Jacqueline Simon Gunn

“This may sound like a bunch of psychobabble, but the truth is that we are all filled with contradictions; personality is fluid not black and white. And, well…we are all both strongand weak. That’s what it means to be human. We all have flaws, weaknesses. The real strength is when we can admit these to ourselves and become able to show them to others.”

“Jacob being sensitive is an endowment. Think about all you'd miss out on if you didn't feel things so deeply, or see things so clearly." "But feeling good things deeply means you feel bad things deeply, too." "Would you rather walk around oblivious to the meaning of things hidden under the surface and the opportunities to feel wonder and joy? Would you want to miss out on moments that take your breath away?”

“Heartbreak is awful, but truth be told, if you have never had your heart broken, then you aren't fully living. I want you to ask yourself this question because I want you to bask in the fullness of life. And in order to feel life - to experience life - you need to take risks. When you open your heart, you risk having it broken; or stated more accurately it will be broken. But do it anyway; open yourself up. If you don't, you will never know what it means to live, to love and to be with others.”

“Empty Spaces I wanted to feel less.To not be burdened by emotion,To not feel sadness,To not know loss.I envied the inanimate,The trees that stand proudly in winter,Not missing their leaves.I wanted to be weightless,To not experience limitation.I didn’t want time to pass,The blur of days, months, years.It moved too quickly,I wanted to grasp on,Hold it.It eluded me,Intangible,Like light.I wanted to preserve life before you were gone.I didn’t want to know grief.But the pain kept me connected.It meant that I loved you,It meant that I would always be a little broken,It meant that our love filled all of the empty spaces.It meant that you would be with me... forever.”

“Life is ephemeral; each moment passes quickly, a blur of color on a fast moving subway car. There and gone and all we are left with is the imprint of what once was.”

“Between the MileI have always counted the miles.Sometimes they came quick,Other times slow.The distance between things,The way I could know.Close could feel far,And far could feel near.The miles that passed too quickly,The ones I ran out of fear.They weren’t all the same,So I had been told,The unmarked trails,And the days I was bold.Some miles went down,Spiraling so low,When I was afraid to look forward,There was nowhere to go.The sunset came fast,And the day turned to night,But the trails could be endless,If I looked at them right.Everything I knew,All I was told,The conversations left behind,The people who grew old.When the miles stretched out before me,I wanted to sew them at the seam,Looking forward and then back,Holding everything in between.”

“Nothing looked the same, and everything looked the same.”

“You know this has really affected my ability to trust myself. No matter what happened in my life, I was always able to trust myself. My instincts. Two men in a row carrying on indiscretions makes me feel like I made up some story. Almost like a fiction, Iwrote in my mind that had a beginning, middle and end. It feels like I manufactured some ideal life that was a made-up invention that I needed to believe was the truth.”

“I fell in love with the expression in his eyes when he looked at me.”

“The pain of running relieves the pain of living.”

“It was a fictional story, but like any good fiction, without the need to adjust or conceal the truth, it actually might bethe greatest expression of truth.”

“She averted his eyes, but not before he recognized the pain in them, a tormented and languished gaze, a stare preserved for people who were able to love deeply enough that they could be destroyed by it. For a moment, he knew that gaze intimately, remembering it from a time long gone. The ache of a shattered belief once known. He knew that feeling.”

“You should only fall in love with someonewhose arms are open, and strong enough to catch you.”

“I wanted to feel less.To not be burdened by emotion,To not feel sadness,To not know loss.I envied the inanimate,The trees that stand proudly in winter,Not missing their leaves.”

“She averted his eyes, but not before he recognized the pain in them, a tormented and languished gaze, a stare preserved for people who were able to love deeply enough that they could be destroyed by it.”

“The truth, a truth, and reality are not always the same.”

“I highly recommended running through grassy trails in the rain. There is a haven of serenity out in nature, the sound of raindrops and the scent of flowers, the feeling of the water along my skin. Even in the middle of a busy city and an insane world, there is beauty everywhere. All we have to do is pause long enough to notice.”

“Looking back, retrospectively on the events of that evening, I can see the irony — the shrink whose cat ate his own tail. At the time of the incident, however, humor was not in my emotional repertoire; it was the furthest thing from my mind.”

“We can reach untainted experiential freedom, by living in the moment as it is—without contemplation. Here we find the possibility of freedom—of just being—living as our authentic self. We are our true nature. We are one and whole.”

“Sometimes we don't know where we are going until we get there.”