Falling Back in Love with Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls

by Kai Cheng Thom

a body is skin wrapped around stories, is tissue filled with veins that the truth runs through, is a box of bones with a voice inside. i don’t want to be a volcano. i want to be a garden full of flowers bursting open toward life, all of them singing, i’m here. i mean something. i want to live.

you do not need to give love to others to love yourself, you can just love yourself.

your divinity is not found in any book. your divinity comes from within.

peace be to the moths, winging their way through the dark. peace be to the heavenly bodies, still tracing the same cycles a billion years after they were born. peace be to the damaged girls, the broken boys, all of us still learning what it means to hold without hurting. maybe someday you’ll be ready. maybe you’ll never be.

truth: i am worthy of love and capable of loving.

It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.

you matter. you would be missed. you are worth fighting for. you are worthy. you are important. you are precious. you are so, so brave. this world is a burning building. whether you leap from a high window or face the flames, know that i am here with you. burning.

my faith didn’t last, but it granted me grace.

tonight you choose yourself, silly girl. you were always worth more than you let yourself believe.

a child who keeps secrets to survive becomes a soldier in their soul.