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People assume strength is loud. In reality, strength is silent. It is resilience, the will to never surrender your dignity. And sometimes, the only person who knows strength exists inside you is you.
Someone so strong, I marvel at your existence. You know what you’re not? You. Are. Not. A. Quitter. You are a warrior, but it’s okay not to feel like one all the time. Even warriors take breaks.
I grew up hating the world because I saw what it was rather than what it could be.
Here’s what people who sit around smoking ganja and quoting Gandhi won’t tell you. There’s always that one mistake that changes your life. If you’re lucky, it’s for the better.
Loneliness sometimes felt crippling. Not in the sense that I needed someone near me at all times, but in the sense that I found no difference between standing in a crowded room and standing in an empty one. I still felt hollow with every breath I took.
I didn’t want safe. I wanted someone who made my heart pound like getting stuck out in the rain, drifting at sea without a home. Someone who gave me the same thrill as being reckless and taking risks.
“Giving up sets you up for failure. It’s like saying you want something, but not hard enough to work for it.”
You are dust. Small and solid, but destined to vanish.
This is why ribs form a cage around the heart. It’s an untamed animal, and wild animals can’t be trusted.
This is why happiness isn’t permanent, I thought. Life introduces you to fantasies, then makes you feel like you can’t have them. You spend the rest of your life seeking that fantasy. When you realize it grew beneath your feet, it’s too late.
Love is the most expensive thing you’ll ever own. You pay for it with grief, tears, and a piece of your soul, but in return, you receive happiness, memories, and life.”
You are wild. To tame you would be a travesty.
If Reed was the prince of peaceful forests and snowless mountains, Nash was the king of smoke, and ashes, and lies. He was the fire that ravaged those forests and the ashes that rained down on those mountains. I wanted to inhale his smoke, coat my tongue with his ashes, and bury myself in his lies. But smoke ruined lungs. Ashes tasted like death. And lies blinded dreamers. I was a dreamer. He was a nightmare.
I didn’t believe in perfect, but I believed in lagom. It meant right, but not necessarily perfect. And in a world filled with devious lies, it was a truth I latched onto.
“Perfection is unattainable. It’s stained by the suffering required to chase it. Perfect is something you think with your head. Lagom is something you feel with your heart.”
If you think about it, the concept of a photograph is fucking mind-blowing. A moment in time. Captured. Preserved. Forever.
The girl looked like a dictionary. Ink-colored hair on pale skin. Rare words printed across her chest. I wanted to devour her, memorize her words, and dog-ear my favorite pages.
with a hand on my hip. He continued, “Life is a Sisyphean task. You put out one fire, and another one starts. It’s easier to accept it burns.”
“You live in a world consumed by fire, but at least it’s the truth. You’re not lured to sleep with a false blanket of security, telling yourself you exist in a part untouched by the flames.” “That’s a horrible way to live.” “Newsflash, Little Tiger, it’s life. There’s death, and betrayal, and revenge, and guilt everywhere you turn. It’s healthier to live it, breathe it, and participate in it than to pretend it doesn’t exist.” “And when you’re burnt everywhere?” “Don’t succumb to the fire. Be the bigger flame.” His fingers dipped below my shirt, skimming the sensitive skin.
So fierce, yet so gentle. Typical Emery, longest claws and the biggest heart.
“The existence of a word proves that someone in the history of humanity felt the same way I did and gave it a name. It means we’re not alone. If there’s a word for what we're feeling, we’re never alone.”
He wasn’t a cruel prince. He wasn’t a twisted warrior either. He was both, and it turned him into a man who would rather break than bend.
Nash had a brash tongue, a lack of filter, and the uncanny ability to pinpoint the exact thing to say to throw someone off balance. He pushed people away, never allowed anyone to see beneath his skin, and had no problems hermiting himself for eternity. He also gave so much of himself, the only thing he kept was his kiss, and I’d taken that from him, too. Sacrifices littered his past and would probably stain his future. And it was a very Nash thing to hurt someone to heal them. People measure love by how much someone receives, but I measure it by how much someone gives. No one in the history of
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“Corrupting you sounds more fun than it actually is, Miss Winthrop,” I lied. Mostly because the opposite was true, and she tasted of bad decisions and something to fight for instead of just something to fight.
“He’s so damaged. Ugh, and he always looks so tortured. Why does that make him hotter?”
“You know he’d want you happy, right? Life is fucked up. It’s a roller coaster ride without an exit, and you’re smushed into the same tiny cart with eight billion other people. You can either push everyone off, throw up until you’re miserable, or enjoy the ride. Let’s enjoy the fucking ride, Nash.”
“I don’t want someone who holds an umbrella over my head when it rains. I want someone who doesn't even own an umbrella. Someone who watches me balter in the rain when they don’t know the word exists. Someone who stares at me instead of the stars in the sky.”
“I used to think she’d burn the world down with a smile on her face and good intentions.”
She was glass, chipped all over, and I shattered her instead of mending the fractured pieces.
“Redamancy.” “What does it mean?” “The act of loving the one who loves you. A love returned in full.”
She believed in words, and magic, and storms. In fighting back, going down hard, never giving up. In blind loyalty, jumping first, dealing with consequences later. She was awful. She infuriated me. She drove me fucking crazy. And, I realized, I love her. “Ask me the question, Tiger.” Her eyes fluttered open, not staring at me but into me. “Is this just lust?” “It's everything.”
\fi-ni-‘fU-gal\ (adjective) hating endings; of someone who tries to avoid or prolong the final moments of a story, relationship, or some other journey Finifugal originates from the Latin word fuga, for flight. It shows us that endings are fleeting. We may hate them. We may fear them. We may avoid them. But we don’t need to. Like sunsets, endings can be beautiful. The next morning, the sun always rises again, because there is no such thing as an ending, just a new beginning.
“Hiraeth is a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was. It is the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past. I’ve always thought of it as the saddest entry in the dictionary.”
“Timing? There is no such thing as time. Time is something people made up to give value to each breath we take, to remind us that they're limited, that we should leap first and ask questions never.”
I pretended to check my watch, feeling some sort of cosmic. Like someone had rigged my life against me, and I somehow still had a shot at winning.
She always searched for meaning, for an explanation, for something to tell her why when the answer would likely do nothing for her.
“You are at war with yourself, and I’ve never wanted to pick up a suit of armor and fight for anyone more than I do now, but I know I can’t. This is your battle. This is your war. You’ll come back to me, Emery, or words like fate and destiny wouldn’t exist.”
“You—the girl who believes in magic words and starless skies—do not believe in fate?”
“Fate is a hurricane. You think you know where it's going. You think you're safe. And just when you think you’ve weathered the storm, its path moves directly into yours.
“Come back to me?” “Not yet.” Yet. I’ll fucking take that.
Fate is the Universe kicking Coincidence’s ass. We are an example of Fate proving to the world it exists.
Who are we to defy the universe?
P.S. Out of all the lies, my favorite was you and me.
No matter how many times I kiss her, claim her, mark her as mine, it will never be enough. The way I crave her is insatiable. It’s proof of immortality.
