To all the boys I've loved before

Part 1
We are not your mothers
You have been weaned from the breast of a woman for years
Yet you come to us wounded and half filled 
with promises you can only keep half the time 
Trying to suck a lost sense of self dry
We have become much too accustomed to sleepless nights and damp pillows
Have become much too accustomed to waiting for our empty beds 
to be weighed down with the bodies of men, 
heavy with the scent and the hands of other women 
and we simply wanting to be loved and to love ourselves unconditionally
Simply wanting the truth of whether you can really love us or not.
Play Hester Prynne
Place scarlet letters on our chest
Become adulteresses, cheating ourselves out of what we truly deserve
Willing to settle for less
Willing to act like a little less then a goddess
Willing to sleep with the enemy
Men too scared to stop acting like boys, thinking we can love away their scars
So we take the lashes of their insecurities they pour on us
And lick our wounds in quiet mourning for the little girls that we lose by the minute.

Part 2
You said you had a photographic memory.
But apparently you forgot that honesty begins by being real with yourself 
and the ones you claim you love
The truth cannot be hidden
What’s clouded in darkness will always come to light my love.
You should have known that, claiming you saw my light so clearly and brightly
I guess shit happens.... I just wish it wasn’t me
And I guess it’s so much better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all
I know that’s some easy shit to say but I’m still gonna try to live by it
I’m still gonna try to put my faith to rest in it
I will sleep on dry pillows now in a bed big enough to love myself in.
I will awake these coming mornings with my eyes dry and shiny, full of the knowledge
I am priceless and worth nothing but honesty
I will remove this scarlet letter from my chest
And take the hand of the little girl I used to be and say I’m sorry to her
I’m sorry for cheating you out of the joy you have always deserved
And I will wait for a man to come along 
that can give me the truth of how much he can really love me.
Mayda Del Valle

wanderlust

“You’ve got wanderlust
stamped on to your heart
next to a list of promises 
to see more, 
do more, 
be more. But tonight, 
you’re in a city
that understands loneliness
all too well, with
people who know loss ―
they can pick him out
in a crowd. Tonight,
you’re looking at the stars 
with your eyes shut, and
I hope you find home. I hope 
you remember the way 
the sky looked when it 
opened blue.
I hope you find tomorrow."

unlike anything else

If he wants to leave you, let him leave. You are terrifying, strange, and beautiful. Not something everyone knows how to love.

silent

To say "I want you"
would sound far too eager.

To say "I need you"
would sound far too desperate.

To say "I love you"
would sound far too hasty.

So I remain silent,
hoping not to sound
too indifferent.

beautiful disaster

I will teach my daughter not to wear her skin like a drunken apology. I will tell her ‘make a home out of your body, live in yourself, do not let people turn you into a regret, do not justify yourself. If you are a disaster it is not forever, if you are a disaster you are the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen. Do not deconstruct from the inside out, you belong here, you belong here, not because you are lovely, but because you are more than that.’ Azra T. 

Last Dream

And someone once told me,
“There are moments, which mark your life.
Moments when you realize nothing will ever be the same
And time is divided into two parts, before this, and after this.”

Ah ma, I am thinking of you, always.
Remembering you. Daydreaming about your hands. And the way they must have held me as a baby. The way they lifted me up as a child. The way you opened the world for me to believe I could one day do anything I set my mind to. Those were the same hands I talked to, cried to, prayed to on those sleepless nights by your hospital bed. Hands that left me sobbing, dripping like a question mark so full of beg. Those hands that remind me of hope, loss, courage, and everything that is limitless.

Each curve, each line, each wrinkle telling a story.
An unsang melody lasting 97 years.
The hands of a servant girl, a midwife, a farmer, a wife, a mother, a grandmother.

It is one year later, yet I still feel your heartbeat. Bashing against my consciousness, daring me to be a better woman. I am the product of a grandmother who taught me about affection and selflessness. About right from wrong. About being humble with myself and those who I love. I am a product of a grandmother who would leave me her last dollar because she knew I would always be her last dream.

10 Painfully Obvious Truths Everyone Forgets Too Soon

1.  The average human life is relatively short.

We know deep down that life is short, and that death will happen to all of us eventually, and yet we are infinitely surprised when it happens to someone we know.  It’s like walking up a flight of stairs with a distracted mind, and misjudging the final step.  You expected there to be one more stair than there is, and so you find yourself off balance for a moment, before your mind shifts back to the present moment and how the world really is. LIVE your life TODAY!  Don’t ignore death, but don’t be afraid of it either.  Be afraid of a life you never lived because you were too afraid to take action.  Death is not the greatest loss in life.  The greatest loss is what dies inside you while you’re still alive.  Be bold.  Be courageous.  Be scared to death, and then take the next step anyway.

2.  You will only ever live the life you create for yourself.

Your life is yours alone.  Others can try to persuade you, but they can’t decide for you.  They can walk with you, but not in your shoes.  So make sure the path you decide to walk aligns with your own intuition and desires, and don’t be scared to switch paths or pave a new one when it makes sense.
Remember, it’s always better to be at the bottom of the ladder you want to climb than the top of the one you don’t.  Be productive and patient.  And realize that patience is not about waiting, but the ability to keep a good attitude while working hard for what you believe in.  This is your life, and it is made up entirely of your choices.  May your actions speak louder than your words.  May your life preach louder than your lips.  May your success be your noise in the end. And if life only teaches you one thing, let it be that taking a passionate leap is always worth it.  Even if you have no idea where you’re going to land, be brave enough to step up to the edge of the unknown, and listen to your heart.

