#(Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver vibes) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ofmermaidstories · 4 years ago

Note

I read somwhere about the idea that only pain is realistic. That somehow softness and optimism and gentle love are silly and that pessimism was intellectual. I think we -or at least the circles I frequent online and irl- are coming around now. I see it in the flood of hurt/comfort and reblogs about loving ppl in their entirety. I see it in the discussions I have w friends and family about how us being together is enjoyable and worth it. "The world can be horrible but i'll hug u tonight" vibes.

i think.... i think tenderness is a choice. i think it’s easy to be caught up in pain — pain and fear are very primal. they are motivators, they keep us going, they make us avoid the things that are going to hurt, that are going to lessen our chances of more pain, more fear. being able to choose tenderness, to choose goodness and kindness and to be able to express them can be a... privilege, in a way. a privilege of safety. Safety in how we were raised, how we view ourselves; the families we build for ourselves in adulthood; the safety of having things in our lives go to plan.

Five years ago, if you’d known me, i would not have been tender or soft — and especially not optimistic. By nature I am a pretty sunny person — it’s just something inherent to who i am, something deeply encoded within me. But five years ago I did not have the safety of having had things go to plan; the natural buoyancy of my personality couldn’t carry me, anymore. I was awful and I was sad and when you’re facing something hard, sometimes you have to be selfish — to protect yourself, to let what’s left of you, what makes you, heal.

This is why the current — movement? trend? — expression of all those soft, wonderful things is so incredible. Because sometimes the world is scary. A lot of times, actually. People will hurt us — people we love, people we don’t know, our governments, society at large. And that makes it all the more important when we curl around that pain and that misery and we still choose to be tender, to let ourselves love. To focus on the small, fleeting good things in this world and in our lives. With the people we love, if we still have them. By ourselves. Especially by ourselves; the people around us, no matter how much they love us, might not always be able to express that love in the way we might want — and sometimes they can’t be here at all to. So it’s important to hold onto that softness, that expression of it, for them and for ourselves. Tenderness, in all things.

Like our Queen Mary Oliver says, in her poem In Blackwater Woods — to live in this world, you must be able to do three things; to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

#ofmermaidstories-asks #mer muses on the nature of love and connection and seperation #ofmermaidsdoodles

16 notes · View notes