturally we said it was a feeling. She said that if we clung to that belief, we’d never have a lasting relationship of any sort.

She made us interview a dozen adults who were or had been married and we asked them about their marriages and why it lasted or why it failed. At the end, I asked every single person if love was an emotion or a choice.

Everybody said that it was a choice. It was a conscious commitment. It was something you choose to make work every day with a person who has chosen the same thing. They all said that at one point in their marriage, the “feeling of love” had vanished or faded and they weren’t happy. They said feelings are always changing and you cannot build something that will last on such a shaky foundation.

The married ones said that when things were bad, they chose to open the communication, chose to identify what broke and how to fix it, and chose to recreate something worth falling in love with.

The divorced ones said they chose to walk away.

Ever since that class, since that project, I never looked at relationships the same way. I understood why arranged marriages were successful. I discovered the difference in feelings and commitments. I’ve never gone for the person who makes my heart flutter or my head spin. I’ve chosen the people who were committed to choosing me, dedicated to finding something to adore even on the ugliest days.

I no longer fear the day someone who swore I was their universe can no longer see the stars in my eyes as long as they still choose to look until they find them again.

[conceitedtrash]

This is so fucking important and I think it’s something I needed right now

[resqectable]

“I plant roots so deeply in the people I love that I always lose a piece of myself when they go.”

— Unknown

[writingandmybrain]

But maybe that’s a beautiful thing for I may live on. When they think of me and they show a touch more kindness, laugh a little harder at a joke because of some distant memory of me. In the end I am okay losing a piece of me, as long as it brings some kindness in the dark. For that, I would give everything.

12.21.2023

-Em

[surqrised]

“No-one will love you exactly the way you want them to. You just have to let them do their best.”

— Unknown

[remanence-of-love]