№ 17.

"I am fucking insane but my intentions are gold and my heart is pure."

She was too quiet, or she was too loud. She took things too seriously, or not seriously at all. She was too sensitive, or too cold-hearted. She hated with every fiber of her being, or loved with every piece of her heart. There was no in-between for her. It was either all or nothing. She wanted everything but settled for nothing.

"i didn’t want you to only fuck me, i wanted you to love me. but i didn’t know what to

 convince you with besides my body."
Lora Mathis.
(this is the story of my life)

this time last year
i was a mess and i feel
like a mess again. 
A messy haiku - JW

growth is painful. change is painful.but nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong. 
Mandy Hale

“She had a heart that swallowed every soul that dared to love her. I didn’t mind being in the back of her throat.”

“That’s what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you’re not so lovable.” 
Deb Caletti.

“I belong to you and always have. Our day will come.”
Amy Winehouse, from a letter to Blake 

What I love most  
about her 
is that she 
knows how to  
fuck reality 
and 
make love to 
fantasy, 
not something 
many other humans 
know how to do. 
imagination, 
is her drink.

“You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”
Ayn Rand 

“Loving someone who hates themselves 
is a special kind of violence,
a fight inside the bones,
a war within the blood.”
Yrsa Daley-Ward ‘A steady, blunt Self Harm.

”marry a man who loves you more than you love him. a woman will always give more than what is necessary to her lover. it is ingrained into her, like maternity. but even when a man loves you more, he will still only be able to meet you halfway.”
Rihanna (relaying advice given to her by her deceased grandmother)

“If people refuse to look at you in a new light and they can only see you for what you were, only see you for the mistakes you’ve made, if they don’t realize that you are not your mistakes, then they have to go.”
Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free.

“We have to allow ourselves to be loved by the people who really love us, the people who really matter. Too much of the time, we are blinded by our own pursuits of people to love us, people that don’t even matter, while all that time we waste and the people who do love us have to stand on the sidewalk and watch us beg in the streets!”
C. JoyBell C.

“Some people think that a place can save them… Like if they could just be somewhere else, their lives would be totally different. They could finally be the people they always wanted to be. But to me, a place is just a place. If you really want things to change, you can make them change no matter where you are.”

Hannah Harrington.

CAPTAIN CAT
As true as I’m here
Dear you Tom Cat’s tart
You landlubber Rosie
You cosy love
My easy as easy
My true sweetheart,
Seas green as a bean
Seas gliding with swans
In the seal-barking moon.

ROSIE PROBERT
What seas were rocking
My little deck hand
My favourite husband
In your seaboots and hunger
My duck my whaler
My honey my daddy
My pretty sugar sailor.
With my name on your belly
When you were a boy
Long long ago?

CAPTAIN CAT
I’ll tell you no lies.
The only sea I saw
Was the seesaw sea
With you riding on it.
Lie down, lie easy.
Let me shipwreck in your thighs.

ROSIE PROBERT,
Knock twice, Jack,
At the door of my grave
And ask for Rosie.

CAPTAIN CAT
Rosie Probert.

ROSIE PROBERT
Remember her.
She is forgetting.
The earth which filled her mouth
Is vanishing from her.
Remember me.
I have forgotten you.
I am going into the darkness of the darkness for ever.
I have forgotten that I was ever born.

“I didn’t become heartless , I just became smarter. My happiness will not depend on someone else . Not anymore”

“i think i am surviving 
in all the wrong ways”

“One day you’re going to see her holding hands with someone who took your chance. She won’t even notice you because she’s too busy laughing with the stupid jokes he makes. And it will burn your heart seeing that beautiful smile on her face and realizing that you’re not the reason anymore. And then it will finally hit you: it was her, it was always her.” 
(e.v.d.a)

 “Don’t let people treat you like a cigarette, they only use you when they’re bored and step on you when they’re done. Be like drugs, let them die for you.” 

