#88 || The World Is Mine by Samm Henshaw

This year has really taught me how to put myself in other people's shoes to generate a level of love and patience from places I didn't even know existed, in an abundance that I didn't know was possible. I've learned that a place exists between happy and sad. Over the last few months I've learned a lot about the limbo you can create when you're too afraid to let yourself feel disappointed. Because that's the compromise that comes with empathy;; it's the balance between hypocrisy and understanding.

When the pressure becomes overwhelming, I run to that place. I am my own best friend, I am the voice of reason, I am my own shoulder to cry on, But there's a catch ;; I find myself afraid of the goodness and the kindness of others, because I am terrified of situations where I can't control what happens. I know that this year has presented challenges that have nearly crossed the boundaries of what can be managed, and what can be survived. I know that places nobody should ever have to visit have been overwhelmed and crowded by undeserving individuals and if I could stand guard of the gate to those dark realms and forbid all from entering - I would.

If you can only believe that those who disappoint you did so in ignorance and oblivion, and that the souls you let into your life mean no malice, then that's one enormous step. The next baby step is to know that you're allowed to feel the way you feel about everything, that you can't control how you feel but you can control how you react. It's not your fault you want more, it's not your fault you had hopes higher than reality, and it's not your fault that you feel disillusioned when it feels like you're the only one missing out on the greenest-grass-fairytale-magic-miracle that everybody on the other side of the rainbow seems to have. The heartache will always be there, but if you place every foot in front of the other with your own purpose and intention, then that's all I can ask of you today.

Tomorrow ;; is a whole other story.
You really never know what tomorrow might bring, so don't write it off just yet and be prepared for everything.

[ ^^ Dear A, this is a little reminder for your every day. Love, A x ]     

"Where do you go when you go quiet?"

#87 || :: death bed ( coffee for your head ) ::

It feels like it's all evolving ; my-self and my alter-ego. For the first time in my life I feel like a solid single entity, I feel like I can truly co-exist with all of my thoughts.  to all the lovers in my heart, I still adore you to the (full) moon and back and a billion times over but right here in this moment, I think I will keep all the love locked up inside my heart and in my head. There is gold in this silence, I promise. I just need a minute (or a million) to collect and consolidate these notions and possibilities of my interconnectedness with the rest of the world and how I can make it work. I have always preferred solitude over superficiality and magic over mediocre. I would rather have nothing than normal and that's on me. Lately I have learned to shift the blame into oblivion, it's nobody's fault if I over-love and over-feel and under-everything else to balance it all out. not everybody is entitled to a happy ending and I have come to terms with a potential future full of uncertainty and heartache and misunderstanding. It's okay, I pinky swear. We'll all be okay.

Maybe I will look forever for a rabbit hole, maybe my auto-response to confusion will be to refrain from it all :: from physical and emotional nutriment, does that make any sense? It is so difficult to imagine that I deserve love and nourishment like the rest of the world. I think that's why I do it :: the only reaction is to abstain and avoid. so I don't feel any antipathy for your confusion or avoidance because it's on me. I will carry that forever - but you know, all I really want for you to remember me by, is that you felt entirely comfortable saying anything in the world in my presence, knowing that I would never -in a hundred thousand years- judge you or anybody else for feeling, for being, for wanting, for needing, for thinking, for remembering or for forgetting. I love you so much.



xo, A.
   


"Are we all designed to be confined?
Organise our lives and lose the key
Our faces all resemble dying roses
We've got to break it before it breaks us." - Metric

#86 || [ glitt3r in the $ky, glitter in 0ur eyes ]

Here we all still are, just post-    une nouvelle lune. What an interesting mars / mois, the nostalgia has been          w i l d    as of late. It's like a montage of carefully-curated memories flicker at the forefront of my mind, in combination with some incredible stills of what is yet to come. I am waiting (im)patiently for compassion to trump complacency (!), I am waiting for a stroke of luck and for a dream to come true. The method and meaning of everything seems to rear its little daisy-head through the     fog and haze     of the stress and anxiety and denial of everything that is happening all around us. The fear of it all reminds me of the same moon we see at night, it's the same     sun and moon     that orbit around this planet that we all share altogether.     

The contrast of every day, the            distance            so surreal it almost seems metaphorical? And I wonder why this was meant to be, because that seems important. The delicate balance of resistance and community and sacrifice and compromise and discomfort ::     I am  fearful of the fear, because when it felt like it was just me, it seemed like the entire weight of the world and now it's the world, it's the terror multiplied by seven point something billion and, no pun intended, it feels impossible to breathe under the immensity of everything.     outside,         You could cut the air, the tension is unreal. 

