Marisa Donnelly

You are broken, and it’s okay to be broken right now. You can’t rush your healing, and that’s fine. But you need to know that this feeling won’t last. You need to know that just because you’re hurting doesn’t mean you can’t get back up again, doesn’t mean you’re weak.

Promise me that we’ll never be too old for cones from the ice cream truck, for lying in the grass and making animals out of clouds, for squirt gun fights and pillow forts and talking in strange accents. Promise that you’ll grow old with me, but never grow up.

Life is too fragile to settle for a partner who is abusive, for a connection that is one-sided, for being with someone who sucks the energy and happiness from you on a daily basis. You are a person of value. You deserve care. You deserve respect.

Because she will inspire you.

I’ve decided to surrender to love. Because I can’t control it. Because I can’t plan around it. Because the world is filled with these unknowns, these chances we take for the things and people we care about. So I’m going for it; I’m going all in.

I like loving you like this. Like high school. Like silly, like stolen sips of whiskey, like Saturday afternoons with the whole weekend ahead of us. I like knowing we’re each other’s everythings. That we’re booth too young and foolish to know any better. To know that love hurts like hell.

Love is kissing you and feeling like I’m dizzy, like I’m melting into your lips as if the two of us were searching blindly our entire lives and finally found where our souls belong. That’s the kind of love I desire.

You’re not supposed to have a map of your life. You’re not supposed to know how things will begin or where they will end. You’re not supposed to know who you’ll fall in love with, at least not right away. And you’re not supposed to have the answers to those questions looming in the back of your brain.

I called you last night. Because I saw that picture,
because I wanted to know if your voice still sounded
like Saturday mornings with closed blinds,
an old truck with the windows down on the highway
in the sticky-hot Western sun. It did.

I won’t disappear from your life like a ghost you forget about, like a ghost that never mattered. I won’t haunt you, but I won’t become invisible. I’m the type of girl that no matter what happens, no matter why or how or what put a giant rift between us, I’ll always have love for you.

You cannot always see the timeline of your life with tick marks at every painful memory. You cannot choose to remember the people that have hurt you, the negative words that have been shared, the times when you were low and didn’t know if you’d make it through.

Because you did. You did make it through.

She’ll be gentle, even in her anger.

Everywhere on the internet you’ll read about ‘living your best life,’ or ‘living the life you’ve always imagined’ or just ‘living a good freaking life’ and although all these articles and posts and Instagram photos and blogs and advice columns have our best intentions in mind, they’re narrowly focused.

“Her smile. I swear to God it stops me in my tracks.”

Laughter. Which is often overlooked, but so very essential for a strong relationship. There needs to be moments of silliness, of finding joy in the simple things, of teasing one another, and of not taking life so seriously.

We love food. Honestly, eating is probably the highlight of our days.

In twenty years, you won’t remember that you drunkenly spent $50 on drinks on a Saturday night—you’ll remember the ugly bathroom selfies with your best friends and dancing until the sun came up.

Take pictures (and selfies!) of and with everything.