Coffee, Books and Everything else

Posts

Showing posts from September, 2026

Show all

“Hey, can I get back to you later? I’m in the middle of trying to keep myself together.” Often, you wish you could say that to people. Tell them the truth, so they might understand what it is like sometimes inside your head. And yet, some days, your mind opens the door to its own ghosts, and suddenly there is no room left inside you for anything else, no explanation you could offer. So you retreat, slowly disappearing from the world, finding your way back to the familiar darkness that was once your hiding place. You thought you had left it behind, believing you had finally found your way out. Only to find yourself standing at its door, once more. And you think to yourself, “One of these days, the ghosts will get tired too.” M. | September 2026

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/1mzQvN5 via IFTTT

“And you do not need my forgiveness, nor I yours; it is all the same whether you forgive or not, all the rest of my life you will remain like a wound in my soul, and I in yours - and that is proper” ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/I07GcM6 via IFTTT

“I can't think of anything to write about, I'm just walking around here between the lines, under the light of your eyes, in the breadth of your mouth as in a beautiful happy day, which remains beautiful and happy, even when the head is sick and tired.” ~Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/LthsBFk via IFTTT

I didn't notice September leaving until there was so little of it left. Maybe that is how time works when you are simply trying to make it through the days. You wake up, you do what needs to be done, you carry whatever is still waiting for you, and somewhere between one day and the next, an entire month has passed. There are things in me that may never completely disappear. The sadness. The anxiety. The old fears that still know exactly where to find me. Perhaps I will carry some of them for the rest of my life. And I know there will still be days when I fall apart. Days when my mind becomes too loud, when I am tired of carrying myself, when getting through the day feels like an accomplishment no one else will ever know about. I will keep going, even on the days when living feels less like certainty and more like an act of faith. Maybe strength was never about becoming someone who could not be broken. Maybe it was learning that brokenness does not get to decide what happens next. September is leaving now. I don't have some beautiful ending for it. I don't think I need one. It was a month. I lived through it. Some days I was brave. Some days I was barely holding myself together. Most days, I was somewhere in between. But I kept going. M. | September 2026

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/QLuAC5F via IFTTT

“How can you be happy in this world? You have a hole in your heart. You have a gateway inside you to lands beyond the world you know. They will call you, as you grow. There can never be a time when you forget them, when you are not, in your heart, questing after something you cannot have, something you cannot even properly imagine, the lack of which will spoil your sleep and your day and your life, until you close your eyes for the final time” ~Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/CBM2VIQ via IFTTT

Over time, I realised that I have not recovered from many things. There were times, even when I was still bleeding profusely, I just shook myself up and moved on with my life. It’s not that I did not allow myself to truly feel and deal with the pain, it’s just that I was too used to being strong that I was afraid I would lose the only protective mechanism that I have. I am a soul full of grief, anger, and longing. I am a keeper of everything broken in my life and of those shattered pieces left by all the people who had been in some chapters of my book. Their memories are forever etched inside my heart, laughing, screaming, crying, sometimes calling my name and jarring me awake from my deep slumber. At times, they were too heavy, too scattered for me to hold and keep up with. I am probably the strongest girl you would ever meet, for no one knows how well I hide my weaknesses and wounds; no one would ever guess how damaged I actually was inside. Maybe that’s why the universe gave me endless papers and quills so I could give all the pain somewhere to run, somewhere to exist outside of me, so I can calmly breathe, even if just for a little while. M.

