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no title can express my sorrow

there's no standard treatment for a broken heart. i sigh quietly to myself, thinking i’ll actually find an answer on how to heal a broken heart on google it all began five years ago, when i finally started spending time with him—the boy who seemed to shine a little brighter than the rest. he was the kindest, the prettiest, the one who made my heart feel lighter just by existing. and he wanted to be my friend. how could i not fall? kept the friendship up for a couple of years and my crush for him grew even stronger. sometimes he would come up in my dreams and then i would try to summon fate itself—manifesting, wishing, aching for him to love me back. because, as every girl knows, there is always a phase where we believe the universe listens. and so, i rinsed and repeated, hoping one day, he would look at me the way I looked at him when we messaged or meet up, he felt like my twin flame. a connection so deep, so natural, that i convinced myself he must feel it too. he understood me, and i understood him but i never felt that he liked me as much as i liked him. and then, it ended—not with a dramatic farewell, not with a grand confession, but with silence. I ruined it in my own quiet way: fading out, withdrawing, blocking him, letting the messages go unanswered. I stopped reaching out, and so did he. it was as if we had been a story left unfinished, pages ripped from the book before the final chapter could be written it has been four months since we last spoke. and now, he has a girlfriend. may I add—throughout our years of friendship, he never had one. situationships, yes, but never something real. yet, here she is. not me. the day I found out, it struck me in a way I hadn’t expected. I had let him slip from my thoughts, let weeks pass without missing him—until I saw what I had once longed for, in the hands of someone else. I hadn’t realized I was still holding onto the dream until it shattered before me. now, my mind drifts to what could have been. I picture myself in her place, feel the ghost of a life that was never mine. would he have loved me, if I had held on? if I had tried? was I ever good enough for him? wasn’t I pretty enough for him…? why… her… not… me…? time is meant to heal. i know this. but this wound runs deep. losing someone you once felt connected to in the deepest corners of your soul is a quiet kind of grief, the kind that doesn’t announce itself loudly but lingers in the spaces between thoughts. my heart feels heavy, my soul even heavier but today, i miss him more than usually. i’ve fallen to deep, so now every time i think of him, i will miss him deeply.

@lukrecija

Feb 28, 2025

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A crispy Realization

For someone who claims to identify so closely with solitude, uncovering just how tethered I was to the emotions of people I love was a crispy realization. Of course, that attachment is the basis for any kind of relationship. You cannot claim to “have someone” in your life if you do not feel some kind of emotional connection towards them. The stronger the connection, the stronger the relationship. We all know this. However, there is something to be said about a relationship that is “too good”; a bond so strong due to its shocking lack of tension. In hindsight of various broken and fragmented connections I’ve been apart of, any relationship that exists while remaining entirely unscathed now kind of terrifies me. I believe there can be such a thing as “too much love”, and I think those who have given or received it know when they have done so. It’s a mistake anyone is capable of making. Imagine a relationship so polished, free from any erosion (visible or otherwise); seemingly perfect. This type of connection can only be established through a building of trust and an abundance of time. However, I’ve come to learn that the more impeccable bonds tend to break easy when faced with their first real blow. Birds only crash into the cleanest of glass. *"If music be the food of love, play on; / Give me excess of it...*" I don’t want excess. For the food of love, I am no glutton. I eat until I am full and push my plate aside. I used to love like my life depended on it. I put those people whom I adored on the highest of pedestals, framed them in my gallery and admired new details every time we shared a visit. Maybe I just hadn’t been wronged enough to ever think that I could be wounded by those I dote on so heavily. What is it with loving and being loved that makes feeling hurt seem so impossible? Why must love shatter all preconceived expectations of what emotion is? Is love really so massive, so gargantuan that it conquers all other feeling? Yes, and no. At least that’s what I think. This is all just what I think. I don’t want to come across as some great romantic or lovesick puppy or old friend. I’m just trying to figure out the right way to love, like everyone else.

