Empyrean01 - Empyrean🍒

“you’ve relied on time to heal your wounds, but time alone isn’t enough. i hope you learn to hold yourself accountable by practicing what is right for you even if it feels uncomfortable or unfamiliar. i hope you adopt a habit of consistency when it comes to how you treat yourself.”

— iambrillyant

“A well-chosen book saves you from everything, including yourself.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald (via minuty)

Sandra Cisneros, In an Interview with Krista Tippett

I dream of...

I dream of the empty tunnels within the earth,

where once worms lived but now only their corpses lay in the poisoned dirt. 

I dream that the sick earth gives away beneath our feet, that mankind slips down passing our equally sickened history as we go. 

I dream there are trees forever preserved in plastic, bones of fish that twist in deformation, the hornless rhinos mouths are still wide in pain and in their blank eye sockets remains fear, small bones lay next to big ones. 

 Finally, we reach our ancestors alongside the mammoths they slew,

 the only genuinely recognizable corpses. 

I dream that we never hit the end, our bodies fall upwards as we pass our mistakes, our triumphs are few and far between. 

Then I wake up. 

I stand on the dirt that I dreamt of, waiting for the human race’s sins to pull me down. 

I feel nothing but the worms digging beneath my feet, I do not feel the waxy plastic or the sharp bones of fish,

but it is then I realize I’m still dreaming. 

Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“You don’t actually fear the opinion of others, what you really fear is how their possible rejections might trigger your own somewhat unconscious dislike for yourself.”

—

So how do we improve your self-image? Well here is a powerful way:

Write an extensive list of short positive sentences about yourself and your qualities (non-grandiose of course) and then read them out aloud. If any one of them either feels really uncomfortable to say or conversely really amazing to say…then you basically know which ones to start with.

Now record them into an audio file, put that mother on repeat, track how much you listen to these affirmation each day, and also write down your experience and sense of progress.

And as to the question of progress…listening to affirmations may not immediately bring positive results as your subconscious mind might start to bicker with them for a while which may push uncomfortable emotions to the surface…but this is exactly when you need to keep going…for the inner resistance will gradually fade, I promise you that.

“Eye contact is a dangerous, dangerous thing. But lovely. God, so lovely.”

— Hedonist Poet

Some days I need you more than others,

days when I don’t feel like myself and

I have forgotten my name and 

why I keep putting one foot in front of the other. 

These days I wish you could just hold me, 

just hold me in your arms tight, 

center me and be my light. 

Be the warmth that keeps away the infinite cold,

that I feel chills me to the bone.

Hold me in these days when I am not strong,

when I am but a muted shadow of myself 

when I need a reason to hold on.

I don't know if I am being selfish,

but I just tell you what I must, 

what I feel deep inside my heart and

I need you so much every day of my life, 

but these days I need you most,

to remember I am worth loving and fighting for. 

e.v.e.

3 a.m.

I find myself in the midst of poetry written by the broken hearted. As I read each line the overwhelmingly hurt that’s been forgotten in my mind. Yet felt in my heart the cries of all the why’s.

Poetry not only written or rewritten; but the kind living in the hearts of those who have lived hurt an pain. In which now converts to healing through words. Writing, the aftermath of endured angush.

Those who have had the highest of hopes. Only to find those hopes crushed by someones lies. Or torn, shattered, and distraught by the hands of a narcissist. Which ever the case may be, I say to you; don’t feel alone because I’ve lived the pain in your poems that I read.

R.A.