When You Know Yourself You Know Life ⋆⋅♡⋅⋆

When you're sensitive, your world is always crumbling—crumbling and rebuilding, rebuilding and crumbling, demolition and construction begin and end and begin again. I could get new carpets, new floor plan or buy furniture too—all brand new, only for another wave, another hurricane to come again and wash it all away.

— Camille Lee, the world is always ending

An old sparkly journal is buried at the bottom of a weathered and worn, old cardboard box. Every other page has an "I ♡ Alex" written in pink ink on it. That girl used count every hand-holding, shoulder-touch, head-pat her first real crush ever gave her and wrote it all down. "He held my hand and rest his head on my shoulder." Fast forward three years and I started a new school, I'm fifteen years old and I reminisce fondly over my younger self's crush, at a party. Everyone around me mistakes my smile as lingering feelings for him, after all, I wasn't very subtle with my feelings back then. They just don't know. Now with older eyes to look back with, I realized something. I was always made of love. Love was never something I had to look for outside of me, it was always within me, I just didn't know it. I am love and love was always made of me.

—Camille Lee, love is what I was always made of

I try not to fall in love. I really do, because I know that I'll think about them, those things that will make it hard to forget. The curve of his back, the outline of his hips, the way his necklace falls at the base of his neck, the way its only something I can admire when his back is turned, because he likes to tuck his necklaces inside his T-shirt, the matching bracelet hangs off his wrist and sparkles in the light the way his eyes do when morning comes the next day. I have his sleepy smile when I'm the first thing he sees as he opens his eyes, memorized, and his low playful drawl to"take a picture, it'll last longer," before he scoops me up in his arms with the strength of someone who had definitely-been-awake-for-a-while and I'll remember it all. These are the things, the things I'll think of when you're gone, so I try my best not to fall in love.

—Camille Lee, I'll remember everything

I'm terrified one day I'll look around and realize for all my platonic love, it isn't enough. For all my friends have paired off like Noah's ark, all over again, one by one, I am but the exception. The lonely outlier, the undesirable creature, alone in the raging storm of living. The one to throw overboard to make space, the easiest at least, because they know there's no one here to miss me. I watch as they gaze into the eyes of their lovers with all the romance I've longed for, talking of the new world and the "rest of their lives together" I'm sick to my stomach but I pass it off as the back and forth rocking of the ark, sea sickness— I send a silent prayer to the sky or to God or to whoever will listen to me I can't possibly be fated to live out my days alone, right?

—Camille Lee

You're too soft, the world will easily devour you whole. You've got no sharp teeth. All dull and rounded, blunt at the edges. You've got no claws, you've got no teeth, no nails to tear into skin. You're just too soft for this world and the wolves will come to eat you alive. They will feast on your soft bits, gobble you and forget your bones where they lay. You're sobbing and no one will listen, but it is said you deserve what's coming. With torn flesh between their teeth and blood spraying from their mouths, they will ask, why didn't you harden when you know you're just too soft for this world?

—Camille Lee, too soft

Loneliness is a wounded beast, roaring and clawing at the walls of my heart, wailing for reprieve, relief for his suffering. A balm, a salve for injuries he can't see, with no end in sight, maybe a mercy kill is instead what he should seek. He couldn't talk and even if he tried, I doubt you'd understand his cries, "Come get me out, these four walls are so empty, somebody please come find me."

— Camille Lee, Loneliness is a wounded beast

He was the first guy, I tried the "talking stage" with. I told him slow, glacially slow, like a candle burning into the late hours of the night, but he didn't hear over his own wants, his own needs. It was part of the reason it was the end of our season, on his way out the door he broke my heart all over and I knew I dodged a bullet when his ego started talking. Suddenly, oh so suddenly, I wasn't worthy of someone like him. Suddenly my beauty was too little and there was something wrong with me, so much for "you're my ideal girl" because now apparently I "wasn't even that pretty" and my version of normal was a problem. The way I was, was a problem. You said if I'm not happy with you, I'll never find a boyfriend. At the mere age of twenty with so much life left to live ahead of me, did you really think that's what I'd believe? The audacity— to try to convince me I wasn't worth loving, if I didn't want to be with you. My only regret is I didn't laugh in your face, so much for the "talking stage."

—Camille Lee, you'll never find a boyfriend

You and I were stranded. Trapped, in the school’s gymnasium. The rain was starting to coming down, it was pouring. There was this hummingbird rhythm in my chest, loud as drums, where you and I lie, side by side, in dark blue skirts and white school shirts, on worn gym mats. The sound compelling, if I let it. Supposedly my feelings lie on some sort of spectrum? All I know is you and I, no matter what, aren't clear cut. I fantasize, or do I fetishize? I'm hoping you don’t realize, I want to kiss between your eyes, and that mine linger on your thighs. Echoes in a empty colosseum, ourselves as our own audience and with no one to witness it. I’m too young to know what I want, young and confused, in a "phase I'll grow out of eventually." Does it mean anything? If your hands linger on my waist? You make a mistake in your haste, kiss the corner of my lips instead of my cheek, before you leave. You giggle, because what else could it possibly mean? 

—Camille Lee, her