Don't Be So Hard On Yourself Quotes Tumblr

- "My body is a haunted place, filled to the brim with ghosts. There is an echo of your laughter concealed underneath my own every time I open my mouth, remnants of your whispered secrets lodged between my ribs. There are imprints of your fingertips in all the places you touched and all the places you could never reach with your bare hands. The stories you told are so intertwined with my memories that I can hardly tell them apart. I feel you all around, day and night. I wonder how long it will take for me to be my old self again, but if it means letting you go completely, I might just hold on a little longer. Only a week, maybe two. Give me a month, please. After all it is not easy to shed what has become a part of yourself."

- "I think that sometimes I get too caught up in things that hurt me. I love them too much to let them go.
  The first deep intake of breath I take after having run for miles that feels like a knife to my lungs, the beauty of saying farewell instead of goodbye, looking at the sun until my eyes water. And you. I love you. And it hurts."

- ninasdrafts:
  
  "Whenever grief creeps up on me, I try to find some solace in knowing that a part of the people we loved will always remain with us. And even when my heart breaks a little, I try to hear an echo of your voice in someone else's story, try to hold on to the things you left behind. Fragments, scattered across our lives and memories like footprints even the tide can never fully wash away. I'm not talking about obvious things like photos and the clothes we can't bring ourselves to throw away. This is different. When you left, you became one with this world. I'll find parts of you in a beautiful sunset. In the first drop of rain that hits the pavement on a summer day. In the first breath of fresh air after leaving a crowded room. I can find them in so many aspects of life that I know I will never be alone, and whenever I reach out to you, you'll be there. And maybe this won't make it hurt less. It will certainly not bring you back. But at least it will allow me to find peace someday, knowing that wherever you are right now, you are never truly far."
  
  — the parts you left behind / n.j.

- "Please remind me who I used to be around you. So much time has passed that I barely remember. Am I the same? Am I different? Did our parting ways change me? We used to hold hands and pour our hearts out to each other, I like to think. I'm not too sure.
  I recall crying with you and laughing with you, but feelings are a hazy thing these days and I can't really get ahold of them. We shared stories and secrets and when we grew up to walk taller and with a swing to our step, we exchanged lipstick and glasses of red wine and laughter that smelled of liquor and half-truths. I haven't seen you around in a while.
  I don't know what happened that made me think of you again. Maybe it was the soft voice I heard behind me that could've been yours or it was that old song that was played on the radio last week, the one we used to sing along to. Maybe it was something as ordinary as the rain and the leaves falling down. I don't know why rain and dead leaves remind me of you, they just do. It's just what autumn does - it stirs up old memories and lets them fester right below the surface until they eventually form cracks in our skin. These days, I'm counting more and more of those cracks.
  I can't quite remember why we stopped talking, it might've been something stupid for all I know. I'm not sure I could fix things, but some images and fragments of you still hovering at the back of my mind tell me you're the forgiving kind. We were always too close to let anything get under our skin. So why was this line drawn between us? Who put it there? And if I can't remember what happened, how come it was bad enough to tear us apart?
  When someone mentions you and asks me what you've been up to, I don't want to admit I have no idea. I don't want to admit I didn't pay attention because I was too busy figuring out who I was without you.
  Sometimes I wish you came back for a day just so I could find out if it would change me. If you really were that bad for me I guess I'd at least remember why."

- The colder months are rolling in.
  
  Happy November - I'm wishing you many steaming cups of tea, cozy movie nights and friends who listen. Enjoy walks in the crisp autumn air and the most beautiful sunsets. Also - many good books! You can never read too many books.
  
  I hope you find enough little moments that light your path in the dark season. If you feel like it, you are welcome to share your comfort movies and comfort books with me☺️

- "It was normal for people to change over time, I thought, normal for them to pick up new habits and become unrecognisable to a person that hadn't seen them for years. But you were different. I'd hoped that eventually you'd turn into a stranger. Into someone I could no longer read like an open book. It'd been a little more than five years and you hadn't changed at all.
  Your smile was the same. The way you talked and walked was the same. How your eyes crinkled when you laughed, how you pushed your hair behind your ears, how you raised your eyebrows in that stupid fashion that made me wish I could do that, too. Some people lost that glint in their eyes over the years, but yours flashed the moment they met mine across a crowded room. And it was so clear to me - I knew you then. I saw you. And I would've known you anywhere, no matter how much time passed."

- ninasdrafts:
  
  "I say I'm over it but when I close my eyes at night, it's still your face I see. And I'd tell you I was sorry if it helped, if I was sure it was what you wanted to hear. The days we haven't talked stretch like an abyss between us, each one tearing us further apart. Most of my anger has evaporated but I'm afraid the sadness lingers. It clings to the tips of my fingers, staining everything I touch. My cup of luke-warm tea, the letter I wrote you, his hands. Ever since I've noticed the waves of missing you kicking back in, I've been finding them all over the house - fragments of you. Your cautious smile in a photograph, slowly fading like we are. Your neat handwriting in an old journal, swearing you'd be here forever - and you were, right until the day you weren't. And I hope you find someone who is to you what you were to me. Because I don't want you to be lonely. I don't want you to be sad. I just want you to miss me. Only a little. Not in a way that hurts you. Just in a way that reminds you that things have changed. Because I'm still a little mad, but I'm not cruel. Because you hurt me, but I hurt you too. And I won't ask you to come back, because it's not fair. You messed up, but so did I, and we can't go back to what we once were. I just hope you know I'm here. I'm still here, no matter if you need me in a month, or in twelve years or if you don't need me at all."
  
  — I'm here if you need me / n.j.

- nightinmyveins asked:
  
  You write beautifully! But I wanted to let you know that there's a typo in "learning curve": "it'd never been about your or about us, really, but about me" - ("your" instead of "you"). But with that said, damn... you really write well. :)
  
  Thank you sooooo much! Sometimes you work on a piece for so long and read it so many times that your eyes just skip over typos like this one ha. Thank you!

- "I'd been waiting for you to ask me to come back and you never did, but this isn't what drove us apart. I couldn't fault you for being hurt or being proud - or both. I couldn't fault you for not missing me the same way I missed you.
  It was always my fault as much as yours because I didn't know if you would even care to have me back when it should've been the clearest thing in the world. When you'd told me a million times that everyday occurences weren't the same without me around. That you missed my easy smile while buying groceries, my hand lying palm up on the sofa, ready to close around yours. But I didn't believe you. I couldn't.
  I gave you time and space, so much of it that you figured out new routines. That you learned how to navigate your life without me in it, until you found someone new who smiled at you from the passenger seat. Someone new who pressed a kiss to your cheek at every red light. Someone who was of course not a new me or a different me, but still a person who filled the holes I'd left behind. I couldn't fault you for that, either.
  You said you'd missed me, alright, but it wasn't the same way I missed you.
  I missed you telling me to speak up. To believe in the things I said and did. I missed you making me feel like I mattered, like I deserved to be heard and seen.
  It was only when I realised you wouldn't come back that I understood I'd also have to rebuild my life around the empty spaces you'd left behind. That it'd never been about you or about us, really, but about me. That even though you'd never asked me to come back, I hadn't ever expected you to. And that was my mistake: not thinking I was someone people would want to take back into their lives.
  I'm learning to see my value, I really am. Even though I'm still struggling, I want to thank you for sending me on my way. For making me feel like I mattered although I couldn't appreciate it at the time. Despite the hurt and the tears, I'm glad we met just to fall apart."