Before I met you, I was a hurricane of a girl.

I was full of burning hot lava and made up of not just star dust but meteor showers.

I was the moon and the sun and every type of sky in between, the purple and blue of a whirlwind storm and the orange-pink hues of a tired day.

I could create waves as high as the boats that sailed my waters, then calm them just before they sank.

I could put every ******* natural disaster to shame with the power I held inside of my gut and my heart and my soul.

Now, I am the aftermath. I am the battered towns and the sunken dirt.

I am the cloudy night that conceals the evening lights and the defeated sea that seems to submerge into itself under the weight of the sinking sky.

I am composed of the residue of every catastrophe you have thrown my way, but underneath the rubble is the same girl from before, alive and whole and full of every great storm and tsunami tide the world has ever seen.

Start digging.

An anxious person's life comes with a set of rules, a guidebook on how to survive that is  etched between the neurons of said person's brain.
Each day fits neatly into a schedule, clocked in by the second and placed firmly into a time slot that is fixed and immovable.
Each thought is churned and questioned before finally being spit out.
Each sentence is perfectly manufactured as it has been sent down an assembly line and thoroughly checked before being spoken.
Each situation is analyzed and placed into a pros and cons power struggle before being decided upon.

An anxious person in love is a difficult thing.
Love can't be placed into a box, can't be precise and planned and prepared for.
Love can't be controlled or put into an agenda, can't be narrowed down into a certain time frame or date range.
Love is bigger than any person can hold in their hand. Love can get away, slip through the cracks and get scattered and messy.
An anxious person does not like messy. It makes them anxious.

Be with me when I am merely lines and edges, seeping into myself,
like soap through fingers after being scrubbed raw.
Can I wash my skin so much that it turns to dust and rubble?
Bright pink and raw, water merging with water, salted with emotion, steaming heat.
My mother always reminded me to wash behind my ears,
but a cotton cloth does not have the strength to cleanse mine from what they’ve heard.
Furious lather, scraping bits of skin, thumbs cracked and caked, kisses as bandaids.
Down the drain.
Swirls and rushes, empty tub and words to go down with it.
Wet tile bed, curled around the steamed aluminum, bunched eyes and clenched fists.
A railed curtain shield, droplets of moisture running, clear and red concoction.
Down the drain.
Hot to cold comfort, fingernail paintings, ripped skin and cracked tap.
Drip but not drop, losing but not lost.
Crawl up, out of dangerous waters, hoisting over porcelain obstacles.
Pull the plug from the outside, all fours on linoleum floors.
Down the drain.

I’ve been waiting for a sign to tell me what to do next, but I’ve discovered that maybe there’s small hints in everything, that we don’t initially notice.
Like how big you finally feel under a sky of a thousand stars, or how good it feels to run barefooted through a parking garage.
It could be hidden under the words of a kind stranger, or the way he talks to you like maybe you’re more important than you thought before.
Maybe it’s masked by the lacking I love you’s and the way he doesn’t quite feel like home anymore.

I think you have to really look for them, or maybe just let them happen and realize afterwards what you had missed when you saw his hand reaching for yours.
A season of change is scary, but it is okay to shed the old skin of an old version of you to embrace a new reality.
Go towards what makes you feel like running up five flights of stairs to lay in the middle of a roof top in the freezing cold, your laugh carrying through the night air.
Open your arms to what makes you feel warm in the middle of the November wind.
Let your heart explore what you are trying to push aside in your head.
It is okay to feel things that you’ve never felt before, but it’s not okay to ignore them.

I am not a door mat.

You can’t just come in and out whenever you please, stepping all over me as you do so.

"Welcome home."

A home is supposed to be comfortable, and that is one thing I am not, and so you are no longer welcome.

My door is shut, locked twice, chain and ****, tight as ever.

Nothing is getting in, so you can stop banging and yelling.

Although this is the most emotion I’ve seen you express in God knows how long, and you look so handsome through the peephole.

You knock so hard it almost feels like the wood is going to crack under your fist, but I built it to endure even the most powerful storms.

I’ve created floods stronger than your knuckles, earthquakes with my wails and hurricanes with my spinning, swirling mind.

You think you can break me, but you can’t, because I’ve already tried.

And trust me when I say, no one wants to destroy me more than I do.

I think the best way that I can describe anxiety is that it’s always there in the back of your mind, in the pit of your stomach, in the lump in your throat, even when you’re smiling or laughing or dancing or running.
It isn’t bigger than everything else you’re doing but it feels like it. It’s like a parasite, this small thing that has the ability to completely take over your body whenever it feels like it.
It doesn’t matter what mood you are, all you can ever feel is “anxious,” which might be mixed with other emotions but really, when you feel it, nothing else can matter. It forces it’s way to the front line and pushes everything else aside.
It changes the way you see things like the sun and the flowers and the buildings and it changes the way you hear things like your favourite song and the sound of the subway arriving and the wail of a siren. The sun is too bright and the flowers remind you that things around you are growing but you are not, and the buildings just confirm that everything in this world is so much bigger than you and your small problems, and your favourite song just makes you cry and the subway makes you miss home and the sirens make you long to be back home where you could hear crickets and rain and silence.
Anxiety makes everything bigger and more complex than it was ever meant to be, but all you can do is live with it and stay away from busy intersections and isolated alleys and roof edges and try not to cry in public and just hold it together.
What else can you do?

