the funniest things happen.

It’s funny how when somebody leaves you, you’ll turn to anything that’ll hurt as much as they did.

Maybe you’ll pick a new brand of gin or drink a shot of whiskey every time you think about him. You’ll tell yourself that it’s because you want to forget his name, but you know that he’ll spin in circles around your head the same way the room is spinning around your vision.

Maybe you’ll try to smoke him out of your lungs. Maybe you’ll find your nails turning yellow but you’ll still inhale with every breath because you’d rather taint your blood than think about the fact that he still lives under your skin like a cloud of smoke.

Maybe you’ll kiss a lot of strangers whose names you don’t know because you’ll tell yourself that you can’t taste the past in someone new- but you still do. You still feel him with every lips you touch and God, do you wish you weren’t kissing anyone but the one person you’re not supposed to think about.

Maybe you’ll tell your best friend that the pain is gone. Maybe you’ll tell them that you don’t even think about it anymore, honestly. Funny because you know you still listen to his voicemails on repeat like a song stuck in your head. Funny because you know your best friend knows it too.

Funny because you won’t admit it to yourself, but you’ll do anything to a feel a pain worse than him leaving. You’ll look for anything that’ll push that boundary, anything to remind you of him even if it’s just a reminder of the way he left you. Funny because you tell yourself you’re doing it because you’re trying to get over him, but really you’re only doing it to try to forget that he ever left.

– excerpt from a book i’ll never write

 

what my mother should’ve told me at fifteen

They’re never going to teach you about heart break.
You’re going to have to figure it out by yourself.

Heartbreak is going to feel a lot like food poisoning when he leaves, even though you haven’t eaten in days. You don’t talk, you don’t open your mouth, you just lay on the bathroom floor so that every time you feel words coming up and pushing to spit out, you’ll be able to reach for the toilet to flush away the screams.

Heartbreak will start to feel a lot like a disease when your mother demands why you’re shivering under four blankets and you’ll try to explain to her that you’re not cold on the outside, you’re cold like all the sunshine has left your bloodstream and veins. You’re cold like standing without an umbrella under the rain.

Heartache will feel a lot like the cold that follows you around all winter. It’ll creep up on you like a fog in the spring, and you’ll never have a chance to see it coming. So when you wake up suddenly because he’s calling you at 3 am after 6 months, and you feel that chill in your bones and the pounding in your head and your teeth are chattering, don’t pick up. This is a sickness that you can prevent. Don’t pick up no matter how many times he calls, because even though you’ve pictured yourself rejecting his apology a million times, you know that if you hear his voice that you’ll break faster than you can take a breath. Scream into your pillow and block his number from your phone. You wanted him back once, but not anymore.

It’s okay to push him out of your mind and it’s okay to cry about it, but please don’t let yourself fall victim to the sickness again.
You’re stronger than that.

– excerpt from a book i’ll never write

you whispered promises of forever into my lungs and now I can hardly breathe

Before you, I didn’t know the meaning of reckless.
I was the definition of careful-
I was 6:03 am alarms and every outfit planned out meticulously and home before curfew

And then you came into my life and threw a whirlwind at the way I used to survive.

We became sunsets with our hands intertwined
We were caught up in the way we felt and
we sang each other songs and we layed in bed with our bodies pressed together and you were my 3 am wake up calls just to tell me you miss me and you were goofy smiles and a sure handshake and a great kisser
So when you left I became a world of chaos.

I was up at 5 am with no alarm and blank stares at ceilings
And sitting in the bathtub till my skin turned blue from the cold but I was already used to the numb
my mother didn’t even know where to start
she would shake me and ask over again,
“dear god what did he do to you?”

Because maybe there’s a calm after the storm but there’s still the evidence of destruction

like laying on the bathroom floor or on the hood of the car dreaming about sunsets and the way your arm settled across my shoulders

I was the definition of the word careful till you tore me apart-
And the only thing I’ve got to show for it is a broken heart.

 

commitment issues

Maybe I’ll be the holes in her sweatshirt girl.
Maybe I’m the one you remember because I couldn’t get through the morning without my third cup of coffee.
You could remember me by soft lips, or by the shoes I wear so much that my footprint is stamped into the soles.

I’m gonna be the sun freckled day dream of a coffee kisser, you know?
I’m gonna be the one you think of as pink lips and arms wrapped around your waist singing Make Damn Sure too loud for the fucking neighbors.
(but it made you laugh so I always started singing it louder)

I’m not saying I’m your forever girl.
I can’t burn like that, but I can be the taste at the back of your mouth in the last drop of your second coffee before your 10 to 4.

I can be your distant memory, if you’re willing to let me.

– excerpt from a book I’ll never write