Bianca Sparacino

The things that hurt you
may have left scars,
but they did not destroy you.
You survived,
and there is hope in that.

You are the one
who built your walls.

Don’t ever doubt for a second
that you have the capacity
to tear them down.

If it is for you, trust that it will find you.

Be brave enough to heal yourself
even when it hurts.

The world is going to give you beauty,

but it will also give you pain.

The greatest lesson you will ever learn

is that this, too,

is a gift.

Your body is more than just a graveyard for those who could not love it. Your heart is more than just a cemetery for those who disappeared.

if you have the ability to inspire me, if you have the ability to stimulate my mind and stir my thoughts—well, that makes you magic.

Goodbye is hard sometimes because the action of leaving is so permanent, and yet that person still occupies so much of the space within your chest. Goodbye isn’t final, it isn’t a finish line you have to step over in order to forget. See, you can’t unlove someone. You can’t get their scent out of your pillowcases, can’t unlearn their name and forget what it felt like to be immersed in the hope and beauty of another human being. People never stay gone. They show up in street corners, they show up in familiar laughs and the booth at that one restaurant where you first held their hand. Goodbye isn’t as simple as many make it seem; goodbye isn’t really goodbye, not for someone who still cares. Not for the person left in the aftermath of a hurricane they once loved.

Life has taught me

that the people who often love the hardest

are the ones who have been hurt the most

They left because at a tender age they were taught that “I love you” doesn’t always mean, I’ll stay.”