“They’re All Angels.”

things my abuser has tried to take away from me but failed:

1) Love in the form of sunflowers and surprise dinners and intertwined fingers. Romance and deep kisses, warm and safe. Dancing and giggling with him to Lily Allen. Kissing him and wondering what I did to deserve a body so soft, a love so raw and honest.

2) Love in the form of looking after this heavy body, even when it doesn’t look after me back. Face masks, showers and brushing through my matted hair, knotted like a unkempt garden. Dragging myself to therapy and loving all the charred parts of me. Loving me flawed, loving me regardless, loving me unconditionally, loving the me that survived.

3) Love in the form of a best friend. Nights spent sleeping next to her, nights spent crying into her lap, nights spent singing at the top of our lungs. She loves me silently, knows me when I’m down, knows me when I’m up. She doesn’t love me different, even with all the flaws.

4) Love in the form of family, with their misguided love and tentative support. Love in the form of my mother’s perfume and food she tells me to eat even when I feel I don’t deserve it. Weeks spent in hospital, bringing me my favourite food in the ward. Love in the form of her imperfection and how I wouldn’t change it for the world.

5) Love in the form of music, of dancing around in my room to the anthems of my youth. Of belting it out as loud as my lungs will allow. Songs I’ve cried to, laughed to, kissed to, lost to. Songs that held me up and gave a melody to all the hurt.

6) Love in the form of the poet in me. On my best days, she is all that I am. On my worst days, she is all that I want to be.

7) Love in the form of hope. A love that screams I made it. A love that believes it happened. Recovery has finally, finally begun to taste sweet.

Tracey Emin

altogether too empty to really quite exist. not pretty enough to make people stop and stare but just attractive enough to make a boy fall for the spark in my eyes. I feel like half a person, a waxing gibbous moon. had the potential to be something wonderful. don’t want to be normal or ordinary but I really am nothing special. that’s the curse of living I guess. you gotta live with the fact that you won’t be an elvis or a bowie or a keats.

“(To be loved means to be consumed. To love means to radiate with inexhaustible light. To be loved is to pass away, to love is to endure.)”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. (via xshayarsha)

losing you felt like something elemental went from the world. like the sun disappeared, swallowed herself up with grief. I miss the nights where we’d dance to david bowie, laugh and paint each other’s faces. his music connected us. we’d hold hands and sing softly to lazarus. we’d go to camden, browse the vinyl and argue over which of his albums were the best.

when he died, the world turned grey. we both cried. held each other. neither of us could believe someone could just disappear like that. ironic, huh?

my girl from mars. my rebel lady. my blackstar. with your silver dress and red shoes. 70s soul and clumsy dancing. i miss you so much. you’re so far away from me now. do you read me? can you hear me? let the stars be your guide. come back to me. please.

kissing you and laughing with you and holding you reminds me that happiness is possible, that happiness is here and that it is here to stay. how wonderful it is to come home to you. how wonderful it is to call you mine, my love. every cell, every inch, every curve of you calls me like the sea. I’ll happily drown in all that you are. happily burn in the sunlight in your eyes. I’m obsessed with all that you are. the chocolate chip cookie grin, the curve of your Adam’s apple, the scent of your skin.

so this is what lovers mean when they say they fall in love with their person more and more everyday. this is what falling feels like.

here darling. summer isn’t so bright this year so come lean on my shoulder and baptise your sorrows in the valleys of my body. I know you’re crumbling under the weight of it all so lean on me until you’re strong enough to walk again. some flowers don’t have sturdy stems, and that’s okay. doesn’t make them any less beautiful, right? let my arms be your peace until the world outside stops sounding so much like violence, the chaos and busyness of it all. come, my love. mind over matter. you’ll start feeling like yourself again, I promise. love is being the hook, line and sinker. love is being the fish and the fisherman. love is knowing that sometimes it isn’t 50/50, that sometimes I must give more than I take. but love is also knowing you’d do the same for me any day of the week.