@ben10

Mar 16, 2025

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EXACT

Why would you do that to me? I keep trying to locate the moment everything broke. Like it’s a pin on a map I can circle in red. But there is no clear shatterpoint—no clean fracture, no dramatic climax. Just pressure. Gradual. Relentless. Until one day, I couldn’t carry it anymore and I don’t even remember deciding to drop it. Maybe the line was never drawn. Maybe I was never taught I could draw one. Is that my fault? His? Does fault even matter? Was it an accident? Was it cruelty? Was it just the consequence of being small in a world that teaches people to take what they want? I don’t know. And I’m learning to live with not knowing. But lately—strangely—I think I’m healing. Not all at once. Not dramatically. But quietly, like the way snow melts: slow and almost imperceptible, until suddenly there’s grass again. I’m letting go of the obsessions that gnawed at me. I have energy again, like I finally remembered how to move. I’m picking up pieces of old joy, half-buried but still intact. I’m remembering the things I loved. The things that loved me back. And maybe, most importantly, I’m forgetting the things that never really mattered at all.

@baileyxward

3d ago

Top Recs from @baileyxward

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DREAM

Last night, I dreamed—though I can’t tell you what of, not exactly. There were fragments. A lawn, half-mown, or cats—dozens of them, maybe. Their shapes flicker now at the edge of memory, insubstantial. That’s how it always goes. I dream every night, I know this, but each one slips through my fingers by morning, evaporating like steam before I can grasp it. It wasn’t always this way. As a child, I kept a dream journal. Religious about it. Woke up, wrote it down. And something about that changed me. Sharpened the recall, made dreams more solid. Realer. And then, over time, something turned. Now they vanish even faster. Like the act of remembering too hard wore out the muscle. I’ve thought about starting again. Journaling. Documenting. Not just the dreams, but the moments around them—the texture of waking, the taste of forgetting. Because vivid dreams begin with remembering, don’t they? But I hate recollection. The way it drags old feelings back up, stale and bitter. The way it stains the present with shadows of things that never happened. There’s something foul in remembering too much. Still. Maybe I’ll try.

@baileyxward

6d ago

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JACKET

I hang your jackets in my closet like trophies, or maybe like warnings. I don’t know which. I don’t wear them. It’s far too hot — sticky, oppressive heat that clings to the skin like regret — but I keep them there, row by row, like memory has a dress code. The scent is gone now. That clean, clove-sweet sharpness you always carried. Still, I walk past them every day. I make myself look. It’s supposed to mean something. All of this. I keep telling myself I’m meant for something bigger — to make a name for myself, they always say — but what name? The one I was given, or the one I’ll have to carve out with blood and trembling hands? Fifty-five years. Fifty-five steps to the top of the hill, up to that damn library where I’ve been meaning to go. Where I keep meaning to go. And yet. I don’t move. My legs work. I know they do. They carried me through worse things — war zones of the heart, ancestral curses, kitchens full of shattered plates. But I still can’t make them climb. I don’t know if that makes me weak or merciful. I don’t know if it’s sabotage or a mercy I don’t deserve. A dog that weeps after it kills is still a killer. A dog that weeps is still a dog. Your guilt won’t make you holy. Your regret won’t make you clean. So I ask: when you see a butterfly land on lavender — that momentary grace, delicate and impossible — do you still spell my name in your head, as if that might bring me back? As if I ever left?

@baileyxward

May 28, 2025

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LAZY

Lazy bastards. Cats. All they do is sprawl out in shafts of sunlight like they own the world—because, in some unspeakable, infuriating way, they do. It’s not envy, not exactly. More like reluctant reverence. I watch them with their slow blinks and casual disregard for everything that demands urgency in a human life, and I think: God, let me be that next time. If there’s an afterlife—if this universe owes us any justice at all—I want out of this skin. Reincarnate me. Strip me of ambition and anxiety, of the gnawing hunger to matter. Make me a cat in someone’s backyard, basking in dandelions and overgrown grass, twitching my tail at passing dragonflies like I’ve got all the time in the world. Let me roll on warm concrete, belly exposed in the ultimate act of trust, purring not out of contentment but as a declaration of territory. Not even the grandest visions of heaven could tempt me otherwise. Give me this one small, feral freedom. There’s a kind of holiness in the way cats move—aloof and unimpressed by gods or mortals—that makes me wonder if they’re the only creatures who got life right. And maybe, deep down, I don’t want eternal peace or salvation. Maybe I just want to nap in a sunbeam without anyone needing anything from me. Let the next life be small. Let it be simple. Let it be feline.

@baileyxward

May 29, 2025