#grief is love with nowhere to go

[flwrkid14]

All the Tomorrows That Won’t Come

Tim doesn’t remember getting the call. He remembers the way his hands shook, though. Remembers the way the world stilled, the way the words—Danny’s gone—didn’t make sense in his head.

Danny Fenton wasn’t supposed to die. Not like this. Not alone in some basement, in a freak accident that no one saw coming. He was supposed to live. To be here.

To be his.

They were Tim and Danny, the campus couple, the ones who always had their hands tangled in each other’s jackets, who passed notes in physics class and made fun of each other’s handwriting. They were the ones people whispered about in the halls, the pair that would “probably get married someday.”

But there’s no someday now.

Tim will never be sixteen again, kissing his best friend before exams, laughing into the press of their lips because Danny was always so nervous before a test. He’ll never lean against Danny’s shoulder in the library, poking fun at his awful calculus notes, never sneak glances at him under cafeteria fluorescents, thinking God, I love him.

He will never get another sticky note left in his locker with barely legible handwriting that says, thinking of you. He will never sit across from Danny at some dingy coffee shop, listening to him complain about a lab report while stirring sugar into his tea. He will never hear Danny laugh so hard he snorts, never watch him roll his eyes but still lean in for a kiss anyway, no more whispered I love you against his temple before they part ways.

There won’t be any more Danny.

Tim is young, still. He knows this, logically. But he feels ancient. He feels hollow. Because the future is stretching out ahead of him, long and endless, and Danny isn’t in it.

And what’s the point of moving forward, if Danny isn’t there to meet him?

[starwarsgrl77]

[elwinged]

to love what is mortal—

unknown / @theblob1958 - the longevity of life and love / @birthmarkmike - A SELECTION FROM THE PRIVATE WORKS OF THE SEAFARER. / Dove Cameron on Instagram / Ellen Bass - The Thing Is / @deheerkonijn & @roselightfairy - rebuild your seawall (brick by brick) / Herbert Mason - Gilgamesh / @hhimringsideblog - The House That Fingon Built / The Haunting of Hill House (2018) / @clothonono - The Diver / @judas-redeemed / Anne Michaels - I Dreamed Again / Julia Gorst / Louise Glück - The Triumph of Achilles / unknown / Fred Chappell - Narcissus and Echo

happiest of happy birthdays, darling xiaohai! i love you a lot❤️

[111lustforlife]

things have changed so much since you left.

do you know i'm no longer afraid of the night? because when a star twinkles a little too bright, i know it's you, watching over me. like you always did.

it will always be you.

[compo67]

breakup poem #1: the bath bombs on my bedroom floor

i'm staring at the bath bombs in the lush bag

on my bedroom floor, and

trying to decide what to do with them.

i kept the receipt, it's inside the bag.

i could regift them, but that feels strange and uncomfortable.

i should just get over it and return the three of them.

but the thought of handing them back to the gal who sold them to me, also feels strange and uncomfortable.

i walk away.

undecided.

they can sit there, on the floor of my bedroom, next to books i haven't read yet and paintings i keep meaning to hang up.

i don't have a need for them.

then i turn, stare at them some more from the doorway.

it's like the collage. the scarf. the book. the candle that says, "You're my favorite notification."

i can keep the book. destroy the collage and toss it into recycling, because it's upsetting and stupid and it just reinforces the foolishness in my heart. the candle i can burn, with the label facing away from me. the book i can keep and add to my collection. i'm glad i didn't inscribe it.

i used to work at a bookstore. every time someone sold a book inscribed to them, i felt a little sad. sometimes we say goodbye to things because we're better off without reminders.

the scarf presents another problem. it's a gift with nowhere to go. i kept your address. i kept the list of things you like and enjoy.

it just seems out of line to send anything without your knowledge, without your permission. but i have this scarf. i don't want to regift it. i don't want to donate it. i don't want to keep it.

some naive part of me wants to hold onto it on the off chance you'll magically appear on my doorstep. this version of me is more patient, willing, and optimistic. and this version of you is brave, unyielding, and confident. this version of you holds a bouquet of snapdragons, because why not? go big or go home, even if it's a knife of foolish hopes and catastrophic day dreams.

this version of you stands behind a door that i open.

and suddenly, everything i've ever lost comes back to me.

i want that moment.

i want more people to read poetry by Nayyirah Waheed

and Warsan Shire.

their poems ground me. teach me. show me.

that version of you doesn't exist.

even in my dreams, the dream crumbles under its own weight, splits in two, and hisses like static on an old tv screen.

it's just that... every time i've been asked to open the door, the love of my life has never showed up behind it.

