“That is why it is so important to let certain things go. To release them. To cut loose. People need to understand that no one is playing with marked cards; sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Don’t expect to get anything back, don’t expect recognition for your efforts, don’t expect your genius to be discovered or your love to be understood. Complete the circle. Not out of pride, inability or arrogance, but simply because whatever it is no longer fits in your life. Close the door, change the record, clean the house, get rid of the dust. Stop being who you were and become who you are.”

- Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

Love is a choice

The truth is that the more intimately you know someone, the more clearly you’ll see their flaws. That’s just the way it is. This is why marriages fail, why children are abandoned, why friendships don’t last. You might think you love someone until you see the way they act when they’re out of money or under pressure, or hungry. Love is something different. Love is choosing to serve someone and be with someone in spite of their filthy, filthy heart. Love is patient and kind, love is deliberate. Love is hard. Love is pain and sacrifice, it’s seeing the darkness in another person and defying the impulse to jump ship.

Love is… feeling safe, despite having absolutely no reason to.

a girl can dream

struggling

It is terribly unsettling to find yourself sobbing your eyes out at 4am with hardly a trigger or much of a legitimate reason to be experiencing this lost-ness when I have not felt the tendrils of powerless and lack of control choking my soul in a very long while

I’m not sure why this week has been so difficult when it is of no particular significance and why I’m feeling like this all of a sudden out of nowhere but jesus, has it been hard.

Someone give me strength.

inexplicable

Every now and then I hear something that reminds me of us, and in that fraction of time I forget how exceedingly destructive we were for each other and the little scraps of me that still inexplicably belong to you misses you, so very much.

fearless, but not careless

‘I’m not afraid of losing you,’ I say. 'Sad, yes. But I don’t fear it.’

You question my indifference.

'I must not mean very much to you, then’, you say.

In the frozen fragments of time between consciousness and slumber and back again, I find myself staring unblinking at the whitewashed ceiling as I have for the last 6 hours, and the same question ticks and tocks back and forth in my head. Steady and unwavering, never stopping, keeping time with the hourglass growing heavy in my heart, gently burying us beneath the sandy call of responsibility, promise, duty and family.

And as suddenly as the dawn spills into darkness, I understand- fear is anchored by uncertainty. Fear stems from instability, it sprouts from doubt.

You and I? We don’t stand a chance in this universe. This conclusion is certain. Definite. Doubtless.

And this is why the opposite of fear isn’t courage, or bravery, or fearlessness, even.

The opposite of fear is love. Unconditional, certain, absolute love. Unmovable. Unshakeable.

'I’m not afraid of losing you,’ I say.

Perhaps in a parallel universe, the sands of time would fall differently for you and I.

“every time you
tell your daughter
you yell at her
out of love

you teach her to confuse

anger with kindness

which seems like a good idea
till she grows up to trust men who hurt her

cause they look so much
like you.”

— to fathers with daughters, rupi kaur