Chasing Flippers

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?

There are days when anxiety makes you feel so kerosene drenched and flammable, that anything can be a trigger to a colossal fire within you. And you are still expected to go out into the world and continue as normal. As though everything around you is not a match. As though every other word will not set your mind aflame and leave you screaming because you are burning from inside, unable to breathe because of the cinders that are piling up in your lungs. And as you are burning, there are people around you, who instead of helping you fight the flames, are watching you burn, saying “Don’t you think you are overreacting?”

And sometimes it’s just so hard to fight the tightness in my chest when everything is dark. And it breaks my heart to realize that I am not (always) strong enough to fight for myself which shouldn’t really be a surprise. So I’m sitting on the edge of my bed, wrapped up in my sheets and the emptiness is overwhelming, just like the way my heart beats. And it is so goddamn hard not to forget that there is something that makes it worth the fight and that I cannot just go back to bed, because the only thing I really don’t want to lose is the awareness that I’m the one who gets to chose where my life will take me and what’s my destiny and that my passions are a way of therapy.

only the ocean understands what it is like to shed so many tears and still feel so heavy, to have the taste of salt still lingering on your mouth long after the tide has gone out

We often forget that there is an after. Afterwards. Aftershocks. Aftertastes. There is something sour in the way things linger. Like an afterthought. An absence filled with a sense of fullness. I exist in places you try to forget.

The ghosts of all the women you used to be are all so proud of who you have become, storm child made of wild and flame.

Pain changes people. This is no secret. But your pain speaks with wisdom. When you are a child, the same pain teaches you to not touch fire by burning your fingers. When you grow older the fire turns into people. Your pain will teach you how to be careful, but it will also teach you how to be compassionate to others, be kind to those who are hurting and how to be strong in the face of adversity. Allow your pain the power to change you in a positive, beautiful way.

If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.