i guess some would say that its just easier to push the ones you love away, instead of sticking around and watching them leave you instead. but absence is absence and leaving hurts too, because either way someone’s being ripped away from you and i don’t think that dull ache ever truly goes away. we just grow numb to it, become unaware and pretend that breathing isn’t hard. even though it is. even though it kills you sometimes just to take a deep breath because shards of everything broken inside of you never truly go away, they just resemble into something else that you either love or hate and end up poking your lungs when you find someone new, letting you know “oh hey! this is scary!” but the point of this is to say, absence hurts like a ***** no matter how it hits you. and maybe its insensitive to say, but you need to appreciate the people you have right now because you never know when you will run out of what seems like an endless succession of tomorrow’s because everything does come to an end at some point. so please, with everything inside of me, im begging you, make the most out of today. tell everyone you love them, shout it as loud as you can, scream it. im not much of a person for saying i love you unless i truly mean it, but please, gather what’s inside of you and tell them. tell them before its too late, appreciate them, call them, text them, go hangout with them, hold them close because when you have a tomorrow that comes and you lose someone you’ve loved with every fiber of your being, that’s what ***** you up inside. it leaves you broken, so broken you can’t even fathom enough life inside of you to breathe for a while and so you become blue and you kind of fade away into the sky and you go away for a while, you vanish from all that you’ve known because when someone you love is ripped away and you’re forced to say goodbye, it’s kind of like hearing every “i love you” and “i hate you” all at once. it’s deafening, numbing, overwhelming and its not something you come back from easily. and i know it hurts how nothing is promised forever but sometimes there’s solace in that. because that means the bad won’t last forever, this darkness won’t surround you forever, these wounds will not bleed you dry forever. so please, hold onto the things close to you even closer. and love. love with everything you’ve got, love until it makes you ******* bleed and remember, you choose who you bleed for. so when you bleed yourself dry, i hope you can see it in you that it was worth it. i hope the person you bleed for also bleeds for you. i hope that that the person you love, loves you back just as much. i hope your heart heals, and more than anything, i hope you find it in you to love when there isn’t much left. love will save you if you let it. please, let it.

love - noun
deep affection, fondness, intimacy
-where your jaw drops to the floor and
your heart beats out of your chest like a cartoon character
past tense
-where time slowed down, or even came to a stop
because you locked eyes with this one person across the room
and your entire future flashed through your mind
like a projector streaming home videos on a
sheet hung upon your living room wall
but it didnt last and eventually time caught back up
and you ran out of film
so again you were stuck holding your own hand

love - verb
adoration, worship, idolize
do you love me?
could you ever love me?

dont answer that

once when i was 11 i read somewhere that you could fall in love with someone just by holding eye contact with them for a number of seconds. i cannot tell you how many hours i would spend in front of mirrors, staring down my reflection hoping to feel something other than my breath on cold glass.

you know the craziest thing to me when i was 12 was that i had never seen my face in person. i mean i'd seen myself in photographs, and i'd obviously saw myself in standing water, or mirrors, or when passing store windows but i had never looked myself in the face for real so maybe that was the problem.

when i was 13 i was in the eigth grade and some boy told me my kiss didnt taste sweet like it was supposed to so i stayed up all night perfecting the combination of chap-stick and lip gloss, and i made smudges all over my mother's make-up mirror in her bathroom, but it still wasnt enough so i left it shattered on the floor and never told her what happened

ages 14-18 i lived my life through glasses and tried so hard to be someone else that i lost sight of who i really was. because people dont want to hear about how you have daily staring contests with yourself, or how you always blink first. people dont want to watch the happiness disappear from your eyes, or see how your reality comes crawling up your throat and sits on your tongue waiting for it's chance to scream help, while your depression runs ramped, changing all of your picture captions to "ugly"

when i turned 19 broken glass and razors became my best friends, and lungs filled with smoke were like breaths of fresh air and i've never told anyone, but there were nights when i didnt come home because i couldnt remember where home was. they tell you that home is supposed to be this safe place where comfort can be found in your own skin, but i wasnt told that home is mirrors covered by sheets, and covering your eyes to anything that showed a reflection because i never quite figured out the trick of falling in love with myself the way everyone else apparently had

i hope that 20 is the year that something amazing finally happens in my chest when i look down at puddles and see myself staring back. i hope when i'm 20 that i'll be able to go through old pictures and not want to cry. i hope that 20 is the year that tolerating myself magically turns into loving myself. that i wont have to constantly replace shattered mirrors or picture frames. i hope the 20 year old version of me will finally be able to look herself in eyes and see more than what's missing. i hope when im 20 this poem wont hold relevancy and that my scars will be faded and the only thing left of this will be a success story

the sickest part
about realizing you are in love with someone
is figuring out that
they don't have to love you back
we believe that
the person that we hold closest to us
should hold onto us just as tightly
sometimes they can't
because they are too busy
holding onto someone else
who isn't holding them back either
and the trend goes on forever.

so after all of this, here i am
sitting on the edge of another strangers bed
coughing up all the 'i love you's that were said to me
but never meant for me
i realize now that curses don't always unbreak
the past is tied to you
like cinder blocks around your ankles
and pressing hard against your chest
like the weight of his other woman
your true loves kiss
wont fix a **** thing
if the love isnt mutual
lately ive learned that
it is sometimes better when you get stuck
kissing your own wounds
and sometimes is always
i never believed that i was somebody
that someone else could love again

thank you for proving me right

And suddenly all she wanted to do was die. No one knew why she was just a little more broken than others. She was begging me to let her go but I just couldn't.

There is no haunted house scarier than the place I speak of.
No creepy woods late at night compares.
The scariest place a human can be, a place no one is safe from.
To be alone with your thoughts can be the most devastating place anyone could be.
You are trapped with only thoughts and feelings and nothing can save you but yourself.
Some people are easily able to evade the thoughts and move on to other things, but some of us aren't that lucky.
For those of us who are trapped inside the tunnels of our minds we constantly are interrupted by overwhelming thoughts and nothing can stop them.
It's easy for people on the outside to think we can just turn off these bad thoughts but for us trapped there is no escaping this horrifying place. It's a constant battle of worry and misconceived ideas that we aren't good enough, that everything we do isn't enough for someone.
But never give up the internal battle with the demons that hide in your tunnel. You are good enough.

the stars are out tonight
trying to call out your name
trying to get you to notice them
do you feel small?
take into consideration
the same God that made millions of stars
also made you
perfect in his image
you are exactly who you are
supposed to be
don't take that for granted