“Sure I Loved Him - Too Much. And He Loved Me, Only Not Enough. I Just Want Someone Who Thinks I’m

a love letter as a hug, as your head in my lap, as the romance of room 56, with the lights turned off. there have been so many nights i wished i was crawling into bed beside you, so many late night library sessions where i wished you were across me, eyes glued to your laptop, days where i wished i was reaching across the mattress to rest against your tenderness, the sweet softness of you.

my hair was wet and tangled, my clothes stuck to me like a second skin. your hands were reaching for me, desperate and frantic. but we’re laughing and splashing. you had dared me to jump into the lake and I had said, yes I’ll do it even if I can’t swim. what’s youth without a little death anyway? what’s life if we don’t test it’s limits? the lake was so cold but I loved feeling your body pull me from it. I loved knowing you’d always save me. I coughed and spluttered in between the giggles, shivering and shocked. you ask me if it hurts. it still does, my brown eyed boy. it still does.

and I think it always will.

when richard siken said, “i hope it’s love. i’m trying really hard to make it love. i said no more severity”

lover, breathe with me in between all the seconds. the slow rise and fall of your rib cage, and the quiet hum of your pulse underneath crumpled bedsheets. spill your lifeline between those saccharin lips onto my body. time spent apart and together, sighing in the bathtub with our naked bodies and glasses of wine. kiss me here and here and here darling. turn my body into a love letter, sign your name onto my inner thigh.

coffee, the sunrise and the buildings awash in the light of a new morning all around me. how lovely is it to be alive. to experience all this busyness and splendour. how the clouds whisper good morning and the heavens themselves shine through each crack in the sky. how the sun calls my body to wake. how the birds tell me today is a new day and aren’t there just endless possibilities. the promise of a new sunrise makes me so glad I’m still alive.

we roll around on the carpet floor, hugging each other tightly, pulling each other ever closer. we try to stay quiet, but whispers of “I missed you so much” spoken in the language of pleasure escape. we giggle at the intimacy of it all, two lovers ready to throw themselves off the brink of everything to stay in this dream.

the way your body melts into mine, like you belong here, like we were made for this moment. we hug and laugh and kiss and say “goodbye, lover, I’ll see you later!” and never worry. we help each other with our work and plan for a future full of sunflowers and paintings and dinner by the fireplace. we’re still arguing if we should get a dog or a cat, though. that playful love.

how my words slip from my loose gloved jaw whenever ur around. how I lie on your chest and hear ur heartbeat quicken like you still get shy when I come close. how you stumbled into my life and made a beautiful mess of my mind.

wouldn’t trade you for the world, my summertime boy, wouldn’t give you away for anything. and when we roll around the carpet floor, breathless and wistful and entangled, I’m reminded why loving you is so easy.

I love the fact that you need to lean on me, a boy says. 

He loved my vulnerability and how big I made him feel, 

But would get annoyed if I’d call him in the midst of another anxiety attack, 

Begging to know if he still loved me,

 if he still wanted me.

He called me his broken little thing. 

Wrote a play and in it I stabbed myself with a blade.

I would write him a suicide note thanking him for his bravery and his charm.

He finds me on the floor, cries over me and goes on to be a doctor, 

It’s only now that I realise he never loved me. 

He just loved the control.

Trigger warning:

I tried to end my life exactly a year ago today. I came dangerously close to dying, spent weeks in a hospital. my life completely changed. this morning I woke up early to a quiet world, save for some birds outside my window. I saw the night change to dusk turn to morning and couldn’t help but remember how I would’ve missed something so wonderful if I died. how I wouldn’t have seen the flashes of orange and gold and honey swirl and change in the sky. how the endless black turned to sunshine. how depression didn’t win.

coffee, the sunrise and the buildings awash in the light of a new morning all around me. how lovely is it to be alive. to experience all this busyness and splendour. how the clouds whisper good morning and the heavens themselves shine through each crack in the sky. how the sun calls my body to wake. how the birds tell me today is a new day and aren’t there just endless possibilities. the promise of a new sunrise makes me so glad I’m still alive.

things my abuser has tried to take away from me but failed:

1) Love in the form of sunflowers and surprise dinners and intertwined fingers. Romance and deep kisses, warm and safe. Dancing and giggling with him to Lily Allen. Kissing him and wondering what I did to deserve a body so soft, a love so raw and honest.

2) Love in the form of looking after this heavy body, even when it doesn’t look after me back. Face masks, showers and brushing through my matted hair, knotted like a unkempt garden. Dragging myself to therapy and loving all the charred parts of me. Loving me flawed, loving me regardless, loving me unconditionally, loving the me that survived.

3) Love in the form of a best friend. Nights spent sleeping next to her, nights spent crying into her lap, nights spent singing at the top of our lungs. She loves me silently, knows me when I’m down, knows me when I’m up. She doesn’t love me different, even with all the flaws.

4) Love in the form of family, with their misguided love and tentative support. Love in the form of my mother’s perfume and food she tells me to eat even when I feel I don’t deserve it. Weeks spent in hospital, bringing me my favourite food in the ward. Love in the form of her imperfection and how I wouldn’t change it for the world.

5) Love in the form of music, of dancing around in my room to the anthems of my youth. Of belting it out as loud as my lungs will allow. Songs I’ve cried to, laughed to, kissed to, lost to. Songs that held me up and gave a melody to all the hurt.

6) Love in the form of the poet in me. On my best days, she is all that I am. On my worst days, she is all that I want to be.

7) Love in the form of hope. A love that screams I made it. A love that believes it happened. Recovery has finally, finally begun to taste sweet.

“You are not real. You are a dream of a dream.”

— Henry Miller, from Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters Of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus (via violentwavesofemotion)