....and the line of the day

Emotions are quite literally contagious.

Repost.

This

And this.


**So I don't forget.

On human behavior

People generally look to others to understand what behavior is expected in any situation, particularly in an ambiguous situation. When others don't act, inaction is viewed as normative and expected. This explains why in emergencies, even the perception that others are also witnessing the same emergency reduces one's likelihood of acting significantly as opposed to when one is alone in the same situation.

For some reason, audiences evaluate action more harshly than inaction.

Felt good to write.

[[Lines from the story I am writing these days. It's crap, but WAY better crap than I have written in the last few years. I have lost the ability to write well, but I still have some taste. These lines are just reminders for myself of why writing feels good...]]

It was funny how everyone tells you so many stories about finding love, about falling in love, about confessing your love - but nobody explains what do you do after that. What exactly does happily ever after mean? What do you do the next day?

***

She didn't say openly, but all he was hearing in those conversations were her unsaid words: I want more of you than you can give me.

***

..thinking and doing are two very different things. It's easy to make a decision, much harder to live with it.

**

She could pretend like she was happy and she didn't need him so that he wouldn't think of her too needy, but in reality, she found herself wanting him all the time, and denying herself all the time. 

[...] The strife within her was slowly killing her. At some level, she hated who she had become, what love and vulnerability had done to her. There was a reason she had kept herself bottled up all her life and never let anyone close, she reminded himself. 

***

...That part questioned him if he was ready to commit himself to this relationship . Was he worthy? Was he willing? That part was - to be honest - intimidated by the magnitude of what it really meant. That part scared him, because it reminded him that this was that life was long and uncertain...

***

Destiny sighed at the anti-climax and thought about finding better things to do. The kid who closes her fist tightly to keep sand in her hand doesn't realize she is only making it fall away faster.

***

Saying “I am sorry” does not undo anything

***

Her phone fell from her hand. The battery fell out as it disassembled into pieces.

Seconds later, she collapsed and fell on the ground, disassembled into pieces herself.

Her world had imploded, but there had been no explosion. Just the faint sound of a bubble being pricked.

***

The world froze, and she lay there, numb, staring at nothing.

Words. Words echoed in her mind over and over.

“I don’t know…”

Words that had caused the world she lived in to collapse. Words that had destroyed everything she was holding on to, until a moment before. Her faith in life, her self-worth, her reason to live. All those things that words themselves – different words – had given to her in the first place. Words from a different time.

Words that mocked her. Words that laughed at her for her foolishness in believing in them.

Hours passed. She lay there, unmoving, like a lifeless corpse, drowning in the echoes of words that represented all she had been left with.

"Do you love me?" "I don't know"

***

She had given him the power to rule her, to hurt her, to own her, to destroy her, and she had bet that he wouldn’t do that.

And she had lost.

She knew the risks, she ignored them anyway. And she had lost. 

***

Would she survive if it happened again? Did it matter?

***

She had begged, literally begged, for another chance, and didn't get one. Why then, was she willing to sign up one more time for a life of slow, constant, enduring pain where she waited and hoped for little morsels of love? [...] She had put at risk everything she had, but she had done that because what she had wasn't much anyway. What was the big deal about going all-in when you were already bankrupt?

*** 

Destiny recognized that her silence was a challenge. Not to him, but to destiny itself. I am here, I am vulnerable. 

Destroy me a second time, if you can.

***

What doesn't kill us, makes us stronger. But this...this had almost killed her. And it had taken every ounce of remaining strength in her to return. Now, she was done.

****

She pushed the darkness that had been enveloping her and their love into a deep dark corner that had no business resurfacing. Damn the memories of pain, damn the darkness of betrayal. If they were to live, they had to move past the hurts of history.

***

More tears were shed that night, but they tasted of catharsis.

***

Destiny noted with curiosity the rug under which she swept the problems of the past. She had dared to believe she would never face them again.