— Chelsea Fagan, How To Fall In Love With Yourself

Stand naked in front of a mirror for a long time, under unflattering light if possible. Trace the rises and falls of the little ripples on your skin — the scars, the dimples, the cellulite — and think about how much you try to hide these things in your day-to-day. Wonder why you hate them so much, and if this hate stems from somewhere within yourself, or as a result of being told all your life that it’s wrong to have physical flaws. Wonder what you would think of your body if you never looked at a magazine, if you never thought about celebrities and models, if you never had to wonder where someone would rate you on a scale of 10. Look at yourself until the initial recoil softens, and you can consider your features in a more forgiving frame of mind.
Listen to the music which makes you want to both sob and dance with uninhibited joy, and allow yourself to repeat any song you want as many times as your heart desires. Think of the person you are when you have your favorite song in your headphones and are walking down a street you feel you own completely, swaying your hips and smiling for no good reason — remember how many things you love about yourself during those moments, how much you are willing to forgive in yourself, how confident you are for no good reason. Try to think of confidence as a gift you give yourself when you need it, instead of something you have to siphon from every unreliable source in your life. Dance because the music makes you remember how much you love yourself, not because it allows you to forget the fact that you don’t.

Write a list of all the things you like about yourself, even if you think it’s a self-indulgent and narcissistic activity. Start as early as you like in your life — put down that time you won a trophy playing little league soccer when you were eight and then got an extra-large shake at the DQ on the way home, and don’t feel silly for remembering it. Try to understand how many sources in your life happiness can come from, how many things you could be proud of if you chose to. Ask yourself why you so tightly limit the things you take pride in, why you set your own hurdles for happiness and fulfillment so much higher than you do with anyone else in your life. Let your list go on for pages and pages if you want it to.

Touch and care for yourself with the attention and the patience that you would someone you loved more than life itself. Rub lotion in small circles on your elbows and hands when it is cold and your skin is dry and cracked. Make soup for yourself when your nose is running and curl up, with your favorite movie, in a pile of expertly-stacked pillows. Light a few candles and let their glow flicker against your body. Admire how gentle they are, how delicately their warmth touches you — wonder why you don’t let yourself do the same. Soak your feet in warm water at the end of a long day, until they have forgiven you for walking on them for so long without so much as a “thank you.” 

Listen to your body when it aches to be touched, and don’t be afraid to give it every orgasm that you may have been too ashamed to ask for in someone else’s bed.

Be patient with yourself, and don’t worry if a switch doesn’t flip in you which abruptly takes you from “crippling self-doubt” to “uncompromising self-love.” Allow yourself all the trepidation and clumsy, uneven infatuation that you would with a promising stranger. Try only to be kinder, to be softer, and to remember all of the things within you which are worth loving. Listen to the voice in the back of your head which tells you, as much out of sadness as anger, “You are ugly. You are stupid. You are boring.” Give it the fleeting moment of attention it so craves, and then remind it, “Even if that were true, I’d still be worth loving.”

— Lauren Oliver, Delirium

“I guess that’s just part of loving people:

 You have to give things up. Sometimes you

 even have to give them up.”

— jessica therese, after “15 Texts I Almost Sent To You" by d.a.s

1. We were in tune like synchronised swimmers.
Now I learn to navigate the oceans on my own.
[delete]

2. I sobbed on public transport yesterday.
I wanted to call you but then remembered
I’m not allowed to.
[delete]

3. The truth is: I know I’m better off
without you, but these memories
keep tricking me.
[delete]

4. You make me feel like a walking cliché.
I need to stop romanticising leaving,
stop comparing your collar bones to
valleys and your freckles to constellations.
[delete]

5. Can you jumpstart my heartbeat again?
I’m running so low on fuel.
[delete]

6. God knows I need to delete your number.
[delete]

7. Please don’t ever contact me again.
[delete]

8. Perhaps we were destined to falter
from the start,
just as Venice is doomed to sink.
[delete]

9. Speaking of Venice,
you should visit while there
is still time.
[delete]

10. You made the words
feel just right. Now they spin
off kilter.
[delete]

11. You had little nicknames for me.
I secretly miss being called moon shell,
tiger, fairy nymph.
[delete]

12. Maybe we were just a collection
of dead ends and false starts.
We should have been disqualified
from the beginning.
[delete]

13. Grief is the same in any language.
I mourn you. I collect flowers and place them
on your grave in the cemetery.
[delete]

14. You are so much more than human.
[delete]

15. Despite all of this, there is some
beautiful solitude in sleeping with
only my heartbeat
for company.
[delete]

— i.c. // to the ones who lost their best friend (via delicatepoetry)

“She always loved the sea, but that never explained

why I saw shipwrecks in her smile. She was the type

of girl that slipped out of your fingers like sand,

especially when you tried to hold on too tight, she

didn’t like being too close. She’d crash into men like

the waves crashed into rocks, she thought she would

find herself in them but she never did. I told her she

already had something. I told her that the emotions

she held inside her were gifts to be written and given,

but instead she swallowed pills that took them away.

