Marisa Donnelly

Be a woman who doesn’t expect everything to be handed to her, but goes out and creates her own world.

You aren’t scared of letting someone in. Because you know that all men are not the same, and you don’t want to hide behind your fear anymore.

This might not be the way of the world, to be a fixer, to appreciate a fixer. It’s unhealthy, really, to love people that aren’t good for you, to try to mend what can only be mended by that person. But you try because it’s inherent within you to care.

And you don’t need to apologize for that.

You are totally capable of crushing on two people at once. Because the feels…duh.

I will not apologize for this stupid heart, this heart that knows better, but doesn’t care. This heart that sees the good in people. This heart that believes.

Does he listen with his eyes?

There are so many things you just can’t control in life. What others think of you is, unfortunately, one of those things.

You are the woman who built me up, who kept me strong, who took my mother’s place when she couldn’t be there. Who has always loved me as if I was one of your own, and some days made me really believe I was.

Don’t settle for anything less than excitement and jumping beans in the pit of your stomach. Nothing less than forever. Nothing less than knowing, beyond on a doubt that this is love.

We think we have to be women and men who are tough on the outside and soft on the inside, who act one way but think another. We believe this makes us attractive, to be complicated. Makes us worth the chase, worth the discovery of what’s beneath the layers. But maybe we really don’t need the layers at all.

“Nature’s way of tricking people into reproducing.”

As I watched the lights, I couldn’t help but cry. Cry for the sounds and the absence of them. Cry for the places I’d been and called home. Cry for the hands I’d held, the hearts I’d broken, and the people I would one day leave behind.