sometimes i think of my heart as a sheet of paper. just regular, white, nonglossy printer paper, handed to me when i was born like i was a student in class getting ready to write an essay. and when i was younger, i was really eager to write all over the paper, because it was blank and open, and there were so many things people were saying that i wanted to hold on to. and i met people who picked up my little sheet of paper and folded it into shapes, and i was so happy to have met someone who could do something like that. and i was so eager to show everyone, like it made me better than other people, to have a heart folded to a crane or flower, because i had someone willing to fold mine and they didn’t.

and then as people came and went, i slowly started to realize that what i wrote down so eagerly never quite erased properly, and the creases other people set in never quite smoothed out. and before i knew it, i looked down at my little sheet of paper, covered in smudges and crinkled, and it didn’t feel special anymore. it didn’t feel like a badge of proof that someone had loved me. it just looked tired.

and i started to worry before writing anything on it again. i felt i couldn’t let just anyone write anything in this paper, because everyone that had come before had already left their mark and i had so little space left. because it was getting harder and harder to read anything written on top of all the things people had said in the past. and it got harder to trust anyone to make anything with my heart anymore, no matter how beautiful i thought they could make it. because every time someone folded my heart and then ran their fingernail down the crease because we wanted it to last forever, it ended up just being preparation for them carefully tearing a corner off when they left.

I find myself counting again
The scars along my arms and legs
And I point to each one
And what I was trying to get out.

And I can tell I didn’t do
The best of jobs because now
I find myself itching again
And something’s pounding inside,
Begging to be let out.

I remember how they felt
I can still remember what I felt,
I knew they were something
To be ashamed of but
That didn’t change the fact they helped.

It’s raining again and I had
Only just gotten used to sun,
I guess I can deal with this again:
The grey and wet and trepidation.

We’re fighting again and I had
Only just gotten used to your smile
In the mornings when we talked
And the night when you drifted to sleep.

The sun might be out again soon,
And the smell of rain might fade,
But I’ve got an eye on every cloud
And I’ll be watching them all day.

Why couldn’t you ever understand
That what I wanted was never
Anything more than just
Us and a little piece of quiet?

I suppose I should never have
Been so angry when you said
You had had enough and you left
Because looking back, I understand.

I don’t know what to do with
All the gifts and the words
I ever made or wrote for you
That just yell, “I’m sorry for yesterday”

What could we have done?
I had never been so scared
By the thought of me
And whether or not I still cared.

I wish I had just held you then,
All the scratches and the cuts
All over your arms and legs
That spelled out “I’m sorry.”

And then she asks me, “Do I look all right?”

And I say, “Yes, you look wonderful tonight.”

-Eric Clapton

mattwasnot replied to your post: evergreen.

is this about me i leaned against a tree for you and you took a picture of me is it about me it has to be about me are you in love with me i love you

yes.

<3

I asked you to sit against a tree,
Your brown hair with bits of sun,
And how sweet you looked,
Through the lens of my old camera.

I kept asking you to look away,
But you kept looking up at me
And at the time I was upset
You ruined that photo against the tree.

But now that you’ve gone away,
I still have this picture of you,
And I’m so glad now you’re looking
And smiling as you did, and it’s for me.

and every time i reach up into the swirling, confused darkness of my brain, i keep pulling my hand down to find my fingers wrapped around the same two questions:

how could you?

and

what took you so long?

The night falls and I am walking
Beside you again and
All I can think as we are talking
Is how nice it would be to hold your hand.

Raindrops begin to fall so
We find our way home
At my place and amidst the clothes
And books and mess, we find ourselves alone.

You rest your eyes for a moment,
For once, I rest my mind,
I think about you
As you fall asleep
And I try not to fall in love.

i don’t really like when people cut quotes about love from movies then apply them as sweeping generalizations about themselves and others. or when people try to use a movie or literary relationship to define or describe their own. why would you do that? that’s not how love is meant to be expressed, through the lens of outside parties. why would you try to remove yourself then look back in, when you could simply have tried to understand it from within in the first place?

i get that love manifests itself differently for different people. but that’s kind of my point, that trying to shoehorn what you are feeling into some weird cookie cutter pattern set out by some assholes with a camera and a budget is wrong. twisting what is uniquely yours to fit someone else’s idea is a perversion. why would you take the one thing that only you could produce in this world and try to change it into something more common, more base, less you?

you’re not joseph gordan levitt and she’s not zooey deschanel, and vice versa. but that’s good, that’s how things are supposed to be. stop trying to warp your idea of love to fit someone else’s. just meet someone and let yourself feel as you will. it’s scary because it’s new and you don’t know where it will lead you, but that’s what love is. it takes some courage to follow your heart’s lead away from your brain’s limitations. don’t try to confine yourself to a mr.-darcy-shaped box, you’re so much more than that, and you could find so much more than that.

there’s no need to try to simplify how you feel into something more readily understandable by yourself or others. yeah it’s harder to understand something without a clear template created by another to follow. but fuck the others, and challenge yourself. there are exactly two people who need to understand what love means to you. concern yourself with being true to yourself and to him or her. be true, not easy.

love as you will, it’s one of the only things really worth doing.