dragonflyhearts - Tumblr blog

[dragonflyhearts]

and i am fifteen years old and i forgot how to feel happy sometime three summers ago and i am looking for love at the hands of a man and i am begging for forgivness at the feet of a father and i am fifteen years old and i am striking myself with knives and i only feel loved if you hurt me and the ribbons in my hair hide the fact that it is thinning and i am fifteen years old and my eyes are too heavy and i wish i was born 18 centuries ago back when people still knew how to love and i am fifteen years old and i am 1/4th of the way through my life and my feet and heart cry with every new step i take forward and when two roads diverged in a wood i veered off the path into the forest where i dug a hole and looked up at the stars and the crickets sang and i am fifteen years old and i dont know how to love or be loved or let love and i am fifteen years old and i know that if the world is an oyster i am not its pearl

[dragonflyhearts]

they want to talk about mental illness and acceptance and how everyone is a little ocd it's cute and quirky and their "intrusive thoughts" are about cutting their hair off and you say yours are about taking a razorblade to your eye and they say ew can you not and everyone is a little adhd sometimes! except if you're late it's a personality flaw and it's because you are careless and cruel (and someone else with adhd mentions they can be on time, so why can't you?) and it's not an eating disorder if it's girl dinner! it's not mania if it's girl math! what do you mean you blew all of your savings on nonrefundable plane tickets for a plane you didn't even end up taking. what do you mean that you are afraid of eating. get over it. they roll their little lips up into a sneer. can you not, like, trauma dump?

they love it on them they like to wear pieces of your suffering like jewels so that it hangs off their tongue in rapiers. they are allowed to arm-chair diagnose and cherrypick their poisons but you can't ever miss too many showers because that's, like, "fuckken gross?" so anyone mean is a narcissist. so anyone with visual tics is clearly faking it and is so cringe. but they get to scream and hit customer service employees because well, i got overwhelmed.

you keep seeing these posts about how people pleasers are "inherently manipulative" and how it's totally unfair behavior. but you are a people pleaser, you have an ingrained fawn response. in the comments, you have typed and deleted the words just because it is technically true does not make it an empathetic or kind reading of the reaction about one million times. it is technically accurate, after all. you think of catholic guilt, how sometimes you feel bad when doing a good deed because the sense of pride you get from acting kind - that pride is a sin. the word "manipulation" is not without bias or stigma attached to it. many people with the fawn response are direct victims of someone who was malignantly manipulative. calling the victims manipulative too is an unfair and unkind reading of the situation. it would be better and more empathetic to say it is safety-seeking or connection-seeking behavior. yes, it can be toxic. no, in general it is not intended to be toxic. there is no reason to make mentally ill people feel worse for what we undergo.

you type why is everyone so quick to turn on someone showing clear signs of trauma but you already know the fucking answer, so what's the point of bothering. you kind of hate those this is what anxiety looks like! infographics because at this point you're so good at white-knuckling through a severe panic attack that people just think you're stoic. even people who know the situation sometimes comment you just don't seem depressed. and you're not a 9 year old white kid so there's no way you're on the spectrum, you're not obsessed with trains and you were never a good mathematician. okay then.

mental illness is trending. in 2012 tumblr said don't romanticize our symptoms but to be fair tiktok didn't exist yet. there's these series of videos where someone pretends to be "the most boring person on earth" and is just being a normal fucking person, which makes your skin crawl, because that probably means you are boring. your friend reads aloud a profile from tinder - no depressed bitches i fucking hate that mental illness crap. your father says that medication never actually works.

you still haven't told your grandmother that you're in therapy. despite everything (and the fact it's helping): you just don't want her to see you differently.

[dragonflyhearts]

Andrea Gibson

[dragonflyhearts]

hey, I don't really know you, but I can tell you deserve a gold star. whatever you did recently that was hard, I'm proud of you. this star is for you

[dragonflyhearts]

I spent all of July practicing avoidiance—in August, I'll make it perfect. I'm replying to emails fast. I'm making time to read. I'm making myself a sweater. Wonder if someone will touch me in it, if someone would hurt me in it. Lonely is too gentle, too dramatic for whatever this is. I'm more social than I've ever been. I want to set my apartment on fire. I travel every weekend. I stand on the train platform and wonder about the universe beyond the yellow line. I sleep in too late, get up too early. Walk everywhere I can, take nervous drives to the supermarket. Back from the supermarket. To the supermarket again. Spend too much money, call my mother for hours. I go on dates sometimes. I write a lot about intimacy. I don't know anything about it.

[dragonflyhearts]

[dragonflyhearts]

[dragonflyhearts]

From Wheeler Light’s book, Blue Means Snow, available at https://bottlecap.press/products/blue-means-snow-by-wheeler-light!

[dragonflyhearts]

home

town

what a powerful

word

it says that

somewhere between these

walls that

caged me my whole

adolescence i

found a home.

and a home it was…

-v

[dragonflyhearts]

can i do it

am i worth it

will i fail

how

irrelevant.

do you want it?

-v

[dragonflyhearts]

"why did i grasp so tightly to the hands of time all it ever did was pass and all i ever did was let it"

-v

[dragonflyhearts]

one day in 

may

you will look up to the

millionth floor of a

skyscraper

somewhere in california

and you will see

glass upon

glass upon

glass

and 

vines covering all the

ceilings

butterflies in the

walls

and above all you

will

see a

young

woman

dancing in the

golden 

and she will turn to

smile at you from

clouds away and when

hell takes you you will

be able to tell them

you

saw heaven

without ever

approaching the

gates.

-v

[dragonflyhearts]

pomegranate beads burst in

my mouth and they tell me

you are mortal

they taste like all the

dark rage i 

hid all these years

from my 

mother

sister

and all other

women in my 

life because i didnt want them to

know there was something

so

unladylike

fostering inside of me

-all us women we starve on red

-v

[dragonflyhearts]

"i am haunted like

every other living thing

shhh i say

dont tell my mother"

-v

[dragonflyhearts]

From Charlotte Heather's chapbook, I, Fig Wasp, available from Bottlecap Press!

[dragonflyhearts]

my friends must think i am pathetic

they must think im stupid

for caring about you,

weeks felt like months to me,

and the hurt lasts longer than the good

they were right,

all the red flags just looked like flags

through my rose-colored glasses

i hope no one ever loves you like i did

i hope you miss me

i hope you remember how bad you hurt me,

i hope you regret it

my friends must think i’m insane

i’m starting to think they’re right

-v

[dragonflyhearts]

ah you aren't worth it

i’ve decided

you aren't worth more poetry

not worth the hurt

the hours of my life spent missing you

not worth the consequences of confrontation

because you don't care

you were running from your problems

and hit me in the crossfire

you shattered my heart

and i wont let you hurt me anymore.

-v