Sending you much love from an old friend in NC. from Anonymous
Hey, I think I know this old friend, and I think about this old friend from time to time. This old friend might be older than dirt by now - there’s new dirt getting made all the time. But to this old friend, oh. Do I send back the love.
Dear Samantha,
I’m sorry
we have to get a divorce.
I know that seems like an odd way to start a love letter but let me explain:
it’s not you.
It sure as hell isn’t me.
It’s just human beings don’t love as well as insects do.
I love you… far too much to let what we have be ruined by the failings of our species.
I saw the way you looked at the waiter last night.
I know you would never DO anything, you never do but…
I saw the way you looked at the waiter last night.
Did you know that when a female fly accepts the pheromones put off by a male fly, it re-writes her brain, destroys the receptors that receive pheromones, sensing the change, the male fly does the same: when two flies love each other they do it so hard, they will never love anything else ever again.
If either one of them dies before procreation can happen both sets of genetic code are lost forever. Now that… is dedication.
After Elizabeth and I broke up, we spent three days dividing everything we had bought together - like if I knew what pots were mine - like if I knew which drapes were mine - somehow the pain would go away.
This is not true.
After two praying mantises mate, the nervous system of the male begins to shut down. While he still has control over his motor functions
he flops onto his back, exposing his soft underbelly up to his lover like a gift.
She then proceeds to lovingly dice him into tiny cubes,
spooning every morsel into her mouth.
She wastes nothing. Even the exoskeleton goes.
She does this so that once their children are born she has something to regurgitate to feed them. Now that… is selflessness.
I could never do that for you.
So I have a new plan: I’m gonna leave you now.
I’m gonna spend the rest of my life committing petty injustices, I hope you do the same.
I will jay walk at every opportunity,
I will steal things i could easily afford,
I will be rude to strangers,
I hope you do the same.
I hope reincarnation is real,
I hope our petty crimes are enough to cause us to be reborn as lesser creatures,
I hope we are reborn as flies,
so that we can love each other as hard as we were meant to.
— Jared Singer, “An Entomologist’s Last Love Letter” (via pasdesolee)
Sublimate me. Elevate me. Meet me in meatspace. Meet me at the bar. Obfuscate me with alcohol. Burble in my ear. Whisper prelinguistic psychobabble in my lobe like a lullaby. Titillate me. Bewitch me. Tickle my funny bone. Run your thumb down the inside of my elbow. Squeeze my bicep. Hard, right? Yeah, I’ve been working out.
Kiss my lisp. Kiss my ellipsis. Take me home. Charm my pants off. Rock my socks off. Verb all my clothes off. Scratch my back. Suck my tongue. Torture me with tenderness. Murder me with sympathy. Tuck me in and watch me dream about you.
Wake me up. Order me around. Speak to me only in imperatives. Sell me yourself. Wow, that’s quite a sales pitch. Gurl, you are so cybersexy. I fit your target demographic, and I like your personal brand. You can market to me anytime.
Fold me up and put me in your pocket. Dissolve me in data. Entertain me with mild stimuli. Text me. Sext me. Touch my touchscreen. Watch me twist into focus. I’m an antisocial butterfly. Socially mediate me. Trap me in your silky web. You like the internet? I like the internet too, let’s be best friends.
Decimate my meatscape. Drown me in your honeyed voice. Drown me in a tub full of candy. Pour some high fructose corn syrup on me. Smother me with your heavenly body weight. Crush me under the unbearable lightness of your being. Unfurl me like your favorite archaic scroll. Crack me open like a fortune cookie and read my insides. Vivisect me. Eviscerate me. Cut me up into thin slices and eat me like a mango. Gnaw on me in a raw reverie. I’m just kidding. This is all just poetic hyperbole. Please don’t eat me.
Walk across my cobblestone heart in your cruel stilettos. Trip me up so I fall and cut open my palms on the concrete. Make me swoon. Make me giddy. Make me vulnerable. Peel away my armadillo armor. Fill up my headspace with hope. Let me let my guard down. Send me mixed messages. Confuse me. Be my muse. Amuse me. Ask me questions. Tell me stories. Laugh at everything I say. Mention your fear of commitment. Start pulling away. Suggest let’s just be friends then never see each other again.
Ignore this. This isn’t for you anyway. It’s for someone else, I swear.
