Her Disintegration Went Down A Shaft Of Phases, Every One More Racking Than The Last; For The Human Brain

Requested! Mountain goat + Books + Bisexual (plus Doll Skin)

the art of saying no was a numbing in our mouths. we learned how to form it gently, to swallow the punch, to let down with gentlest hands. we learned how to fake a smile, to force a chuckle, to take disgust and turn it into polite denial, to take fear and weigh our options and submit.  he said he needed sex because oh it hurt how we made him. he said we should have just smiled back at him. he said that we could have learned karate to fight them. he said that we couldn’t say no, he was our boyfriend. 

how many girls are raised to feel guilty for no. we feel it must come with a reason. our no has to have qualifications. if our no isn’t enough, we are expected to cave in. 

the battle of our inner strength and our outer bodies. how we calculate small injustice versus our personal safety. how we’d form no in small ways that made him feel like it was our fault. how we’d let him down in a way he wouldn’t follow us home. we’d say no without the words; lying about sudden appointments or phone calls, we’d invent husbands, we’d suddenly become best friends with the woman beside us. we always had someone waiting at home for us - usually big and angry - who would notice if we were missing. we enter in our phone numbers with the last two digits switched. we say we’re going to the bathroom we’ll be right back before we take off running. 

and our no, those two letters, was never good enough. we either rejected him too harshly or not clearly. if we said no, we weren’t in love. the no was too forceful, the no was too gentle. the no meant ask nicely, the no meant keep persisting. the no was because we’re all catty and cruel and hate nice men. the no was because we’re all paranoid bitches. the no was wait long enough and it’s a yes. the no was playing hard to get.

and our life was learning. it amazes me sometimes when men tell me, “but she never said no” and i hear her story. how he was her boss and she would lose her job and it was her everything. how he said no but men aren’t allowed to refuse these things. i was thirteen the first time i had to spend a two hour train ride gently turning down a middle-aged man and someone else told me i should have just screamed or hit him or done something. how the girls i told all nodded solemnly because they know what it’s like to be thirteen and scared and to be eighteen and scared and how to be twenty-three and scared. because we’ve all said no and had it blow up in our faces. we’ve watched men turn from flirty to aggressive. we’ve seen what happens to our friends.

but in the end it’s our fault. don’t you know a man can’t take rejection.

If you tell a boy whose hair is curly and wild and who dresses in faded holey t-shirts that smell like worn cotton and home that he should comb his hair down for you and dress up nicer for you, then you are slowly killing him and replacing him with what you think he should have to be…for you. Do me a favor. Dont. This world needs more boys with wild hair and worn cotton shirts and if you cant appreciate him, let him go, because he does not need to be told that his comfort and style is wrong. He should be loved by someone who thinks that wild hair is beautiful, and that he is stunning in a suit or worn cotton or nothing at all, because that is what love is. Healthy love is accepting them as they came, with all their flaws and problems and quirks. You should not have to “fix” someone you love at all, if they are right for you, you will be able to grow together into better people. They might adapt around you as time goes on, and that is normal, growth and change is good and natural, but forcing change is brutal and mean. He deserves to be loved just the way he came to you, because someone thinks he is beautiful, and if you can’t do that, let him love someone who will.

Thoughts of things  (via burtonbutton)

everyone should read this

(via lottie360)

Have a Laurens with his eyes open because I was called out.

One of my favorite stories about Artemis is that after she required Agamemnon to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia, she stole her away at the last moment and left a white deer in her place. After that, people disagree on what happened, but I like the story where Artemis transforms her into Hecate, because can you imagine them in the modern era?

Artemis, protector of young women and goddess of the hunt turned vigilante, hunting down the ones who attack girls in dark alleys, the ones with beer-hard hands and no sense of decency even if they’d been sober anyway.

But when Artemis finds the girls, she takes them to Hecate–Hecate, who was mortal once, led like a lamb to an altar by a man who was supposed to protect her. And sure, Artemis is the one who makes them pay, who delights in their screams and dances in the moonlight once she knows those men will be scared of the dark forever, spend their entire lives looking over their shoulders fearing her.

But Hecate… Hecate is good with herbs and potions and she understands the nightmares, the heart-pounding, sweaty hands panic that wakes them up screaming in the middle of the night, and she makes them herbal draughts to help them sleep, because unlike Artemis, Hecate understands. She isn’t vengeful, an angry older sister out for blood like Artemis. She’s the best friend, the mother, and the sister rolled all into one.

So Artemis avenges them and Hecate cares for them and the moon-goddess Selene shines her absolute brightest for them, fills every shadow with bright silver so they don’t need to be afraid of the dark anymore, and the three goddesses call these their Lost Girls, and at first Apollo was sort of skeptical but there’s no stopping Artemis when she sets her mind on something, and before Apollo quite realizes it, he’s running beside his sister, chasing a boy who couldn’t keep his hands to himself, and he’s never felt more right.

Maybe I was destined to forever fall in love with people I couldn’t have. Maybe there’s a whole assortment of impossible people waiting for me to find them. Waiting to make me feel the same impossibility over and over again.

Carol Rifka Brunt

(via

purplebuddhaquotes

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as she walks dead lilies bloom underneath her feet. The closest the underworld had to life

my late night thoughts on Persephone