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"I spent my childhood learning how to fear and now I spend my adulthood learning how to not to." — Gemma Troy

"I wish for the same thing I’ve hoped for since the beginning. I wish for a life so brave, so unpredictable, so full of unexpected joys and unforgettable love that no box could possibly contain all my memories." — Chelsey Philpot

"Well," she said, head tilted to the skies, "I seem to have forgotten who I was born to be." — Seeker

"And I’ll try to make loving you seem easy on the days you find it hard to love yourself." — spatwords

"People get so tired of asking you what's wrong and you've run out of nothings to tell them. You've tried and they've tried, but the words just turn to ashes every time they try to leave your mouth. They start as fire in the pit of your stomach, but come out in a puff of smoke. You are not you anymore. And you don't know how to fix this. The worst part is... you don't even know how to try." — Trauma Steals Your Voice, Nikita Gill

"I am slowly learning what it means to be human. What it means to make mistakes and learn from them. What it means to be both happy and sad at the same time. I am slowly learning how to do the damn work. How to stop running from what is heavy and uncomfortable in my life. How to take the easy route less and less. How to grow myself, how to be a better person. But most of all, I am slowly learning how to just be, in this moment. How to exist. How to understand that I cannot control life, that I can only experience it in both its light and its dark stages. I am slowly learning how to laugh and cry and feel through it all, how to welcome the confusion and the joy that comes with loving, and living, and breaking. I am slowly learning how to accept where I am. I am slowly learning how to simply believe in the person I am becoming." — bianca sparacino

"I like to listen. I have learnt a lot from listening carefully. Most people never listen." — Ernest Hemingway

"I needed to take care of myself. So I let go of all responsibility except the responsibility— and the satisfaction— of being myself. For me, it was a most unusual feeling: to be comfortably irresponsible with no feelings of guilt. And, to my surprise, I found I was more effective that way." — Carl Rogers

Quaintrelle (n.) A woman who emphasizes a life of passion, expressed through personal style, leisurely pastimes, charm and cultivation of life's pleasures.

"A dream is what makes people love life even when it is painful." — Theodore Zeldin

"You only see yourself as destroyed, I only see you as art." — B.E. Van de Veire

Pluviophile (n.) a lover of rain. Someone who finds joy and peace of mind during rainy days.

"Sometimes you have to send as much positivity out into the world as you can without expecting it to come back to you, the world isn't always a nice place, not everyone is going to be as giving or as kind as you are and you need to accept that, often, the positivity you send out to others may not find its way back to you, but it doesn't mean that you'll never get it back, it may come back, perhaps a little slower, in different shape or form and from a different person, but to stop yourself from getting hurt, just don't expect it to." — Ruby Dhal

Drapetomania (n.) an overwhelming urge to run away.

"I'm not suggesting that the girl was afraid of life, only that she walked through it more carefully now, with much more awareness than before. Time has a way of becoming more valuable only after someone steals enough of it. The girl you see now, is not the girl you first met. You tread through seasons, dragging monsters and enough history behind you, and you're just not the same person once on the other side of it all. You shed yourself of what weighs you down, eventually. So, wander this world alongside her, but do so while filling each minute with excitement, each minute with peace, each hour with passion, her days with hope and promise, every year with adventure, and her life with value. Hold tight to the notion that if she's giving you some of her time, she's giving you some of her life. " - J. Raymond

Arcane (adj.) Secret, mysterious, understand only by few

"I just wanted to tell you that with all your faults I love you. I love or revere very few people. As for the rest, I’m ashamed of my indifference to them. But for those I love, nothing and no one, neither I nor certainly they themselves, can ever make me stop loving them. It took me a long time to learn that; now I know it." — Albert Camus

Serein (n.) The fine, light rain that falls from a clear sky at sunset or in the early hours of night; evening serenity.

Erlebnisse (n.) The experiences, positive or negative, that we feel most deeply, and through which we truly live; not mere experiences, but Experiences.

Sciamachy (n.) A battle against imaginary enemies; fighting your shadow.

"Running away was not like it was in stories. People did not try and stop you. They did not give chase. The thing people didn’t understand was that you had to decide what you were running away from. Most of the time it wasn’t mothers or fathers or monsters or villains; most of the time you were running away from that little voice inside your head, the one telling you to stay where you are, that everything will turn out all right."— Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers

"What I’ve realized about hiding an unbearable amount of pain is that it makes you both the strongest and weakest person. Strong because you learn to cope with and handle all the suffering. Weak because it wears you down until all of you is broken." — tara love

Querencia (n.) a place where on feels safe, a place from which one's strength of character is drawn.

