Every Word You Cannot Say

by Iain S. Thomas

If things are good, they will change. If things are bad, they will change. Because change is the nature of every story.

It takes time. But time is all it takes. Not your heart. Not your life. Just time.

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.

Embrace the you inside you, silence the voice that stops you from being able to truly help yourself and others. You can be someone who matters to others. You can be someone who matters to you.

Love me, because I love you more than anyone else has ever loved you.”

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

We all want to love. We’re all afraid we are alone. We’re afraid no one will know who we were. Because on some level, we all know you can die without love, without anyone, without even you knowing who you are.

(Unless you take care of you, and give yourself love. Unless you meet yourself, inside yourself. Unless you know yourself like you were meant to. Forgive yourself for being you— you have done nothing wrong and tomorrow is another chance. I swear, there is a day after, every day.)

Break every vow that hurts you. Take every opportunity. Light all fires. Turn all keys.

You love again. Recycle your heart. Someone out there needs it. —Remember this.

*If I’m honest, sometimes I feel like we’ve been trying to find each other in every life before this one, and this is as close as we’ve ever gotten. And I know now that we have to try again because we fucked this up. Maybe we won’t even be born on the same continent next time, or the time after that, and we’ll just spend those lives searching for something we can’t find, miserable for reasons we will never understand. Until we get to try again. Until we somehow find each other in another life.

Take a moment, now, to be conscious of what you’re doing with your time. If you intend to waste it, that’s fine, just be aware that you’re wasting it. Do not confuse being in the same room, with spending good time with another human being. Do not confuse the distractions of the world, with the world itself.

When we’re hurt, we need to take better care of ourselves. Not worse. It can be hard to be conscious in the moment and remember to be kind to ourselves when someone hurts us. But you need to try.

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.

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

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, there is all the kindness you will ever need.

Don’t worry, time must pass, even in the moments when it feels like it can’t, or shouldn’t.

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.

“I know we are strangers but just for a moment, I want to pretend that we are in love, and that we finish each other’s sentences and that there is no place we’d rather be than right Here. If it’s not too much to ask: Just for this moment, I don’t want to be alone.”