Unsplintered

Eventually, you’ll know that I wrote this for you – though I’m publishing it because I’m not the only one in the world who needs, who deserves, who craves to be inspired by, reminded of, enlightened by an example such as you.

I just asked you the hardest questions ever about our budding relationship. I stated the hardest truths – unique to us, but not unique; and they may very well be the hardest truths we ever face.

It’s the second time today we’ve struggled through strong, heavy, deep emotions. Trudging through tidal waves in old rivers that promise to pull us under if we lose hold of each other, if we fail to keep aware, I led us this morning and again this evening.

It would be easier, of course, to slip into something comfortable and let the tide carry us away, swept on the surface of our emotions without ever diving beneath the rippling waves.

I’m not like that, though.

I don’t trust the way others live their romances, ignoring life and living, believing only what’s above the surface, pretending nothing exists beneath; then lying about where they’ve been when they delve into depths with other friends or lovers – or by themselves.

I’ve tried to lead men in this way before.

Countless times (very literally), I’ve been accused harshly for speaking the truth. Countless times, I’ve been hammered down for fearing, for feeling, for expressing my anxieties, my heartfelt wishes, my anguish-strained memories.

I was alone when you found me, this time, for a reason:

It never worked, before. I’ve countlessly been abandoned. I’ve endlessly been blamed, misunderstood, rejected.

It’s a lot, I know. Where once I was silent, afraid to speak a word about the rippling of my heart, reigned in the tidal waves of fears and tears and love and dreams because I was used to being beaten, I speak it all, given liberty to do so. I ask, still, rather than presuming. It speaks highly of… everything.

Not that any of that matters, now.

What matters is that you looked at your life, at our love, at the difficulties that lay ahead of us and, rather than hiding anymore, rather than accepting what is untenable, rather than asking that I accept something equally or more untenable, you took the lead.

You don’t know how proud I am of you for this, for what you did for me. For us. For you.

And you let me give this to you.

This, also, speaks highly of everything.

I know it’s not easy to face your truths. I know it’s not easy to change one’s life, to walk out into the unknown.

But you did it. You took that first step.

I’m so proud of you. As hard as it is, as deep as this hurts, I’m so proud of you for accepting responsibility for your life. For not evading anymore. For accepting yourself.

You’re not splintered anymore.

Splintered by Aisha Badru

They never taught us how to love
So we use our pain
To comfort us
And we never practice what we preach
Instead, we find
Someone else to teach

We try not to see with our eyes
We fill our plates
With dozens of lies
We try so hard to keep it in
We turn away
From what lies within

We are splintered
And we are rotten
Deep within the walls that we've forgotten
All the answers
To all our problems
Lie within the one who tries to dodge them

Ooooh, ooooh
Ooooh, ooooh

We're so afraid to be alone
So we hoard our pain
And call it home
They never taught us how to look inside
Only how to run and how to dry our eyes

We dig ourselves into a ditch
How many of us die
And pretend to live?
We stop the life from leakin' in
When we turn away
From what lies within

We are splintered
And we are rotten
Deep within the walls that we've forgotten
All the answers
To all our problems
Lie within the one who tries to dodge them

We are splintered
And we are rotten
Deep under the floorboards we've forgotten
But all the answers
To all our problems
Lie within the one who tries to dodge them

Ooooh, ooooh
Ooooh, ooooh

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Aisha Badru

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.

Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum (via wordsnquotes)

 

~ Thank you for the reminder. ~

 

 

Do you even know what it’s like? To look at a person like their eyes are made of stars and the galaxies run through their bloodstream and not having an inkling of a clue as to how they feel about you? It’s an agony that I can’t even put into words.

excerpt from a book i’ll never write #47 (via a-laa-mode)

We mistake sex for romance. Guys are taught that pushing a girl up against a wall is romance. Sex is easy; you can do it with anyone, yourself, with batteries. Romance is when someone you like walks into a room and they take your breath away. Romance is when two people are dancing and they fit together perfectly. Romance is when two people are walking next to each other and all of a sudden they find themselves holding hands, and they don’t know how that happened.

The hardest battle you are ever going to have to fight is the battle to be just you.

…I see more than this,

More than I can tell you, more than there are words for.

T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems & Plays (via wordsnquotes)

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

 

My darling, you can’t see it, can you? How like the moon you are. Both of you so timid in yourselves; hiding pieces from the world. Then, there are those rare moments when you both are full, and it becomes hard to look away. You are beautiful.

 

She’s broken. But that doesn’t mean she is weak. If you apply enough pressure anything will break.

 

To tell someone not to be emotional is to tell them to be dead.

Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
(via wordsnquotes)
~Except:  don’t forget that happy is normal, too~

 

I’m not running away from anything, I’m running towards. I’m running towards love, towards things larger than life. I’m not running away from my problems, I’m simply leaving them behind, leaving them in the past. I don’t need them where I’m going.

 

Mais mon amour, mon doux, mon tendre, mon merveilleux amour

De l’aube claire jusqu’à la fin du jour

Je t’aime encore, tu sais, je t’aime

Jacques Brel
(via soul-and-blues)

 

~ Translated, with help from Google Translate ~

 

But, my love, my sweet, my dear, my wonderful love
From clearest dawn until the end of day
I love you again, you know, I love you

Did you ever know, dear, how much you took away with you when you left?

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
(via wordsnquotes)

This is exactly how I feel, almost all the time.

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are

E.E. Cummings (via watehva)

Don’t wait for it…Create a world, your world. Alone. Stand alone. Create. And then the love will come to you, then it comes to you.

if we loved people as we should

we wouldn’t have poetry.

 

words aren’t hollow.

K. Kazik. (via these-chains-are-daisies)

 

Perhaps this is true.

She had a big love inside her, and she needed to give it.

Jeanne DuPrauThe Prophet of Yonwood
(via wordsnquotes)

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.

Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
(via wnq-anonymous)