carmen⋆.˚

“When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker … but as survivors. Survivors who don’t get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it. Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand. I hope to one day see a sea of people all wearing silver ribbons as a sign that they understand the secret battle, and as a celebration of the victories made each day as we individually pull ourselves up out of our foxholes to see our scars heal, and to remember what the sun looks like.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“Break my heart. Break it a thousand times if you like. It was only ever yours to break anyway.”
― Kiera Cass, The One

“Impossible to be alone inside something living & listening. ”
― Matthew Edward Hall, San Mateo: Proof of The Divine

“once I believed
love poems were foolish

now I read love poems
just for the sake of it

and yet perhaps I want
to reach a higher state of poetry

I don't know if that's right or wrong
but such a feeling persists anyway

and sometimes irritates me
provoking outrageous desires

once I believed
love poems were foolish

yet now I do nothing
but dream about love”
― Chūya Nakahara