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Love This.

[the-briiis-knees]

September 24, 2018

I dreamed one time that I was in a dark room. No windows. No real doors. No way to see light. In this dream, or rather nightmare, I sat on the floor, waiting.

My heart was racing and I was scared. I could hear the footsteps of the unknown. And suddenly, a door appeared and they opened it. Only to quickly slam it shut. In that brief second, I saw a glimmer of light. It was distracting. So much so, I didn’t realize the unknown figure was taking my last breath. And then I was gone. I woke in tears, terrified of the thought of death. Or so I thought in that moment.

I continued to have this nightmare. Over and over. It got to the point where I was aware of my soon to be demise. I became numb to it.

Eventually, after several years, it stopped occurring. But I could never rid the thought from my mind. Why was this nightmare making a presence in my conscious world? That death was no longer scary, so why couldn’t I let it go?

It was only today that I figured it out. I was never actually afraid of death or even being killed. I’ve never been one to fear my end. No. What I feared, what I fear, is being alone. That dream wasn’t about my death. It was about my life. I live in darkness with no way to escape. No window to jump out of. No door to run through. And just when I think there is a light coming my way, it’s gone. Instantly. My fear is never being able to escape the darkness. I wonder if that glimpse of light is real. Or is it just my subconscious giving me hope. I don’t know. I would like to think that one day that room will beam with light of every color. But every time I dreamed that dream, it was the same. A room of darkness.

[the-briiis-knees]

“Many couples who live together but aren’t married are likely to experience at least some of the costs and benefits associated with marriage. The expectations that come with living with a serious partner, married or not, can enforce the norms that create social isolation. In the months after Mark moved into my apartment, I enjoyed the coziness of our shared domestic life. I liked having another person to help walk the dog and shop for groceries. I loved getting into bed with him every night. But when I looked at my life, I was surprised by how it seemed to have contracted. I didn’t go out as much. I got fewer invitations for after-work beers. Even my own parents seemed to call less often. When invitations did arrive, they were addressed to us both. We hadn’t even discussed marriage yet, but already it seemed everyone had tacitly agreed that our step toward each other necessitated a step away from friendship and community. I was happy in our home, but that happiness was twinned with a sense of loneliness I hadn’t expected.”

— Mandy Len Catron, “The Case Against Marriage,” The Atlantic

[the-briiis-knees]

“I never told you I loved you but I loved you the whole time we were together. But I just didn’t want to tell you because I was scared you weren’t going to feel the same way. Every time I was with you I looked into your eyes the way I look at the ocean. I always wondered if you had love somewhere swimming inside of you, but then I started realizing that maybe you were too deep for me and I was just too shallow. I wanted to tell you that I loved you but I was just too scared of falling further into you, and I always wondered what if I did tell you about my feelings, and then you just let me drown inside of you because you’re the type of person that doesn’t like making a person like me feel like salvation is actually real.”

— Alexa Evangelista, the book i’ll never finish writing

[the-briiis-knees]

“Love is the marrow of life, and yet, so often people attempt to funnel it into the narrow channels prescribed by marriage and the nuclear family. And though this setup is seen as a cultural norm, it is not, in reality, the way most Americans are living their lives. The two-parents-plus-kids family represents only 20 percent of households in the U.S.; couples (both married and unmarried) without children are another 25 percent. But millions of Americans are living alone, with other unmarried adults, or as single parents with children. It’s worth considering what would happen if they lived in a culture that supported all intimate relationships with the same energy currently devoted to celebrating and supporting marriage. Governments, hospitals, insurance companies, and schools assume that marriage (and subsequently the nuclear family) is the primary unit of care. But of course love—and the care it necessitates—is much more far-reaching and unwieldy than that. What if you could share health-care benefits with your sister and her son? Or take paid leave to be with a close friend who had an operation? In a country with epidemic rates of loneliness, expanding our sense of what counts as meaningful love—and acknowledging and supporting relationships in all their forms—could have enormous benefits. Energy spent striving to prop up the insular institution of marriage could instead be spent working to support family stability in whatever form it takes.”

— Mandy Len Catron, “The Case Against Marriage,” The Atlantic

[the-briiis-knees]

“Whether it is the texture of the beloved’s skin or hair, their singular scent, the way they drool in their sleep, the way they eat with their mouth open, or the way they are trapped within their own umwelt of semiotic disinhibitors: we love the creaturely in the other, as much as their humanity. In fact, we could go so far as to insist that love is not a human phenomenon at all, but an attempt to make the other admit, under a type of passionate interrogation, that they are not human; never were human; were trying to fool us with their distracting, sophisticated ways. Love would thus be the litmus test which we all fail; and in doing so, ironically succeed. For we all suspect, at various levels of consciousness, that we are not really human. Or not only human.”

— Dominic Pettman, Creaturely Love: How Desire Makes Us More and Less Than Human

[the-briiis-knees]

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⭐️⭐️

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We are our biggest enemies.

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a text wrote to you..

you turned my life into the most beautiful thing i could ever imagine. my entire universe clicked the moment i first heard you speak, the rhythm in the sound waves of your voice through my ears was like the most beautiful song I have ever heard. But you aren’t just any song, you are a song my mouth doesn’t know how to sing because that song is yours. My sound waves could never match yours but I tried so hard to get into your wavelength and I got a bit off track and I know I said some things I didn’t mean to say.. and that made you think that you weren’t enough for me.. but god, you are more than enough..

© copyright Em Griffith

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Retro Pinup Girl Art Prints by SvetaShubinaGallery

x / x / x / x / x x / x / x / x / x

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I want..

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Flatline.

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