Prattle Peach

the best love letter

I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you everyday… I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close… I will love you until your face is fogged by distant memory. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else and I will love you if you never marry at all, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all. That is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.
Lemony Snicket

This is from Lemony Snicket’s “The Beatrice Letters.” If you can, I really urge you to read this out loud to yourself.

I wish I could write something that encapsulated exactly how I feel when I read this. It’s so atomic-bomb-earth-shatteringly beautiful that I am left breathless after reading it. It gives me hope that one day someone is going to think about me like this, about you like this, about everybody. Talk about a soulmate, imagine being the Beatrice to somebody’s Lemony Snicket.

I want to write about it, but I think it really speaks for itself. And truly, it goes on and on, and would probably continue until the end of time if it weren’t for the silly fact that it does have an ending.

Here is the full version.

boundaries

Having boundaries in general, with a lot of people in your life, is good.

“I love people. I love my family, my children ….. but inside myself is a place where I live all alone, where I renew my springs that never dry up…..”
Pearl S. Buck

I’ve lived in the world of right and wrong for so long that I forgot the grey area, the place where most things exist. Now I have accepted the ability to realize that most things are not mutually exclusive. There is good, there is bad, but nobody and nothing is 100% both. There is peace within the chaos and there is chaos when there is peace. I know that now, and it is within my power to accept both in my heart.

By being able to focus on things that are not people-oriented, I am able to grow as a person. By not focusing on pleasing someone, or trying to stay in contact at all times, I am focusing on myself.

Setting up boundaries isn’t bad. You don’t owe it to anyone to be available 24/7 for whenever they need you. You do owe it to yourself to available 24/7 for yourself when you need you.

One of the best things I have done over the past couple months is turn off notifications on my social media. I set a boundary between me and others, and I feel like I have a healthier relationship with my phone now because of it. It also makes me happier to see what my friends are up to, because I genuinely want to know. I’m not just mindlessly switching between apps for no reason.

Set boundaries, be happy!

asking for what you want

I really don’t know if I’m going to get it, but I’m glad that I asked. It’s always worth doing or saying something important in the moment, instead of looking back later and regretting not using your voice. I’m proud of myself for asking for more for myself, and if I do end up getting it I’ll be so *insert happiest adjective possible here.*

I have always been a hopeful person, and I don’t think I’ve ever hoped for something so much.

impacts

The answer to most of my security questions online is my first grade best friend’s middle name. I used to live in a suburb of Seattle called Puyallup before moving to California in fourth grade. After I moved we never spoke again but I still know her middle name.

There are people I don’t talk to anymore that have had such an impact on my life. I still wear a friend from 8th grade’s P.E. shirt to bed sometimes because we accidentally switched shirts at a sleepover and never ended up giving them back.

I still listen to a band that my very first boyfriend showed me, and it’s one of my favorites.

And I still make a crunchy tuna casserole that one of my elementary school friend’s mom showed me. Half of their casserole was made without peas because her dad didn’t like them but the rest of the family did. I wonder if they still do that.

Our lives are made up of so many people, and sometimes you keep pieces of them long after they have left your life.

At the same time, there are so many lives that you have left some kind of impact on like this. I wonder what parts of me are alive in someone else that I have no idea about.

compatibility + obsession = love?

Last night I sat and talked with a very old friend of mine for hours. We talked about love, and contemplated whether the kind of love that hopeless romantics like us look for is even real. Is the formula for love compatibility + infatuation? I think I have only ever felt one, or the other, and finding a combination of those seems impossible. But at the same time it’s everywhere; it’s in every book I’ve ever read, it’s what I see when I look at my parents’ relationship.

I once said that I was a closet hopeless romantic. My friend responded by saying:

“Oh my god. You are the most out of the closet hopeless romantic. You are literally running in the streets screaming through a megaphone letting everybody know exactly who you are at all times.”

I am a goal-oriented person. I make goals and then I obsess completely about them until they are reached. I am like a tiny little ant lifting a crumb to bring to the queen. Goal. Goal. Goal. This is a very good way to be when it comes to my career.

One of my biggest goals is to fall in love, but you can’t will yourself into love or set aside some time to do so. I don’t think that the heart really takes your goals under consideration. Hearts are very inconsiderate things.

There will never be a right time, but I think that there is a right person. You just have to find that compatibility and then become infatuated with them (or vice versa), and exist in that state forever. Sounds easy, right?

With dating apps it’s easy to trick yourself into thinking that you decide when you get to fall in love, but I just don’t know if that’s how it really works.

