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It doesn’t always hurt the way you think it will.

This is a letter to myself from four years ago about our life as an SA survivor. We’re not living for it, babe.

To start us off, there’s some more obvious stuff. Touching sucks. Because it’s not just touching that bothers you - it’s the fact that you crave intimacy and seriously all you want in the world is to hug someone, and you can’t.

Anything intimate is just a paradox. Opening up, being social, and putting yourself out there is something that you would die for - but you can’t. Yourr always reaching for it, and then jerking your hand away like being normal is a poisonous snake, or a hot stove, or something.

Feelings are off the rails, in case you didn’t know. Sometimes, youll just wake up and then it’s like everything was shut off overnight. Don’t feel happy, don’t feel sad, don’t get angry - nothing. It’s so miserable. Especially when you start to prefer it that way. Other times, youll wake up and feel everything. Over-analyzing every single thing you do - to the point that you end up messing it up. Stuttering, spilling, tripping, you name it - if it’s on this existential plane, you will overthink it and then malfunction. Often in these periods of emotional overload, you’re gonna mix things up. We mistake love for fear, and gratitude for manipulation. We get scared when things get real. We run. You’re like a deer, dude. Stop staring at that light like a weirdo and let someone treat you right. Date the boy, you’re only young once. Stop expecting everyone to be your abuser. Stop expecting everyone to run for the hills just because you didn’t have it easy.

There’s also the episodes. You get stuck in hyper-realistic dreams like quicksand, and you physically cannot wake up. You’ll try, but you won’t. You’re still too exhausted. And then, when you do wake up, you’re gonna be the most paranoid, twitchy, and sensitive you’ve ever been in your life. Everyone is not trying to hurt you. They aren’t going to touch you. It’s just your mom. Give her a hug.

You will also be ready and willing to fight any man that crosses you - I’m so serious. It’s not a joke anymore. If they look at you the wrong way, you will start yelling. Very inconvenient when we’re at work, to be honest.

You’re gonna have the worst, stupidest, most unnecessary defense mechanisms this world has ever seen. Stop convincing yourself that you aren’t ready for relationships just because you’re scared. That’s a dick move. Don’t say out of pocket stuff to get a reaction out of people just because you’re upset - literally just tell them that you’re upset, man. Everyone isn’t your ex, so stop acting like that. Everyone isn’t lying to you, so stop cutting them off. Everyone doesn’t secretly want you out of their lives, so stop crying about that. Everyone isn’t using you, so stop refusing to give.

I miss you. So much. I think about you all the time. You were actually kind of good at math, which is crazy. You are so full of sunshine and excitement and bravery, and you are so ready to give the world to everyone. You’re so willing to love, and make new friends just because everybody needs one. You have so many questions, and you have no idea that some of the answers will break you. There’s a piece of you still with me, but it’s not the same. It never will be, because now there are other pieces of me, too. I learned a lot from you, but I learned a lot from the other versions of me, too. I love them all, in their own special way. Maybe one day soon I can love myself like that, too.

I know you’re never gonna read this letter, and that’s okay. You probably wouldn’t listen to it anyway, because you’re seventeen and you’re stupid. I just like to talk to you, sometimes.

I wish I could tell you how strong you are. I wish you knew how much easier things would be if you just said no to that first date, or if you were serious about ending things the first time. I wish I could tell you that even though you shouldn’t have, you did your damnedest to make things work. I wish I could tell you that you don’t have to sit in the shower for four hours, scrubbing and scraping your body to rid yourself of him, because your cells completely shed and rebuild themselves every seven years, and one day there will be no atom on your body that he has touched. It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. We’re going to be okay.

I love you.

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mcgonagall suddenly opening her eyes in the middle of the night:

“those little prats were animagus!!”

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“As long as you’re trying, I’m staying.”

— Unknown

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“i was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.”

- edgar allen poe

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Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

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things to do that will make you happy when you’re sad:

read a book

listen to your favourite music

watch your favourite movie

burn a candle

drink some tea

bake!!!!! bake!!!! bake!!!!!

facetime your friends/family

go out and exercise!!!! all the time!!!!

paint

dance until you can’t!!!!!!!

rearrange your room

find a DIY project that interests you

write in a journal

go through old photo albums

dress up in your favourite dream outfit

watch netflix

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“Black Lives Matter” and “Justice for missing and murdered Indigneous women” Photo credit: Does anyone know who took this image?

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“I often wonder how it is that some hearts manage to break despite the fact that they were never whole.”

-n.p.

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just ember island things

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me_irl

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White people who say “All Lives Matter” are like the founding fathers who wrote “All men are created equal” while owning slaves.

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if i am real, i am not real enough

a dream is a dream until it looks in the mirror

i only know how sunlight feels filtered through glass

i see truth like a star in the sky: beautiful but unreachable

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Such wounds to the heart will probably never heal. But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.

— Haruki Murakami

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People often forget the eroticism of connecting through mind & spirit. The way a body tingles when its soul has been stroked by another's. The comfort when someone not only understands you, but feels you.

— Meredith Marple

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