callmefrieden

[callmefrieden]

"To forget, to forget ...", Vahan Teryan (translated by Tathev Simonyan)

[callmefrieden]

 Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

[callmefrieden]

human brain is so easy to manipulate its stupid. sun is out longer in evening = life is worth living...read some negative social media posts = everybody hates me...read one interesting article = i have the scholar's ambition

[callmefrieden]

rositooth

[callmefrieden]

one thing i need to start living by is “become the thing that you want” if i want friends who throw themed parties maybe i should start throwing those parties. if i want someone who writes me love letters maybe i should start writing letters for the people i love. if i want to hang out at museums and pretty cafes maybe i should invite my friends to these places. and maybe even then i won’t find the kind of people i want to be around. but then i would have become the exact person i want to be around. and maybe that’s good enough.

[callmefrieden]

people are like “i am fine” and then stare into the void all night.

its me, i am people.

[callmefrieden]

[callmefrieden]

"My biggest trouble is that people look at me and think that no serious trouble has ever troubled my little head. They seldom realize the chaos that seethes behind my exterior."

- Sylvia Plath

[callmefrieden]

- j (x)

[callmefrieden]

Normal People

[callmefrieden]

i have spent a few days listening to the music you like. you have a tattoo of the band's logo on your ribs. you got it when you were still kind of a kid. my first tattoo was a bird instead. i did the math - we got our first tattoos in the same calendar year. isn't that kind of cool.

my mom loves hallmark movies, so i grew up thinking love would look like a firework. it feels like one, after all. it's just that my house wasn't safe. i thought love was a weapon, could be pointed at your eyes. could lose a finger to it, or teeth. my father used to say passion is everything. i thought that meant constant fighting was a good thing. i thought that meant love looked like a week of bickering, because it was worth the the weekend's boombox apology. i thought quiet love was boring. i thought love had to blot out everything, compel the body and the mind like puppetry. i thought love looks like ruining your own dinner table - but at least you set a feast.

but love looks like a scarf. your hands smoothing it down my chest, being sure each of the edges are tucked in, worried about my asthma attacks being cold-activated. i race you while i'm wearing heels, you hold my hand to guide me downhill while walking my dog. we dance in my living room to waltz of the flowers, i show you how to hold your arms in proper ballet port de bras. you write a song about looking out of my window while the snow falls. i ask you to text my friends back while i'm driving. you play dj in the front seat. somewhere on route 93, we start murmuring about secret things.

oh. there is a difference between peace and dispassion. it was never that i feared quiet, it's that i didn't know what safe felt like. i liked the chaos because it was familiar, not because it was kind. i think i used to fear the word wife. i didn't like the idea of long, lonely days and being yelled at for small things. i didn't like the idea of sacrificing my one beautiful life.

you meet my friends and make a point to learn things about them. we both get excited about the other person's passions. you read my book for hours, squinting at the small words. i try to understand basic guitar information. we talk for four hours on the phone while i string together a garland. we talk for six hours while you write a poem. i save a pintrest tip for the summer about making paper kites. i plan us a week-long trip to maine, map out my favorite places for an eventual hike. you fall asleep on the ride home, and i turn down the radio so it won't wake you up. your quiet hands fold over mine.

when i look up, the stars are brighter. how carefully you've woven gold into the corners of my life. when i move, i feel some part of my soul reflected back onto you.

oh, love is not a net. it's a blanket.

[callmefrieden]

“Love never dies of a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness, errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds. It dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings, but never of a natural death.”

— Anais Nin

[callmefrieden]

!!!!

[callmefrieden]

connecting to another person means understanding that they are human and capable of mistakes. understand that they have a shadow that needs to be acknowledged, as well as a lifetime of conditioning and programming to recognize and release. don’t idealize your partners, allow them humanity. 

[callmefrieden]

“I think you lost all interest in this world. You were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your physical body. You went to a world apart and you’re living a different kind of life there. In a world inside you.”

— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

[callmefrieden]

Adonis, tr. by Samuel Hazo, The Pages of Day and Night

[callmefrieden]

It is a nightmare. There is no sun. There is only continual motion. If I rest, if I think inward, I go mad. There is so much, and I am torn in different directions, pulled thin, taut against horizons too distant for me to reach. (...) Will I never rest in sunlight again―slow, languid & golden with peace?

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath