#on trauma

[thecosmoswhispers]

And I whisper to myself, I am safer alone.

Wasted, Marya Hornbacher / . / . / . / painting by Mladen Ilic / Paul Auster / Letters To Milena, Franz Kafka / Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys / The Departure Of The Train, Clarice Lispector / Beau Taplin

[asoftepiloguemylove]

i never grew up with you and you're not my waiting room

Marjane Satrapi Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood / unknown / Clementine von Radics / Clementine von Radics / image (unknown) quote (Richard Siken Crush) / Louise Glück from Unpainted Door, "Poems 1962-2012" / unknown / image (unknown) quote (Phoebe Bridgers Moon Song)

i. Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

[ "What is childhood like? It's a little like dying, a little like being born. Which is to say, it's nothing you can remember, but you know there was blood." ]

ii. unknown

[ Floating cutout of a wolf on a black background. Text surrounds the image. "NOTHING WILL BE LEFT OF ME / BUT A MEMORY / BUT EVEN THAT WILL DIE OFF TOO" ]

iii. Clementine von Radics

[ "Every time a man yells / you are seven years old again / and he is packing that suitcase / once more. Picking you up by the neck, / teaching you obedience. To be soft, / like the belly of a fish / exposed to a knife." ]

iv. Clementine von Radics

[ "When I imagine myself I am barely there." ]

v. Richard Siken, Crush

[ The background image is of two black men standing face to face. The man of the left holds the back of the man on the right's head. They are posed intimately with their foreheads touching. The words are cut out like a collage and placed in the middle of the image. "he / touches / you, / like a / prayer / for which / no / words / exist, / and you / feel / your heart / taking / root / in your / body, / like / you've / discovered / something / you didn't / even / have / a name / for." ]

vi. Louise Glück, Unpainted Door

[ Screenshot of a tumblr post from @/weltenwellen "I remember my childhood as a long wish to be elsewhere." Louise Glück from "Unpainted Door", Poems 1962-2012 ]

vii. unknown

[ "You can never leave home. / You take it with you no matter where you go. Home is between your teeth, under your fingernails, in the hair follicles, in your smile, in the ride of your hips, in the passage of your breasts." ]

viii. Phoebe Bridgers, Moon Song

[ Edited collage. The background image is of a teenage boy laying on a pile of books while his dog lays with it's chin on his neck. The words are cut on paper at the top and bottom of the image. There are silver stars sporadically placed on the image. "so i will wait for the next time you want me / like a dog with a bird at your door" ]

[agirlnamedbone]

Hard stories are worth the difficulty. It seems to me the only way I have forgiven anything, understood anything, is through that process of opening up to my own terror and pain and reexamining it, recreating it in the story, and making it something different, making it meaningful--even if the meaning is only in the act of the telling. Some things are absolutely unjust, without purpose, horrible and blinding, soul-destroying: the death of the beloved, the rape of a child. Situations some of us know all too well. There was no meaning in what my step-father did to me. But the stories I have made out if it do have meaning. More importantly, these stories do not function as some sort of retribution. They are redress for all those like me, whether they can write their own stories are not. My stories are not against anyone; they are for the life we need.

Dorothy Allison, "Survival Is The Least of My Desires" (Skin: Talking About Sex, Class & Literature, 1994)

[kimiko24]

I 🩷 you, you will be okay

not sure which one I liked more

[deathchains]

[howlingtothevoid]

I hate what you've done to me!!!

...

So why do I still miss you?

[comfreyhollywings]

love, i have felt grief and anger in the same breath.

/ savior (interlude) by kendrick lamar / susitse.art on Instagram /@. kumdumpster247 on pinterest / (in regards to feeling anything) anne carson / bella414 on pinterest / thegirlwithexistentialcrises on pinterest / mr. morale by kendrick lamar there's more credit i've probably missed - if any of you recognize a quote that hasn't been credited here, please let me know!

[octaviasdread]

Richard Siken was right. There are boxes in my head and I move them around pretending it changed something

What is a ghost? What is a painting? yes and yes, the same answers. Boxes open. Boxes shut. Boxes taped and splitting

[myheartsblood]

the only way I'd know love is if it hit me in the face

for my oc, Odylline

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, Sylvia Plath // Salt in the Wound, boygenius // Daily 19 Painting, Nickie Zimov // @dreadfulhounds // Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices, Sylvia Plath // from a letter by Tennessee Williams, to Donald Windham (July, 1947) // Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James // deer at night, George Shiras (1893) /// Glepnir, Walton Ford // Myth of Innocence, Louise Glück // Father, The Front Bottoms // Ghismonda with the heart of Guiscardo (Detail), Bernardino Mei // The Red Bed, James Pryde // Oculus, Sally Wen Mao

[lena-oleanderson]

was going to wait to post this until i edited it more but i have poor impulse control when i'm sober

[prairiedeath]

[asoftepiloguemylove]

mom, am i still young? can i dream for a few months more?

unknown / Maia Baia / Ethel Cain Family Tree / Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest / @/honeytuesday (on tumblr) / Lorde Writer in the Dark / Lidia Yuknavitch Letter to My Rage: An Evolution

i. unknown

[ "My mother is where it begins. / She and I are at war. / Our relation is hatred." ]

ii. Maia Baia

[ "Mother / Eat me and give birth to me again // This time around I'll make you proud" ]

iii. Ethel Cain, Family Tree

[ "I'm just a child but I'm not above violence / My mama raised me better than that" ]

iv. Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

[ "All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, that is his." ]

v. @/honeytuesday

[ "mothers and daughters existing as wretched mirrors of each otehr: i am all you could have been and you are all i might be." ]

vi. Lorde, Writer in the Dark

[ "I am my mother's child, I'll love you 'til my breathing stops / I'll love you 'til you call the cops on me" ]

vii. Lidia Yuknavitch, Letter to My Rage: An Evolution

[ "Or was my rage my mother's? Or her mother's? Or hers? An inherited creature?" ]

[sentientsky]

Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma (2022)

[naturalborndevil]

NO ONE WANTS ROTTEN MEAT

[the-ghost-bird]

Origins; There's no home for me besides these gallows.

How’d Your Parents Die Again? by Fatimah Asghar | Unpainted Door by Louise Glück | A Hymn to Childhood by Li-Young Lee | I Don't Love Anyone by Belle & Sebastian | Can I Exist by Missio | Daddy's Lil Girl by Bikini Kill | via @/sainticide | Dog Woman by Chris Abani | Final Girl VII: The Terrible Place by Daphne Gottlieb | The Truth About Grief by Fortesa Latifi | Family Tree (Intro) by Ethel Cain | The Sun Is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon | Desireé Dallagiacomo | Father by The Front Bottoms | via @/ijaazat | To Juan Doe #234 By Eduardo Corral | In The Blood by John Mayer | Angry Chair by Alice in Chains | How to Cure a Ghost by Fariha Róisín | The Things We Lost In The Fire by @lastactiontricia | FORGIVENESS IS THE THING WITH KNIVES AND BLOOD by @judas-redeemed | How to Be a Person in the World by Heather Havrilesky | Courtney Love Prays to Oregon by Clementine von Radics