…

 “you.

not wanting me.

was 

the beginning of me. 

wanting myself.

thank you.”

the hurt, nayyirah waheed 

“i would tell you to go to hell, but i don’t want to see you again.”
Sylvia Plath

 “don’t think too much - you’ll create a problem that wasn't there in the first place.”  

Unknown

“Be careful who you open up to. only a few people actually care. the rest just want to have something to gossip about.”
Unknown

“you either like me or you don’t. it took me twenty-something years to learn how to love myself, i don’t have that kinda time to convince somebody else.”
Daniel Franzese  
…

“Stop beating yourself up. You are a work in progress - which means you get there a little at a time, not all at once.”  
☾
Unknown
…

“She was laughing even as we kissed and kissed again. There is no better taste than someone else’s laughter in your mouth.”

When he told her 

that her voice sounded like earl grey tea 

and her laughs like manic pencil scratches; 

that he always drew out the pattern of her freckles 

on restaurant napkins; 

that she was the princess 

he told his little sister bedtime stories about; 

that her eyelashes looked pretty when she cried, 

his voice trembled like a violin string 

and she cracked like the spine of a book.

…

 “She’s got the whole dark forest living inside of her.” 

Tom Waits

“I don’t like knowing about myself. It’s tantamount to torture to have to understand, acknowledge and accept each and every one of my several hundred million selves. It’s self-derision, a one-player game, a one-person performance.” 
Hitomi Kanehara, Autofiction  

I teach her Chinese.
Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I’ve forgotten.   
Naked:   I’ve forgotten.
Ni, wo:   you and me.
I part her legs,
remember to tell her
she is beautiful as the moon.

you are a horse running alone and he tries to tame you, compares you to an impossible highway, to a burning house, says you are blinding him, that he could never leave you, forget you, want anything but you. you dizzy him. you are unbearable. every woman before or after you is doused in your name. you fill his mouth. his teeth ache with memory of taste. his body just a long shadow seeking yours. but you are always too intense, frightening in the way you want him, unashamed and sacrificial. he tells you that no man can live up to the one who lives in your head and you tried to change didn’t you? closed your mouth more. tried to be softer, prettier, less volatile, less awake. but even when sleeping you could feel him travelling away from you in his dreams. you can’t make homes out of human beings; someone should have already told you that and if he wants to leave then let him leave. you are terrifying and strange and beautiful; something not everyone knows how to love.

…

 “My parents found my bong. They put the bong on a table next to a note that said, “This is shit and you’re in it.” I thought it was so funny.”

Chloë Sevigny on adolescence

“As if you were on fire from within. The moon lives in the lining of your skin.” 
☾
Pablo Neruda

 “I don’t pay attention to the

world ending.

it has ended for me

many times

and began again in the morning.”

…

 “treat her like you’re still trying to win her, and that’s how you’ll never lose her.”

“do i remember you? yes, but they’re not good memories. if i were you, i would prefer to be forgotten.”
Jonathan Carroll

LIFE RULES
1.  i work on my instincts. at the end of the day, it’s all you have. if you don’t trust yourself, no one else is going to, either.
2. you can’t fix yesterday. and don’t beat yourself up over it - the only reason to beat yourself up is if you don’t learn from it. 
3.  respect honesty and transparency. there is no room for people who can’t give a clear and honest opinion.
4. when i was younger, i always wanted things to be easier - but i learned that there are always some things in flux and always changing. then i realized that makes things far more interesting.
5. whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. there is no question. it’s a cliche, but it’s true.
6. never assume that just because we did it one way means that we can do it again the same next time.

“Why didn’t i learn to treat everything like it was the last time. my greatest regret was how much i believed in the future.”

Jonathan Safran Foer

“I’m gonna give you exactly three-fucking-seconds to wipe that stupid looking grin off your face or I will gouge out your eyeballs and skull fuck you!”

 “Bullshit I can’t hear you. Sound off like you got a pair. Bitch”

“Sometimes she fears that the spaces between her fingers are too rough for any willing hand, that her words come out too bitter, laced with the bile of previous mistakes, and that maybe she’s not built for love like everyone else.”

