I have always been a ribs-to-ribs, skin-to-bone person. I don’t know how to love without offering everything i have in my soul. And that’s why i have always been away from surface level people. I have never been kissed. Never held the hands of my love interest. I simply had higher standards and i still do.

And when you have been touch deprived your whole life, you develop millions of possibilities in your head consisting of how you might be held, kissed for the first time. And they keep getting more and more unreal. You put on a 90s rom com and watch not two but three people fall in love. And one of them is you- not with particularly the movie, but with the potential of your future love life.

It’s a heavy weight to carry. It’s heavy because it is something you have to ponder about. Something you have to wait for. And waiting can drive you crazy.
The deprivation of physical touch polishes the possibilities into an immaculate brevity. The foreground of your mind gets flooded with scenarios that give you butterflies. A lot of them. Fluttering away in your stomach.

I imagine it as being stabbed in your guts in a good way. It all starts with the brevity of an accidental touch. The brushing of knuckles. The stomach drops at the contact. And you hold each others gaze a bit longer than you are supposed to. Everything stops in that moment. It’s the moment you have been waiting for ever since you learned intimacy. It’s the moment you know what you want. You want this to happen. And it cannot wait any longer.

I think the best part about getting to experience a kiss with someone you love, is the moment just before. The anticipation. When you are inches away and your skin is warm against each other. You both feel each others breath on your lips. But don’t collide. Not yet. Instead savor and consume each other in the moment . Try to find the right placement for your hands. Because you are so nervous your hands won’t stop shaking, your heart is stuck in your throat. And all you do is yearn. And oh god does it hurt.

The moment you give in is beautiful. Air from your lungs hitches in your mouth and you don’t know if you can breathe now because the only place you’ll get air seems to be their mouth. The embrace of it feels too overwhelming to even think about. What starts with a soft press of lips against each other, the next moment makes you gasp for breath from, The lips that drive you to your salvation.

Being kissed must feel like standing up too fast when you have iron deficiency. It’s like you become a fluid, no longer a body. It’s exactly as, “You have bewitched me body and soul.”

And I hope my first kiss feels that way. I hope it feels the way I felt riding a bike for the first time as a kid without the training wheels. I hope it feels as gentle as the breeze kissing my face. I hope it feels, how I know how much my father loves my mother just by the way he looks at her. I hope it feels, the way i feel when i see a grave blooming with flowers.(in this case the grave would be my heart). I hope it feels like every good thing i have ever felt until now accumulated in one moment. And i hope it lasts forever. Because oh what a blessing it is to be coming undone by a kiss.

to become one just by the parting of our lips.
oh to destroy a philosophy.

oh to be kissed.

I grew up in a house where everything that happened to me was destined, not by fate but written by the hands of my own mother.

She made sure every step of my mine carried the shadows of her own, like a haunting ghost that paralyzes you in your sleep, to control you. Every step I took fell short no matter how far I pushed my legs to go. It was never enough.

and in her eyes- the world is full of hatred. And if so, then in my eyes she is the world.

Mother, I know you grew up without one, but you could have filled your void with my love, instead of leaving the same void as your mother did, even though you are lying next to me, eyes closed, breathing.

I always thought you are beautiful. Is it the lipstick you put on? Or the dragged kajal? your lashes swaying down like feathers as you sleep. But why is it that whenever you see me your brows furrow and your look of love turns to one of wrath?

Your love was like a burden I carried all day, for it always came wrapped in expectations and misery. It’s me, isn’t it? how did you see my falling grades but not my falling sanity? Lost chasing a love, not just any love but a mother’s love. And how can you seek the touch, the warmth, the love of a mother from anyone else other than your own? you only find it within your own blood. the blood you inherent.

Which i soon realized was out of my reach just like my life.

The same hands that cradled me would now not take a second to slick the throat- of the one they once held like it was their world, something fragile. Something that once was to care for, to live for— now just a lost echo among two lost souls wandering in a house filled with screams and taunts.

You never spent one moment where you weren’t pulling the strings of my heart. keeping it under your pillow, out of my reach, in the dark.

