๐ quotes | study | self-help ๐ต
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I hope you get to find your peace soon <3 sending hugs and sunflowers ๐ป ๐ป๐ป๐ป๐ป๐ป
is wanting to vibe under wisteria with my chai and a book too much to ask for?
There'll be a moment when you realise you're 27 when yesterday you were just 17; and you wouldn't be able to tell how a decade passed away and your life got divided into before and afters. The fury of youth will subdue and nothing will really change but everything will feel different when you look at old photographs and blurry videos taken on cheap mobile phones. Scents will remind you of childhood and certain friends you don't talk to anymore, hangouts will become reunions and mom's burnt pie will become the best food you ever had. And I know on some days you won't be able to show anything of those 10 years but I hope you remember to breathe, and let go of the knot in your chest. I hope you go out in the sun and live a little, because tomorrow is 37. An excerpt from The Flesh I Burned
โI want you to tell me about every person you've ever been in love with. Tell me why you loved them, then tell me why they loved you. Tell me about a day in your life you didn't think you'd live through. Tell me what the word "home" means to you and tell me in a way that I'll know your mother's name just by the way you describe your bed room when you were 8.
See, I wanna know the first time you felt the weight of hate and if that day still trembles beneath your bones. Do you prefer to play in puddles of rain or bounce in the bellies of snow? And if you were to build a snowman, would you rip two branches from a tree to build your snowman arms? Or would you leave the snowman armless for the sake of being harmless to the tree?
And if you would, would you notice how that tree weeps for you because your snowman has no arms to hug you every time you kiss him on the cheek? Do you kiss your friends on the cheek? Do you sleep beside them when they're sad, even if it makes your lover mad? Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain?
See, I wanna know what you think of your first name. And if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mother's joy when she spoke it for the very first time. I want you tell me all the ways you've been unkind. Tell me all the ways you've been cruel. See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living. I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving.
And if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes. I wanna know if you bleed sometimes through other people's wounds.โ
โ Andrea Gibson
Hey love, it will all work out, the stars will align. Don't you think that it's time to live for yourself already.
When Sylvia plath said, "why can't I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which fits best and is more becoming" ; and when Ocean Vuong said, "you would tell them that the most useful thing one can do with empty hands is hold on" jwjwuwjwwjwbbevevegehbe im gonna go overdose on chai now, bye.
The cosmos cries comets, the moon bleeds lullabies, and here i am, icarus; i, who can bear the quarrels of fate and time no more. you sought the sun, but did the sun seek you back? does it mourn you, or am i the only one doing that?
Who's stars am i aligning, are they mine? certainly that is what i was told (did you not tell me that, icarus) . those promises that I kept safe so dearly in my pockets, how did they find me? who am i to chase after the remarkableย (i thought i could, in the name of you, icarus).
i, who sought icarus, can hear him no more. i am searching. where are you?
it is your time to find me, icarus; search for me. heal me. answer me.
I get that you might not be able to understand my point of view, but that doesn't mean that you misunderstand when I'm trying to convey. Don't twist my words to form those judgemental opinions of yours.
*kisses the inside of your wrist, and proceeds to hold your hand whilst making eye-contact* happy women's day babe.
live your life now. donโt save clothes for a time youโre happier in your body, donโt put off adventures because you think your friends would be happier without you there, donโt deprive yourself of good things just because you canโt see the good in yourself
-The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid
And then all of a sudden, it feels like January again, and you're all alone in that blanket of yours, dreaming of sunsets, stardust and peace.
But sorrow is unreliable in that way. When people donโt share it thereโs a good chance that it will drive them apart instead.
- Fredrik Backman,ย A Man Called Ove
Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it's often one of the great motivations for living. Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury. Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis. Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival. We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.
- Fredrik Backman,ย A Man Called Ove
Endings are what give stories meaning. I donโt know if I believe that. I think the whole story has meaning but I also think to have a whole story-shaped story it needs some sort of resolution. Not even a resolution, some appropriate place to leave it. A goodbye.
- Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea
How are you feeling? Zachary asks. โLike Iโm losing my mind but in a slow, achingly beautiful sort of way.
- Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea
I accepted because mysterious ladies offering bourbon under the stars is very much my aesthetic.
- Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea.
Everyone wants the stars. Everyone wishes to grasp that which exists out of reach. To hold the extraordinary in their hands and keep the remarkable in their pockets.
- Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea.
But the world is strange and endings are not truly endings no matter how the stars might wish it so.
- Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea
We are all stardust and stories.
- Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea
I am not lost;
I just don't wish to find.
not anymore...
A cat lays in the sun
Belly up
Soaking in the warmth
His Sister comes by
What are you doing Brother
Trying
Said Brother
Trying?
Questioned Sister
With her black and white spots
Standing on end a bit
It appears you are doing nothing
She said
Does it?
He asked
Perhaps things are not
What they seem
He replied
And with that
He dragged himself up
Into a sitting position
I see you have moved
Said Sister
But sitting is not really trying
You think not?
Asked Brother
Quietly
I spent last night
Locked outside
Helping a friend who
Was cold and sad
That in turn made me
Cold and sad
This morning
When I came back in
I helped the Dog
Find its toy
(He always seems to lose it)
Iโm tired
And a bit melancholy
So Iโm trying to cheer up
By laying in the sun
This feels like real work
Like real trying
I see
Said Sister
You are trying very hard on the inside
And I couldnโt see that
So I assumed you were not trying
But now I see
I was wrong
Trying on the inside
May be the hardest trying there is
Thank you, Sister
Purred Brother
Thank you for trying to understand
Trying
Is everything
When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist.
- Madeline Miller,ย Circe
But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.
- Madeline Miller,ย Circe
The thought was this: that all my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.
- Madeline Miller,ย Circe
โYou have always been the worst of my children,โ he said. โBe sure to not dishonor me.โ
โI have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.
- Madeline Miller,ย Circe
You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.
- Madeline Miller,ย Circe
He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.
- Madeline Miller, Circe
But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.
- Madeline Miller,ย Circe
'I can't. It's too risky,' I tell myself, as I back away from the wings that lay in front of me, the ones that I yearn for, hope for. Live for. Those wings.
'I'm so close,' I argue, 'I've always wanted this.' Those wings.
I can imagine Icarus smiling at the stars burning in my eyes.
'Come,' he would say, 'Fly.'
I smile, closing my eyes, keeping those stars going supernova to myself. And I walk away. Those wings.
'I am no Icarus.'