 “You don’t actually get over things… you incorporate them. they become part of everything you are. i don’t mean that you walk about crying all the time. but you change.”

When You’re Falling, Dive: Lessons in the Art of Living, by Mark Matousek 

i love the little, beautiful things. there was a morning - i woke up tangled in you, the light invading the room through curtain cracks, sweeping away all of the night dust and dirt. i was reborn then, when the newest rays make stripes across your face and particles fly away from your eyelashes. there’s a reason that never was before. there is life and angel, you were all mine.

my hands curl in your lap and i just can’t believe how strange it feels for these things to happen in daylight - no dreams, no ghosts, no night. no eyes shut steel-tight. it’s been so long, it feels like a lifetime. is it any miracle, in truth, that it feels like it will shatter at any moment? it’s like see-through skin. every second is a blessing.

“I started promising myself to never stay anywhere I’m not very much wanted. I have too

many scars to be breaking 
my bones to fit into places
that weren’t made to fit me.”
Anne 

“April is the cruelest month
bringing with her an invitation to exploration
and so we talk in tongues and let the fires of freedom pass through our fingertips (oh, electricity)
we chew and we spit
stolen words and hours
(in the grass, beyond the swings)
and if you listen quiet
    all those radio songs are about us”

 “I was always too good for you.

I offered

everything you could need,

and that scared you.

You crave unconditional love;

Beg for something

powerful and true,

but buckle and break under

the pressure to deserve it.

You crumble in your

shallow attempt to return true love.

Your body is no substitute

for your essence, or your heart,

but you don’t have the strength

to offer either of those.

You aren’t worthy of anyone’s commitment”

“Do I make you nervous?”

 “Boy,

why are you crying?

Your shadow is gone,

but I am here

and I will teach you to kiss,

(though never to love

in the way that I need).

Stay for awhile

and I will leave the window open

for when it’s time to leave.” 

Wendy’s Lament  Meghan Lynn

“Okay, we didn't work, and all

But sometimes there were good times.

Love was good. I loved your crooked sleep

beside me and never dreamed afraid.

There should be stars for great wars

like ours.” 

Sandra Cisneros.

“I don’t like
the memories 
because the tears 
come easily, 
and once again I break 
my promise 
to myself for this day. 

It’s a constant battle. 
A war between 
remembering and forgetting.”

“But why do i notice everything? she thought. why must i think? she did not want to think. she wanted to force her mind to become a blank and lie back, and accept quietly, tolerantly, whatever came.” 

Virginia Woolf, The Years 

“They call you heartless; but you have a heart and i love you for being ashamed to show it.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

STRANGER THAN FICTION 

“I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but i’ve heard about you. you see sir i was built to break boys. one by one two by two. Mother says give it two years and i’ll be trouble for sure. they always said i’d be a heartbreaker. Grandmother says “beautiful girls should be refined”, sorry but i’m a snake not a girl. you invite me to your parties, i drink all your liquor, i steal all the cigarettes hiding in pockets, i step on your bed in my shoes. you invite me again. the lead singer is pulling on my dress. wait what? the lead singer is pulling on my dress. it’s a slow death, but i like it, i like it.”

MARLOWE GLITTERATI

 “people get drunk

they hook up with the wrong person and pretend to be 

okay people act tough

and get mad

people will do anything to distract their heart.

they will do anything to distract it from missing someone”

 Blown kisses never make their way to mouths and the other side of the bed is wrinkly and cold. you say things to make her feel golden but she’s not she’s rusting each day. My friends are beginning to grow in numbers and i hate how i can’t count them on my hands and feet. throw them away when they’ve lost their flavour because no one is as fun as you wish they are. no one can be as perfect as you’ve pictured and your favourite people are tarnishing. I want the cold wind to pass through my limbs and I want my body to fall over and accept the force. I want the freckles on my cheek to be noticed and my mirror to break. I’m sick of you and you and you. I still want to be in the game, but it’s turning pale. Stop living to show everyone else how you’re living. just be. I don’t believe what i have to deal with. who the fuck do you think you are?

