Why Didnt Anybody Tell Me

leaving

what if when i leave

i hate it

or they hate me

and im homesick every day

and all i want is to be back

but

what if

i love it there

and i dont want to come home

and its the time of my life

it is so much harder to go

when i am searching for

every

reason

to

stay

there is beauty

in the mundane

in the simplest things that life has to offer

in remembering to laugh

and smile

and maybe even to cry

it is beautiful all the same

do you feel your breathing

in and out and in and out

you can breathe

there is beauty in every breath you take

Talk on the phone w your friends and play in the sun and have picnics in the grass and bury your feet in the sand and be open to the world and learn from your mistakes and laugh often and go on drives to nowhere and protect what nourishes you and remember to have a good time

love is my sister

saving me the last of the

blackberries she had

One day I will stop falling in love with you. Until I do, I'll be thinking of you.

k.b. // laufey, philharmonia orchestra - let you break my heart again

you want them to text back but that's anxious attachment isn't it. it's just that you can feel on the wind when you're not wanted anymore. when they've fallen out of love in any small part of their marrow. you have a hawk's eye for disharmony. you can tell when she has begun packing her things.

don't be annoying. you want to write: i have never experienced unconditional love as an explanation but isn't that pathetic. in adulthood all love is conditional and it should be. you've been to too much therapy. touch grass. how sappy can you be.

but they don't reach for your hand while they're driving. they forget to ask you how you're doing. the call times no longer read 12:34:19. they're 30 minutes and perfunctory before she says baby please, i'm tired. i need to go to sleep. where in her life do you fit. why is it that you never fit into anyone's life very long. oblong creature with so many needs, spilling up and out and over everything. it's a fucking shame the first time she said she loved you it was for your independence. and now look at you.

hollow pit in your stomach, body shaking. fuck, not again. you're not going to ruin another relationship like this, codependent and toxic, spiraling. and in the other half of your brain: if that's your wife, wouldn't she want to hear it? wouldn't it be fine? wouldn't she just comfort you and you can both move on and nobody dies?

but you're crowding her! read another instagram Positive Vibes Only type of post that talks about calming your heart and your brain and your body. try to sit in silence. the thing is that you do have a life outside of her, remember? go back to it.

great news, your parents fucked you up and now you have no idea how to deal with love. you just keep wanting to be chosen. to be real to someone, all the way through. real and kept. held closely. seen as precious to somebody. why even is that? didn't you always swear that people can and should complete themselves? why are you so constantly driven to beg for love, doglike and barking?

it's just the tiny things. it's just that you have to weigh every silence and sentence like bricks on an exposed belly. you have no idea how to shut it off. every alarm bell in your body saying: this isn't safe. start scrambling. she's already going.

“When you can tell your story and it doesn’t make you cry, that’s when you know you’ve healed.”

— Unknown

november rain

take away the pain and

replace it with something

warm, for i do not care

for these wet and cold 

thoughts. 

~K.T.

words may never truly express

the gratitude i feel

to have travelled to

the depths of despair.

after all,

it brought me you.

the combination of unlikely events

flutter in effect, endlessly changing

the possibility of what could be.

even then, i'm still content.

it brought me you.

isn't that enough, then?

tribulations and uncertainties:

i shed my past "self"

in the aftermath.

it was all worth it,

because

"it brought me you."

d.b.a

for s.

oh

still not friends

still haven't talked

but he celebrated my 250 day duolingo streak

its the little things

that hurt the most

feminine rage

i was 11

crying over the loss of a friend

"boys and girls are just different" my mom told me

was it helpful or trivializing

i'm still not sure

i was 12

they told us something like 1 in 4 girls are assaulted

we looked around the room

wondering who it might be

terrified of the answer

they told us what the men are looking for

our eyes turned on ourselves

we didn't want to make ourselves more of a target

i was 13

during a self-defense class at church

we learned how to hit, how to kick

how to pop a man's eyes out of his head

barely a teenager

and they told me to hit the dummy like i really meant it

i was 13

ruth bader ginsburg died, and i cried

i rarely cried over anything then

but i cried over her

trump was already trying to replace her that night

i was 14

sitting in the front of the car

while my brothers in the back

made a joke about sexual assault

i wanted to scream at them

but i didn't

i was 14

we were working on a story about the dress code

one of the girls mentioned

that it hadn't mattered what she was wearing

my heart broke

i was 15

i watched as they stripped my right to my body

as people around me celebrated

what happened to my choice

a boy asked me to stop talking about it

for the girls in our class to stop using dark humor

as our only coping mechanism

said it made him uncomfortable

he still has all his rights

i am 16

a friend calls while she is running

just to feel safer

i have to explain to the boys in the room

that she didnt want to talk

she wanted to not be a target

i am 16

my brother says that sometimes

women are so annoying

he just wants to shoot them

i'm not sure he doesn't mean it

i am 16

"it must be his time of the month"

one boy jokes about another acting irrationally

it isn't funny

but i sit in silence anyways

i don't want to be accused of being emotional, too

i am 16

"men's lives are more challenging" he argues

he ignores every point we make

he was never going to listen

but we still try, desperately

finally our teacher shuts us down

i want to yell or cry or do anything to release the rage bottling up inside

the rage that runs through my veins

all of our veins

when they belittle us and take away our rights and make us feel weak

and we let them

because it's all they ever taught us to do