Caroline Cook

“if you’re waiting for them
to make you feel like you’re enough
you’ll be waiting a long time”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“I know what she smells like. This little freckle on her neck when she pulls up her hair. Her upper lip is a little plumper than the lower. The curve of her wrist, when she holds a pen. It’s wrong, really wrong, but I know the shape of her. I go to sleep thinking about it, and then I wake up, go to work, and she is there, and it’s impossible. I tell her stuff I know she’ll agree to, just to hear her hum back at me. It’s like hot water down my fucking spine. She’s married. She’s brilliant. She trusts me, and all I think about is taking her to my office, stripping her, doing unspeakable things to her. And I want to tell her. I want to tell her that she’s luminous, she’s so bright in my mind, sometimes I can’t focus. Sometimes I forget why I came into the room. I’m distracted. I want to push her against a wall, and I want her to push back. I want to go back in time and punch her stupid husband on the day I met him and then travel back to the future and punch him again. I want to buy her flowers, food, books. I want to hold her hand, and I want to lock her in my bedroom. She’s everything I ever wanted and I want to inject her into my veins and also to never see her again. There’s nothing like her and these feelings, they are fucking intolerable. They were half-asleep while she was gone, but now she’s here and my body thinks it’s a fucking teenager and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. There is nothing I can do, so I’ll just . . . not.”
― Ali Hazelwood, Love on the Brain

“When our conversations become constrained, when we avoid topics that might cause upset, when we accept comments or behavior that are hurtful, we no longer aim for harmony but rather toward a sort of deafness that allows us to stay in a relationship longer than we should.  Our senses have become dulled and we end up settling, even when we are anguished. ”
― Susan Scott, Fierce Love: Creating a Love that Lasts---One Conversation at a Time

“No one completes us.  No one is our missing piece, our other half.  We complete ourselves or fail to.   No one else could be successful in that role because each of us is utterly unique.  There isn’t another “you” anywhere on this planet.  If you somehow feel incomplete, the answers aren’t out there somewhere.  The answers are in the room.  You have them.  ”
― Susan Scott, Fierce Love: Creating a Love that Lasts---One Conversation at a Time