; when love stays

When love stays something inside of you stops fighting, it lays down its arms, it finally rests. When love stays, your heart stops holding its breath, it lets out all doubt, all confusion, all fear, all of the heaviness that surrounded its need to guard and defend and dismiss anything that came close to holding it. When love stays, something quietly whispers from the depths of who you are – “It is okay to be soft now. It is okay.”

When love stays, you start to understand why it had to leave in the first place. Why you had to ache, why it had to dig caverns inside of your heart in order to make room for what would end up filling your soul with light. When love stays, clarity cracks within you — you comprehend the hurt, the lessons, you comprehend everything. When love stays, you make peace with all that weathered you, because you see just how it pushed you in the direction of growth, how it pushed you in the direction of the right arms, the right heart, the right soul.

But I know the fear, for when love stays, at first it is difficult to believe that it has truly chosen you. After all of this time, after all of the damage, something so heavy has suddenly become delicate, has become simple and light. After all the endless agony, you have found the kind of love that nurtures you. That believes in you. And I know, I know — it is difficult when every tender part of who you are has been bruised and let down. But you must believe in this love the way it believes in you. You must trust it.

Because when love stays, the only way to truly experience it in all of its beauty, is to let it wash over you — is to have confidence in it, is to give it all that you are. When love stays, you have to be loyal to it, you have to show up for it, you have to understand that it is going to be by your side, it is going to fight with you — no matter what. You cannot flee from it. You cannot let the past shrink you into the kind of person who walks away from it in order to refrain from being hurt. You have to plant your feet, you have to stand and face it for all that it is, as terrifying as such an unknown can be. You have to believe, that this time, love is different. That this time, love is right.

And everything is gonna be alright.

(As you always told me, huh?)

; we break, and we mend

There is this thing that we generally don't want to accept, but it's one of the biggest truths in life: Not everyone who comes into our lives is meant to stay forever.

It's really, really hard to hear that. Because after all we're humans, we care, we attach. We feel. We hold on too much, as long as it's possible, and even when we know that letting go is the healthy, right thing to do. We fight against it.

It's really, really hard to let go of people we love, even when they are bad for us, because we insert parts of ourselves into them. We take our deepest pains and decide to share them with the ones we love. We invite these people in. Take them by the hand and say “I will show you all the things I hide from everyone else”.

That's the biggest, hugest thing we can do. The fact that we allow that level of insight into our souls for someone, that we find it in our hearts to trust, thinking that those people will never do something that can hurt us. We do this all even while we know, logically, that humans have the ability to hurt, to carve wounds so deep that we feel like we’ll never recover.

And it's not something easy to let go.

But the fact that we’ve been hurt by someone we love and trust this much is nothing but humanity doing its thing. And sometimes we let this consume us.

This idea of love, this ideal of love, we think that if it feels so right, those people must be meant to stick by us for a lifetime. Because we’ve trusted them with everything we have; we can’t imagine, don’t want to imagine, a betrayal of our fragility that huge and unforgivable.

But life isn’t easy. Neither is love.

As we grow, we learn. We realize that the ones we let into our hearts aren’t always forever. That most of the time it’s no one’s fault when things don’t work out. And it hurts to feel those secret parts of you, the ones you never wanted to share with anyone else, be given back.

But not everyone can be permanent, no matter how badly we may want this to be true. That doesn’t make them bad people, it just means that some things aren’t meant to last forever.

And when you really think about it, life is filled with so many unpredictable variables. Sometimes circumstances change. Old feelings morph into new ones. New people enter while other simultaneously doesn’t fit anymore.

But regardless, days keep ending and starting again. The world keeps turning, the carousel never stops turning. Life goes on.

We'll feel that pain of someone’s absence. That crushing feeling against our lungs, the seeming lack of air. That sense that it was somehow our fault. But the point is we do our best with what we’re given at the time. Life is this weird thing we do while we try to figure out what the hell we’re doing.

Yes, some people are going to be forever, and some of them will go away. But it doesn’t mean that all was for nothing. Everything is a lesson in this life. Every happy memory, every unbearable moment. Sometimes we move on because it’s the best, the only thing that we can do. Or at least we try.

We break, and we mend. And we keep going on.

; love is fucking hard

Love is enchanting, mesmeric, teasing. It's delightful, fascinating, appealing. Love is beautiful. It's like walking on air, and all those butterflies. Love is all of this, and much more.

But it also can be a battle, a riot. Love is challenging, tough, and sometimes, it's painful. Like fighting a dragon without even a sword. Like climbing a mountain that never ends.

