10 things I will tell my daughter.

1. Do not date a boy who does not care what your favourite song is. The boy who does not care what melodies ignite your heart strings with love and wonder while staring at passing street lights on the last train home, will not care if it’s 2 a.m. and your heart is breaking.
2. Do not let anyone fold you up like last winters tattered scarf and put you away with the others in a neatly labeled box. Even when there’s thunder and the sky is crying, you are your mum’s favourite summer dress. You are to wear yourself like you believe it.
3. We are all stories. Write yours how you want. Make today’s chapter about purposely taking the wrong bus and discovering a tiny blue tea shop, or folding origami paper hearts over and over on your window sill. Just make sure it’s something you’d enjoy reading.
4. I will always try to save you.
5. Someday you will be 19 and lost and heartbroken and you will think about a place you’ve seen on TV or heard or read about in a book or seen a picture of. You will feel your heart drop into your stomach. Go there. For a day, a month, forever, but it’s important that you go.
6. The world is so beautiful. Do not let the slumped over homeless man outside the convenience store or the stories of guns and bombs on the television let you believe otherwise. We are all so lost. All of us. We all show it in different ways. I write bad poems. Others start wars. There is no inherent evil, only good people searching too hard.
7. I love everything about you.
8. Money turns people into liars and emotional ghosts. School grades are an inaccurate representation of you. Measure your life’s worth in how many times you’ve nearly lost your life to laughter, how many books you’ve closed with happy tears in your eyes, people whose lives you’ve brought joy to, marshmallows eaten, or countries visited.
9. Don’t ever let anyone tell you to stop crying. Cry if you want to. It’s okay. You’re allowed.
10. My best friend once told me that the most important decision he had ever made was to love everyone and everything. He’s the only person I’ve ever known to have a viewable aura of light around him. Don’t forget to love this world, to love people. Be light. You are already mine.

if only i could hug you for real right now, right this moment, i would be more than willing to do it.

i wish i could be there in a snap
wherever you are
instead of knowing that
you’re mad at the world again
and you don’t have any choice
but to drink the pain away.
if only i am allowed to sneak out
at the early hours of the day
just to see you,
just to feel you,
just to hug you,
just to kiss you,
just to comfort you,
i would do all those in a heartbeat
because that is how much
i value you the most;
that is how much
i care for you
and perhaps,
that is how much
i love you
that i cannot even afford
to lose you
forever.

Fun little trick I learned in therapy:

VALIDATION.

When someone is upset, don’t try to fix the problem, point out the cause, or tell them it could be worse. Just validate their emotions. Be like, ‘shit yeah man, that sucks. I’m sorry you’re going through that. I’m here for you.’ That’s literally all you have to do to make them feel better. Thank you and goodnight.

when someone’s flaws are not flaws in your eyes, you’re fucked.

— I’M FUCKED.

Too Late.

I wish someone would have warned me that when you fall in love, you give a piece of your heart that you’ll never get back, no matter how many nights I scream your name into my pillow until my throat is raw and my eyes sting. I wish someone would have warned me that I would avoid going certain places again simply because it would remind me of you too much. I wish someone would have warned me that it’s so easy to lose yourself when you’re busy chasing someone else. I wish someone would have warned me that time can only heal what you’re willing to let it. I wish someone would have warned me that I can’t lose what was never mine.