#Growing

"As we learn, grow and prosper, consciousness takes on new expressions and intrinsically searches for purpose and meaning."

"I fantasize the night sky to be like a cosmic blue print of my life as I close my eyes and unbutton my heart…. just in case anyone up there is listening."

"Stop trying to be less of who you are. Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back."

"Your personal truth is your gift to the world."

"The lungs are fishing nets for smoke, and I inhaled her essence like she was marijuana grown just for me."

"My father was an electrical engineer who worked at Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. When I was growing up, my mother wrote humor columns for the local paper. She was the Erma Bombeck of Murrysville, Pa."

"I can do this… I can start over. I can save my own life and I’m never going to be alone as long as I have stars to wish on and people to still love."

"If ever I was running, it was towards you."

"I know that your soul is on life support and that you feel lost and like you’re completely spinning out of control, but you’re finding yourself — here, tonight… even in this darkness."

"I just want your voice aimed at me again. I want to absorb the direction of your eyes…"

"Don’t worry if people think you’re crazy. You are crazy. You have that kind of intoxicating insanity that lets other people dream outside of the lines and become who they’re destined to be."

"I look out into the water and up deep into the stars. I beg the sparkling lanterns of light to cure me of myself — my past and the kaleidoscope of mistakes, failures and wrong turns that have stacked unbearable regret upon my shoulders."

"I know that this process of ‘me changing my life’ doesn’t just end once I set fire to this list of things I hate about myself. Tonight isn’t as much of a new beginning as it is a violent end and I know the real work hasn’t even started yet."

"For so many years, I couldn’t understand why every time I thought that someone finally loved me, like… for real, they would eventually turn to vapor. Every person whom I’ve ever loved is trapped inside of my chest. I’ve breathed all of them in so deeply that I’ve nearly choked and died on every soul that I’ve ever given myself to."

"I look in the mirror through the eyes of the child that was me."

"Every day I’m growing as a man. I’m not growing in height, but rather I’m growing in love, which makes me seem taller than I really am."

"Does our purpose on Earth directly link to the people whom we end up meeting? Are our relationships and experiences actually the required dots that connect and then lead us to our ultimate destinies?"

"I’ve grown up defined by this desperate, undeniable, ‘can’t breathe’ kind of space inside of myself and I’m afraid that the diagnosis is fatal."

"I feel a resurgence of my 6-year-old self… that little warrior, goddess of a girl reminding me of who I was when I was little, before the world got its hands on me."

"I love him in ways that I can’t explain to other people. They don’t understand… it’s not their fault."