aren’t even mine…

it’s one of the darkest feelings
i’ve ever known… unworthy.

and maybe i want to learn to start
questioning it when i feel it.
like… is it always even mine?

because if it’s from someone else…
someone else’s unkindness, or judgment,
or their own unworthiness they’re projecting…
then i want to learn to say no.

i think maybe my own battles would get a little
easier to face if i wasn’t also fighting the
ones that aren’t even mine.

– butterflies rising

soft and vulnerable and beautiful, just like flowers.

this world can
feel so harsh and ugly
to you because you are
so soft and vulnerable
and beautiful… like flowers.
now imagine this world
without flowers.
so please let yourself be
something in this world that is soft
and vulnerable and beautiful,
just like flowers.

– butterflies rising

it’s so delicate here.
but it’s where i’m the most brutal.
it’s where my raging gets careless,
and the delicate things end up crushed.
i fight my hardest fights
trying to love the deepest love,
but i’ve never been more unkind
than i’ve been in these close quarters
…in this head, and to this heart.
and when others have been unkind,
how quick i’ve been to betray myself and just agree.
and i’ve let it all hurt so much that unworthy has felt
like the only feeling i may ever again know…
like a flower whose every last petal has been torn away and
thrown to the wind with nothing left to recognize as beautiful.
just wilted. and bare with pain.
but what if it hurts this way for a reason…
because that ache in me is the fight in me
to learn to feel different.
because somewhere deep inside i know
that i want to be delicate here… desperately.
and when they’re unkind, and when i’m unkind,
somewhere deep down, i know that i fiercely. disagree.
and there’s a wild blossom in me and it’s too beautiful
to ever just be torn away and thrown to the wind.
and there’s a tenderness that i’m made of and an intimacy
that i’m part of… one that i’m going to learn
to take such delicate care of.