i still have no idea what to do with the bath bombs.

maybe i can ask the gals if i could use their bath tub for a soak.

maybe then, immersed in whatever bath bombs are made of, i can understand you and the choices you made, the person you sided with, and the impossibility of us.

i want to throw them like snowballs.

crush them into powder.

to feel like i have power.

now, i walk away, out of the room and into my car.

i can drive. i can sleep alone. i can push forward.

i can, i can, i can.

i am "terrifying and strange."

the bath bombs can be returned until the end of january.

i can make my decision later. i can stall. i can--out of stupid, fumbling hope--day dream about that door.

one day, someone--likely not you--will be behind it.

i am what i remind myself of every time my heart breaks. i am "beautiful--something not everyone knows how to love."

i can keep the book. destroy the collage. burn the candle.

reality takes a back seat as i drive south.

i can, i can, i will.

[slhsawf]

“Grief is a change we didn’t want.”

— David Kessler

[starwarsgrl77]

I don’t know how my life ended up like this

[chikachic]

I will live.

I will thrive.

In spite of the needles between each breathe.

For if every death should haunt me,

If every lose becomes a ceaseless throb

That slowly steals my beating heart,

I would not have lived this day.

I would not have known another heartbreaking love.

[littledoughty]

Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars

of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment,

the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders

of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is

nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned

in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side

is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. 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.

“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver

[happy-mokka]

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just l♥️ve. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent l♥️ve gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just l♥️ve with no place to go.”

Jamie Anderson

[starwarsgrl77]

You have the biggest heart

[insertsomthinawesome]

@priellan COME GET THE BOY!!! ✨

Some different ideas for how that could go down >:D And me picking something personally self indulgent again asdlfjsdLJSDGLDSJG I wanna see him with a Tangled rapunzel length hair braid... it would be so pretty...

[yea-baiyi]

someone just posted this quote and it just hit me that it wasn’t that nobody loved xie lian after knowing how far he’d fallen and everything he’d done. it was xie lian who was too terrified to lean on them and share what he was going through, or he tried and they didn’t have the full context to understand him, and it just made xie lian feel more alone which made him push them away even more. he had feng xin and mu qing the whole time and they never ever stopped loving him even when they saw him falter and fail. and it wasn’t that hua cheng was unique in loving him anyway but it was hua cheng that happened to be present for all of xie lian’s worst moments and none of it made him love xie lian any less, and hua cheng is not the exception to the rule but the proof that xie lian was always loveable and always deserving and always loved despite despite despite. and after finding hua cheng he opens his heart up to his friends once again and accepts their love back into his life when he had shut it all out for centuries. i am in TEARS rn when i said i can’t think about feng xin and mu qing this is one of the reasons why

[soracities]

"there's a place where you live in me forever, and the moving trucks never come" is one of the most fragile and raw lines I've read in a while. I cried. Thank you.

🤍🤍🤍🤍

[altschmerzes]

Fleabag 2x04 | The Bear 1x08 "Braciole"

[bidokja]

i want to slap ye zimu's father but he absolutely fascinates me as a character.

here you have a man who's own upbringing was some of the strictest and most impersonal bullshit, and who views the years where he even slightly broke out of that mold as the brightest, most colorful, most joyous years of his life. and yet here is a man who subjects his own son to the same strict and impersonal upbringing, even after kneeling in front of his wife's grave and saying that he understood her wish. that he understood that she wanted their child to be whoever he wants to be.

why? was he lying? did he give up? did his bitterness overcome his determination? is that why he raised their son like that? is that why he was so strict? so hurtful and cold and neglectful? why did he do that, when he said he "understood"?

multiple reasons. complicated reasons. simple reasons. even if he can no longer bring himself to love his own son, even if ye zimu only reminds him of his wife's death...ye zimu will always be the son loved by the woman he loves. and he wants nothing more than to fulfill her wish for their child. so why? it boils down to this: raising ye zimu that way was the only way he knew how to make zimu into a person strong enough to do whatever he wants in life. raising him like that was the only method he knew of to grant her wish for their son.

if you understand that, then you can understand everything about ye zimu's father.

does that make him right, or justified, or good? no. it makes him human. and the fact of the matter is that his efforts alone weren't enough. the fact is that his efforts tied ye zimu down more than anything. and just like he needed his wife to help him realize he was strong enough to break his mold, ye zimu needed ling chen and their friends. in the end ye zimu did choose his own path. once his father saw him doing that, and finally standing up to him, that's when he felt ye zimu could be whoever he wanted to be. and that's when he cut ye zimu off. his wife's last wish was fulfilled. his job was done.