a matter of truth

I think I've discovered some of the biggest secrets in life right here, shoved into my pillow case. There are some truths out there that are so seemingly obvious, so simple that they almost become a cliche. Cliches don't have a lot of respect in this world but they are cliched for a reason, right? Sometimes being reminded of those simple truths could save a life or fix a broken heart.

Here are some of the simple truths I have discovered recently. I hope that some of these can help you too.

You have to love yourself and you have to love others. At the end of the day, all we have is humanity and our fellow man. Human beings are capable of profound feelings that I will never begin to understand, but watching the insanity that is a human existence unfold before your eyes is a gift that deserves to be treasured. Treasure each other and treasure history. History matters because for all of these years on this Earth, those people who have come before you have cried like you, laughed like you, screamed like you, bled like you. Learn their feelings and empathize with those struggles. Go to those places that are screaming with history and soak it all in because the tens of millions of people that have passed through this Earth deserve that respect and our thirst for knowledge. We are all humans and that needs to be respected and loved.

Love yourself. Please, know how lovely and good you are and can be. The potential you hold in your fingertips could build empires or crumble everything into ruins. You can be unstoppable and beautiful. Help yourself down that path toward beauty and creation by loving your body and your skin and your mind. Have fun in this life and have fun in your skin.

Do not let anyone destroy you without your consent. Here is the biggest secret I have learned, my loves: You are in charge of who is in your life and at what capacity. YOU pick who surrounds you and what energy you let in. The Daisy Buchanan's in this world are gorgeous and they offer you pretty things. When a Daisy shines their eyes across you, it is easy to feel special and singled out but I promise you that you mean nothing to them. If someone tells you they are horrible or careless, believe them. They most likely mean it. And if they don't, what a horrible and juvenile lie for attention.

I went through a break up recently that was needless and cruel but it changed me so completely. I feel as though it made me more empathetic and less so. Less patient and more patient. Lovelies, you are not required to keep venomous people in your life. I felt so destroyed by being in this relationship that I just sort of... remained because I felt too small to leave. That was a horrible lesson but I'm grateful for it. You get to control how venomous people are in your life. YOU. You decide if you make the frightening decision to make it their responsibility to change or if you are smart and adult enough to suck their poison from your life. You get to decide how to live and change.

Change is so hard, I know. But if you know what to do, change. Let that rush drive you against a wall and suffer if you have to but I promise you that everything will get better and you will be ok. Don't let yourself stay miserable. Choose to move on. If you don't, remember your life and your misery is on you and nobody else. Life is too beautiful to miss out on because someone gives you such horrific anxiety that you can't eat for five months or because someone makes you feel small.

Fill your lungs with air, breathe in and out, and love. Love until your heart is full to bursting. Then fill it even more.

I love you. So so much.

via *

a visit

Cemeteries are playgrounds of names and stories all ripe for the picking. I’ve walked through many cemeteries in my day and always spent more time jotting down names and piecing together ideas for stories than mourning my losses, facing a hunk of stone that is now supposed to be a place holder for a spirit that is gone. Crossed over. Vanished. But this cemetery, this headstone, her headstone, I know her story already. I cross back into it every time my car finds its way back down the familiar path toward the tree she rests under now. Even when I’m a few streets away from the cemetery entrance, I turn my music off and let the wind carry me forward. Maybe I’m afraid of silence and that’s why I need a constant stream of music. But in this place, I feel silence pressing in and I want to be alone with that fuzzy sound it has. 

My aunt died tragically. She was fine on a Monday and by Wednesday evening she was gone. Nine hours later my uncle, her brother, followed her into death. Unrelated. Both cancer. One known, another a sneaking viper that took her heart before mine had time to handle the break. I’m not a religious person but I always feel her at her headstone. I feel the eyes of all of these names watching me as I write them down in my notebook for use in my stories. But I feel her entire being at my back as I clear off the lighthouse on her grave. She was always so connected to the world around her and to her own mind. The borders people normally had didn’t seem to block her from knowing more than seemed possible. And now with me in ratty jeans, her beneath my feet in a white gown no doubt rotting and tarnished, but really her at my side, I feel light in my head for the first time in months. I see her opening a door and releasing pressure from my mind. 

