I shouldn’t read Thought Catalog articles this late at night. My stomach is in knots and I feel like I’m going to vomit. I use the majority of the articles to humor myself, but every so often I come across one that makes me weak. I haven’t developed coherent feelings on the topic that haunts and hovers over me like the dense, mucky humidity in the middle of a Georgia summer. What would I accomplish if I do develop these feelings? I can’t imagine satisfaction - perhaps a feeling of satisfaction, but that is just creating more feelings. I don’t want revenge; maybe if I did, though, I would discover inner peace. I don’t ever want to see him again. Not in my dreams, not on campus, not at the grocery store. I have trust issues. I want to talk to his friends about it, but no one will believe it. “He is such a good guy,” they say, “I could never see him doing something like that.” They’ll ask me questions. Ones that make me feel ashamed, responsible. I know they are wrong but this is all they know. This is all my friends know. They still watch unrealistic, triggering SVU marathons. They still throw around the word. It’s a verbal yo-yo, gracefully gliding off the tip of their lips, spiraling ‘round and ‘round, until they suddenly snatch it back, realizing the consequences of their diction. They apologize but I never get mad. I understand their ignorance. Nobody tells you that you’ll be able to do this after something like that. Nobody says that something positive can come out of something so traumatic. And even though something so beautiful can arise, as much as you want to share this beautiful realization with another - your closest confidant - the very moment you work up the courage to do so…you become numb.

You choke. Stutter. Puke. Fall. Bleed.

Not physically, but the image of you doing so recycles repetitively in your mind. When this happens, you stop even when you don’t think you can. You don’t give any indication that this is happening; instead, inhale, exhale. But do it quickly. Change the subject. Talk about the awesome graduate program you found to validate yourself. Talk about the workout you did this morning and how you want to lose just 7 more pounds, despite how skinny they say you already are. Talk about your dogs and how sick they’ve gotten. Talk about your drunken weekend and replay how you were the life of the party, but leave out the part where you came home and sat idly until your eyelids acted as weights. Talk about the goddamn weather. That tornado that tore through that small town, yeah, I read about it. So many families are suffering. You babble until the image seems stupid, like it never happened. Nobody tells you that you will learn how to do this, how to quickly con your own senses. Surely this isn’t enlightenment. I can only imagine what else I will learn, but the case still hasn’t closed. It may never close. The prospects of learning, then, are infinite. So it looms, like the dense, mucky humidity in the middle of a Georgia summer.

Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

(via larmoyante)

Too many people are too mad about the wrong things. This is simple math to me.

Negative (-) thoughts > positive (+) concepts
Positive (+) thoughts > negative (-) concepts

The general trend:
negative (-) thoughts + positive (+) concepts = negative (-) energy

But if you follow this model:
positive (+) thoughts + negative (-) concepts = positive (+) energy

The math doesn’t exactly follow the rules in the second example, but positive thinking overwhelms any sort of negativity. Lately I’ve just been thinking about how human rights have always been put on the back burner. Economics, politics, and religion, to name a few, are barriers that prohibit positive energy. Thought connotation (positive or negative) has an enormous influence over energy production. Too often, people focus on how much money they DON’T have, how many people AREN’T democrat/republican, or how many people REFUSE to practice the same religion, and/or on how many people they want to CONVERT.  If people instead took the time to be content, not even happy, with what they have, there would be much more positive energy radiating in daily life. 

This is all very simple and none is monumental, but it does make sense.

Doing a hefty amount of research on grad programs this weekend. The west beckons - I’m ready.

I’m a lover not a fighter, but I fight for what I love.

You can fall, you can fail, and you can recover. You can test your strength time and time again, not by hiding under a shroud of independence but by not being afraid to open up and potentially get hurt. Relationships are every bit about testing and reassessing your own character as they are about the bond you have with another person.