Maria Kristina Cassandra

It's easy when we're on the outside to believe that we would walk away without a second thought if a person mistreated us. It's easy to say we couldn't continue to love someone who mistreats us when we aren't the ones feeling the love of that person. When you experience it firsthand, it isn't so easy to hate the person who mistreats you when most of the time they're your godsend.

“I’ll keep pretending to swim, when really all I’m doing is floating. Barely keeping my head above water.”

“Fifteen seconds. That’s all it takes to completely change everything about a person. Fifteen.”

“Just because someone hurts you doesn’t mean you can simply stop loving them. It’s not a person’s actions that hurt the most. It’s the love. If there was no love attached to the action, the pain would be a little easier to bear.”

Cycles exist because they are excruciating to break. It takes an astronomical amount of pain and courage to disrupt a familiar pattern. Sometimes it seems easier to just keep running in the same familiar circles, rather than facing the fear of jumping and possibly not landing on your feet.

“I hope that in the end you’ll be satisfied. Not only satisfied, but happy. I hope you’ll tell me you gave your best and on days you couldn’t, you allowed yourself to rest without feeling guilty about it. I hope you found love at some point, that you cherished it and did not take it for granted. And when it crashed and burned and you held the shattered pieces in your bloody palms, I hope you could at least learn something about yourself. You grew from the things that broke you. I’m so proud of you for staying soft in a world that tries to harden your heart every day. I hope that at the end of your days you will not regret anything you did and didn’t do. I want to hear you say “I made mistakes and I fucked up, but I lived. I lived through it all and looking back, I would not change a single thing.””