Pillow Thoughts III: Mending the Mind

by Courtney Peppernell

There is beauty in the chaos of living.

The sky opened and I watched a star streak through, burning quickly, rushing toward the earth. Such beauty in vastness, like you, when you wear your hair the way you do.

I wish for someone to look at me and lose the next thing they were going to say.

Loyalty isn’t only when it suits you. There is no such thing as loyal during the week but on the weekend it’s someone new you seek. When you are loyal, you are loyal for life. There are no excuses. Either you commit or you don’t.

For some it is your smile or eyes they notice first. They talk about how beautiful your hair is, how words roll off your tongue in elegance. But for me, it is more in the way you hold yourself. Even after everything, you hold yourself in a way that says, “I am still here; I survived.”

The grass isn’t always greener on the other side. In fact, that grass has been tendered and grown by someone else. Just because your front lawn is withering ...

There will come a day when I am not wondering how you are. When all the parts of us we shared will just become memories to store away. I won’t feel a tightness in my chest when I see a picture of you, or wonder if it’s you when my phone rings. Maybe I’ll even understand why my first love is the one that seems to haunt me.

My mother said I could fall for anyone That love has no boundaries That love could be as endless as the sky and as beautiful as the sea So why did I have to fall for someone who didn’t fall for me

Even after all this hurt, and the mess of being together, the saddest part was not the tears or the constant shutting of doors. It’s that this was the best we could do.

I know I overthink too much, like my mind is the sky and it explodes and rains stardust. I know I can be insecure, like I am always staring in the mirror and seeing another. But I will love you wholly. I will think of you often. I will make you feel like the sun, never ever forgotten.

I know life doesn’t play out like the movies. But I want a happy ending with you.

Mental illness is not weakness. It doesn’t define you. It will try to dictate your days and make you feel cursed. But just like anyone else, you are equally a child of the universe.

Please believe this As easily as the sun rises You are enough

Who you are is louder than you think.

The mountain is to climb, not to carry on your shoulders.

Maybe after all this time you were looking to the wrong person to save you. The right person had been there in front of you. You had just forgotten to look in the mirror.

There is bravery in uncertainty. But in order to leap forward, you need to stop looking back.

It’s okay to take a break from the path. You can retreat, heal, and continue your journ...

Words look different on pages than in your mind. On pages, they sit quietly, waiting to be read. But inside your head, they’re screaming, angry, hurting, bleeding red.

I feel sadness when it slips into the sleepy parts of my life. It shows when I don’t pick up the pile of clothes on my floor or call back the person I love most. But I recognize it now, I see it, and I fight back.

You might meet someone who will fight harder than anyone to keep you here. But at the end of the day, the battle is still yours. No matter how much someone loves you, they can’t win the battle for you.

The mind can be full of dark thoughts. A long hallway, full of compartments. And you push all the bad memories into drawers, trying to make them disappear. Only you know they won’t. They’ll r...

Sadness feels like a lifelong friend some days. As though I cannot let it go, because I am not sure who I would be without it.

There is nothing beautiful about wishing you’d never been born There is nothing poetic about believing you are a burden There is nothing sadder than thinking you’re ruining the lives of the people you love But there is nothing stronger than you I am in awe of the way you live even with all these dark thoughts You are brave in the way you begin again each day

Words become trapped in your mind if you don’t free them. Write them down, speak them, share them. Even if nobody reads the words or hears the words. They need to be freed. Let the words go, my friend.

Allow your mind to grow and expand in any way it wants to You are not broken or damaged beyond repair You are a warrior made from ghosts of all the people you’ve been Your mind deserves calm waters Reach for every moment

Words still hang in my throat Quivering Afraid to speak out into the night But I am reminded that I am fit to fight the war between my head and heart Because while the world was sleeping I was tearing myself apart

Sometimes I wonder if fear is really the ghosts inside us of the things we should have said but didn’t

the earth is far too big and I am only a person, but your fears are nothing to be ashamed of. Like the sun and the moon, you will never be a burden.

I am not afraid of spiders or small spaces or missing flights I am afraid of ignoring warning signs and red flags and finding out I was right

There will be days you are afraid to live, where your lungs feel hollow and each moment takes all the strength you can give. But it’s okay to feel these things, it’s okay to make mistakes so that you can grow. You have not failed on the days you draw the curtains across your window.

There are many things I have been broken defeated afraid but more than that, I have proven to be bold strong brave

But the fear makes it all valid The fear makes it important

It’s a fear of telling people everything inside you because you are afraid it’s too ugly for them to hear You are afraid it will ruin them to know But each day you stay silent it’s ruining you

They can’t face the fear for you It’s your battle Fight it well Fight it with anger and with grace

There are many things you should care about Like sick animals, dying trees, and saving the bees. What others think of you is not one of these things.

People heal in different ways. There is no shame in letting someone know you are hurting. If you are honest, you could spare them some pain too.

There is power in not being afraid to break.

Every survivor has different fears You don’t get to choose what should and shouldn’t haunt them

We fear the things we don’t understand We fear feelings we have never felt concepts we have never heard of We fear the unknown and the things we have never dreamed of

My mind repeats all the mistakes I’ve made, like a bad movie reminding me of all the things that cause me so much doubt.

life is meant not to restore what was but rather to create something new and move forward.

Mistakes do not define you lessons are to be discovered And often when you read poetry there is a little bit of magic uncovered

Consistency is one of life’s many challenges. To overcome temptation and stay focused on your own path is just a concept to some. But the key comes from within. Start with being consistent with your consistency.

Pain will always be in your life. You need to walk beside it, hold its hand, understand that while it’s not always fair, you will learn something from it being there.

There is no manual on how to reach your dreams. You could take fifty steps forward and one hundred steps back. The goal isn’t always to move from one step to the next; it’s just to keep going.

Action starts with an individual. Act with your best intentions. Be a better you.

You are more than the failures you have experienced

You have every right to demand more from others, But you should always demand more from yourself as well

You don’t need to take yourself apart to help other people. You can’t be there for some...