Rachel Sharer

I still think that this bruise inside of me, this dull ache beneath my ribs, will never go away. I know I am allowed to be deeply sad; that we are all allowed to be this deeply sad, still, after all these years.

Go jump in that mosh pit.

To be able to love is a beautiful thing, but that also means we are able to hurt, to feel afraid, to feel alone. It’s intrinsic — we ache for connection.

1. “They wanted happiness without knowing what it was, or where to look, which made them want it all the more.” -Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods Sara, Mount Holyoke College: 2.

Giving change and donating food will only help to a certain degree; it is not until you sit down with these people and treat them like humans that the true change will occur.

Tell me what the weather was like. Tell me if you killed people. Tell me the names of your friends’ girlfriends and how you passed the time and the color of the sky in the morning. Tell me all the things I never got to ask you, because I want to know.

For anyone else like me who has ever been moved by their lyrics, here are some of the saddest, most romantic, and most beautiful ones:

5. He never gets tired of snuggling (surrogate boyfriend!)

12. For meeting my high school friends from home and embracing them and loving them almost as much as I do.

So do the things you’ve always dreamed of doing, and feel as alive as you think you need to feel, but never stop reading. Because there are things you can learn from the pages of a book that will teach you so much more tan you will ever learn from real life.

I love you like I love plane rides in the dark, like I love the first song that made me cry. I love you like all the sunsets I’ve ever seen, and so much more than all these things.

Because when you fall asleep at night under a billion stars, on rocks that are a million years old, with people you have nothing in common with besides the pure unadulterated fact that you are all witnessing the beginnings of time, you don’t remember.