Quotes by "Vironika Tugaleva"

Life is not a sport. Life is not math. There is no final end goal and there is no right answer. Just because your truth does not match someone else's truth does not make either of you wrong. Life is not a zero sum game. If I am right, that does not make you wrong. If you are right, that does not make me wrong either. A jar of vinegar can sit in a cupboard beside a box of baking soda peacefully, and we can allow those who disagree with us to exist alongside us without reacting to them. There is nothing to prove. There is enough room in the world for all of us.

The history of your happiness is the history of your feeling connected.

I wanted, for so long, for someone to understand me better than I understood myself, to take control of me, to save me, to make it all better. I thought that the hardest part of a loving, mutually healing relationship would be showing my vulnerable, raw spots to a person, even though I'd been hurt so many times before. This has not been the hardest part. The actual hardest part has been realizing that no one, no matter how compassionate and kind they are, will say the perfect things always. Myself included. The hardest part has been learning to communicate what I need, to hear what others need, to tell others how to tell me what they need. Intimacy takes a lot of communication. We all have triggers. I don't know your triggers and you don't know mine. No matter how much I love or trust you, you cannot possibly know exactly the words I need to hear, the words I don't want to hear, and the way I like to be touched. And how strange that we expect these things of each other. How strange, and self-sabotaging, that we refuse to get into relationships and friendships with people unless they treat us in just that perfect way. We've been raised to want fairy tales. We've been raised to wait for flawless saviors to rescue us. But the savior isn't flawless and the savior is not coming. The savior is you. The savior is still learning. The savior is never done learning. The savior is a human being. Forget perfect. Forget flawless. And start speaking your truth. Start speaking what you want and how you want it. And start asking and listening, really listening, to what the people around you say. Maybe, then, we will stop abandoning and hurting each other. Maybe, then, there's hope for us.

To love everyone unconditionally does not mean to give everyone your unconditional time. Sometimes, to love completely, we must never see someone again. This, too, is love. This is giving someone the freedom to exist and be happy, even if it must be without you.

A soul mate is not found. A soul mate is recognized.

Only love that continues to flow in the face of anger, blame, and indifference can be called love. All else is simply a transaction.

If you do not respect your own wishes, no one else will. You will simply attract people who disrespect you as much as you do.

In some ways, we will always be different. In other ways, we will always be the same. There is always room to disagree and blame, just as there is always room to take a new perspective and empathize. Understanding is a choice.

It happens often. More than you know. Like when you made me a flower out of the paper scraps I felt guilty throwing away. Like when we sustain eye contact and your pupils start sparkling. Like when you inch closer to me so our skin can touch, and I just want to fall deep, deep down into you (or want you to fall deep, deep down into me). But. I am afraid of how I fall. But. I don't know how to come back to the ground after diving into the ocean. So. I keep falling silently. In my head. In my hips. And I want you to notice. Or.

There was magic. Some kind of alchemy. I don't remember the moment you transformed from a prop into a main character. No, that's not what happened. I don't remember when you shape- shifted from an elf into a Prince. No, that isn't it either. What I really mean is: I don't know if we were meant to fall into each other all along or if you were just in the right place at the right time. Yes, I found safety in your arms in the middle of a hurricane I chose to escape, and I still don't know how it would have turned out if someone else came to my door that day. Or if you never held me. Or if I never cried. Or if everything hadn't been so fairy tale. Until it wasn't. Do you see the magic now, now that it's too late? Do you still remember me? Do I still remember you? And what, in the end, have we learned? Is it really better to have loved and lost? Was it love for you? Who now is dying faster from the lonely?

I want to be held, and the things that hold me down do half a job. Some days, I can't even fix it. Some days, I rot on the inside and refuse to cut myself down. Some days, my fruits hit pavement, explode with seeds meant for soil; and only I understand what a wreckage my smile is. Joy is a weight. It's heavy. Can't you carry it for me while I dance around the void, run my nails down its spine? Put a hand on each hip, square your shoulders, grip tightly. The future is trying to take me. Hold me back. Hold me down. Hold on until you're done and forget that I've drifted away before you reach for your pants. Because you knew, didn't you? A blindfold knows its job. And at the end of the day, the most selfish thing is trying to help another person.

It burns, I know. It burns now, now that the story is over, now that the daybreak is liquid, now that my knees don't creak anymore and the leaves are blowing and the highway is humming, and a few extra pounds is not a terminal diagnosis. It burns in me too healing me but the ache is not for you. It's for my passion. That used to be your name. And it's sad, really. The sting of too little too late.

The sooner we heal our traumas, the sooner we liberate ourselves from the people who hurt us. By hating them, we hold onto them. We cannot heal.

He who believes in soul mates never ceases to doubt if his current partner is, truly, “The One.” As a result, the great irony emerges: those who believe in soul mates are much less likely to actually find one.

Some people engage in retail therapy, buying new things to make themselves feel more secure, and others engage in knowledge therapy, amassing new ideas to make themselves feel like they know something. We consume for comfort. We rely on certainty to shield us from the pain of confusion. The truth is staggering, colossal, unfathomable, so we cling to our bite-sized lies. We organize knowledge into bulleted lists and line graphs while the wisdom of the present moment sits patiently at the doors of our perception.

One particularly harmful idea carried by our cultural narrative is that you need to find someone who will love you. Imagine if we believed this about any other basic need: food, water, oxygen. If you needed another person to provide you with those, you’d be considered dependent—if not disabled. Yet we so willingly put ourselves in this state with love.