regarding the röttgen pietà, elle emerson
the heart opens and closes. sometimes i go hours without thinking of you, and i find myself absolutely stunned with that fact - it's been whole hours! good days feel like a knot in me is slowly remembering how to release. bad days feel like every muscle in my body is imploding. i don't know i ever feel good. but it's starting to be better-than-just-surviving.
for a while, anything i did just sang of distraction. i couldn't enjoy movies or eating or sleeping since it was all just waiting-to-remember-you. i knew when i finished the book or art project that i'd return to the pain of it, and it flooded every moment with your hair and your laughter. it's been a long spring. more and more i find myself actually-living. not stealing moments away from the grief, but growing them in joy.
i can't stop feeling guilty and fucked up and brutal. on good days, i know i shouldn't want you back. on bad days, i would cut my hand off to feed you an apology. it slams into me randomly, full of roadrash. the endless loop. i still love you/actually fuck you.
i have a really beautiful life i feel immensely grateful for. i hate that i want to show it to you. i have so many opportunities that i've agreed to, so many windows and doors open. they still feel like they belong to you, somehow - like i only did this stuff to avoid you, so it of course is-still-about-you. every poem that's not about you just has your lipstick in the underscore - my words know i'm tiptoeing around your name, and that makes it kind of hurt more.
i'm at the halfway: it's not that i think i'll never be okay. it's that i hate the okay i will be is an okay without you. i hate knowing i'm cultivating an entire garden you'll never see bear fruit.
in and out and in and out of loving you.
fucking hate it when the stuff everybody says "actually works" does actually work.
hate exercising and realizing i've let go of a lot of anxiety and anger because i've overturned my fight-or-flight response.
hate eating right and eating enough and eating 3 times a day and realizing i'm less anxious and i have more energy
hate journaling in my stupid notebook with my stupid bic ballpoint and realizing that i've actually started healing about something once i'm able to externalize it
hate forgiving myself hate complimenting myself more often hate treating myself with kindness hate taking a gratitude inventory hate having patience hate talking to myself gently
hate turning my little face up to the sun and taking deep breaths and looking at nature and grounding myself and realizing that i feel less burdened and more hopeful, more actually-here, that i am able to see the good sides of myself more clearly, that i am able to see not only how far i have to grow - but also how much growth i have already done & how much of my life i truly fill with light and laughter and love
horrible horrible horrible. hate it but i'm gonna do it tho
when i say "romanticise the ordinary" i don't mean "hide all aspects of your life that do not fit under some kind of aesthetic" but rather "strive to find beauty in all the little things because i promise you, happiness can be found everywhere"
My 13 year old cousin came back from a date with her boyfriend and said, "I can't wait to grow up and spend sunday afternoons with him." At first, I wanted to laugh (after all they're just 13), but I remember being 13 and having the world in my hands. I remember getting excited to talk to someone about my dreams and wishes, and how happy these daydreams and fantasies made me. There's this innocence you can only have at 13 and the world rises and falls and crashes and burns every year... until you do not think about quiet sunday afternoons.
So I asked her about the date and heard her giggle about bubblegum flavored ice cream, and how much she loves this little life. I think she makes me love it too.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
on being 23
"the vault" andres Cerpa // "dirty valentine" richard siken // "the glass essay" anne carson // "class of 2013" mitski // "trampoline" you won't // "elephant gun" beirut // "ten years old" you won't // "skeptic goodbye" you won't // "the love song of j. alfred prufrock" t.s. eliot // "by and by" caamp // "the glass essay" anne carson // "another last letter to you" nate pritts // "saying your names" richard siken
being in my 20s is like I understand more of my mother and less than i ever have. My childhood friends are strangers to me and there’s no one i know better. i want to drink wine. i never stopped wanting to climb trees. i know more than I’ve ever known before. I don’t know anything at all. i’m seven years old and sixteen and twenty nine and seventy. I can’t tell when i'm happy. I think the only thing that will make me happy is to be little again. i want to be really old. i go to the ocean and feel like nothing matters more than that. in my bedroom everything matters so much. I go to the grocery store every day. i know how to cook a lot of things but the only thing i know how to eat is fried eggs. I can take care of myself but i want to be taken care of. i want to go home and I don't know where that is. i think it may be somewhere inside of me but i’m not sure
autumn is really like. i brought you some sunlight from when you were 10. didn't the world feel so bright to you then? i'll drench your hands in syrupy nostalgia, so everything you make is stained bittersweet. i'll ruffle your hair with an ice-kissed breeze--it'll be the kindest touch you've had in years. you finally feel like a part of something grander. i'm the last warm hand you hold before winter surrender.
