“You know who’s gonna give you everything? Yourself.”

–Diane Von Furstenberg 

“I am figuring out which parts of my personality are mine 
and which ones I created to please you.”

 

–Lora Mathis, The Dust On This Poem Could Choke You 

“It’s better to have nobody than someone who is half there, or who don’t want to be there.”

-Angelina Jolie 

Many psychoanalysts think that lovesickness is a form of regression, that in longing for intense closeness, we are like infants craving our mother’s embrace. This is why we are most at risk when we are struggling with loss or despair, or when we are lonely and isolated – it is not uncommon to fall in love during the first term of university, for example. But are these feelings really love?

‘I sometimes say – but not entirely seriously – that infatuation is the exciting bit at the beginning; real love is the boring bit that comes later,’ the poet Wendy Cope once told me. ‘People who are lovesick put off testing their fantasies against reality.’ But given the anguish that lovesickness can cause – the loss of mental freedom, the dissatisfaction with one’s self, and the awful ache – why do some of us put off facing reality for so long?

Often it’s because facing reality means accepting loneliness. And while loneliness can be useful – motivating us to meet someone new, for example – a fear of loneliness can work like a trap, ensnaring us in heartsick feelings for a very long time. At it worst, lovesickness becomes a habit of mind, a way of thinking about the world that is not altogether dissimilar to paranoia.

 

– The Examined Life /  Stephen Grosz 

the gift of pain

…
at one time or another, we all try to silence painful emotions

but when we succeed in feeling nothing we lose the only means we have of knowing what hurts us, and why.

 

• The Examined Life / Stephen Grosz

“you should never have to apologize for the way you need to be loved.”

–spinningsharks

“The sexiest thing in the entire world is being really smart. And being thoughtful. And being generous. Everything else is crap, I promise you. It’s just crap that people try to sell to you to make you feel like less. So don’t buy it. Be smart. Be thoughtful. And be generous.”

-Ashton Kutcher 

i don’t know what living a balanced life feels like
when i am sad
i don’t cry, i pour
when i am happy
i don’t smile, i glow
when i am angry
i don’t yell, i burn

the good thing about feeling in extremes is
when i love i give them wings
but perhaps that isn’t
such a good thing cause
they always tend to leave
and you should see me
when my heart is broken
i don’t grieve
i shatter

– Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

you tell me to quite down cause
my opinion make me less beautiful
but i was not made with a fire in my belly
so i could be put out
i was not made with a lightness on my tongue
so i could be easy to swallow
i was made heavy
half blade and half silk
difficult to forget and not easy
for the mind to follow

• Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

“I was crying just to get you,
Now I’m dying to let you.”

Cryin’ 
(Aerosmith)

An Interview With A Narcissist

Why did you tell me that you loved me, and walk away when i needed your love the most?  

Because if I didnt tell you that I loved you, you wouldn’t be there when I needed you the most.

What about the time you told me that you loved my eyes?
The innocence in your eyes seduced me to speak. I was no longer able to tame the devil within me.

What about the time you told me that my voice was the most soothing to your soul?
Your voice was the calming white noise to my miserable black soul, and my misery craved your company.

What about the time you told me that you loved being around me and that it made you feel like you’ve never felt before?
You made me feel special and never judged me for the disaster that I was. You validated my existence.

What do I do now? I’m desperately in love with you and you don’t even care.
I can’t give you my heart when it disassembled like this. Just like the life took care of me, life will take care of you.

(Najwa Zebian & Spoken Silence) 

—

*Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of ultra-confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that’s vulnerable to the slightest criticism. And if talking generally and not medically, the highest level of selfishness one can exercise, to an extent where the cost and benefit rule applies only to the narcissist, getting what they need, using it to their benefit and throwing it away when no longer needed goes to the extent as far as bargaining ones heart to awake in love and when it fully blooms you leave them there hanging in the middle of no where.

nobody really knew anything.

people lived, they went here and there about the earth and rode through forests, so much seemed challenge or to promise and so many sights to stir our longing: an evening star, a blue harebell, a lake half-covered in green reeds, the eyes of beasts and human eyes and always it was as though something would happen, something never seen and yet sighed for, as though a veil would be pulled back off the world till the feeling passed and there had been nothing.

-Herman Hesse 

This Song Will Save Your Life

Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don’t know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn’t you. That isn’t you at all.

• Leila Sales

This Is How You Lose Her -Junot Diaz

you must learn her.

you must know the reason why she is silent
you must trace her weakness spots
you must write to her
you must remind her that you are there
you must know how long it takes for her to give up
you must be there to hold her when she is about to

you must love her because many have tried and failed
and she wants to know that she is worthy to be loved
that she is worthy to be kept

and this is how you keep her.

words

sometimes when you let them in again, and i’m not sure if that makes you brave or foolish because there is always a risk of being hurt or left with more scars than the first time. Somehow, this person is worth it. They are special and they mean more than the heartache they put you through, they are worth the heart throbbing, heart stopping, heart wrenching moments every time you stare at them after all you’ve been through. I’m not sure if that says more about you than it does about them – how they left you endure another form of pain while staying in your life or how you continue to let them be your moon while you are the waves

• Ming D.liu