She asked me if I believed in heaven and I said yes,

and followed it with a don’t go without me. She shook

away the smile on her face and said one day she’d meet

me between the sea and the sun, I didn’t understand

what the hell she meant so I just said okay. It wasn’t

until the next day I called her in the morning and got no

answer, no answer, no answer.

The last time I caught a glimpse of her was when I set

her ashes free, between the sun and the sea. Where

she wanted to be.”

posting this for the last one

it’s a game show where everyone eats the furniture in a room and tries to see which is made of chocolate

— Childish Gambin

“I think she’s special. She doesn’t need anyone. Like that’s the thing. Even if we were together, she wouldn’t really belong to me. She doesn’t belong to anything. She’s off in her own world…”

Dedicated to Rae

“The second time I overdosed,
my body couldn’t handle it,
and I threw it all up.
I texted my dad saying,
“I think I took a little too many pills”.
And every time I’ve overdosed,
I always downplay it.
I’ve always tried to act
like it wasn’t a big deal.

That having the urge to swallow a whole bottle of pills
was something daily that normal people do.
My dad hurried home and saw the empty bottle
and he shook me to make sure I was awake.
I kept mumbling “I threw it up.. I threw it up..”
while I was drifting off to sleep.
He had to wake me up every 15 minutes
to make sure I was okay.

Let me tell you now,
it is a big deal.

The third time I overdosed,
I slept through first and second period
and passed out in the counselor’s office.
I didn’t want to go to the ER.
I just wanted to go home.
All I wanted to do was sleep.
Again, I just said,
“I think I took too many pills this morning.”

The fifth time I overdosed,
my dad found the empty pill box.
I hallucinated, I had a fever.
I couldn’t move my legs.
All I could do was scream,
“Don’t take me to the hospital this time.
I don’t want to go!”

I became friends with a girl who had overdosed
she’s one of my best friends now
and when I heard she was hospitalized as well,
it just makes me realize how real this problem is.

A couple months ago, another friend of mine overdosed.
Do you realize how fucked up it is,
that I’ve done it so many times
that I know the exact procedure that she’s going to go through?
She messaged me saying,
“I took a bunch of pills,
but I just realized I didn’t want to die.
I don’t know what to do.
Help.”

And I’m screaming at her over the screen
that she should throw it up and call 911
because sometimes when someone you love
decides that they hate the world,
that’s all you can do.
You can’t teleport through the phone.
You can’t travel through the internet.
You can’t be there to hold them
and take them to the hospital.

Your love is not charcoal that can
absorb all their poison in their life.
I know, love that you would have done all you could.
Sometimes words aren’t enough.
Sometimes love isn’t enough.
Sometimes a person needs to try dying
to know that that’s not really what they want.
There’s nothing you could have done.
You’ve done all you could.
Just keep loving them.

But you see the thing is,
I got lucky.
I’ve made it back from 5 overdoses
without a scratch on me.
But that’s not always the case.
My favorite teacher’s stepdaughter
locked herself in her room and overdosed.

To this day,
her stepmother still has a scar on her heart.
To this day,
on the anniversary of her death,
her stepmother still stays home from school
on the anniversary of her death.
Her sister is in a bad mental state,
and so is her biological mother.
Her family has fallen apart.

You overdose because you think
you will get a peaceful release from death.
It’s not peaceful.
It is not like falling asleep.
It is convulsions, vomiting,
muscle spasms, fevers,
and sharp stomach pains.

An overdose is not instant.

Hollywood has you believing,
that an overdose
is how a lady should exit the world.
As quiet as she came in,
Peaceful and unnoticed.

You will go out kicking and screaming
and wishing you hadn’t taken them.”

— 6:03 p.m. (I think I’m done overdosing)

Dedicated to Rae