SECRETS;

each day gets colder and colder and each day i wish to fade into the white walls and disrupt their peace. i’m sick of my idea and my concepts and the storyline i’m made out to play. i count my fingers one by one squeezing each just to make sure i’m real. what if i turned around and ran the other way? delete my life and forget my friends?

“We ruined each other so badly to the point that we had to completely change into a whole new person because the old us is all we knew and once we didn’t have that anymore we were lost and confused so we died and became two, new, separate people.
That’s what we did.”

“I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. You’re all locked up in that little world of yours, and when I try knocking on the door, you just sort of look up for a second and go right back inside.”
☾
Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” 
☾
Buddha

“I have ruined relationships for fear of ruining those relationship”
Neil Hilborn 

“You are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing.” 
e.e. cummings

“you've become so damaged that when someone tries to give you what you deserve, you have no fucking idea how to respond.”

“we all love someone way too fucking much. you’re really good at not letting people love you.” 
Unknown

"You do this, you do. You take things you love and tear them apart or you pin

them down with your body and pretend they're yours."

Richard Siken.

For the love i'd fallen on

in the swampy August dawn

what a mischief you would bring, young darling.

 She asked him imploringly, “How many times am I going to have to break your heart before you learn to leave me?”

Without blinking he replied, “As many times as it takes for you to stop breaking my heart.”

“You can’t force love, I realised. It’s there or it isn’t. If it’s not there, you’ve got to be able to admit it. If it is there, you’ve got to do whatever it takes to protect the ones you love.” 
☾
Richelle Mead

flowers remind you of rubber, and her name tastes like

bleach, 

you wear pink lipstick and cheap perfume, white 

shirts with red bras, black mascara and blue sneakers when you 

meet

him, he won’t smell of gasoline

and orange soda, he’ll tell 

you about her

and how he think she’s rotting inside of him, 

you’ll spend days weaving black

gardens with your tongues, 

his mother will make tea and omelets when you visit, 

he’ll tell you about his first piano recital and

how he wore a yellow tie to his sisters

funeral,

he’ll show you Portugal and Bombay in his

paintings on your white walls,

he’ll buy tickets for 

Shakespeare’s Theatre, he’ll

use words like “cynosure” and 

“panacea”, he’ll know you prefer

cherries over 

lipstick and 

that to 

you

3 PM will always mean Hell, 

you’ll write poetry about

how he makes your

stomach bleed, how his hands could

become moons when they 

touch your thighs but when you kiss him,

he’ll only taste of salt

― your eyes are crying licorice

 The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

 “We’re not the same person we were a year ago, a month ago, or a week ago. We’re constantly changing. Experiences don’t stop. That’s life.”

 “i become attached to people i shouldn’t. i distance myself from the people who matter. i am bad with people. i am good at being alone. but i hate being lonely.”

P.P.

 “i wish i had the courage not to fight and doubt everything. i wish, just once, i could say: ‘this. this is good enough.”

Chuck Palahniuk

 “one day, whether you 

are 14, 28 

or 65

you will stumble upon

someone who will start 

a fire in you that cannot die.

however, the saddest, 

most awful truth 

you will ever come to find 

is they are not always 

with whom we spend our lives.” 

Beau Taplin, “The Awful Truth

 “you make mistakes. mistakes don’t make you.” 

Maxwell Maltz.

 PEOPLE I HAVE MET, AND HOW THEY HAVE PROCEEDED TO ANNOY ME.

 “It’s midnight. I’m 21 years old. I’m still afraid of commitment. Still afraid I’ll end up alone. Still sorry for not knowing how to handle things. Still taking up too much space. Still eating only one meal a day. Still wishing I were someone else. Still haven’t let anyone in. Still haven’t learned how to put down roots. Still joke about suicide too much. Still a compulsive liar. Still waiting for someone to stick around. I’m still here. Barely.”

Still So Far