Thoughts

Watered Down

“I see this beautiful, gorgeous, girl who has these big and amazing dreams and she won't tell people what she wants. I think you use filters when telling me what you want. And so you feel alone, because I don't often hear you fully, because what you're saying has been filtered and watered down so much”
////

These are words someone said to me once. 

I’d written them down in an attempts to remember them.
In hopes that they would sink in, in the way you want good advice to sink in, and that I would come to some resolve afterwards to take action against their subject, however conscious or subconscious. 

The subject being, to not filter what I want. 

When I came across these words recently I realized, that it's been quite some time since I heard them but also, more importantly: I am not that person anymore. 

Or, at least, I haven’t been for the past year or so. I’ve slowly but surely built up that assurance in myself (whether it was conscious or subconscious is unknown) and my desires and convictions to state, really-truly-all-the-way-out-loud what it is I want. 

With the exception of lately. 

Lately there’s been a certain area in my life where I haven’t been all the way clear about those things. I've been watering things down. It’s mostly business related, but, without going into detail, I've been noticing that it’s leaked into other areas of my life as well.
However, I have no desire to revert back to that person that I once-upon-a-time was.

And so this is a reminder to myself today.

Don’t water down your dreams.
Your ambitions.
Your wants.
Whether they are larger than life desires, or in the moment small needs. Because you’re a person with value and substance. Your wants matter. Don’t be shy about them. Be bold and speak out. 
No one's going to know what you want unless you tell them. It's not a guessing game. Don't treat your dreams so lightly. Give them the voice they deserve.

Don’t leave them watered down.

Write To Me Always

write to me always. 

in words of mutual confidence, despair, joy, frustration. write to me always of the feelings that i do so have a hard time putting into all-the-way-making-sense trains of thought.

write to me of the poetry i attempt to live but so often cannot write or verbally express. write to me of our late night thoughts that come about on star lit rooftops. in parked cars. on light-dim-dark dance floors. on mussed beds from long evenings of lying about in wonder at the events that brought us here.

because yours is a soul that resonates and responds with mine in a way that is at times baffling and unexplainable but something i not all-the-way need to understand. simply because i am content in our bond and working on the canvas that we now mutually share.

so write to me always.

Know Yourself

I just want to remind you to know yourself.
And if you don't feel like you know yourself, get to. 
Spend time with you in varying situations and places and circumstances.
Comfortable and uncomfortable.
Alone. With people. With strangers. With friends. 
Be honest about your loves and likes and dislikes.
Stay true to them when you find them.
But also be okay with them evolving and changing with you as you evolve and change. 
Don't be ashamed of the quirks and inconsistencies and wrinkles and bumps and imperfections.
Whether they be physical or emotional.
Be unwavering in embracing who you are.
The world will notice that. It's what's most attractive about people.
The embracing of their whole entire selves, flaws and all.
The openness, rawness and realness of being intrinsically human. 
If you currently feel like that, open, raw, and in a state of mess and struggle, embrace it.
Be there.
Be all there.
Because it's beautiful.
And you'd be so much duller, flatter, and unattractive without those pieces of you.
Because those pieces help refine and shape you into being a person worth knowing.  

//// Thanks Emily for modeling for these portraits.
I love that you know exactly who you are.
Keep knowing that.