“Why can’t you see me? Why can’t I stop needing you to see me?”
— Chen Chen, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

“The seats are empty. The theatre is dark. Why do you keep acting?”

“You laugh like a little girl, and inside you think like a martyr.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“To put on your best outfit and feel like you’re dressing a wound.”

“I was always ashamed to take. So I gave. It was not a virtue. It was a disguise.”
— Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 4

“Some days I want to spit me out, the whole mess of me, but mostly I am good and quiet.”
— Camille Rankine, Emergency Management

“I talk to myself and look at the dark trees, blessedly neutral. So much easier than facing people, than having to look happy, invulnerable, clever.”
— Sylvia Plath

“I understand now that I’m not a mess but a deeply feeling person in a messy world. I explain that now, when someone asks me why I cry so often, I say, ‘For the same reason I laugh so often — because I’m paying attention.’”

“See what you are. Don’t ask others, don’t let others tell you about yourself. Look within and see.”
— Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“There is no audience to perform for, there is no approval, no admiration to attain. There is no role worth playing, there is no one to convince. Let it go.”
— tordenevjr

“She cleared out all of her old ideas of things, until she could hear her own joy with almost no effort at all.”

“I wish to live a life that causes my soul to dance inside my body.”
— Dele Olanubi

“The truth is that no child can save her mother.”

“Why can’t you see me? Why can’t I stop needing you to see me?”
— Chen Chen, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

“How long / will / it feel like burning, said the child trying to be / kind.”
— Anne Carson, Lines

“Or was my rage my mother’s? Or her mother’s? Or hers? An inherited creature?”
— Lidia Yuknavitch, Letter to My Rage

“Grieving, grieving, constantly grieving. I mourn what could have been, what will not be, what I can't save.”
— ojibwa

“Maybe you weren’t a terrible person, maybe you were just fifteen.”

“God, God, what do I do / after all this survival?”
— Traci Brimhall, Vive, Vive

“Tell me where it hurts,” she’d say. “Stop howling. Just calm down and show me where.
But some people can’t tell where it hurts. They can’t calm down.
They can’t ever stop howling.”
— Margaret Atwood

“When you are not fed love on a silver spoon you learn to lick it off knives.”
— Lauren Eden

“My father is a good man. Sort of. He is good when I compare him to his own father, and that’s enough. I hope.
My father and I are more alike than I’d care to admit, and whenever I feel pure rage, I know I am my father’s daughter.”

“A woman will return, looking for the girl she was.”
— Louise Glück, Landscape

“Never be ashamed of how deeply and passionately you loved someone who destroyed you,
because destroying things is just who they are…
but loving things deeply and passionately is who you are.”
— butterflies rising

“I treat myself like I would my daughter.
I brush her hair, wash her laundry, tuck her in goodnight.
Most importantly, I feed her. I do not punish her. I do not berate her,
leave tears staining her face. I do not leave her alone.
I know she deserves more. I know I deserve more.”
— Michelle K., I Know I Deserve More

YOUR INNER CHILD IS ROOTING FOR YOU

“I’ve been letting go of heavy things
and I’ve been healing a spirit, and tending to a soul,
and listening to a heart. And I’ve started to exhale.
And to breathe in… and to breathe. in a life…
and I’ve been letting go of so, so many heavy things.”
— butterflies rising

“You’ve just come in from a rainstorm.
You can’t expect to be immediately dry, warm, and comfortable.
But you can do the little things.
Take off the heavy clothing. Turn on the comfort.
Wrap yourself in something soft. One small thing... then another.
— healing is a process

“I overcame myself, the sufferer; I carried my own ashes to the mountains;
I invented a brighter flame for myself.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“I crave affection; and run from it.”
— (via poems-and-words)

“I still don’t know how to love someone without swallowing them.”

“Do you understand? In life I am incorrigibly wild; I will slip out of any hand.”
— Marina Tsvetaeva, Letters Summer 1926

“Angry, and half in love with you, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.”
— ruination

“I’m abandoning everything! everything! and that way I won’t be abandoned—”
— Clarice Lispector, The Departure of the Train

“I am frightened and doubtful, and everyone who touches me must suffer.”
— Martha Gellhorn, Selected Letters

“I, in my corner, with my monstrous needs.”
— Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh

“TELL ME WHERE TO PUT THE ANGER
TELL ME WHERE TO PUT THE ANGER
TELL ME WHERE TO PUT THE ANGER”
— rbhvleo

“Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.”
— Anne Carson, Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides

“I feel it’s my anger that has helped keep me alive.”
— Audre Lorde, in a letter to Pat Parker

“If only my heart were as cold as I pretend it is, maybe I could get over this.”
— Jessica Katoff

“I am destroying myself so other people can’t,” she said, “and it’s the worst kind of control but it’s the only form I know.”
— (via sofijasofia)

“I don't need you to understand me. I need you not to turn away when you don't.”
— Rachel Wolchin

“Tell me where it hurts,” she'd say. “Stop howling. Just calm down and show me where.
But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling.”
— Margaret Atwood

“You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you.”
— Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Who hasn’t ever wondered: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?”
— Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star

“I hate rarely, though when I hate, I hate murderously.”

“Show me all the parts of you that you don’t love so I know where to begin.”

“I met you and now I am kind to myself in my sleep.
And how do you explain that?”
— Laura Marris, Tell Me Gently

“You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.”
— Louise Erdrich