"Let’s face it: I’m scared, scared and frozen. First, I guess I’m afraid for myself, the old primitive urge for survival. It’s getting so I live every moment with terrible intensity. It all flowed over me with a screaming ache of pain, remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted. When you feel that this may be goodbye, the last time, it hits you harder."
Sylvia Plath
(Source: troubled)
"I’m the girl who is lost in space, the girl who is disappearing always, forever fading away and receding farther and farther into the background. Just like the Cheshire cat, someday I will suddenly leave, but the artificial warmth of my smile, that phony, clownish curve, the kind you see on miserably sad people and villains in Disney movies, will remain behind as an ironic remnant. I am the girl you see in the photograph from some party someplace or some picnic in the park, the one who is in fact soon to be gone. When you look at the picture again, I want to assure you, I will no longer be there. I will be erased from history, like a traitor in the Soviet Union. Because with every day that goes by, I feel myself becoming more and more invisible."
Elizabeth Wurtzel
(Source: troubled)
"We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate by hypothesis, by daydream, by scientific investigation those leaden walls that encase the human spirit, that define it and guard it and hold it forever inaccessible."
Tim O’Brien
(Source: troubled)
"If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don’t need to wish her anything, for she’ll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn’t such a moment sufficient for the whole of one’s life?"
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
(Source: troubled)
It’s the desperation that pulls us closer together. I bet if you looked close, between the blinds and between the cobblestone and bits of trash labeling the streets as slums, you’d see it.
We reach out, begging to be touched by someone we’ve never seen. We make this ideal person up in our mind and the first person that comes along is immediately our knight in shining armor. They are our damsel in distress. They are the answer to all of our questions on loneliness, covered and wrapped tight in blankets made of sorrow.
We pull apart who and what they really are and reassemble them to fit with what we’ve already conceived as the perfect person for us. They are our missing puzzle piece. It’s not fair, but it’s beautiful.
“So forget it, it’s in the past, I don’t remember anymore. I’ve made you new. I’ve washed you white as snow.”
I think of late nights,
In my car,
Driving through puddles.
The trust.
Feeling scared and apprehensive, but anticipating only the best.
Litte did we know, we held our fears in our front pockets.
And then,
Revealing to each other,
What truly makes us feel alive.
“My beloved, I have washed you, I have cleansed you. You are beautiful to Me.”
Across desolate moorland,
that seductive voice
remained
still.
Far from my heart.
I am no longer thirsty.
She braids her hair
with mystery,
Ribbons scatterd,
everywhere,
with hieroglyphs and
cheekbones fine painted -
only the softest
shade of pink.
We’d find landscapes
in one another,
Mapping out
her homeland with
the constellations of
her freckles,
while she’d
conjure the Mississippi
into the crevices
of your palm.
You’d often find her -
head in books,
chastising the author’s taste
in romance while
placing herself
amongst bright lights,
talks of war
and smokey air,
whilst dining
only the most adventurous
of men.
She,
who would easily be
lured into a
gingerbread house
by the scent of
pumpkin pie.
She,
who knew she could
speak to you with
integrity and
stars on shoulders
and we’d have
interlocking patterns for
thumb prints.
I was idly following nothing in particular through some department store when I tripped quite unexpectedly onto your scent still stubtly lingering in an aisle filled with socks and shampoo. Oblivious to what the scent was, I was only subconsciously in-tune with that hint of musk. Fragrant, yet light. Then all of a sudden it hit me and there you were, right under my nose and by my side for as long as my eyes were closed. Then it all made sense - I looked around a bit and you were gone, slipped away to another aisle of my mind. I turned the corner but only she was there. Myself. My “new thing”. Looking for a black and white dress. Of course, yes, I remember. But I had to stop her, nothing is black and white anymore. Your fragrance was gone and there I was, standing in that aisle with a package of six pairs of white socks in hand, trying to understand exactly why I suddenly didn’t feel like shopping anymore.
Yes, this is the sound of my breathing. It’s slow but sometimes it’s fast. And when I notice, everything seems to stand on the edge; my mind, my soul.
And this is the sound of my voice, growing confident, growing fearful. It’s slow but sometimes it’s fast, like when I think of the reasons my world stands still while I’m laying in bed, alone, silent as eyes. And sometimes it has no sound at all. The world has won, “beauty” has won, I am not in control.
No. I am not in control.