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/DgNzmPw via IFTTT

We thought we were made of scars, but they were constellations maps leading us back to each other. And how could I not love a soul that was carved from the same longing as mine? You make me feel seen in a world that so easily forgets my name. You make me feel wanted in a world that remembers my hands only in need. When the hours dissolve into silence, when screams fade into whispers, you make me forget the weight of it all. In the end, our reunion will be quiet stars watching, the breeze gentle, for the world has finally learned that peace is long overdue, and we have suffered enough. M. | March 2025

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/cDyTU4l via IFTTT

Sometimes all I want is to sit still while the whole world rushes past me. Sit on the beach at dusk, watching the sky hold its last streaks of orange and lavender, listening to the waves arrive and leave as the wind sighs for the night. I sought and claimed my place among the world's many, yet what I longed for was to be in the company of my own presence. To let the world carry on without asking me to follow. To let my thoughts run free. For they remind me of all the things I pretend not to care about. They are brutal, yes, but honest. Often sad, yet kind. Always alone, but never lonely. Perhaps, for once, I can watch the world go by. And perhaps I can leave a little of myself here with the tide. Between here and elsewhere, some part of me will always remain. M. | September 2026

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/ocmuFRS via IFTTT

When the night comes, we'd lie on our backs beneath a velvet sky, watching the stars dance across its endless darkness, drunk on a beauty existed long before us. And for a little while, we would forget that we were ever meant to be anywhere else. Perhaps there is a kind of solitude reserved for the mad, a place where the world falls away and neither of us has to be afraid of being too much. For I have long decided that the strangest thing of all is believing we were ever meant to be anything other than ourselves. And perhaps we were never meant to fit into the world, but to find one another in its vastness and make a little world of our own. M. | September 2026

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/pXJIheu via IFTTT

Here is a piece about how conflicted I am. I am conflicted about posting it as well. Anyway, here it is. 😌 ****** They call us the confused generation. Perhaps they are right. But we are not confused because we don't know anything. We are confused because we know too much. We know about boundaries, but we were raised to be considerate. We know about choosing ourselves, but we were taught to take care of everyone. We know leaving is sometimes necessary, but we also know what it feels like to be left. We know rest is productive, but we have spent our lives measuring our worth by what we can endure. We know love shouldn't hurt, but we also know love is rarely simple. We know we should have a five-year plan while barely knowing what we want to do next Tuesday. We are fully aware that we were given more choices than the generations before us, and somehow, that made choosing harder. We can be anything, so we spend years wondering who we are supposed to be. We are told not to settle, but nobody tells us what to do with the loneliness that comes from leaving. We are told to choose ourselves, but not what to do when choosing ourselves means disappointing the people we love. But perhaps we are not confused. Maybe we are simply trying to live with all the things we have learned to know at once. And perhaps we are simply a generation aware of how complicated it is to be a person. M. | September 2026

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/fFamTEu via IFTTT

More than we would like to admit is that, the simplest yet hardest dream we could possibly have is to be happy. We are human, after all. We get tangled in our emotions, our circumstances, the things that hurt, the things that need fixing. And so we keep telling ourselves we will be happy when life gets a little easier. When work gets better. When our family is okay. When the future makes sense. When the person we love is okay. We keep placing happiness somewhere ahead of us, as though it is a reward waiting at the end of everything we have to survive. But perhaps we need to learn the difference between choosing happiness and allowing ourselves to feel it. Not in the shallow way of “just choose happiness", because sometimes life makes those words feel almost insulting. We cannot choose grief away. We cannot wish exhaustion or fear into disappearing. But perhaps happiness can exist alongside them. A good coffee. A book that makes us forget the world for an hour. A weekend spent with someone we love. None of these things fixes what is wrong. And maybe that is the point. We do not have to wait for everything to be okay before we are allowed to be happy. Maybe happiness is not something we find at the end of everything. Maybe it is simply something we give ourselves permission to feel when it finds us. Even in the middle of everything. M. | September 2026

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/UBrcW0V via IFTTT

And then morning came. Somewhere between sleep and waking, something inside me shifted. Those feelings, hope and love, were still there, I think. I just couldn't reach them. Everything felt distant again. Maybe the thing that once protected me no longer knows when it is okay to let go. My mind rearranged itself into a place I didn't recognize, and suddenly I was tired of everything. Numb for no particular reason. So I pretended. I smiled. I talked. I moved through my day as though I was okay. Maybe that is what I have become good at, looking okay while quietly disappearing from myself. I don't know how many times I can keep finding my way back. And now the night is here. Slumber land is calling. And I'm afraid to fall asleep and wake up to another spotless, soulless room in my mind. Afraid to wake up to another stranger of myself. M.| September 2026

