Every Word You Cannot Say

by Iain S. Thomas

Sometimes, our immediate response to the way the world is, is anger, and the world is the way it is, because sometimes our immediate response to it, is anger.

Sometimes we do not see how much someone is already hurting and so when we hurt someone just a little, and they react, we think they’re overreacting, that they’re hostile and they think they’re finally being brave.

You are not a moment. Moments are just moments.

*We forget that how a person acts in each moment is not who they are, that each person is a series of moments and we cannot judge any moment in isolation, and use that moment to define them. It is not up to others, it is up to us, which moments we want to hang on to, for good or for bad. We forget our successes and enshrine our failures. We forget there is still a child in all of us, begging for love. We forget that this is true of every person we meet. We only hear the loudest voices when really, we should be listening to the quietest.

So do not ask for an easy life, with nothing to do. An easy life is not a good life.

You deserved to be loved the way you want to be loved.

The world will always wear you down, so let it wear you down until only the good remains. Hold on to the incredible parts of you that survive.

Given enough time, every building collapses, every flower turns to ash, every candle burns out, every name must be forgotten.

It’s a silence so big you could swim in it and blow up bubbles from the bottom of it. A silence so big it’d swallow you whole. A silence so big, if you listen hard enough, you can hear it roar.

I know: Sometimes, you think you don’t deserve goodness. But, I promise you, we all have things we think we don’t deserve.

And it’s easy to get stuck in a kind of loop of pain.

You’re hurt, so you hurt yourself some more.

There are days when everyone needs you to be strong, even if you’re dying inside, and you can only cry when no one’s looking because you’re petrified of letting them down. And I know you know: It can be so incredibly hard, just to be.

Often, we hate people not because they have wronged us, but because they have reminded us of some secret part of ourselves that we don’t like.

Maybe, making peace with the world starts with making peace with ourselves.

And sometimes anger is your body’s way of telling you that you’re ready to change things.

And while your anger can be useful, you have no duty to it.

There is no register in the sky keeping track of whether or not you got angry as many times as you were supposed to. You get to decide what eats you up.

And you have no obligation to kindness. You can be kind as often as you want. Kindness is not a currency, and if you treat it like one, then that is not kindness. Within you...

Not everyone wins the lottery, but everyone who does bought a ticket. To live the life you want, you have to be brave and buy the ticket every single day.

We all intend to be perfect but none of us are. If only we could all see each other as we intended to be, instead of as who we are.

And we’re not everything we could be, because we’re afraid to allow ourselves to exist all at once, because too many people have told us not to.

So I say, ‘I love you’ but I mean, ‘I believe I will love you again, one day.’”

You cannot nail words or water to a board. All our words have ever done, is leave our lips, and become air.

“How can I help you, when what happened to you, happened to you before I got Here. You think if I went away, your problems would go away. But I’m just a person. I’m not your problems. Your problems, are your problems. What happened to you, happened to you before I got Here.”