Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir Of Healing From Complex Trauma

i was so fucking sad when i was 14 and now when i fold my laundry or see a pool of moonlight on the floor of my bedroom i know that miracles exist. i see love in everything. love sees everything in me too

“No more apologies for a bleeding heart when the opposite is no heart at all. Danger of losing our humanity must be met with more humanity.”

— The Source of Self-Regard: The War on Error by Toni Morrison

Yes, sure, my trauma affected me.

Do you know what else affected me?

Dancing under the glow of LED strip lights with my best friend at 3am. The pair of shoes my godmother gave me with the cute little bows that I wear for good luck. My girlfriend laughing so hard at my joke she had tears on her face. The hours and hours I’ve spent scribbling in the margins of books. Buying the ugliest sweater at goodwill because it made all my friends grin. Listening to that song on repeat while I swayed through the halls at school, smiling in response to all the weird looks people sent me.

I’m never going to just be the bad parts. I refuse to be boiled down to just the bad parts. Every moment of my life has affected me in some way, more than even just the parts I remember, and there has been beauty contained within and surrounding all the grotesquities.

Sarah Perry, The Essence of Peopling

October, Louise Glück

“It was an act of self-preservation — however misguided it was”.