So now when one reaches for my heart I have nothing but a hollowed cavern to offer. for I never learned how to give anything else other than hate, for that’s all i have ever received from the person i have loved to death.

Over the years, however, I discovered movies and books that captured the intricate blend of messy relationships and Youthful Exuberance. Maybe in another universe, teenage hearts pound from the rush of falling in love, not from the weight of grief. But in this one, let’s thank the directors who gave us movies to survive it. Here are some of the most heartfelt movies I watched as a teen that helped me through my years.

Grab your blanket. Dim the lights. And get ready to feel.

10. Normal People (2020)

Normal people(2020) is based on the bestselling novel by Sally Rooney. While I firmly believe you should read the book first, this is by far the most beautiful page-to-screen adaptation I have ever found. I usually despise book adapted media but this was surprisingly good.

“i will never pretend not to know you”

Yeah. So. Watch it if you are in a happy relationship. Or you might get slightly depressed. Just a tiny bit. As for me? Never recovered. I like my suffering raw, thank you.

09. I saw the tv glow (2024)

A very sensitive topic for me. This isn’t a five star movie. It’s messy. It’s almost weird. But that’s what makes it stand out. I will never watch it for the second time, and whatever I felt watching it wasn’t pleasant but i still reccommend. This is such a delicate movie for people who are still trying to accept themselves.

“It feels like someone... took a shovel and dug out all my insides. And I know there’s nothing in there, but I’m still too nervous to open myself up and check.”

Catch the eulogy and this whole weird messy movie becomes the reason why you’ll come undone. Apart from that it also has a beautiful sountrack. My favourite is, ‘Anthems for a seventeen year-old’.

08. Mermaids (1990)

The mother daughter relationship dynamic is a bit different here. Not entirely but somehow it is. It isn’t crazy but it is. It’s one of those movies where i don’t know whom i related to more. The daughter or the mother. Maybe both, depending on the scenarios. It’s a relatable watch. And the ending pumped the blood back to my heart with ease.

“There’s only two things you can do with a man. You can marry him or you can shoot him”

There was so many things said in this movie that stayed with me. I wish I could list them all. So let’s put one more if it helps to convince you watch this movie.

“Please God, don’t let me fall in love. It is the most destructive thing in the universe.”

and i still think about charlotte from time to time. because when i was her age, i was scared of becoming her.

07. Submarine (2010)

Submarine felt like a love letter to the teenage love i never experienced, because i would probably love the way oliver does.

“I could drink your blood. You are the only person that I would allow to be shrunken down to a microscopic size and swim inside me in a tiny submersible machine.”

And that’s all i have to say about this movie. It was so simple and awkward and funny that it made me almost melancholic.

06. Blue (2002)

I don’t remember much about this movie because i didn’t want to. I just remember it was healing in an unfamiliar way. Or maybe it was familiar and I was scared to acknowledge it.

“Sometimes I hang out here on my way home. After school I don’t want to go home... but there’s nowhere to go. You’re the one who came... and found me.”

I wanted so desperately to forget this movie. But i did fail in the end. In the end it still reminded me of her.

05. Beautiful Boy (2018)

After watching this i had to close my eyes and i did fear. i feared the helplessness this movie had. The rawness. The melancholy.

I always felt I needed to stay strong, that there’d be some future event, and I’d need all my strength for it. But there are no events after this one... When you mourn the living, that’s a hard way to live.

this is a “hyperventilating from crying/10” movie.

04. Fallen Angels (1995)

The brevity of every scene from this film stood out to me a lot. It felt how growing old in a single sitting would feel like. And it felt good.

“On August 29th, 1995, I ran into my first love again. But she seemed to have forgotten about me. I guess I’d gotten too handsome.”

The amount of weight this statement has is not talked about enough.

03. All about lily chou chou (2001)

This movie is a bit dark, to be fair. Maybe this movie will make you empathetic towards people your age a bit more than you usually are. It’s an open pool of teen angst.

“The blue sky is a trap. It looks beautiful, but it holds you down. ….I wanted to disappear. I wanted to become just a sound in the air.”