                 " But whatever , let's get lost on mars... " - Dula Peeps

With love, A. x

#85 || WITH NOTHING HOLDING ME,I HANG LIKE A STAR.

~ ~ ~

For ever and forever and ever I have been drawn to the sea ;; it's something about the childish wonder of the water on the horizon. I liken the excitement of that initial regard of the ocean -- through the windscreen of the car -- along with rollercoasters and birthdays and seeing somebody you love after a very very very long time. The last few months and maybe most likely many more to come :: are re-defining me. There are no lack of lessons, lately - every other day I feel the earth being pulled out from underneath me and I wish I could bring myself to write without romanticising everything, but it's a guilty pleasure. The comfort I have in creating hyper-verbose sentences with too many adjectives and alliteration and not enough punctuation is one of the few joys in one of the greyest summers I have ever seen. 

Where do free spirits fit, in the intricate puzzle of society? Is it realism and the rigidity that bind us to these invisible rules of normality? With little else to lose, it is the intangible that seems to propel my physical and emotional reactions - which thereby has created a newfound empathy from deep within my heart. Because the truth outweighs the facts :: the undeniable calm I feel in your presence that makes me curiously blind to everything and everybody around us. But as real as the calm, I sense the disparity between us. And inside that difference is an unmistakable distance :: there is a very real divergence that simultaneously breaks my heart and has made me realise that the underlying complication has nothing to do with you and maybe everything to do with me.

It is the seemingly infinite disappointment that I think may one day get the better of me. Latterly, the layers of (my)self are stripped away and I am terrified of what may remain at the core when I have nothing left to lose. Every time I think I can't possibly feel more naked than I do in that moment, something happens. I wonder, at the end of everything, what else is there? 

There are moments where the descent down-the-rabbit-hole seems to lull and I am suspended in the air. In those instances, I can see fragments of the future and I can see myself exactly where I am :: I am a tangle of introspection and I am all alone, I have everything and nothing but the frightening secret is, I don't need anything or anybody. Truly, it might not seem scary on the outside but inside I am absolutely terrified. All. The. Time.

The fear is in the moment when I realised that was little comfort left in y o u. Because even the most gentle of reminders would instinctively present itself as a harsh slap-in-the-face that I am never going to be half of a whole. The gratitude, the stars and the fortune of the smallest pleasures :: their memory is fading faster than the speed of sound. I see you and I see headlights and explosions, I have a sip of wine, a cigarette, and feel my heart splitting at the seams. I catch my own gaze in a mirrored reflection and I wish I didn't have to be any-body or any-thing any-where any-more.

                                                                             Yours Sincerely, A.

#84 || "You are what you love, not who loves you back."

my baby versace-on-the-floor, versace-in-the-sky, c'est pour toi ♡.
 

Once upon a time, secrets were the propellant to my existence. I believed that enigma and mystery would make me magnetic and then I wondered why I felt so lonely. One of the most significant alterations I made to my mindset was to never underestimate the power of communication and honesty and diplomacy. It is in my innate nature to withdraw, to resent and encourage indifference. But the moment I became the individual who would initiate and wait for a response than expect a prompt from the other, my life became considerably more interesting.

I think I forget that in this very moment, I am the most evolved that I have ever been before. Even if for every three steps forward it seems I take four steps back, even if I find myself weeping over the same woes time and time again, even if one time out of ten I forget to bite my tongue and recklessly release all sorts of cruelties and criticisms to the hearts that can't handle it ::: it doesn't mean this life was all for nothing, it doesn't mean I am the incompetent pond scum that I think I am. Remember that this life is a ride not a race; it is a crusade not a contest and you have your whole life to make your dreams come true.

The moment you leave your doom to destiny, you've already lost ( but not forever, everything can be transitory! ). We are the world we want to live in and we are the love that makes magic transpire. The moment you are blindsided to the soul behind the (re-)actions that broke your heart and would keep you awake at night, the moment you forget the innate good in the greater number of human beans coexisting on this planet, the moment you rank your own woes and worries ahead of others, it becomes all too  easy to fall down a rabbit hole.    

You are allowed to feel however you do and you need not apologise for something mattering more than you believe it should. The intangibility of feelings and emotions and thoughts are just as valid as the tangibility of scars and destruction and devastation. So, be the friend you wish you had and overlove how you overthink and be kind. You'll feel so much better, I pinky swear.

love always,

Afifa.