3.  Being busy does NOT mean being productive.

Busyness isn’t a virtue, nor is it something to respect.  Though we all have seasons of crazy schedules, very few of us have a legitimate need to be busy ALL the time.  We simply don’t know how to live within our means, prioritize properly, and say no when we should. Being busy rarely equates to productivity these days.  Just take a quick look around.  Busy people outnumber productive people by a wide margin.  Busy people are rushing all over the place, and running late half of the time.  They’re heading to work, conferences, meetings, social engagements, etc.  They barely have enough free time for family get-togethers and they rarely get enough sleep.  Yet, emails are shooting out of their smart phones like machine gun bullets, and their day planners are jammed to the brim with obligations.  Their busy schedule gives them an elevated sense of importance.  But it’s all an illusion.  They’re like hamsters running on a wheel. Though being busy can make us feel more alive than anything else for a moment, the sensation is not sustainable long term.  We will inevitably, whether tomorrow or on our deathbed, come to wish that we spent less time in the buzz of busyness and more time actually living a purposeful life.

4.  Some kind of failure always occurs before success.

Most mistakes are unavoidable.  Learn to forgive yourself.  It’s not a problem to make them.  It’s only a problem if you never learn from them. If you’re too afraid of failure, you can’t possibly do what needs to be done to be successful.  The solution to this problem is making friends with failure.  You want to know the difference between a master and a beginner?  The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.  Behind every great piece of art is a thousand failed attempts to make it, but these attempts are simply never shown to us. Bottom line:  Just because it’s not happening now, doesn’t mean it never will.  Sometimes things have to go very wrong before they can be right.

5.  Thinking and doing are two very different things.

Success never comes to look for you while you wait around thinking about it. You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.  Knowledge is basically useless without action.  Good things don’t come to those who wait; they come to those who work on meaningful goals.  Ask yourself what’s really important and then have the courage to build your life around your answer.
And remember, if you wait until you feel 100% ready to begin, you’ll likely be waiting the rest of your life.

6.  You don’t have to wait for an apology to forgive.

Life gets much easier when you learn to accept all the apologies you never got.  The key is to be thankful for every experience – positive or negative.  It’s taking a step back and saying, “Thank you for the lesson.”  It’s realizing that grudges from the past are a perfect waste of today’s happiness, and that holding one is like letting unwanted company live rent free in your head. Forgiveness is a promise – one you want to keep.  When you forgive someone you are making a promise not to hold the unchangeable past against your present self.  It has nothing to do with freeing a criminal of his or her crime, and everything to do with freeing yourself of the burden of being an eternal victim.

7.  Some people are simply the wrong match for you.

You will only ever be as great as the people you surround yourself with, so be brave enough to let go of those who keep bringing you down.  You shouldn’t force connections with people who constantly make you feel less than amazing. If someone makes you feel uncomfortable and insecure every time you’re with them, for whatever reason, they’re probably not close friend material.  If they make you feel like you can’t be yourself, or if they make you “less than” in any way, don’t pursue a connection with them.  If you feel emotionally drained after hanging out with them or get a small hit of anxiety when you are reminded of them, listen to your intuition.  There are so many “right people” for you, who energize you and inspire you to be your best self.  It makes no sense to force it with people who are the wrong match for you.

8.  It’s not other people’s job to love you; it’s yours.

It’s important to be nice to others, but it’s even more important to be nice to yourself.  You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.  So make sure you don’t start seeing yourself through the eyes of those who don’t value you.  Know your worth, even if they don’t. Today, let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as incomplete as you think you are.  Yes, let someone love you despite all of this, and let that someone be YOU.

9.  What you own is not who YOU are.

Stuff really is just stuff, and it has absolutely no bearing on who you are as a person.  Most of us can make do with much less than we think we need.  That’s a valuable reminder, especially in a hugely consumer-driven culture that focuses more on material things than meaningful connections and experiences. You have to create your own culture.  Don’t watch TV, don’t read every fashion magazine, and don’t consume too much of the evening news.  Find the strength to fill your time with meaningful experiences.  The space and time you are occupying at this very moment is LIFE, and if you’re worrying about Kim Kardashian or Lebron James or some other famous face, then you are disempowered.  You’re giving your life away to marketing and media trickery, which is created by big companies to ultimately motivate you to want to dress a certain way, look a certain way, and be a certain way.  This is tragic, this kind of thinking.  It’s all just Hollywood brainwashing.  What is real is YOU and your friends and your family, your loves, your highs, your hopes, your plans, your fears, etc. Too often we’re told that we’re not important, we’re just peripheral to what is.  “Get a degree, get a job, get a car, get a house, and keep on getting.”  And it’s sad, because someday you’ll wake up and realize you’ve been tricked.  And all you’ll want then is to reclaim your mind by getting it out of the hands of the brainwashers who want to turn you into a drone that buys everything that isn’t needed to impress everyone that isn't important.

10.  Everything changes, every second.

Embrace change and realize it happens for a reason.  It won’t always be obvious at first, but in the end it will be worth it. What you have today may become what you had by tomorrow.  You never know.  Things change, often spontaneously.  People and circumstances come and go.  Life doesn’t stop for anybody.  It moves rapidly and rushes from calm to chaos in a matter of seconds, and happens like this to people every day.  It’s likely happening to someone nearby right now.
Sometimes the shortest split second in time changes the direction of our lives.  A seemingly innocuous decision rattles our whole world like a meteorite striking Earth.  Entire lives have been swiveled and flipped upside down, for better or worse, on the strength of an unpredictable event. And these events are always happening. However good or bad a situation is now, it will change.  That’s the one thing you can count on.  So when life is good, enjoy it.  Don’t go looking for something better every second.  Happiness never comes to those who don’t appreciate what they have while they have it.