The thing is: when love is real, it's fucking hard.

It's not like a romance novel, a fairytale. It's more like a shakespearean experience of suffering through sweet pages of misery and joy, all in the same time, all with a bittersweet taste.

Love is not about finding someone beautiful, or sexy, or funny. In the end of the day, it all goes away, and you will feel drained, exasperated, and even look to your significant other can be a challenge. True love is getting past that point.

Love is looking past someone’s dark side. It’s opening up the ugly parts, the hard angles. Love is peeling them down layer by layer, and accepting each one of them. Love is caring about their past, finding out their mistakes and accepting that they are going to make new ones.

Love is sitting, waiting, listening, attending, even when you're not in the mood. It’s talking through hard things, it's having a conversation that you know that will lead to an argument, but you also know that you need to do this to overcome your problems. But love is still kissing them goodnight after all. And love is still loving them, despite hating at the same time.

Love is wanting to punch someone in the face, out of annoyance from what your partner has just said. It’s feeling full of frustration and anger sometimes, but it’s accepting their difference in opinion. It’s about acceptance. It’s about forgiveness. It’s never about wanting to always be right. It’s never about them always being wrong.

Love is living together, and the capacity of being fine when you're apart. It’s colliding next to one another at night, sharing your ordinary day, and it’s also about having your own space. Love is being so, so beautiful together, but it’s also about being just as wonderful apart.

The last thing love can be is easy. When it's genuine in existence, love is a big deal, and it's as hard as it's big. But it's true. And it's scary. Like jumping off a cliff. And it's even scarier when you and your lover are together on it for real, for life.

It's having big conversations, it's taking big decisions, it's acceptance when things get hard or overwhelming. It's about saying, and it's about hearing. It's about feeling. It’s about compassion and understanding, not resisting.

Love is fucking hard.

But the beautiful moments are more than worth the hard parts. And the wonderful and magical bits are far more powerful than the bad.

It's love. It's your love. And that's all that matters.

; you’ve chosen to run

Whatever the reason, you’ve chosen to run. Maybe you’ve let your fear control your heart. Maybe you’re overanalyzing, worrying about where things will head before they begin. Maybe you’re just not ready.

But instead of being honest, instead of being vulnerable and choosing, despite all doubt, to step forward, you ran in the other direction. You tucked your feelings deep inside and turned your face away. You poured yourself into other things, other people who weren’t nearly as ready to give you their all.

You walked away from a woman who cared for you. You traded something genuine for something that will never light a fire in your soul. You sought affection instead of passion, and found temporary instead of permanent.

She was ready to love you. She was open arms and a forgiving mind. She was kisses that tasted like home and hands that were ready to help build you into the person you were always capable of becoming — the person you’ve always been. She was tenderness in all the places that were bruised, kindness in every embrace, and touch, and sentence.

She was fearless when it came to sharing her heart. And yet, you didn’t share yours. You failed to see that what you two could have was something worth fighting for; you put down your sword and left her standing there alone.

You walked away from a woman who was ready to start something meaningful. Who was willing to stop running, stop searching, stop wishing for something perfect — because all she needed was right here. With you.

But you left.

And now you’ve lost out on late nights, arm-in-arm, staring at the stars and talking about dreams. You’ve lost lips that could softly press into every ache and teach you how it feels to be loved. You’ve lost a heart that was so willing to put the past behind and start over. You’ve lost a body, a soul who was ready and willing to be your partner, your right-hand, your best friend.

You lost what so many people spend their entire lives desperately searching for.

In a world of fleeting connections, you can’t afford to lose a love like this.

; às vezes

às vezes eu sinto que me desconectei de mim mesma e perdi em consequência a conexão com tudo de bom que eu tinha
às vezes eu sinto que me perdi no caminho, que me perdi de mim e do amor no meio da trilha
às vezes eu sinto que tô dormente e não consigo levantar e continuar os passos
às vezes eu sinto que tudo de bom tá escorrendo pelo meus dedos e não há nada que eu possa fazer pra segurar
às vezes eu sinto que tô perdendo tudo que um dia guardei aqui dentro nos lugares mais profundos reservados àquilo que teremos de mais importante pra sempre

mas então
a vida
às vezes
em pequenos sinais
me lembra que raízes profundas podem até se mexer no vendaval
mas vão continuar sendo raízes
vão continuar enraizadas
e vão se perpetuar
se for possível
durante a tempestade mais feia
se segurar na fé que temos em nós mesmos

e em tudo que temos em nós