“Travel is little beds and cramped bathrooms. It’s old television sets and slow Internet connections. Travel is extraordinary conversations with ordinary people. It’s waiters, gas station attendants, and housekeepers becoming the most interesting people in the world. It’s churches that are compelling enough to enter. It’s McDonald’s being a luxury. It’s the realization that you may have been born in the wrong country. Travel is a smile that leads to a conversation in broken English. It’s the epiphany that pretty girls smile the same way all over the world. Travel is tipping 10% and being embraced for it. Travel is the same white T-shirt again tomorrow. Travel is accented sex after good wine and too many unfiltered cigarettes. Travel is flowing in the back of a bus with giggly strangers. It’s a street full of bearded backpackers looking down at maps. Travel is wishing for one more bite of whatever that just was. It’s the rediscovery of walking somewhere. It’s sharing a bottle of liquor on an overnight train with a new friend. Travel is ‘Maybe I don’t have to do it that way when I get back home.’”

“Once I fell off my bike, once I fell down the stairs, once I fell into a lake, once I fell in love, once I fell out of love, once I turned once into twice. The second time I usually remember. But how do you know which of the ‘once’ are worth it? Anyway, you fall and you get back up. You fall and you get back up. You get up just to fall again. Always. Just. Get. Up.”

“I don’t feel the same way”

brain-food:

You knew the chances of hearing that were on the table, but like all fairy tales we have grasped for dear life on, you were hoping for the happy ending rather than, well, the shit pile that just got dumped on your feelings. 

Despite liking somebody and them not liking you back, I would like to tell you that I’m proud you at least vocalized these feelings rather than holding them forever as if you were Voldemort and liking someone was a Horcrux.

This shit happens. More often for others, but some time down the line it does happen to everyone. It’s what makes us all fear rejection and openly welcome torture of never really knowing. I’m guilty of this. I’ve denied my feelings for someone or refused to be the first to admit my feelings. Which is why I won’t sit here and tell you to go ahead and tell that person in your life that you’d want to John Hughes that shit up with them. I also won’t tell you that those feelings will be mutual 100% of the time. I can’t even bullshit a proper percentage because it will always be a hit or a miss. You kinda just put your feelings out there and hope for the best. I think that’s one of the bravest things anyone can do in their life really.

I will tell you this. For me, not knowing is much worse than knowing. I enjoy the fantasies in my head of a relationship that could be, but I would like to take that thought out of my head and place it into my every day life. When that person declines the offer of my feels, it sucks. It sucks all of the balls on this planet. But now I can at least move forward, and stop torturing myself with the unknown emotional abyss. I can finally sleep.

But I get it. I get why not speaking up seems like a better option. Your little happy bubble gets burst and you feel like no one else can take that place. And even worse, you start taking it out on yourself. Blaming everything in the mirror and burrowing yourself in the deepest and darkest place possible. I wish I could tell you not to do that. To not automatically say it’s every flaw you see in yourself that this person doesn’t feel the same way toward you. That maybe it’s just chemistry, maybe it’s personality differences, maybe they can go piss off because you’re one hell of a fucking person. Like I said, this shit happens. To everyone. I know you won’t find comfort in that, and yeah it doesn’t put a Band-Aid on your feelings nor does it make that person like you back. I wish I had those abilities. I just wanted you to know that despite not getting the happy ending this time doesn’t mean you’ll never get it at all. I say that with confidence, too.