Love can be described as desire,
the flutters in your chest as your hands touch
the light in their eyes.
But love is more.
Love is fights you have to talk through.
Love is struggles with money.
Love is disagreeing on the color of your couches.
Love is wondering if you're still in love.
Its not easy. Its not always pretty.
Its having problems and solving them.
Years and years, endless changes
You can't expect every moment to be perfect
you have to work towards perfect.
Find the moments that remind you
why you had those flutters in the first place

How dare you
How dare you sit there cradling your head
Wishing you had never been born
When you have birthed someone yourself
How dare you consider leaving him
His father doesn’t know how to take care of a baby by himself
How dare you think of the check the military would give him if you were gone
How dare you think that that would be enough.
The tension in your shoulders increases the pressure in your head. You fix it. You did it.
Your hands are what’s causing so much pain
Your nails are in your legs
You’ve been doing everything on your own for so long.
Is that why now you need to be told your next step
You need to be told where to go to be better
You wish you were better
No you say, you want to be good at something not better just good at
Something
Anything
You’re sick of articles saying that everyone is good at something because you need to be worth something.
You need to make money
Help your family
Help yourself.
You want to be remembered as more than a mom
More than a wife
**** more than some girl who took her own life
So you want to be good at something
You want to be worth something
You want back the passion you had
You want to strive for talent and skills
Being kind isn’t enough because being kind doesn’t help replace the dryer.
Being someone to talk to doesn’t pay for a deposit on a house
Well then ******* try something new
You say you’re not good at anything new no ****
You have no talents because you don’t work for them
You have no passion because you give up on everything.
You gave up guitar viola art writing crochet knitting school working out everything. You gave up on yourself.
So how dare you
How dare you hold your head and pretend you’re not good enough
When you’ve never given yourself the chance to be great.

She smiled with blue lips
Mascara on sloped eyelashes
She hoped the world didn’t see she was sick
Her hands shook and her hair was thin
She clipped in her extensions
She propped her camera on a tripod
She smiled with blue lips

Why is knowing my problems
Never enough to fix them?

Children are not so oblivious as an adult
Their wide eyes seem to see so much more than we
Their tiny ears pick up feeling and
We think them ignorant.

I babysat my two nieces,
One was 5, the other 7
And as I walked through the door one day
They greeted me,
“Aspen, why are you sad?”

Nobody else seemed to see
The buildings in my head crashing
But these little girls knew instantly.
Even when I smiled and assured them I was fine
They snuck little worried glances at me

At the end of the day,
When I had forgotten the beginning,
They hugged me
They said they loved me and that’d I’d be okay
Because they knew I needed it.

Children are not so oblivious as an adult.

Staying in love is a choice.
Falling in love is easy
You are or you are not,
And you can tell by feeling.
Staying in love requires the effort
Of keeping that feeling when the newness is gone
It requires a complacency towards your partner
While remaining yourself
Even as you change.
Staying in love is hard.
Most stop trying when the feeling begins to fade
Some wait for the feeling to come back
But those who remain in love,
Persist the feeling.

I am not the best at keeping in touch
I don't call or text my parents often
or my friends.
But for almost two years
I seemed to have lost touch with myself
Anger and Sadness and
void.
I was so void of me
for almost two whole years.
How does a person live without themselves for two years?
Some do it all their lives
I don't want to be like that.
I want to take the steps to feel like me
Just putting in the effort to care is the first one.
So hello myself,
it's been a while.