02. Aftersun (2022)

Aftersun is an eulogy for every father and daughter who were close but never close enough to not let the silence grow bigger with time. I have a wonderful father but he is also emotionally absent. I don’t blame him, but i did yearn for him to be present. And I think this movie made me feel everything I have ever felt over the span of years, but in under 101 minutes.

“I think it’s nice that we share the same sky.”

I spiraled for days after watching this. And i cried for hours.

“Don’t you ever feel like you’ve just done a whole amazing day and then you come home and feel tired and down and... it feels like your bones don’t work... Like you’re sinking.”

hmm sure after hearing this my bones are sinking in my blood sophie.

01. Perks of being a wallflower (2012)

Keeping this as the top one because this saved me at one point of my life. Still to this day one of the best films i have watched that captured how much life can be affected by the events in your life. And how important it is to have people that care about you at this time of your life.

And there are people who forget what it’s like to be 16 when they turn 17. I know these will all be stories someday. And our pictures will become old photographs. We’ll all become somebody’s mom or dad. But right now these moments are not stories. This is happening… ….And in this moment I swear, we are infinite.

Live in the moment, brace love. And not the one you think you deserve.

The end.

I wish I had the perfect editorial-like words to start this article. but grief doesn’t know how to hide under editorials and pose elequently to eccentuate the horror of it all. having a loving mother is nice. but not when that love is wrapped in conditions and inner wrath. it’s like having a hand caressing your hair, that’s one mistake away from choking you. yet it’s almost a betrayal to write these words that are never meant to be said aloud. That aren’t meant to even be thought of. betrayal. guilt. It creeps in. I feel like an absolute ungrate, writing as an ungrateful.

I think I was about 4 when she first hit me. We were getting ready for a wedding and I accidentally broke one of her blush palettes. I only remember how she pulled away her hand in a flash, because it burned more than my cheeks did. The blood rushed back to my face and tears splunged through my eyes. I cried for hours. breathless, huffing. and the only person comforting me was an unknown hand, because i couldn’t open my eyes to see who it was. As the years went on I think she wanted to replace the weight of her pallete with the weight of something heavier. Me. So, she pinned me to the floor and said, ‘If I have given you life, I can take it away too’.

While i grew up it shifted from physical to emotional and verbal abuse. I was a clay being molded by her words, “i hit you because i love you.”
‘i am the only one who’ll ever truly love you’- sounds so delicate and motherly, but not when you know where it’s coming from. If said with nuance enough, it’s almost a threat. harmless or not.
She often looked at me as if she loathed what she saw. She’d say, “maybe it’s my fault i gave birth to someone like you”. and I’d walk away with a pit in my stomach and an urge to drown myself. ‘I ruined her life’, was all I thought most of my life.
The mind f*ck is that followed by these events, when she’d realize she struck a nerve(she always did) she’d prepare all my favourite meals, buy me my favourite cd records. Shower me with affection. And that’s the worst, most dubious emotional whiplash a child could endure. Going from total neglect, to being the only thing that mattered to her left me with severe abandonment and trust issues.

I think i just don’t know how to start saying i understand her for what she did. i don’t know how to make her the good person to everyone even though she probably isn’t. The cruelest part for me, is that I know how much she sacrificed for this family. How hard she worked to protect it, to love it. but she forgot to protect it from herself. And the reality is, sacrificing a lot for somebody does not give you the free pass to abuse them.

Yet strangely, all of it somehow got washed away by a single one teardrop of hers- the time I saw her crying after hitting me. She was guilty, and that made me feel guiltier for getting hurt. Why should I cry? Why should I feel hurt? She was just trying to be a better mother. And if that made her a bad person to me then I am the rotten daughter. A daughter that failed to acknowledge her mother’s sorrow before she acknowledged hers.

so i chose to become the anchor of her pain.

I looked at my mother and never saw rage. instead, she was a graveyard of her father’s rage. I saw my mother stand in front of her father and beg him to love her, and he never did. and yet,

My mother is still the most forgiving daughter i have ever seen. and i love her to the moon and back.
because behind every failed mother, is a daughter that once begged to be loved without rage.

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