All the names I’m seeing around me seem bigger than they should. Bourne. Blood. Killpack. Holding. Holding onto what? The decaying flowers sitting above your skulls? Born into what? The secret world we all want a peek into but that we are all dying to avoid. This cemetery is drenched in history and memorials. A marble angel stands guard over its child corpse, an angel that would turn from lovely to fearsome in the moonlight. A sand blasted headstone stands not even two feet tall for Millie Clair next to my great-grandfather’s headstone. Born October 20, 1891. Died February 12, 1892. Her headstone has a tree stump and a lonely little dove. I can see her blonde curls, pure as the dove’s wings. Next to her headstone is a newer model. Decorated with a basketball carved into the stone, another actual ball at the base of the statue. Flowers overflowing the pots. Did Millie see this boy’s family leaving the flowers what looks like hours beforehand? Did her little heart break at a lack of visitors for over 200 years? I vow to bring her flowers next time I visit. Yellow like her hair. 

An amazing pyramid while I am here. I stand with my Aunt. Three rows away two gravediggers are finishing filling a new grave. They are smeared in dirt and decidedly less cheerful than the clowns of Hamlet, headphones bouncing around as they swing their shovels back and forth. A few rows behind them a casket sits on a pyre high above the ground, all guests having left minutes before my arrival. Two maintenance workers work at removing floral arrangements and throwing them back into their bed of their truck. A few petals fall into the hole beneath the casket. One worker curses as he stubs a finger against the wood. Is this what we have to look forward to? 

via *

nightlight

It's harder to sleep at night knowing
I'll miss the stars and record players
Spinning in their galaxies,
These orbits outside my window.
Miles above the radiation-
Light years away from memories of
hands and tears nestling into my fingertips.
My shoulders closing in like book covers,
letting my heart be burrowed in my
word soaked ribs.
I curb loneliness with pages.
His spine is gone and yet five spines
have settled in my bed,
peaking at me under pillowcases,
laughing below my calve
and lounging beside me in my sheets.
The stars have the black matter to
nestle inside of but I have
my serpentine spines.
The night wears on and yet sleep
remains a shadow dancing on my wall.
Pages flutter with the breeze sneaking
in through the open window and
rattling the cages the characters share,
begging for stories to be told.
Go to sleep, I whisper, trying to
evaporate into the stars as they
beat against my brain and seconds
hoist their hands on toward daylight.
Another morning coming much too soon.
But I'd rather be tired and inspired,
heart on fire, fingertips wired to the keys,
than retired from the desire to create
and let these people breathe.

via *

solstice

The onset of summer leaves me vibrating and nostalgic like folk music,
the sunset like melting ice cream and honeydew scents
curling in the newly forming blossoms on the trees.

I feel young and small and tired, fallen from the nest too soon.
I feel strong and awake and ready, getting drunk on warming air.
The paradox of 22, too young to not call mother, too old to miss her much.

via *

6/13/13

-being barely awake at 5:30. roll over darling, you still have hours to sleep.
-sweet little puppy faces cuddling with you in the early morning light streaking into your bedroom.
-sunlit sky so bright so early and so late.  endless possibilities on those horizons.
-dew coated grass kissing your bare feet in the early morning.

-solitude and silence with the rest of the world still in its mid morning slumber.

-cold cokes in the sun soaked afternoon.

-hazy violet, velvet evening skies.
-the pavement sweating as your shoes slip off. you step onto the hot ground, cold winter feet thawing.

-secret smiles flitting across your face, memories of summers past.

-soft winds singing from their perches in the leaves.

-driving free and clear on the open road, middle of the night, no one's watching. no one's hearing. 

-disappear into the light. breathe summer in.

*all images via Tumblr