Mended

There are levels to brokenness. 

There are things that can be mended. 

A broken nail. 

A broken toy. 

A broken bone. 

There are things that can be replaced. 

A broken dish. 

A broken phone. 

A broken window.

And then there are the permanent ones. 

A broken trust. 

A broken relationship. 

A broken heart. 

Those are the ones that stay with us. The ones that, even when put behind us, always seem to be etched into our brains. They can't be mended or replaced. You may trust that person again, or get back together with your ex. Your heart may return to a steady rhythm. But there will always be that uneasy feeling in the back of your mind. That doubt. 

Will they betray my trust again? 

Does he love me the way he did before? 

Is my heart ready for this? 

The answer may never be clear.

Life is sometimes unforgiving. It's a fucking mess. Parts of it are easily broken, but there's strength in experiencing pain, hardship, and shitty times. Why do we use the phrase "break a leg" to tell someone good luck? Why do we love to tell that story about how we broke our arm in middle school falling out of a tree? Why do we empathize so much with movies whose main character had their heart broken and then lived to be a success story? 

There's power to it.

So go ahead. Break a nail. Smash a glass plate. Have your heart broken. Don't regret a single thing.

There are levels to brokenness. 

How broken are you?

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Better yet,

How strong are you?

Ghosted

you had become a ghost,

a distant memory, slightly faded,

the words written in my journal.

i remember the night i told you goodbye.

when i yelled and screamed,

and promised that was the end of it. 

the nights that followed were cold.

too empty in the darkness, too alone,

the silence echoed. the tears whispered.

i learned to hear your name without crying. 

learned to smile at other men again.

 no longer searching for your face in theirs.

then i ran into you on the street one day and 

everything came pouring back. i hid it quite well 

behind the smile i had practiced. 

your smile. that smile that shook the ground

i stood on. the smile that i fell in love with. 

the one i tried so hard to forget.

i'd never felt love like what i had with you.

 it was indescribable. my heart ached from 

how hard it beat for you every day. 

i was a forest and you were a god damn match. 

carved from the same tree but you burned like hell 

and i was flammable.

you were ignited by our love. i was struck by 

the beauty and danger and raw power of your flame. 

until one day it burned out. 

and all that was left were ashes. dust left over from a 

wildfire. beneath, the embers still glowed with 

an unwavering passion.

i almost lost it. i almost broke like that god awful day. 

all of the pieces i glued back together, 

threatening to fall apart. 

but i didn't. we talked. mindless chit chat about

 how we've been. formalities. and then we parted. 

yet another goodbye.

i was left standing there in the street. processing. 

was he as broken as i was before? 

was he glued together like me?

i like to think so. that's the thing about love. 

it's excruciating. when you have it and after it's gone.

 a blessing and a curse. 

but it stays with us until we die. 

a score made on our hearts like tattoos of the past. 

they fade but never truly go away. 

we might have gone our separate ways, 

but we'll always have that. the love we shared. 

the kind they write books after. 

so once again you're a ghost,

a distant memory, slightly faded,

the words written in this poem.

always there, forever. 

-b.m.

Bedtime Bliss

Good evening, Moths!

Hope everyone had a lovely Saturday! Tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday, which means good company and delicious food. But let's focus on the here and now and leave tomorrow where it belongs: in the future. Maybe you're a college student reading this from the comfort of your dorm room, or a mom of three unwinding from a busy day, finally getting some time to yourself. No matter where you are reading this from, or what your situation is at the moment, I think we can all agree that night time is a magical time. It's a time to reflect on everything that has happened that day without having to expend anymore energy, and a time to feed your exhaustion with delicious sleep. It's a special intermediate zone between the sweet ending of one day and the fresh beginning of another. Sleep can do wonders for the body--when you get enough of it--and it is filled with that magical (I know, I said it again!) thing called dreams. Dreams are our subconscious playing out scenes from deep within our mind where anything is possible, like a film being projected directly from our imagination. Some people can recall the most specific details from their dreams (like my mom), while others lose the memory of them as soon as their eyes open and their senses are awoken (like me). Either way, we're all dreamers. We all dream of something while we sleep, whether we remember it or not.

My eyelids are drooping just typing this post..
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One of the greatest feelings in the world is waking up in the early morning hours thinking it's around the time you need to be awake, only to find that it's three in the morning and you have several hours until your alarm will ring. I am a very restless sleeper (probably due to all of the technology I look at right before going to sleep..) and almost every night when I inevitably wake up, I check the time--I somehow always remember that time the following morning--and it's such a scrumptious feeling knowing that I can drift right back into blissful sleep. Sleep itself is such a weird thing. Our body goes into a stasis of sorts, where our breathing is low and our muscles are completely  relaxed, not needed for the coming hours. Complete darkness. Time is such an interesting component of sleep because we have absolutely no concept of it when unconscious. Similar to getting anesthetized for surgery: you count backwards from ten for as long as you can hold on, and in a blink you are awake and the surgery is over with zero recollection, in some cases of the hours it took for them to complete it. While our brain is still active, our senses are muted and the world is silenced. That statement is what makes up the difficult debate over a patient in a coma. While the physical body may be immobile, the mind still has the ability to be conscious. Can they hear someone that is speaking to them and comprehend it, but simply be unable to respond? That's an interesting discussion question, but let's leave that for another post.

Let's return to the present moment. Are your eyelids feeling heavy? Is your body sunken into the mattress beneath you? Let go. Let go of all of the stress, all of the thoughts, all of the activity that today brought. All that happened today belongs in the past and cannot be changed, no matter how much you think about it. Let it live in the past while you allow your body and mind to rejuvenate itself for the new day ahead. Let every single muscle in your body let go of any tension. What I like to do is listen to a guided mediation (for example: Guided Sleep Meditation) which I find to be highly successful in helping me to focus on falling asleep and quieting the activity of my mind. What I love about the one I attached a link to, besides his voice, is that he talks you through every muscle--from your toes all the way up to your scalp--so you can identify what parts of your body are holding the most tension, and ease them to relaxation. Everyone has their own experience when meditating, but I get this warm, almost tingly sensation that moves up through my body like a wave of comfort that simply washes over me, leaving me numb and completely at ease. He counts down from ten towards the end and I almost always fall asleep before reaching one (which I know because the next morning I can't, for the life of me, recollect what number he got to before I fell asleep). If you've never listened to a guided meditation before, I highly recommend you try implementing one into your daily regimen. The app Buddhify is my #1 favorite guided mediation supplement and it is perfect for beginners! It may feel silly at first listening to one, but they are so spiritually healing and buddhify is broken up into different categories so you can listen to one no matter what you are doing at that moment--anywhere from eating, trouble falling asleep, difficult emotions, or even walking in nature!

That's all I have for tonight, I really hope you try guided mediation for yourself if you've never done so before, especially the one I attached a link for in this post.  It's one of those things that is tailored to you, and is completely different from one individual to the next. There's no right or wrong way of doing it. Some people love it, some simply don't have the patience for it, but you can train your mind by listening to them, similar to how you train your muscles by lifting weights. If you decide to try it for the first time, comment on here and share your experience! I would love to hear how it went and how you feel about it.

***It's that magical time!!***
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Well, go on.
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Let go
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Relax
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Dream
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Sweet dreams, Moths. xoxo