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/ULpgNaZ via IFTTT

Love with him is quiet. Steady and peaceful. It lives in the ordinary days as much as the beautiful ones, in the little things that are easy to miss but somehow stay with me. A familiar warmth in changing days. A voice I know, a presence, the same person at the end of every day, even when the day itself has been anything but gentle. He doesn't make me wonder. He doesn't make me chase. He just stays. He is the steady flame in my winter night, the warmth that stays long after the day has gone quiet. My little haven in a world that rarely stays still. My constant. M. | September 2026

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/05SaWtO via IFTTT

Because being the child of parents who went their separate ways is one thing. Being particularly close to the parent who left, and then watching his life continue somewhere else, is another. Even when you understand the circumstances intellectually, there can still be a part of you that never quite knows where you belong in that rearranged family. I think the part that stays with you isn't even the separation itself. It's being made to carry the emotional consequences of adults' decisions. One parent wants you to choose them. The other wants you to accept the new life they have built. And somewhere between those two demands is this child thinking, “What about me? Where do I get to stand?” But you don't always get to ask. Instead, you learn to read the room. Who is hurting. Who needs comforting. What you can say. What you shouldn't. When to stay quiet. When to smile. You learn to make yourself easy to have around. You pretend things don't hurt because, perhaps somewhere along the way, you learn that your hurting would only make things harder for everyone else. And eventually, the smile becomes almost automatic. You become good at pretending you're okay. So good that people start believing you. You were the strong child. An okay child. And then you grow up. But some things grow up with you too. You still read the room before you read yourself. You notice the smallest change in someone's voice. You feel responsible for pain that isn't yours. You become so accustomed to holding space for everyone else, that asking someone to hold it for you feels almost selfish. And sometimes you don't even know you're doing it. M. | September 2026

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/B7c83qO via IFTTT

Some nights, I don't want to be strong. I don't want to understand why I feel this way either. I don't want to find the lesson in it, or remind myself that tomorrow will be another day. Tonight, I am just tired. Tired in that place where even sadness feels like too much work. I have spent so much of my life being the person who stays. The one who answers. The one who carries things home without letting anyone see how heavy they are. I became so good at making sure everyone else was alright that somewhere along the way, I stopped asking what would happen if I wasn't. And there are things I miss that I thought I had already made peace with. People. Places. Old versions of myself. A life I might have lived if I had learned earlier that I was allowed to want things too. Sometimes I think that is what hurts most. Not losing everything. But realizing how much of yourself you quietly gave away while calling it love, responsibility, or simply the way things had to be. And now the night is here, and there is nothing left to fix. So I lie here, finally letting my eyes open their gates, and let the tears run freely down my face. M. | September 2026

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/np7T6LF via IFTTT

Sometimes life puts you back in a place you thought you had already left behind. You tell yourself that you can do this because you’ve done this before. But knowing you’ve been through something similar does not make you any less helpless when you find yourself there again. You don’t want to be in this situation. You didn’t ask for it. You wish there were something you could do to change it. You go over the things you can control, the things you cannot, the things you wish you could have done differently. You try to find a way around it because surely there has to be one. And sometimes, there just isn’t. You have to accept that this is where you are, for now. Even when you are disappointed. Even when you are angry. And still, you keep coming back to the same question: God, when do we get to have one uncomplicated good thing? You don't have to understand it right now. Really. You don't have to convince yourself that it's okay. You don't have to know how it will turn out. You haven't lived all of these days yet. M. | 1 September 2026

from Chocolate & Thoughts https://ift.tt/MvHYhgo via IFTTT