dark star

I was your insomnia, I was your grief.

Stop minimizing and discounting your feelings. You have every right to feel the way you do. Your feelings may not always be logical, but they are always valid. Because if you feel something, then you feel it and it’s real to you. It’s not something you can ignore or wish away. It’s there, gnawing at you, tugging at your core, and in order to find peace, you have to give yourself permission to feel whatever it is you feel. You have to let go of what you’ve been told you should or shouldn’t feel. You have to drown out the voices of people who try to shame you into silence. You have to listen to the sound of your own breathing and honor the truth inside you. Because despite what you may believe, you don’t need anyone’s validation or approval to feel what you feel. Your feelings are inherently right and true. They’re important and they matter — you matter — and it is more than okay to feel what you feel. Don’t let anyone, including yourself, convince you otherwise.

… her sad smile like that sadness we feel after sex, those few delirious hours when we needed nothing but breath and flesh, after we’ve flown back into ourselves, our imperfect heavy bodies, just before the terrible hunger returns.

You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy.

It happens like this. One day you meet someone and for some inexplicable reason, you feel more connected to this stranger than anyone else—closer to them than your closest family. Perhaps this person carries within them an angel—one sent to you for some higher purpose; to teach you an important lesson or to keep you safe during a perilous time. What you must do is trust in them—even if they come hand in hand with pain or suffering—the reason for their presence will become clear in due time. Though here is a word of warning—you may grow to love this person but remember they are not yours to keep. Their purpose isn’t to save you but to show you how to save yourself. And once this is fulfilled; the halo lifts and the angel leaves their body as the person exits your life. They will be a stranger to you once more.

silly girl, you bled for him, didn’t you? grew out your hair, shrunk down your waist, let him fuck you with the lights off and paint his name in blood onto your back. silly girl, forgive yourself for the bad dates, for saying yes, for meaning no, for the diets, the discounted liquor, the makeup you painted onto your face like camouflage. your dreams were made for the dark, they bloom and grow inside of you. your womb, a greenhouse. your hands, wind. you were in love except he didn’t love you, but you tried, didn’t you? silly girl, you are not the most reliable narrator. all those nights you waited up to hear from him, phone poised in your hand like a gun. you’ve always loved things that were the worst for you: trans fat, sweet tea, Black Friday sales, boys whose hands feel like triggers. you’ll grow out of it, or you won’t, and you’ll forget to delete the voicemails, the emojis you sent when you couldn’t express yourself in words. just look at the quiet shipwreck of you. it was always about the drowning, and you never learned to swim.

"I don’t let anyone touch me," I finally said… "Why not?" Why not? Because I was tired of men. Hanging in doorways, standing too close, their smell of beer or fifteen-year-old whiskey. Men who didn’t come to the emergency room with you, men who left on Christmas Eve. Men who slammed the security gates, who made you love them and then changed their minds. Forests of boys, their ragged shrubs full of eyes following you, grabbing your breasts, waving their money, eyes already knocking you down, taking what they felt was theirs. Because I could still see a woman in a red bathrobe crawling in the street. A woman on a roof in the wind, mute and strange. Women with pills, with knives, women dyeing their hair. Women painting doorknobs with poison for love, making dinners too large to eat, firing into a child’s room at close range. It was a play and I knew how it ended, I didn’t want to audition for any of the roles. It was no game, no casual thrill. It was three-bullet Russian roulette.

Well, excuse me for messing up the distinction. Well, during college and after, you did get better at disguising it, even if you’ve obviously reverted back to doing it.

I really don't think I can, excuse you that is.  It's inexcusable, actually.--What can I say?  It's a survival technique.

First Love came with a contract that it wanted me to sign in blood, that I would always be the girl I was at 18. First Love came with dirty hands, ready to shape me into half of what First Love thought we could be. First Love was cocky and drunk, daring the world to fight us. First Love was stupid and reckless, making promises it couldn’t keep. First Love was cold and quiet, leaving before it was left and when it left, First Love left with the air in my lungs. First Love left with the belief in my bones. First Love left with deflated vows and cracked certainty and a heart that was reaching for something I couldn’t see. When First Love left, I burned the contract and let myself grow.

Nico almost had to laugh when he pulled up to the bar.  The address had seemed familiar, but he had no goddamned idea why.  Leave it to the family to buy the bar in which Nico committed a crime that had him sent away for a decade.  Leave it to them to tell him that he’d be running it.  They sure had a sick sense of humor. — He explored the back bits of the bar, the parts he never saw all those years ago when he was only a customer, before deciding to get to work.  It became obvious to him that no one had cleaned up from the previous night, and Nico found himself cleaning tables and washing glasses.  Nico had become entirely wrapped in the mind-numbing work, his head somewhere else entirely when he heard the automated music play, signaling that someone had opened the door.  Without looking up, he called out