at a certain point you just get tired of your own shit. you have to force yourself to meditate, workout, eat mindfully and read the books to form a routine that gives you a sense of happiness within yourself again. it’s exhausting i know, but you gotta keep fighting for yourself because no one will take care and love you the way you can for own being. this life is not something to go bout so casually, everyday is your first and last time to embrace this moment. this life was gifted to you with a planet to explore and souls to experience. so show up for yourself.
when healing from a person.. you will have thoughts like “I loved them more than I loved anyone, I never knew I could love someone so much, I’ll never love someone that much again..”
It is important to realize that your ability to love that person didn’t come from them, it came from within you. You were always a lover, already someone who could love deeply. Just because they are gone doesn’t mean that goes away. They didn’t give you the capacity to love, they just gave you a place to express it. Don’t give someone else the credit for how hard you could love, that was you and it still is.
i think the thing that makes me the most emotional in life is the realization that everything i have and everything i see has been touched by other people. someone designed the logo of my favorite tea bags and someone decided which paintings should go in the calendar hanging on my wall. someone built the roof above my head and someone paved the street outside my house. someone made this pair of glasses specific for me, someone picked the pear i ate with my lunch and someone designed my favorite sweater. every book i read, every song i listen to, every film i watch, tens, if not hundreds of people had to be there to make it happen. even if i am alone, i am always surrounded by other human beings - a fact that makes my heart squeeze in on itself everytime i remember it.
my anonymous friend sent me this and i thought this was really beautiful
Obviously there are many things to dislike about adulthood but as someone who grew up in an abusive household for whom adulthood offered the only chance at an escape, it's incredibly important to me that i romanticize adulthood whenever possible because i know there are kids and teenagers like me out there who are seeing nothing but complaints about rent and taxes and the loneliness of living on your own and i know they're going to internalize all of that and assume it means that adulthood won't offer them the freedom and safety they've been dreaming of. So while i never want to minimize the difficulties of being an adult, i also want to highlight how incredibly nice it can be to finally have ownership of your life and your body and your time and money and food and everything else in a way that you never had before. You can choose when you wake up! You can choose what you have for breakfast! You can choose when to go to sleep or if you want to (inadvisably) stay up all night watching tv in the living room! In the living room! You can choose what to watch! These are little things, but they are worth taking pleasure in, and they are worth looking forward to.
Oh. Man. I'm in my 40s now, but can STILL remember the first apartment I lived in alone. The first week, I had nothing. NOTHING. I slept on the floor wrapped up in curtains, until a friend came to visit and was like "welp. This ain't keepin' on" and gave me a folding bed and a couple of blankets. There were part of it that were just... not fun. You know what I did, though? I made cookies. Because I wanted them, and nobody could keep me from using the kitchen. I got a cat, because nobody could tell me "no". I took long, hot bubble baths because the bathroom - and the bathtub - were MINE and nobody else's. I turned MY music up and danced around MY living room all day (but was aware of the family with children downstairs, so shut down the one person party before it got too late). I bought a cast-off couch for cheap and had friends help me bring it in, and sat on MY couch and sewed. And crocheted. And started to teach myself to knit. The only one there to tell me "no" was the kitten, and she loved playing with the yarn. There were things about it that were exceptionally hard. I was a pregnant single waitress truly struggling to pay bills and put food on the table. But that's not what stuck. What stayed with me, and what was important, was those little things that made being an adult worthwhile.
You will get out and you will get free and it still rains, sometimes, but you get to decide whether to stay in or put up your umbrella or just let it pour down your face while you stomp puddles. You get to choose. It's not paradise, but it is, in the end, yours, which is such a relief. And all the things they say about the best of life being free - that's true. You will have happiness of your own making.