Forget me. Wipe me from your memory. Uninstall me from your brain. I wish I could do the same. But I don’t want eternal sunshine. I washed my clothes and sheets and the skyline but I can’t get your scent out. Everything beautiful reminds me of you. You’re undeletable.
— Ethan Ryan, “Kill Me With Kindness” (via perfect)
1. When he starts distancing himself from you, do not restring bridges with your own sinew. You will find yourself two months later coming unraveled, coming undone. You will find he has left you in the places he has visited and in the hair of the girls he has imagined kissing. You will find yourself splatterpainted on the walls where while drunk he confessed all of your secrets to his college friends. You will be crying on the floor, surrounded by the parts of you he has stepped on, and he will look you in the eyes and ask you to clean up the mess.
2. When she cannot get through the words “I love you” without her eyes flicking to the side or her tongue slurring or her mouth pressing in at the edges: do not assume it is your fault. Do not think that you have yet again pushed away someone amazing. You have not. Sometimes people knock on their bones and find themselves hollow. You were the only way they felt momentarily whole, do not empty yourself to fill up their soul. Do not shatter into pieces trying to perfect yourself. You do not need to be glass to turn light into rainbows. You are a person, not their prism.
3. Do not let them hold you against their body if you know they do not cherish every second they are in contact with your skin. I know it feels as if you are breaking your own spine, but tear yourself away from them. Know that the something beautiful you had was already fading. Know that in the end you did the only thing you could. Sometimes people grow apart. Even trees do it.
4. Cry. Want them back.
5. Cry. Do not take them back.
6. In the following months, you will rediscover what it means to be alone. You will sit and stare at a ceiling and hate yourself and hate the world and cry about everything because everything hurts. You will wonder if it could have gotten better if you’d just been a little different, if the timing had worked out, if if if. Do not worry about this. Nothing would have changed the reality that the person you were in love with had stopped loving you somewhere along the line, whether it was in the middle of a conversation or while driving under a bridge or when they made eye contact with someone new and wonderful. It doesn’t matter. Stop wasting your time on them. You don’t need to stop your story just because they are no longer a main character. Do not take back what has already poisoned you. Instead start healing and start healing soon.
7. Take yourself back. Bring out the mop, the broom, the magic wand. Glue where needs to be glued, put up new paint, turn off the lights in places that are too hot to touch. Touch your toes. Touch your hair. Touch a dog. Touch the grass, touch the telephone, do not call him. Touch base with your mom. Touch another person with no love in your heart, touch another person and mean every second of it. Believe in yourself even if you don’t believe in love. It’s okay. There is nothing wrong with being alone. You are the best company you’ll ever know. It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay and none of this was ever your fault. Sometimes people just fall out of love. It’s okay. It’s okay. You’ll one day discover you didn’t need them anyway.
—
“How to stop loving someone who does not love you.” /// r.i.d (via inkskinned)
(Y'know, in all those months of being in love, and out, and in love with being loved, and out of love with being wanted at all, and in love with being out of love with—
in all those months, the months that begat years, I never called my mom. Or my dad. Or anybody. They called me, and when they did, all that seemed to matter was how little I was doing to be self-sufficient in another city.
That’s not to blame my parents. They were right. They were very right. I wasn’t doing anything constructive—for myself, or the woman I had loved. I was drifting and wasting my early 20s. They’re gone forever, and all I can do is try and be better. I don’t like calling an era of my life a write-off, but.
But, I never called anyone. I have friends, I have family. I maybe could have contacted some of them. I could have rambled on and talked their ear off. You know that feeling in a long phone call, when your ear gets hot and you have to switch sides? Does anyone else hear better out of one ear than the other?
I could have talked to somebody. Instead, I drank too much and spent piles of hours on my own. I ate poorly, I lived poorly, and the people who knew me then couldn’t possibly have ratcheted up their respect for me.
I didn’t seriously seek employment. I didn’t further my creative abilities. I bought fresh food from the farmer’s market every couple weeks, and threw it out because I had grown fat and full at Pizza Pizza, and on horrendous samosas from the corner store.
I never called anyone and told them how scared, how alone I felt. I still haven’t done that. I’m better now, but I still never talk it out. And for the record, typing it out feels nothing like saying it. I could write a gawdam novel here, about all the scary I do, but if I spoke it true with my voice, I wouldn’t make it through.
I never called anybody then, and I’m coming to terms with those wasted years. I should call somebody.)
Years ago. Looking back on myself and seeing that I’ve come a long way. Thank goodness for that.
from Anonymous
