Most of the time I am satisfied with the life I choose to lead. Not having many plans on the weekends, going to bed before midnight, drinking hot water.
Then comes a sudden wave of scare, that I’m not making the most of my life, that I’m boring.
I can’t help it if I prefer reading in my room to clubbing at the club, and I am blessed with friends who get that but also who push me out of my corner to live a little differently sometimes.
“Sometimes I look at you and I can’t understand how someone before me didn’t see what I see,
sometimes I look at you and I can’t understand how someone before me didn’t notice a whole beautiful universe hidden within you,
sometimes I look at you and I can’t understand how someone before me looked at you and didn’t find every single thing they’d been searching for in a single human being,
and sometimes I look at you feeling glad that they didn’t, because if they looked deep enough to see all of those things within you, then I would’ve never been able to.”—Ruby Dhal (via lovelustquotes)
“Human beings can withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness. It is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings.”—Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes (via the-book-diaries)
“Time will pass; these moods will pass; and I will, eventually, be myself again.”—Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (via the-book-diaries)
“She wanted to say ‘Don’t leave me,’ but she couldn’t do it, not again. She was so tired of begging people to love her.”—Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale (via the-book-diaries)
“What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?”—Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (via the-book-diaries)
I woke up rather late today for a Thursday but as it is Thanksgiving, I am taking the next two days off of work! This year has been incredible in every sense of the word.
1) I am thankful for being 24 and young and vibrant. I am 24 and alive. Even if sometimes I wish I weren’t. Even if I try to remember who I was before 19. Even if I’m always scared of the shoe dropping.
2) I am thankful for my ability to care for others and put them before myself in their times of need.
3) I am thankful that I am slowly learning how to let G take care of me.
4) I am thankful Mii and I are still best friends and able to talk about anything we want to. Though I am hiding something from you now, I believe you would forgive me.
5) I am thankful for having health insurance. I am thankful my parents have health insurance.
6) I am thankful that I was able to go back to Taiwan this year and spend some much needed quality time with my entire family. Taiwan will always be home; it will always be my top pick for leaving the US.
7) I am thankful that Meghann joined the lab. I am thankful that I gave her a second chance. I enjoy the liveliness and the upbeat-ness to our lab.
8) I am thankful that in the last couple of weeks my lab has become more close-knit and social. I like that now we can sit in the tea room together and chat. I am thankful that I am getting over my social anxiety around them.
9) I am thankful that I have a mom and a dad that care for each other and are good at supplementing each other’s needs. They are my inspiration for what a stable long-term marriage is, even with its ups and downs. They know they have each other for their lifetimes. Right now they are on their way to see my dad’s brother in Northern California. My mom knows how much my dad cares about his brother and is willing to go on this long drive on Thanksgiving day so they can all be together. If this is not true love, I do not know what else is.
10) I am thankful I found my way back to therapy. I am thankful to Kate for understanding my complexities and for wanting the best for me, which meant seeking outside help.
11) I am thankful Calista who goes on cold morning runs with me, who I can get coffee and lunch with, who I share food with. She is my girl and I hers. Through anything and everything. I love that I have a friendship as strong as this.
12) I am thankful for Sophia and for becoming closer with her. I am thankful that she always knows exactly what to do, like walking with me at night, coming over after dad’s accident, and asking me over for dinner. She is dependable and loving. I am thankful for sharing so many of my life’s moments with her this year.
13) I am thankful for my ability to know now what is good for me, to stand up for myself even if it sometimes takes me a while to own up to it and to ask for it.
14) I am thankful for my bosses who are tough, understanding, and continue to push me to do better and think critically. I could not ask to be in a better lab situation.
I don’t want to strive for 24 subpar things I am thankful for. This is me breaking my OCDness and being content that I can think immediately of 14 things I am thankful for this Thanksgiving.
“I want to talk
about what happened
without mentioning
how much it hurt.
There has to be a way.
To care for the wounds
without reopening them.
To name the pain
without inviting it back
into me.”—If There’s A Way Out I’ll Take It, Lora Mathis (via stolenwine)
“But what
do I do with all this leftover love?
My hands were built for crawling on.
How do I write myself gently. How
do I not worship the shipwreck that
stranded me here?”—Sierra DeMulder, from “After Googling Affirmations for Abuse Survivors,”We Slept Here (via wethinkwedream)
“I’m just dying to say, ‘Hey, do you ever feel like jumping off a bridge?’ or ‘Do you feel an emptiness inside your chest at night that is going to swallow you?’ But you can’t say that at a…party.”—Paul Gilmartin, The Mental Illness Happy Hour (via wordsnquotes)
“There are two things about the autumn that particularly attract me. Sometimes there’s a gentle melancholy in the falling leaves, in the tempered light, in the haziness of things, in the elegance of the slender trunks. Then, I like the more robust, rougher side just as much — the strong light effects, for example on a digger sweating in the midday sun.”—Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo van Gogh, 9 September 1882 (via cognacandlace)
“When morning finally comes tomorrow, it will be so bright that you’ll forget all about the terrors in the dark. So just breathe, it will all pass soon.”—A. Synthia (via humanseoul)
“no monster here,
only the shape of a falling star
where your heart should be.
northbound & reaching, a
hero telling her story. it starts
like this: once upon a time,
you rode the dragon
& saved your own life.”— NATALIE WEE, EXCERPT OF “HOW TO SAVE YOUR OWN LIFE”, PUBLISHED IN THE RISING PHOENIX REVIEW (via 7-weeks)
“i lay awake and pictured
all the ugly ways i could hurt you
like you’d hurt me,
cut you open and spill out all that
future,
seal off all the heart chambers and
let them fill up with memories that
taste like iron, make you
carry around a belly full of regret that
never seems to let you finish a sandwich
i lay awake thinking
of how i’d make you feel like i did,
a ship that had been burned down
by its captain, a mouse in front of a lion,
a yard that never grew flowers,
or worse, a flower that nobody ever
loved enough to try to strangle
i lay awake and pictured
you showing up in ridiculous places
and what i’d say when i saw you finally
how i’d hurt you so you could be hurting too,
beginning with
the worst plan i had,
beginning with,
“i forgive you.””—r.i.d (via inkskinned)
“i still love you
but last night instead of
scanning through our text messages
a little rabbit looking for
the flaw in her den;
i went to sleep
and forgot about them
i still love you
but my hair smells like
a new brand of conditioner and
i cut it so i feel light, i feel
whole
and your hands wouldn’t recognize it,
have never run their course
through the new styles
i’ve been trying
because i don’t care if you
like it down
anymore
i still love you;
some part of me fears
that i’ll always love you,
a small seashell amount, a
shard of glass hidden in
my bedsheets
i still love you
but i am learning how to love myself
as wide as beaches,
to check under the covers for sharp things
and when i find them,
to put them somewhere i won’t see
i still love you
but i am better
at loving me.”—r.i.d (via inkskinned)
