Caitlyn G

“I learned years ago that it’s okay to do this. To seek out small spaces for me, to stop and imagine myself alone. People are too much sometimes. Friends, acquaintances, enemies, strangers. It doesn’t matter; they all crowd. Even if they’re all the way across the room, they crowd. I take a moment of silence and think:
I am here. I am okay.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“what love looks like

what does love look like the therapist asks
one week after the breakup
and i’m not sure how to answer her question
except for the fact that i thought love
looked so much like you

that’s when it hit me
and i realized how naive i had been
to place an idea so beautiful on the image of a person
as if anybody on this entire earth
could encompass all love represented
as if this emotion seven billion people tremble for
would look like a five foot eleven
medium-sized brown-skinned guy
who likes eating frozen pizza for breakfast

what does love look like the therapist asks again
this time interrupting my thoughts midsentence
and at this point i’m about to get up
and walk right out the door
except i paid too much money for this hour
so instead i take a piercing look at her
the way you look at someone
when you’re about to hand it to them
lips pursed tightly preparing to launch into conversation
eyes digging deeply into theirs
searching for all the weak spots
they have hidden somewhere
hair being tucked behind the ears
as if you have to physically prepare for a conversation
on the philosophies or rather disappointments
of what love looks like

well i tell her
i don’t think love is him anymore
if love was him
he would be here wouldn’t he
if he was the one for me
wouldn’t he be the one sitting across from me
if love was him it would have been simple
i don’t think love is him anymore i repeat
i think love never was
i think i just wanted something
was ready to give myself to something
i believed was bigger than myself
and when i saw someone
who probably fit the part
i made it very much my intention
to make him my counterpart

and i lost myself to him
he took and he took
wrapped me in the word special
until i was so convinced he had eyes only to see me
hands only to feel me
a body only to be with me
oh how he emptied me

how does that make you feel
interrupts the therapist
well i said
it kind of makes me feel like shit

maybe we’re looking at it wrong
we think it’s something to search for out there
something meant to crash into us
on our way out of an elevator
or slip into our chair at a cafe somewhere
appear at the end of an aisle at the bookstore
looking the right amount of sexy and intellectual
but i think love starts here
everything else is just desire and projection
of all our wants needs and fantasies
but those externalities could never work out
if we didn’t turn inward and learn
how to love ourselves in order to love other people

love does not look like a person
love is our actions
love is giving all we can
even if it’s just the bigger slice of cake
love is understanding
we have the power to hurt one another
but we are going to do everything in our power
to make sure we don’t
love is figuring out all the kind sweetness we deserve
and when someone shows up
saying they will provide it as you do
but their actions seem to break you
rather than build you
love is knowing who to choose”
― Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers

“i will tell you about selfish people
even when they know they will hurt you they
walk into your life to taste you because you are
the type of being they don’t want to miss out on
you are too much shine to not be felt
so when they have gotten a good look at everything you have to offer.
when they have taken your skin, your hair, your secrets with them
when they realize how real this is
how much of a storm you are and it hits them.
that is when the cowardice sets in.
that is when the person you thought they were is replaced with the sad reality of what they are.
that is when they lose every fighting bone in their body and leave after saying you will find better than me.
you will stand there naked with half of them still hidden somewhere inside you and sob.
asking them why they did it.
why they forced you to love them when they had no intention of loving you back
and they’ll say something along the lines of I just had to try. I had to give it a chance. It was you after all but that isn’t romantic. It isn’t sweet.
The idea that they were so engulfed by your existence that had to risk breaking it for the sake of knowing they weren’t the one missing out
your existence meant that little next to their curiosity of you
this is the thing about selfish people
they gamble entire beings. entire souls to please their own. One second they are holding you like the world in their lap and the next they have belittled you to a mere picture
a moment. something of the past. one second.
as if the human heart means that little to them.
isn’t it sad and funny how people have more guts these days to undress you with their fingers than they do to pick up the phone and call. apologize. for the loss.”
― Rupi Kaur

“If I'm not the love of your life
I'll be the greatest loss instead”
― Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers