I Was A Gifted Child. Until I Wasn't. I Was The Golden Girl. Until I Couldn't Burn Anymore.

if we did ask ourselves would the answer even matter we are a person as viewed by the ones around us they make us real otherwise all this could be just a dream

we are reduced to asking others what we are. we never dare to ask ourselves

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality

This is why it hurts the way it hurts. You have too many words in your head. There are too many ways to describe the way you feel. You will never have the luxury of a dull ache. You must suffer through the intricacy of feeling too much.

- Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You and Only You

{Marya Hornbacher from Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia//stay away but come closer via Altusboy on Tumblr}

I can’t live without her (…) I couldn’t live with her either.

Franz Kafka, from The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910-1923; “February 14, 1914”

June 25th. I sent another message just to unsend it 2 seconds later. My best friend asked me how I was today and I said 'I'm fine', what word can I use to define what I feel? What language burns in melancholy and drowns in loneliness only to go sleep with grief?

It's not so dramatic really. But it is.

“Maybe I live inside myself too much and maybe that is my greatest downfall.”

— Megan Grant, Solitude & the Sea

It must have been impossible to insult Kafka. Like, imagine that you call him an insufferable asshole and he just agrees with you. And then he would write in his diary about it.

February 15th I know I am the most insufferable of humans. Horrible. No sleep. Awful.

I bleed through words if not for poetry I would’ve bled my wrists dry long ago but bleeding through my words has helped me greatly.

: )

“Sometimes I wonder why words can’t actually make us bleed.”

— Swati Avasthi

A Tribute to the Unspoken, Just Words

As I kid, I wanted to be a savior, trailblazer, the prophecy child. I wanted a big life, with ups and ups like the breasts of mountains and lows like the depths of valleys full of forgotten debris. I was convinced the great flood was knocking at my door, beckoning me to become someone bigger. A juvenile fantasy, a hazy dream.

I'm 19 now. It's not a grand big life, I'm no hero. I love my friends and sunday mornings. I like cats and strawberries. No flood, no rapture, no calamity- just quiet weekdays and sleepy weekends. But oh my days, I am full, finally.

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned