December 2011
73 posts
Over the past few days, I’ve found a handful of No Shame November posts trickling into my email account. Though I can’t post them, I would like to say that if any of you feel the urge to share your stories, you may continue to pass them along in my direction. Sometimes the catharsis is contained in just writing it and sending it away, not necessarily allowing hundreds of strangers to...
Hi everyone,
Thank you to everyone who participated in No Shame November this year. You have all proved your willingness to do something outside of your comfort zone, and I hope you gained a little something from sharing your words.
Until next time, Rachel
the scariest part of this project is that i am being honest, but i still don’t feel very brave.
(nora)
Every time I tell myself just once more, you’ll be perfect soon, this is the last one. I’m lying, and I know it, but that won’t stop me. I’ve grow too accustomed now, I don’t want to. My eyes tear up as it all comes out, and I think about my goal, I’m satisfied now that everything is gone. I promised him I’d never go back, it’d never get that bad,...
I can’t get you off of my mind. I miss you and it’s killing me.
(anonymous)
I should hate your guts after all the shit you put me through. But I don’t. Not at all, not even a little bit. I still just want to make you happy because your sad all the fucking time. I still just want to be yours. I still just want to sit in an empty room and just stare into nothing with you. I loved how we could spend hours talking or hours in silence. I loved how you were like my half,...
Something that scares me: I will have to wait another year before I can submit the words I want to share. I haven’t found them yet.
(anonymous)
There must be something wrong with me. I have a constant need to feel wanted. You might say…on no everyone goes through that. Everyone wants to feel wanted. But this is different. I don’t know what it is about me. But I need it. I need it to function. I fall apart if I don’t feel needed. Right now my friend base is 0. All I have is my mom and my boyfriend and sometimes I get too...
My eyes were puffy bloodshot eyelids swollen blue and purple semi circles imprinted on the delicate tissue my body was aching everything felt stiff and sore my blood felt of glass frozen glass as if nothing was moving everything was at a standstill, my bones felt dead and brittle as if I would snap!! any second, as if I would crack!! at the wrong step a miscalculated twist. I rolled out of bed the...
The truth is that I’m broken. My first kiss was with a guy that had lead me on for years beforehand and would tell me beautiful lies because I was too weak to hear the truth; the truth is that I love him for those lies. My first best friend turned out to be a bitch, and now we don’t even talk; the truth is that I miss her more than anything else in the world. My first love was my...
I will be kissing no one this National Kissing Day. I will not be telling anybody how unreasonably in a state I am, or how my emotions are taking shape. I overestimate my importance, while they underestimate theirs. I wish I were a spellcasting cherub who, instead of making people fall in love, made them at least not afraid to try again. I wish, just once, that I was somebody’s first choice....
I’m scared of her. I’m scared that she’ll come back and I’ll go with her. I’m scared that the moment I see her, I’ll lose everything I’ve gained since she left. I’m scared that she’ll come back and I’ll forget the pieces of myself that I’ve collected so carefully. I’m scared that she still has power over me. I’m scared...
My mother raised me to be a caretaker—her heart would break once, and then twice, and then three times, and then a fourth when she planted her palm against my cheekbone. “Take care of me,” tears would slip from the corners of her eyes and I’d pick up the shattered remnants of the wine bottle from the kitchen floor, stroke the crack in the counter where she had taken the...
I’m avoidance. I actually procrastinate writing, no typing everything that has occupied my mind down until the last minute, the last chance of submit something for this project. I always lie, circumvent, duck away, dramatize and stay silent whenever the siren in my head blaring, signifying something is coming up, although it was just only encountering or hanging out with friends, my closest...
I read your post on here. It’s easy to find traces of you, when our mutual friends have our best interest. The letter you wrote, was of unrequited love. Years have passed and you spoke of time, promises and how I moved on to not quite caring. On the contrary, I moved on to not fighting, because harbored are still remnants of resentment. Words and worlds were never spoken, because it would...
I am leaving you. Let’s not be petty and point out the fact that you have already left me, numerous times, during the course of our five year courtship. Tonight, I bury you. I won’t carry you with me through December. The heat won’t remind me of you and that salty scent of sweat won’t remind me of you and steaming pavements won’t remind me of you and I’ll live and I’ll keep living and I’ll...
I know every inch of your body better than I know my own. I’ve memorized the taste of your tongue and the way your chest flutters when you snore, I know the smell of your J.Crew cologne that has somehow embedded itself into all of my clothes, yet I still don’t know you. For the past eight weeks I’ve woken up to the scruff of your beard sending shivers down my spine as you kiss my...
I’m terrified that when I’m married, with two lovely kids and a man who truly loves me… I’ll still be thinking of you. Wondering about endless what-ifs. What if I had the courage to stay. What if I had the courage to defy my family. What if I had the courage to battle the endless obstacles that we would have to go through if we were still together. It took all of me to walk away, it took all of...
you wanna talk about shame? let’s talk about kissing you on my bedroom floor with thin lips. there was snow falling outside my window like all the ways you thought you could save me. you couldn’t save me. let’s be clear about this: i was a woman of seventeen with very long hair. you were still making plans to run away from your parents house. i would have kept you for my friend...
I looked at my watch. It had stopped at exactly 10:30 that morning, but I kept checking it throughout the day in the hope its hands had somehow regained consciousness. They hadn’t, and my tardiness was evident of that. It didn’t matter, though. I just know she would be there, sitting in the same booth she usually does with her head cocked downward staring boundlessly at the menu. I...
“It feels like everything is slowly turning to crap…” We wanted summer, our summer, to last forever, but rather the cogs keep turning and life thrusts forward and just when you’re getting comfortable, everything changes. (faireandfen)
Ive been putting off writing this all month, and now that the time has come for me to put something together my brain can’t settle and there are a thousand things running through it all calling out at me. I want to say that I am in such awe to be able call you mine, that I can’t imagine anybody else in the world who I could go through life with. That you truly are my light and...
I thought writing this would be easy. I thought that the words would come pouring out of me, but I’ve been staring at a blank document for almost an hour. Nothing seems to be easy anymore. The classes are harder, the relationships are more serious, and the idea of being a real person is becoming inescapable. I consistently feel insecure, unhappy, and like I will never be enough. The worst...
We all have a story to tell; that, in itself, is an indisputable fact. The question is, how honest are we willing to be? There will be remainders left over after a true story – figurative paper cuts, smudges of verbal ink on fingers, dog-eared memory holders, something. Simply put, a true story will strike something inside of you. It will be sincere. Unaffected. Artless. It should feel...
“Real or Not Real?” (Hunger Game reference) I am constantly asking myself this. I watch way to much TV; I read way too many fiction books; and I listen to way to much music. Sometimes I forget that those aren’t real life. This messes with my feelings all the time. I don’t know what’s real and what’s not real. I obviously know the difference between fact and...
I am terrified of the things I think I’ve gotten over. Because sometimes, when I’m laying alone in bed they come flooding back and make me ache so bad I think I’m going to break into pieces and it’s then that I realise maybe I still have some grieving to do and maybe I’m not quite over them yet and the thought that all the pain I’ve already felt is not even...
I know you’re the one who told me that if I wanted to do this, then I should. So here I am, typing this submission with you on my mind. You’re really there more than you should be and it puts me off. Not in a bad way I suppose. So now I will admit that I am a coward in a post that is supposed to be me showing my bravery of some sort. Honestly, I am the biggest coward I know. Perhaps...
The only thing thats really ever scared me in my life is the man in the mirror. Now, dont mistake this person with a reflection. The man staring back at you in the mirror is not the accurate depiction of anything you hold true about yourself. The woman in the mirror follows the same rules. The reason this person staring back at me frightens me to such a degree is because that person is the only...
I hate your crooked smile and your stupid haircut. I hate your jawline and I hate the deep blue color of your eyes. I hate how you live an hour away and we haven’t known each other for very long, but you know what makes me tick because we’re so similar. I hate how I felt like I had to break up with you. I hate the look in your eyes when you’re concentrating on something, thinking...
December is near, and I’m still all alone. Apologies exhaust me; the word sorry pulls at my insides and nothing is okay. Nothing is ever okay when you are not around. The trees growing in my bones are dying without you. Save me, save me, save me. Nevermind, you cannot hear my call. If you could hear my voice right now, would you even listen? Because no one ever listens. I don’t even listen. Do you...
I’m afraid I’ve forgotten how to be happy. I know sadness, I know fear, I know longing and anxiety and despair. I even know how to be content. But happy? Really, truly happy? I can’t even explain the concept. I never get excited about anything anymore, never look forward to anything. I’m afraid I’m broken somehow and I’ll never be whole again. All I want is to...
This is a different kind of story I guess. This time last year I wrote to no shame November, anonymously, about how I was embarrassed about how I masturbate, and I have been since I was really young, and that I hadn’t told anyone. I was miserable then. I was tired and frustrated and, I see now, for no reason really. No reason than that was what I wanted to be. It was easier to just...
I’m haunted by thoughts of death. Both mine and others. I’m afraid I won’t be alive to submit something this time next year. I’m afraid of everything going on around me. There’s no place in this world or the next for people like me. I’m too tired to live and too afraid to die. And because of that, I’m trapped. I wish I could have phrased this more...
“What do you love most about me?” “Only one characteristic?” “Only one.” The ease of your presence. Your effortless beauty, not just physically but the way you are. It’s like everything comes so naturally to you, from the way you lure me in to the way you speak. Like bees to honey. Like you were born to bring me to my knees, make my hands quiver. When...
On this cold day, I feel alive. Walking alone, watching clouds of breath all around me, trying to control my own. I feel alive, but I still hold this fear, like this tiny tiny ball of insecurities and second guesses and comparisons and what if’s, and when I get close to courageousness the twine of fear unravels in whispers that sound like alarms in my head, you’re not good enough,...
The way my heart stops for a fraction of a second every time I think of the day you were murdered. To know that it is possible to feel like your heart is going to explode, or rip into a million pieces, or slowly stop beating from the stark truth that you are never coming back. Hoping that my life will cease to exist because the unashamed pain that thrives off of every memory of every inch of...
It’s difficult to watch the magic die, the stars fall, the eccentricities replaced by mundane acceptance. It’s difficult to feel the emotion fade, the vitality drain, the feelings moderate. Logic and complacency simplify everything. But true joy can only come from pain. But one day the hurt is too much and one resorts to complacency. I want passion and magic. I lay here...
Born in shame, I saw those images pierce my eyes and burn themselves into my memory. I feel myself craving some grotesque touch to sliver up through my things and ruin me, but in that split second before it enters through me, I can feel my soul screaming and thrashing to escape. I carry the shame that you hold inside of your heart. Born in shame. You brought up something I shouldn’t have ever...
I was crawling on the edges and hiding in the curtains for so long, and I was laughing. It’s impossible to classify how many different kinds of laughter there are, but there is laughter you mean and laughter you don’t. Laughter you feel and laughter you can’t. On my twentieth birthday I laughed as hard as you should laugh on that day. Two decades worth of yelling and screaming, growing and...
This is the opportunity I had always thought I had been waiting for, until it is here. I’ve spent the entire month wondering what to do with myself, what to write about, what exactly it is I need to say. I love to write, but hate teenage cliche angst. I’ve decided that I won’t delete, won’t go back and edit myself until it’s perfect, because what’s perfect?...
My best friend passed away 527 days ago and I still haven’t recovered from losing her. She died by the power of her own hand, but I know it was my fault. Everyone has tried to convince me that I didn’t do anything wrong - they have no idea. What about the fact that she was in love with me, despite us both being women? Does anyone know that I led her on for a year and a half, making...
I used to plan things like this out. When I was in the fifth grade, I had visions of myself pulling the cutest boy in the class behind the big Oak tree at the school playground. And while the shade of the leaves was hovering over our heads, I would tell him: “I like you” and he would kiss me on the cheek and all of the other girls watching from the squeaky swings would drag their feet on the wood...
I told myself, that I wouldn’t let this happen. Not again. I wouldn’t let you break me this time like all the rest. Hell, you were never supposed to be the one to finish the job; to take every remaining piece of me and throw it away. You were supposed to be the one to pick them all up from the other boys before you. You were supposed to be the one that helped put me back together. You...
If I go to him, I’ll just compare every ounce of his being, every particle of the us we would be, to you. You will be that esteemed model, the paragon, the epitome of my desire. But he will never be you. He’ll be different; possibly, probably better for me. But I won’t care. He won’t be you. He’ll do everything right, except that he won’t be you. He’ll be...
I’m not your average young adult. I’m not your normal female. I’ve struggled, I’ve had a past, and my past seems to be taking over my future. It scares me so bad that I’ll never rise above myself and become who I want to be, but I’m trying. God, I am trying. I was recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder by not only one mental healthcare practitioner, but...
If I ever get my hands on you, I would literally wring your neck until your head exploded. Seriously what kind of fucking person are you? If I ever got the chance I would hunt you down and cut your little incredibly naive stupid heart out. How dare you go around taking pieces of innocent people leaving them feeling incomplete and lost? Who bestowed you the goddamn power to fuck with people’s lives...
Everyone thinks that it’s the inital pain that hurts the most when your mom dies. They’re wrong. It’s the missing that leaves your teeth aching, the trembling fingertips when all you want is to press the call button on your phone, the time when you realize that there are things they will never live through. It’s sitting across the diner table and saying...
I’m happy for a few weeks in March and again for a little over a week most Octobers but for the rest of the year I’m silently contemplating suicide with varying degrees of seriousness and sincerity. Look, do you think in my rock and roll youth I ever imagined I’d spend my thirties worrying about picking out the right can of sweet corn at the suburban grocery megaplex? Does that appeal to you?...
I’m a lesbian. I told my parents and they are accepting, but my mom makes fun of me for it all the time. I’m so lonely, she doesn’t understand. I wish I could go back into the closet.
(carmenluigina)
You make me feel as though I’ve missed out on something important, as though I won’t grow up because it’s already too late, because I don’t know how. You, so much more mature than I despite fewer years. What happened to me? What didn’t happen to me? Perhaps I should see somebody, be with somebody. Somebody that can explain why I wont be touched, that can explain why...