luuurk:

“If a man wants you, nothing can keep him away. If he doesn’t want you, nothing can make him stay.”

- Oprah Winfrey

mostlymiri:

“It’s one of those things where you are waiting for your heart to catch up to your brain.“ - Ray, season 4, Girls

biatryce:

Don’t make me feel safe and then abandon me.

Charlie - Girls

smashfizzle:

“Love who you love while you have them. That’s all you can do. Let them go when you must. If you know how to love, you’ll never run out.”

— Ann Brashares, My Name Is Memory   (via wordsnquotes)

smashfizzle:

Today marks a week since the last time I saw Kelly and I’m feeling like a monumental jerk. I’ve spent a lot of time creating a life where I very rarely have to miss people. Of course, friends move away and you have to miss them, and that sucks. It’s a situation I try to avoid.

Now, I miss my boyfriend. A boyfriend I’ve had for a little over a week. A boyfriend who will live in Seattle until July at the very least. Maybe I’m not being fair about this. I mean, it’s not like I’ve known him for just a week. I’ve known him for three years. We’ve dated before and had to end it because he moved away. And I always missed him before, but then I could tell myself that he’s just a friend and I’ll talk to him soon. But now, we’re dating. And the missing him isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. 

It will get better, though. And he’ll be back at Christmas time. And that will be good. 

Also, every time I talk about him, I feel like the biggest sap in the world and worry that I’m talking about him too much. Even when someone asks who he is. I’m scared to let my happy annoy the piss out of people. Which is probably not the best way to look at it. But here we are.

smashfizzle:

1. I’ve gone off my antidepressant. About three weeks ago, I talked to my therapist about giving it a shot. It was never the plan to be on them forever, but use them to buoy me why I practiced other ways to manage my PTSD and grief. My therapist agreed that we could give it a shot noting that should this go poorly, the medications would still be there. I could always go back if I really needed to go back. I stopped taking them. 

So far, so good. 

Two and half weeks off my meds, and the biggest problem I have is not being able to tell if I’m “normal sad” or “girl-grab-them-pills sad”. I don’t remember the true weight of all of my gears. Were my legs always this heavy when I got out of bed in the morning? Did I always love cooking this much? Since when do pictures of my brother make me cry? 

My therapist says some of this is normal, the way any person would react to everyday moments in their very stable life. Sometimes she says, “Ashley, there’s no such thing as the cup of coffee or the perfect amount of sadness.” I challenge her and say I’ve had the perfect cup of coffee. I’m lying. I prefer tea. She ignores me.

“Take your time, and live your life this way. You’re doing everything right. You’ll know when or if it gets too bad, and you’ll know what to do. Pills aren’t always the answer. There’s no perfect pill either.”

2. Last week was the busiest, most productive, but awful week I’ve had in a long time. There were so many assignments, and I took them all on. I’ve been full-time freelancing for two months, but I’m still finding my limits. I had a long text conversation with a friend about my fear of disappointing people, and what to do when it inevitably occurs. She gave me some good advice about accountability and being careful of my reputation. 

I’m trying. I am not always succeeding, but I’m trying. I could make a list of all the things I don’t do enough, and it would be a long list, but it would also be the wrong list to spend my time writing. So, I choose to focus on what I’ve done right, and lucky me, there’s always been at least on thing I’ve done right. Even it’s 1 thing in a100, I cling to to that one thing and remind myself I did good once. I am capable of making a good decision. Everyone once in a while, it actually works.

3. Today, I spent an hour in bed writing down what I want in the second half of this year. It was an indulgent list. I am learning to indulge myself. You are welcome to join me.

4. Read this.

5. You know what kind of pisses me off? When people say they don’t cheat on their partner because they “couldn’t live with the guilt”. What is that statement, really? I mean, fuck your guilt. We’re all capable of doing terrible things and convincing ourselves that our actions were justified. Everybody has something deep and dark and buried, something they’ve convinced themselves no one could know and still love them, something they forgotten whether or not it actually happened because they’ve been lying to themselves for too long about. Victimization is not a feeling, but if you convince yourself you were the victim, the ghost of that feeling might visit you in your sleep, and the memory of the dream might linger. 

Rationalization is our most human superpower. It is easier than you think to tell a lie and not feel guilty. It is even easier to lie, feel the guilt, and let it pass. You’ve done it before and you will do it again, only hopefully, not over something as bad as cheating on the person you love. So no, it won’t be the fear of how YOU would feel if you cheated that keeps you from doing it, it’s going to have to be your fear of what THEY would feel that keeps you in check. 

Listen, you don’t really trust yourself. You know yourself. You know every fucked up thing you’ve ever done. You know what you’re hiding, and you know that most days, it doesn’t feel that bad at all. You barely remember. But the person who loves you–if they’re the right person–trusts you. They trust you in a way you could never trust yourself because there’s always something they don’t know you’re capable of because you can’t even admit it to yourself. You don’t cheat and you do it for them. You don’t cheat because there’s a chance they could find out, and no matter how you feel about yourself, you’d never want to take that trust away from them. 

I’ve been cheated on once, and I’ve cheated once. 

Ask me which one hurt the most.

smashfizzle:

When I started doing my 5 Things blog every Sunday, I was lonely and thinking the only person who would ever read those posts was me. Maybe my friend Spencer too. For the past year and a half, I’ve had many many regular readers of 5 Things. Gorgeous and empowering strangers with so many thoughts about my thoughts. It’s been a truly amazing way to make connections.

Writing 5 Things hasn’t felt right to me since February. I’ve been white-knuckling it, coming back not every Sunday, but sporadic days of the week with posts I struggled to get through. After my grandmother died, something shifted for me. I stopped writing here as much and I started talking to people in my life more. I didn’t get tired of writing 5 Things as much I realized I didn’t particularly need that particular way of writing anymore. I still loved it, so I kept trying to come back over and over again. Many of you asked me to continue, and I tried to return to you. At this point, my only regret is not having a firm and decisive talk with myself about saying goodbye to 5 Things gracefully. 

I will still be blogging (and re-blogging) here. Tumblr is still a place I love, and maybe I’ll find a new way to blog/write here consistently that feels more congruent with who I am right now. I have many ideas, but I’d like to allow something to happen organically. Of course, the page for my 5 Things posts will stay up, if you want to go back there and browse. I like to do that sometimes. I go back and visit myself at those times in my life, and I remember all that I hoped for, all that I feared, and I am thankful for a life in which I refuse to stagnate, and my problems get more interesting. It’s been a good run.

Thank you so much for letting me share so many Sundays.

Love, Ashley