when john berger said that the small things we do for each other are ‘commas of care’ and thinking now of every book that has been recommended to me and every song i’ve loved that has been shared with me and every movie i’ve watched because someone dear adored it and each one of those is a stitch in time, bright and gleaming, in whatever the pattern is of our own little lived-in tapestry of lives, and a placeholder for love bc when i come back to all these things, i come back to the love that gave them to me first, commas of care that let you pause and go on.
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
— Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum (via anditslove)
I’ve tried to keep people in my life that have dismissed my feelings, used me and/or hurt me after I’ve let my walls down for them and I’ve stayed bc I had hope and I missed how they were and made me feel, and I do not recommend it to anyone. It’s okay to let people go once they make you feel more bad than good, they ain’t going back to what they were bc they have showed their true selves and it’s up to you to cut that off.
So what if you’re alone right now. Embrace it. Go get coffee alone. Shop alone. Drive alone. Watch movies alone. Get to know yourself. Nothing bad can come from riding whatever wave to self improvement you’re blessed with in the moment.