Aesthete (adj.) someone with deep sensitivity to the beauty of art or nature.

"You don't have to be with someone if you're alone. You don't need to feel as if you need to find someone new when someone has abandoned you. People leave, and we know this already but that doesn't mean once someone is out the door then you must open it for a new lover. That's another goddam tragedy waiting to happen. So give yourself some time to breathe a little, to live a little on your own. Give yourself time, all the seconds and all the hours of the day. Give yourself a chance. The patience you need to heal, to move on...your way, and at your own pace. Is it that hard to do? To just do it. Day in and day out. To live by it. You don't need someone to be happy. You don't need to rely on another human being to find what fuels you. You don't, really, you don't. And yes, people are addicting, there's no lie in that. But what matters most is you...and I will say this...time and time again. People aren't meant to complete you...they aren't meant to fix you, to heal you or to bring you back from some terrible doom. They are meant to guide you. To be there for you. To witness your flaws and appreciate you for who you are...regardless of what happens in the end. People, like years, they come and they go but it is what you have within that matters most. And I hope you take the time you need to realize this because you don't need someone to fill the void. That is, after all, only something you can do....for yourself." — r.m. drake

"Time will not make you forget, it will make you grow and understand things." — theloversmindset

Meraki (n.) The soul, creavity or love put into something; the essence of yourself that is put into your work.

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new." — Socrates

“Be grateful for what you already have while you pursue your goals.
If you aren’t grateful for what you already have, what makes you think you would be happy with more.” ― Roy T. Bennett

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

"She was full of wildflowers in notebooks. Smoke scented beaches. Skipping town and a little bit of save the world." — atlas

"Sometimes, you'll have a couple of good days, and then it hits you. Everything. It hurts to talk, to love, to be. Existing is so difficult at times but no one wants to hear that. No one wants to know about the days you spend crying or curled up in a corner somewhere or wishing you could be anywhere but here. We all have our very own acts of survival. Our ways of staying alive when we're in too much pain to feel anything at all. I get it. This isn't life anymore. This is just about getting through the day. I hope that one day it'll be something more than that." — r.e.s

"Be so full that even if they take & take & take & take you can still be overflowing." — Alison Malee

Aeipathy (n.) An enduring and consuming passion.

"Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I’m one of them." — Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

"Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all." — The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Emily Dickinson

"We live and breathe words. It was books that kept me from taking my own life after I thought I could never love anyone, never be loved again. It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them." — Clockwork Prince, Cassandra Clare

"Suddenly, all at once, she knows, knows that he doesn’t understand her, that he never will." — The Lover, Marguerite Duras

Jouska (n.) a hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head.

"I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy." — The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman

"Be curious, not judgmental." — Walt Whitman

"Some nights, the universe won’t be on your side. Don’t stop chasing the stars when that happens." — Juansen Dizon

"You're a cup of hot chocolate on a winter morning." — M.I.

"If you'll just hear all the stories I've said to the moon, you can never count those times I've mentioned how much I adore you." — Words I Can't Tell You, ma.c.a

"She loves rambling along in her woods. She loves going out by herself at night. She loves hiding from callers. She loves walking among her trees and musing." — The Death of the Moth and other Essays, Virginia Woolf

"Inside of me lives a civil war between me and me. It is amazing, because I am all the time winning and all the time losing." — Bshayer

"I guess I have myself to blame. I craved a love so deep. I didn't think about the consequences." — Gemma Troy

"You have to get yourself out of bad place. You need to resist the temptation to let everything slip and become apathetic and cynical toward yourself and your life. You need to accept that it takes time to change and it's okay to fall over as long as you get back up. Every morning is a new start and things don't have to be this way forever. You can heal and you can change." — flowerais

"Ah, kindness. What a simple way to tell another struggling soul that there is love to be found in this world." — Alison Malee

"So this is your life, and you are going to be both moved and confused by it. You are going to experience things that will inspire you, and things that you will never quite come to terms with. You are going to love people that you will sometimes lose, but you will also find those who stay. Appreciate those people, let them know that you care. You are going to laugh until you cry, you are going to ache in ways you never thought possible; you are going to be exhausted by the chaos of it all and ignited by the beauty. You are going to be hurt, and you are going to hurt. Sometimes you will be the bad person. Sometimes you will be the one who makes the mistake. Sometimes you will have to give yourself your own closure. Sometimes you will have to let go. Sometimes you will have to find comfort in being alone, in being lost. Yes, this is your life, and though it can unpredictable, and messy, even though it can break you down - you are going to survive it. You will always survive it." — bianca sparacino