I thoughts that airplanes and road trips would fix me.
I thought I could fill the cracks with bits of every new adventure,
with street lights and tequila shots from strangers who called me beautiful,
rough hotel sheets and slurred conversations with blurred faces.
I thought I could match up my scars with locations on a map, trace them to find something more fulfilling, heal them with sea water and one night stands.
But then I realized that it wasn’t the place, it was me,
and no stamp on a passport could rewire my mind.
I was always bound to end up on the balcony overlooking seas and sidewalks,
wishing I was whole enough to jump without losing every part of myself on the way down.
Hanging over the railing talking myself in and out, and on to the comfort of the bathroom floor, creating my own oceans.

i do not believe in holding things in.

that is how bottled messages collect on deserted beaches,

how unaddressed letters begin filling desk drawers,

how unanswered questions spill over into one word midnight conversations.

communication was created for a reason,

verbal expression and languages formed in order to allow humans to connect.

when did words become so disconnected,

a way to fill space, a burden, something that has to be done.

when did silence become louder than heated debates,

texts become more crucial than ‘working it out’ over coffee,

media posts become more legitimized than countless apologies for the same god ****** thing over and over again.

who taught us to swallow our inner conflicts and emotions?

who said expression was weak and suppression was strong?

who taped our mouths and allowed our finger tips to take over,

a society of silence and screens?

Some mornings, heartbreak is in your bones, settled deep inside though you can’t seem to recall sending the invitation.
Your rib cage stands like the bare tree of fall, the wind whistling through it’s frail branches, tapping on your window as if to remind you, you are alone.

Some mornings, heartbreak is in your skull, in the crevices of the pale blue casing that surrounds your every thought, the broken dreamcatcher trying to keep the evil away.
But ghosts can float between the bars, slip inside your deepest secrets, with no regret or remorse for making you cry out in the night.

Some mornings, heartbreak is in your spine, intertwining like ivy on a lamp post, leaving you begging for someone else to hold your own head up for you.
Comfort resides in the hours spent cut off from reality, for at least you have control of that, though the dreams leave you franticly reaching in the night for something unknown to even you.

Some mornings, heartbreak finds it’s way back to your heart, slides through the valves, into the ventricles, mixing with the blood that gives you life. Heartbreak gives you life. Heartbreak reaches every last corner of your body, crippling you and taunting you, but you are still capable of breathing on your own. Heartbreak may be a thief, but you are a statue, broken and crumbling around the edges but still standing after all these years.

Some mornings, heart break is in your body. It seems to make up the essence of you, but it is not your being. You are your being.

When the thought of him makes your throat close and your eyes water,
in the middle of a coffee shop far from home,
maybe it’s a sign that your love is bitter, like black coffee,
stinging your lungs in the last sips, burning your lips, erasing his taste slowly.

When the sight of him makes your mind go blank, urges you to cross the street when the light is barely yellow,
maybe it’s a sign that you would sacrifice too much of yourself,
for a boy who would wait seconds after the shades signal a definite yes.

When the smell of him makes your heart beat faster than a taxi cab in rush hour,
horns blaring amongst the commotion of busy feet and lagging conversation,
maybe it’s a sign that you should be heading the other way,
towards a sunrise instead of the hues of a dying sunset.

Maybe it’s a sign that instead of knowingly heading to the end,
you should turn yourself around and go back to where you started.
The purple and orange blaze holds nothing that you need,
and you deserve a beginning instead of a sinking smile in the horizon.

I am a challenge, your own personal jigsaw puzzle.
You scattered my pieces all over your dinner table, sorting them into rough edges and smooth centers, completing me slowly from the outside in, until one day you decided that your fingers were too worn to continue.
An incomplete project, counting it as a loss, of interest and time and space in your too small, already cluttered world.
A picture that could have been beautiful, a landscape of somewhere you had only dreamed of, but instead discarded as simply a silly distraction, something too childish for your mature mind.
You left me fragmented and dispersed, disorganized when you knew I needed everything to be in one place, together, whole.
You never finish what you start, and I knew that from the beginning. I just hoped I could be the one thing you stuck around long enough to solve.

Your mother knows best, always.
2. You will promise to always be friends with people who you will eventually fall out of touch with. It's okay to be okay with this.
3. You will think you've lost a friendship, only to return and realize nothing has changed. Distance doesn't define a friendship.
4. It is okay to do whatever you need to do in order to feel alive. However, it is not okay to be self destructive. There is a fine line.
5. Space is not a bad thing. Sometimes you need to distance yourself in order to see the bigger picture.
6. Ask questions, even if the answer may hurt or embarrass or sadden you. Never allow yourself to be blinded.
7. You are no longer a naive little girl. You are a woman now, and you deserve to be treated like one no matter what. Don't make excuses for the people who make you feel like less.
8. It is okay to be scared. Embrace your fears, because when you do, your life will change for the better.
9. Make time to love and care for yourself. Sleep in, treat yourself to lacy underwear that only you will see, buy an $8 cappuccino even though you're broke.
10. Don't let others tell you what should make you happy. Only you know that, so don't let others guilt you into thinking you should be doing anything differently.
11. Turn off your phone when you need to get things done. If that means turning it off for the whole day, do it. You won't be missing out on anything, I promise.
12. Don't put up with people who make you feel like you are lesser than them. It's okay to walk away, without explanation.
13. Invest in a good pair of jeans, a high quality mascara, a bright red lipstick, and a push up bra. All of these will make you feel **** as hell.
14. Friendships aren't based on distance, time or proximity, but rather how much someone is there for you emotionally, consistently.
15. Sometimes, a night out with the girls is better medicine than anything else. Sometimes, you just need a good nights sleep.
16. You belong to you before you belong to anyone else. Don't let others feel as though they own you, or should come before you.