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I know there will be a morning when I wake up and don’t think of my brother. But it’s not today.
As parents we’re supposed to be superheroes and never let anything get to us, but that’s not true. We’re people just like anyone, and we need care too.
As a species we like spectacle along with the nice stories. We get off on it. As long as it’s not our issue, our problem, our pain.
When it’s removed from us, it’s something else. It’s entertainment.
I’d always marveled at how soundly others slumbered. Their minds could shut down and leave them be for hours at a time, while mine always seemed to be in third gear, just waiting to drop the clutch and burn rubber the moment I surfaced.
Nature versus nurture. That catchy little alliteration, with the versus in the middle being the most important part of the phrase because it implies a debate is still open. That there’s still hope.
People aren’t always ruled by their pasts, but they never really escape them either.
Sometimes the heart hides. It hides in our dreams, our words, our passions. Andrea’s was hidden here in these drawings.
We become passengers sometimes. We like to think we’re in control and the electrically charged tissue in our heads is the captain steering the ship. But sometimes an iceberg comes out of the fog, and evasive measures are taken. We’re suddenly the people holding on for dear life, hoping whoever’s driving knows what the fuck they’re doing.
Letting this go was the right thing to do. But the right thing didn’t always help you sleep at night.
humans are learning machines. We learn by what’s done to us, not just what we’re taught. We learn to injure and touch and wound what we shouldn’t. We learn to abuse and abandon if we’re hurt and lost. The past imprints on the future like a typewriter slowly running out of ink.
Tragedy was a consumable commodity, and everyone was buying.
It was like I’d been struck. Was it that apparent? Was I a walking billboard of doubt?
“Nice to know people will give you their time,” he mused, watching out the window. “The only thing we really have to give, and it’s special. Time’s just another word for love.”
Obsession is caustic. It strips all reason away.
Bitter truth is that pill we can’t get ourselves to swallow. It’s the medicine we get force-fed by the ones who love us. And even when we know it’s good for us, we spit it out the moment they’re not looking.
How many brilliant people had fallen under the weight of unattainable desires? When you didn’t have opportunity, hope could become chains.
Sleep’s a funny thing. It’s amorphous as steam, seeming to come and go at a whim of its own. It favors some and shuns others. It comes in technicolor dreams and deathlike comas. Sleep is fickle and undeniable.
The trick is finding a place so quiet, so full of solitude, you don’t have to think over the din—the noise other minds create. Your own creates enough by itself. Everyone should have a place to retreat to, somewhere unique that doesn’t belong to anyone, not even you. When there are no distractions, you can get down to business. Let the terrible things out of their cages you keep inside. Face them as fully as you can, let them hurt you. Bones are the strongest at a break site while they’re mending. Scar tissue is fibrous so it’s tougher than skin.
We’re told a life without pain is ideal. To avoid suffering as much as possible. But pain is where you grow. We cry with our first breaths because it hurts to expel amniotic fluid and take in air. No transition occurs without pain.
“You wonder what you did wrong. Always. You pore over your mistakes and try to find where things started to fall apart. You want someone to blame, even if it’s yourself.”
The subconscious is a serious person with a clipboard and a list.
It observes and checks boxes, scribbles little notes in the margins of our thoughts. It watches and catalogs and hopes the person in which it resides can’t possibly be as dense as they seem. And yet it is unsurprised as we stumble through mistake after mistake, oblivious to its cues.
Everyone has something to fight for. But not everyone has someone to fight for them.
Popular note - but, personally, I don't know why
Hated her and understood how broken she was inside to do what she did. Some days it took all my will not to scream when I thought of her.
There are no words for what we do to each other. No words for what we are. Human beings are the strongest and weakest part of the world. And when they break, they shatter everything around them.
yet another reminder the world wasn’t fair, and you had to keep going even when you wanted to stop.
