4.

There's one sad truth in life I've found
While journeying east and west -
The only folks we really wound
Are those we love the best.
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.

~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.

 by Jonathan Franzen.

“The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life.”

“When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might love some of them.

And who knows what might happen to you then?”

Mask of Social Acceptance.

' Maybe it was fitting in a world of insecurity, where curly haired kids wanted straight hair, heavy kids wanted to lose weight, skinny kids wanted to gain it, and everybody wanted to be somebody else — the one true beauty was the girl who simply knew herself and was happy with what she knew. '

- The Wonder Years

We live in a time where flaws are to be hidden, mistakes forgotten and pain concealed. Our thoughts and imaginations and ambitions are overshadowed by appearances: the facades we plaster to our beings with cake makeup faces and false friends meant to disguise our true selves.

Our hours are riddled with technology and texting and multitasking. We have shortened attention spans that just worry, worry, worry and because we hear so often how we’re different or disappointing or less attractive or better or wore than everyone else, few people stop to realize we’re all really the same. 

Take It Or Leave It.

' I know who I am and I am always me, although I can be really intense at times…sometimes I’m shy, painfully transparent, sharp at times, at others silly. I am one intense adjective at a time, and while I’m there, I don’t resist those feelings. I rest in those moments. I call it freedom. Maybe I’m nuts (probably,) but I notice that when I fight myself, suck myself in, I lose all the stuff, the fruit, the core of me that I enjoy the most. Some find me off-putting, but here I am. Take it or leave it. Being honest outwardly and most important inwardly is terrifying. Maybe they won’t like you. Maybe they won’t understand you. Maybe you won’t get the job. Maybe all that is true, but not every chance belongs to you. ' x

Upon Written Pages.

"To many it is obvious — I’ve got the likes of you written all over me, in ink no less. And the string of words and phrases you’ve got me wearing feel never ending, going from line after line to pages upon pages, to the point where you could no longer see the pale of my skin, but only the goosebumps you manage to draw from just the ticklish edge of your (finger)tips. And no one understands why you I let you use me like an open canvas for your needs, because they don’t understand how it feels to have all of you blanket over me and they don’t know about the softness that’s in each stroke of your movement as you press up against me and they don’t know easily fulfilled I feel whenever I am full of you. But it isn’t about that — it’s about how just the touch of you makes me my corners curve up into a smile and how every time we get together, we have more than enough chapters to add on to continue our love story. Because as silly as it seems, I guess there just isn’t anyone else who’s got me penned like you do."


A love letter from paper to pen. x