“And even after all this time, you’ve got to find it in yourself to love this life. Even after bad haircuts and flu season and nights spent staring at the ceiling, half-drunk and wondering what the point is. Even after your third slice of cold pizza and bug bites and pink eye. Hangnails, selfish sex, that little smudge on the mirror that never goes away. Even alone. Even in love. Even worse. The world, your mother used to tell you, is not your oyster. What she meant was, the world, too, is hard to love. Just like you. And even still. Even now, with all your carefully built walls caving in. Icy sidewalks lined with hungry people. Hopeless eyes. Empty hands open wide. Here’s the truth: she doesn’t love you back. Or maybe it’s him. Shaggy-haired smart ass. He’s too far away to touch you the way you want. Even then. Even when the bananas rot away. Brown and lined with fruit flies. It’s been a year since your grandmother died, and the kitchen still smells like the butterscotch candy she used to make each Christmas. She never got around to teaching you how to make it for yourself. Even so. Look up at the stars every once in a while. Watch how they flicker like the headlights on the highway behind your childhood home. Promise you’ll try to see this life with brand new eyes. A lover whose name you’re only now learning. Even after all this time. Forgive her sharp edges. She, too, is doing all she can. She, too, deserves a chance at reinvention.”

“There’s power in the touch of another person’s hand. We acknowledge it in little ways, all the time. There’s a reason human beings shake hands, hold hands, slap hands, bump hands. “It comes from our very earliest memories, when we all come into the world blinded by light and color, deafened by riotous sound, flailing in a suddenly cavernous space without any way of orienting ourselves, shuddering with cold, emptied with hunger, and justifiably frightened and confused. And what changes that first horror, that original state of terror? “The touch of another person’s hands. “Hands that wrap us in warmth, that hold us close. Hands that guide us to shelter, to comfort, to food. Hands that hold and touch and reassure us through our very first crisis, and guide us into our very first shelter from pain. The first thing we ever learn is that the touch of someone else’s hand can ease pain and make things better. “That’s power. That’s power so fundamental that most people never even realize it exists.”

• if you can’t fall asleep (atmospheric) 
• a brief playlist to calm yourself down
• actually the saddest
• songs for falling in love
• a dreamy mix for late afternoons
• the feeling of homesickness
• soft swing jazz
• dark folk & magical forests
• summer spirit
• five am study chill
• cold summer nights
• nostalgic moonlit drives
• ethereal songs
• gay jams
• classical pieces
• i miss myself
• songs from memes/vines
• film scores
• somewhat bittersweet
• songs i like (alternative)
• musicals