Life Really Is Just Like. You Meet People You Love Them And Then You Lose Them And You Never See Them

I was a gifted child. Until I wasn't. I was the golden girl. Until I couldn't burn anymore.

My parents expected me to build wings of gold and fly further than anyone could ever try. I don't blame them, having a child to raise is like sculpting a clay pot, you can shape it the way you like, paint it the colour you fancy. To raise a child is to play God. To raise a child is to be God.

But to be a child is to fall, to make mistakes, to fail. The thing about being too bright at an early age means you burn out by the time you're 16 and suddenly the world around you becomes more gray and terribly, terribly lonely. The fire is never warm enough, nothing is ever enough. And one day you find yourself begging to a godless sky, begging for a new spark.

I was a gifted child once. I was the golden girl. And one day, I burned out.

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire

There's a sort of goodbye that comes with 17.

All questions of 'who do you want to be when you grow up' turn to 'who are you becoming now?' 17 is young, 17 is old. It's everything you wanted. It's everything you despised. It's messy and ruthless and full of grief at times. And 17 is scary as hell because now you know that you finally have to say goodbye to childhood.

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned (source)

— Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

"Was he your soulmate?"

She stared at me for a while, then smiled.

"That's just a word." She laughs.

"I think we loved each other with the kind of love that lasts lifetimes. But I loved many people with different kinds of love that would last lifetimes. We had our time and we lived a beautiful life. Is that enough to become a soulmate? I don't know.

"I guess that's it. You love someone in the moment, and you make more of them and then you hope those moments will last forever, knowing that they won't. So you gather those moments in your memory, hold them close and cherish them and make new ones."

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned

(source)

“And that was what destroyed you in the end: the longing for something you could never have.”

— Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

me. me when a poem says something ive felt before

okay but saying “i wish i had known you sooner” — like the love in my heart is growing so big and fast for you that i wish i had the opportunity to have you way earlier by my side, because i want to love you longer than i can do now. my love for you reaches my past and makes a place for you.

“Wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely? Wasn’t this house, this beauty, this comfort, this life a miracle?”

— Hanya Yanagihara, from A Little Life

I say I'm okay and I am okay.. but some evenings I barely move from the chair and some mornings I skip breakfast and don't open your texts. I say I'm okay and I am okay but some nights my hands shake when I think of getting up the next morning.

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from Elle took a knife and carved her thighs