“I overcame myself, the sufferer; I carried my own ashes to the mountains; I invented a brighter flame for myself.”

Someday, someone is going to look at you with a light in their eyes you’ve never seen, they’ll look at you like you’re everything they’ve been looking for their entire lives. Wait for it.

Stop asking me to trust you while I’m still coughing water up from the last time you let me drown.

I’ve spent most of my life and most of my friendships holding my breath and hoping that when people get close enough they won’t leave, and fearing that it’s a matter of time before they figure me out and go.

I am tired. These people make me feel I have a hole in the middle of me.

there’s so much I haven’t told her lately, about how quickly my soul is aging, how it feels like a basement I keep filling with everything I’m tired of surviving.

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.

I know. I’m angry because I understand, not because I don’t.

I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in … but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.