I still hope that I’ll meet someone at a party, and he’ll say he couldn’t stop staring at me from across the room. Or at a coffee shop, where he asks “is this seat taken?” and we begin a deep conversation. Or I’m in my favorite book store, and he will compliment my impeccable taste in literature and fall in love with me.

it’s weird that they say hopeless romantics when it’s just the opposite. I’m so full of hope for romance, and I’m so happy that it exists. I just want a taste of it for my own.

bête noire

Noun. a person or thing that one particularly dislikes

I have collected a lot of pictures of quotes and I think it’s cool to look back at them sometimes and see the place you were in. These are all from the last year, screenshotted and saved in my phone while I was going through things that I can’t even remember now.
If it’s not going to matter in five months, don’t give it 5 minutes. These are all from the little five minutes of some intense feeling that I can’t even recall today. This is my little collection of bête noires.

I like that we can look back and be like hey, u good in there buddy? It feels like reading letters from your past self and knowing you really are all the wiser now. I’m not a wise person yet but I am definitely better off now than I was a year ago, half a year ago, even a month ago. We keep learning and we keep growing and that’s super cool and really exciting! Who will I be in six months?? I don’t know but I’m ready to meet her.

reading books, listening to music

How lucky I feel, to be in my body again. How lovely I feel not to have to pretend.
Hayley Williams (Watch Me While I Bloom)

I didn’t want to work out this morning but I pushed myself to do whatever my best is today and I feel soooo good. Like my mood has been so intensely good lately!

This weekend I’m staying home, I got a few books and I think I’m just going to read them all. I know I need to go to the store at some point and meal prep all my lunches for the week or I’ll end up ordering out and feeling like a slug and right now I feel like that speedy snail from the snail mail game. I don’t want this empowering, uplifting feeling to go away.

My local bookstore is back open so I bought one book from each of my favorite authors. If you have a book recommendation please leave it in the comments or send me a DM @prattlepeach on Instagram. I neglected to read as much as I should have been earlier this year so I’m making up for it now.

The books I bought are Sellevision by Augusten Burroughs, Damned by Chuck Palahniuk, and The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore.

When I was in high school I read Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs and I felt this itch to go explore the world. Not fall in love with a pedophile and live with a crooked therapist and his family, but at least go to New York and stand in the middle of Times Square.

My freshman year of high school I also emailed a fan letter to Christopher Moore and he replied and I have loved him and his work ever since. He writes how I think, or maybe I think this way because I’ve been reading his work since I was 14? I am all of books I’ve ever read, I think.

My favorite band is Panic! at the Disco, and the song Time to Dance is based off the book Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. I met him a couple times and he’s the coolest person ever, and his books are so intricate and I usually have to read them a couple times each to fully understand them.

I’m definitely happiest after I’ve read a book, done some HIIT, and had an iced americano. That’s an ideal day alone with myself.

I also want to go to the beach maybe, or just take a drive on PCH and listen to music. I feel open and excited, after so many weeks of not feeling good. I think there is potential in the air, and I’m going to try and live in this moment as much as possible.

Clear-rimmed glasses

I don’t understand why in California, optometrists are not considered essential. I have really bad eyesight, and I ran out of contacts in March when the whole pandy really took off.

I found a pair of old clear-rimmed glasses and I like the look of them but I think they’re too strong of a prescription. The first time I wore them a couple years ago, I fell down a flight of stairs and twisted both my ankles. I had to call my roommate to help me walk back up the stairs and I skipped my classes for that day, half out of embarrassment because I didn’t want anyone to see me attempt to go back down the stairs again.

I like the way these glasses look, and I do see everything in a crisper way, but I also get a little bit of a headache.

My current glasses are all scratched up and I think I stepped on them at one point or something because they also don’t sit flat on my nose. There’s a tilt to the upper left and that throws me off sometimes.

I ran out of contacts in March, right around when California went into a lockdown. I really wish optometrists were considered essential. I don’t see how getting a haircut is different from getting a prescription to see.

I can’t wait to hear “which one is better, one or two?” and not know!! I like being able to do my eye makeup and see, not choose one or the other.

PMS

I cannot express how much I hate being on my period. For the last week I went Full Emo and I didn’t put 2 and 2 together to realize that it was because I was on my period. I thought the whole world was being mean to me and that I needed to just stick myself in a box and never talk to anyone ever again because the week was going so terribly and it turns out it was literally just good ‘ol hormones.

Today’s the first day where I’m not on my period and I went for a walk in my favorite park, learned how to tie dye some shirts, and finally put up some decorations on the walls of my apartment.

My mood is literally so much better. I wrote a post earlier this week where I said I’m always either 100% upset or 100% happy and that’s just not true. But I was on my period and I felt like everybody was against me.

This was the worst PMS-ing I’ve had in a very long time. It felt like I was a teenager again, I was so full of weird angst??? Yikes!!

I’m so happy it’s over, it literally feels like the clouds are parting and everything is good again.

Now that I can appreciate them again, here’s a BoredPanda list of period memes for your pleasure. #20 really, and I mean really, resonates with me for this past one.