So You’re Damaged Goods, My Ex Boyfriend Laughed After I Told Him About My Abuse. 

for someone that feels empty a lot of the time, I’m sure able to give and give and give. it’s my nastiest and most damaging habit. maybe that’s why I have such a fascination with sandcastles and other temporary things, the way I commit all my time to a couple of fleeting moments. strange that I can always feel the storm before it hits, the way the air sticks to my body like ghosts. don’t I lose love like eyelashes. don’t I hold love like a hoarder. this little light lady is all smoke and no flame.

[Softly but with a lot of feeling] fuck

cherry picking things to smile about this summer. I need these things to keep going. all this love, food, films, songs...I grin, take big bites until I have a mouthful of sweetness. things are bad again. I’m tired and sad and slow all over again. everything that used to be colourful is grey and dark, depression is the fog that covers everything. but it’ll get better. I know it. with all this love and art and music, I’ll feel alive again.

“They’re all angels.”

— Keanu Reeves when asked what type of girls he likes x

a conversation with sappho

I've nodded and being complicit in my own destruction, maybe more than I should have. because that was way easier than arguing about it, so much easier than just saying no because I am so used to the word falling on deaf ears. Our relationship wasn’t that bad, I say to my girlfriends. But I would close my eyes and leave my body and whisper to my bleeding heart: turn over, you don’t need to like it. god knows that’s not what he wants anyway. you just need to do it. close your eyes and lose yourself to him. do what he wants. do it. felt myself cower into nothingness. again.

today, on the anniversary of my final suicide attempt, I went out and witnessed the Black Lives Matter movement, felt the rush of humanity coming together, the inexplicable feeling of togetherness and justice. I squeezed my boyfriends hand and bought chocolate milk, sat by the river with him and breathed in the air. exhaled. inhaled. there’s so much sweetness in the air.

and isn’t that just what we’re here for. to witness and experience all this sweetness. to feel all the pain. to grow from all of it. to cut short that inherited trauma. isn’t that what makes us flesh and bone and cartilage.

my story was not that of a superhero who overcame all the pain and abuse and sadness. I’m lucky enough to have the most amazing people around me. lucky enough to kiss and laugh and run and eat foods that make my heart happy. I won’t make a fairytale out of my story but god, I’m so glad I’m still here. so glad I didn’t leave.

i related a lot to your post about not being able to listen to a band. drinking wine and listening to music was most of my relationship with my ex and i couldn’t listen to our favourite band for months. it does get better you do start to forget the memories behind songs and then you get to create new ones. it does get better 💖

hello my love! it means the world you relate to my writing. love is a powerful and risky vice, huh? sending you all the light in the world, angel, because losing somebody you felt had one half of your heart is fucking painful. it does get better, slowly each wave of despair gets less devestating. my messages are open if you ever need to talk lovely❤️

I loved you and then I didn’t and then I realised how wrong we were. I realised that your hands had not been welcome here and that even when I locked the door, you found a way to kick it open. I loved you and then I didn’t and then I realised I never knew what love was. all those terrifying memories that still feel too close and raw. memories that don’t feel like they belong to me. my therapist calls it abuse and I still don’t know if it actually was or if I’m just crazy and emotional like you said I was. I loved you and then I didn’t and then I was too sad to remember that my body isn’t a graveyard and things will be okay and I’ll never forget you or the things you did but I will move on. all those mornings spent in tears, the heart palpitations that were too urgent to feel like butterflies. your knuckles and the dark and then blinding light and then I have to explain away the bruises again to my mother. I loved you and you said you did too but you don’t hurt the ones you love. you don’t hurt the ones you love. I still loved you even when you did and I still don’t know if it was my fault or not.

you move & the wind moves with you, something honey, something bruised— in the way you chew on your bottom lip. nervous habit; delayed reaction. how in summer the world feels like a mirage of itself. hands that chain themselves to anything that refuses to let go: a leech, or brown muck. your teeth (grazing) the inside of my elbow. something damn frustrating about the way you give yourself up (to anything that’s foolish enough to take you) i.e the sea, the coast, where your shoulders meet, the leylines of your veins. & picture me humbly, please. picture me in evenings & earthly tones, only. & do not hold your breath when i go, slip. out the back door—silhouetted feline; precipitous, or better yet. picture (you), standing barefoot in the tall grass, picture the curve of your neck in malnourished light, & a puncture wound, in the now negative (space) you found me in: a flower bed emptied; the sun bleached out. — oh all i ever wanted / was a life in your shape // mitski