I am not in control when I ruin page after page of a journal entry. I am not in control when I stand by the sink with a ruined cup of coffee (black grinds float around like little sail boats, slowly, but always moving, even if they’re trapped by the rim of the cup) trying to decide whether to pour it out or just drink it (I drink it).
Still, still, this is the sound of my heart beating: all it would take is one word and we’d step into a new world. A new world where I photograph the way the shadows weave my untamed hair, or the way you smile in your sweater (I remember I wrote these words a long time ago and still they are true). One word. The power of words, the power of choice.
It kisses the edges of my soul;
I tremble.
We are taught to share at such a young age; share your toys, share your snacks. If company was over, you’d serve and share your food with them first. I always remember sharing to be such a beautiful looking concept in my mind, lots of pink and yellow. As an only child, I struggled with sharing a bit at first but overall I warmed up to the notion very early on.
But somewhere along in the journey of growing up, sharing becomes wrong. Why? Sharing is not communism. Sharing is about love and justice and community, but sharing has been rebranded.
This is me. I am a weary person. I am unsure. I am uneasy. I am cautious. I am quiet. I am naive. I am bitter. I am angry. I am impatient. I am doubtful. I fall and I fear and I do all of this in the privacy of my own mind.
I’m just going to be transparent right now.
I’m a naturally very introverted person, so I am never inclined to invite myself out with friends or anything like that. I keep to myself often. I don’t like this aspect of myself, I don’t think it’s right and it’s something I know God is changing in me. This fault is self- destructive, I spend a lot of time alone and in those times the enemy has time to creep in and whisper lies to me. This happened today and I fell, I fell hard. I’ve been questioning things that I know God has told me otherwise. Am I beautiful? Am I intelligent? Will I ever find a man of God? Will I find someone who will love me, despite the sins I’ve committed? Will I ever be capable enough to be the radical disciple that I know God wants me to become? How does he even see me as being capable for that? What if I become a failure to His Kingdom? I ask all these things of myself and displease God in the meantime. I am so fallen, I am such a disgusting sinner.
You may have some small victories in my life, but that’s all they are, small victories. Praise God, they are so minuscule compared to my Creator and His Victory. The Victory that reigns over my entire life, including the dark sides of me. Jesus, I embrace You in all areas of my life! I am dead to sin, You have saved me, I am beautiful in your sight, and I need not worry about these things. They are all in Your hands. Thank You for the fall, thank You for the reminder, for within my suffering I can come to terms and look up toward your face and I am once again reminded of how breathtakingly beautiful You are. Thank you for truth, thank you for truth, thank you for truth.
Your. Grace. Is. Enough.
I get it now. And I’m in complete awe.
Let’s pretend we’re scholars and everything we feel or do is something new to be proud of. Let’s take our imaginary friends on a double date and ditch them in a movie and hope they get along while we kiss outside on the sidewalk. Let’s take the dreams you mumbled in your sleep and paint a children’s nursery. If we don’t finish today, we’ve always got tomorrow.
You’re inhaling the fresh air deeply, like it was your first drag from a cigarette. You give me this look, like you’re trying to telling me something but you just expect me to know. Like, how you’re cutting down to five smokes a day instead of ten. Just five. Don’t worry, next week it will be three. I imagined your non-existant nicotine addicition, but still I wonder what the inside of your lungs look like. Are they black and flaccid, like when they show you a pig lung in biology that can’t inflate anymore because they filled it with cigarette smoke? Or maybe they’re all dried up and tiny and shriveled like little raisins. In that moment I desperately want to tell you that you can have one of my lungs if you ever need it…a lung you will never need. I know I dream too much about scenereos like this, but I think it’s important for you to know that I would give you one of my lungs. That is a good thing to know, right? I mean, it’s my lung. That says a lot. I look at you and the words are right at the tip of my tounge, but I hesitate.
Because telling you I would give you my lung sounds too much like a proposal.
I will not compromise with any exception. I do not have to be obligated to change who I am for someone else’s well being, I as well do not have to settle or meet half way for the sake of comfort. Not everyone sees life in the light that you do and not everyone is the same as you are. We are each on a diverse journey and while it is not entirely black and white there is and must be only One Way.
What you believe is true, is true for you and what I believe is true, is true for me. However, Jesus disregards this and says that He is truth. My faith didn’t save me, rather it was Him who rescued me and it was my faith that made the agreement with what He has already done. I was saved when He ransomed me from the life of devastation and death.
