Honesty

by Seth King

“I love unmade beds. I love when people are drunk and crying and cannot be anything but honest in that moment. I love the look in people’s eyes when they realize they are in love. I love the way people look when they first wake up and have forgotten their surroundings. I love the gasp people make when a favorite character dies. I love when people close their eyes and drift to somewhere in the clouds. I fall in love with people and their honest moments all the time, with their breakdowns and their smeared makeup. Honesty is just too beautiful to ever put into words.” -Unknown

“Speak your truth even if your voice shakes. Live your truth even if your body breaks. Spirit survives.” -Katheryn Hudson

“Man is free the instance he decides to be.” -Voltaire, Brutus

My story was real, and it happened, and no matter how hard I try to forget it, I will never be able to make it unhappen.

What must it be like, I wondered, to look out at the world through galaxies every day instead of eyes?

The casual kind of cruelty hurt the worst, as it usually rolled off the lips of the ones we loved most. Sometimes we let our loved ones pick and pick and pick at us until suddenly there was nothing left to save.

That was the day I realized I could really, truly make people happy just by making them feel comfortable, by making them feel heard, making them feel witnessed, like they mattered.

Book lovers were also fools, in a way. Everyone knew they could never find love, because all they did was compare real life to life within the page. And spoiler alert: the page always won.

We were playing by the rules of our parents, and their money and acceptance were our leashes.

He was the sun, and I was burning up.

Who I loved was as much a part of me as my hair color or the fact that I was right-handed at everything except taking photos. Boys were in my DNA.

I wanted to believe that we were not what happened to us, we were what we did about it.

You’re like a book I want the whole world to read.”

For the first time ever I wasn’t waking up sad.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “But I do know you’re the only person I wanna be alive with.”

“To write is to access all the parts of yourself that others avoid,” he said, holding his notebook. “A book is like a rose that blooms from the most barren corner of your soul.”

Advice to live by

The world forces people to go into hiding, and then gawks at them when they come out of that hiding.

I looked around at the books on the shelves, antiquated artifacts in a world that had moved past them. Just like us.

That was odd. I always thought you could only drown in water, never humans.

The weird thing about words was that once released, you could never get them back.

clichés were made for this. Even if they ripped me apart.

She said that dependence was seeking out something from someone, while love, on the other hand, was offering someone something because you were already full.

You’ll only ever love me with the lights off.”

Put something in love’s path and it will crack stone, conceal love and it will break through and move mountains. Deny love and it will explode, run from love and it will overtake you. Kill love and watch love’s revenant, imprison love and watch it break free and sing.

“Whoever’s reading this out there – you deserve to have someone's hands be glued to you, for their eyes to be stuck on you. You deserve for their face to catch on fire when they look at you, for them to lay eyes on you and devote the rest of their day to you. Don’t ever let yourself settle for anything less than magic from Dumbledore’s freakin’ wand. That feeling – you know, that crazy, irrational, my-brain-won’t-work-without-you, I’d-make-you-eggs-every-morning-for-the-rest-of-my-life kind of feeling – that feeling is the most important thing you will ever find. No matter what happens in this life, that feeling – that love – will keep you warm, and carry you through. So find that magic feeling and never let anything take it away from you.”

Because sometimes breakups destroyed one person and made the other person fly.

“go to where your passions flow.”

“There’s nothing wrong with chandeliers,” I whispered, but he was already gone.

I couldn’t keep allowing him to treat my heart like the cold green beans at the bottom of the sink after dinner,

The act of grieving meant so much more when you were doing it in the center of a group of people who loved you, or had at least loved the same person as you. What did my lonesome grief mean to the world?

Here lies Nicky Flores, a boy who loved. He loved with every tool he had, in every way he know how, as hard as his broken heart would let him. He loved in a world that tried to destroy that love, and really there has never been anyone or anything braver. And as we cry for him, let us cry freely, as he is worth every tear.

adulting was a journey, not a destination.

I didn’t know my own life anymore