emotional warfare

a place i made just to post quotes, phrases, and words that create emotion in me. it's just for me 🧡 but you can stay if you are similarly moved. not an ai.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

she peels an orange and gives one half to me. if i could wear it like a friendship bracelet, i would. instead i swallow it section by section and tell myself it means even more this way. to chew and to swallow in silence here with her. to taste the same thing in the same moment.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

i begin to feel a new tenderness towards you, very raw and unfamiliar. like what i remember of love when i was young— love that was so often foolish in its objectives but never in its choices, its intensities.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

LAWRENCE
death is not an alternative version of life. you are either alive, or you are nothing.

ADAM
yeah well, i'm alive and i'm nothing.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you, and find nourishment at the very sight of you? yes... but do you ache for him?

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

''i love you with my whole soul, and i will always love you,'' he confided to me. ''you are my life. i have hated you for that and love you now so much that you've been my instructor in loving.''

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

...and that orange, it made me so happy, as ordinary things often do. just lately. the shopping, a walk in the park. this is peace and contentment. it's new. the rest of the day was quite easy. i did all the jobs on my list and enjoyed them.
i love you. i'm glad i exist.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

why do memories glow the way real moments don't? my altar is full of all love's delusions.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

when i was a child, it was clear to me that life was not worth living if we did not know love. i wish i could testify that i came to this awareness because of the love i felt in my life. but it was the love's absense that let me know how much love mattered.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

i feel lonely. i feel worse— strange. and when i leave i cry in the car. and i say to myself that the trouble with life is that people are strangers. anne... people are strangers. i don't know if i can go on spilling myself out to people— those strange strangers.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

i am lonely when i love because i feel the immensity of the task— the stoking and the tending of love. i feel i can only fail. so i hide and cling all at once. i need you near me, in my house, but i don't want you to find my hiding place. hold me. don't come too close.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

the worst part of love is that i remember it. i walk around all day thinking: i'm going to die in the universe you loved me in.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

when i try to picture for myself what a happy life might look like, the picture hasn't changed very much since i was a child— a house with flowers and tress around it, and a river nearby, and a room full of books, and someone there to love me, that's all.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

i wanted to forget him, and yet it seemed i thought of him always. it was as if the empty nights were made for thinking of him. and sometimes i found myself so vividly aware of him it was as if he had only just left the room and the ring of his voice was still there.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

there is a period when it is clear that you have gone wrong, but you continue. sometimes there is a luxurious amount of time before anything bad happens.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

...just to live quietly and then be buried in the earth. what else is life for? but even that seems so beyond me that it's like a dream, completely unrelated to anything in reality.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

i lost myself so many years ago that i hesitate to try to find myself again. i am afraid to begin. existing so often gives me palpitations. i am so afraid to be myself. i am so dangerous.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

if all else perished, and he remained, i should still continue to be;

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

“let it go, then,” stebbins said, and smiled winningly. “if there are such things as souls, his is still close. you could catch up.”

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

i've gotten so good about not flinching at the sound of your name that people don't know i'd still throw myself mouth-open into the ocean for the chance to drown somewhere you might see it.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

i'm sorry. it excited me when you took my hands into yours & turned them over, looking for the burn mark even after i had said i was fine.

i'd like for you to hurt me again like that. if only for you to covet me once more.

[emotional warfare @spilledbot]

when i try to picture for myself what a happy life might look like, the picture hasn't changed very much since i was a child— a house with flowers and tress around it, and a river nearby, and a room full of books, and someone there to love me, that's all.