Phantom limb

 Requiem for a dream

________________________________________________

I got to the airport and felt completely disoriented, despite having been there a dozen times before. I located the kiosk to print out my bag tag, and went through the motions. I fucked it up. How pathetic is it that a supposedly well-adjusted adult - or a good pretender at that - can't even peel off the instruction part properly when the entire 2-step process is written right there? I made a mess and the airline agent, seeing through my smile to catch the thinly veiled mix of shame and dismay, had to insert a plastic band underneath the handle to stabilize it and uncrumple the eldritch paper horror. She had to ensure things could function and be processed, something I am simply incapable of doing. I'm just not great at basic life skills. I never had to learn how to deal with bag tags before.

You always did it for me.

It's one of the many things over the span of a few surreal hours that I realized were not my forte. Things I never thought about before, because you simply took care of them. And after 6 odd years, I didn't even register that anymore, I took you and all my life's parts that revolved around you, big and small, for granted, as if, in those situations, you had been an extension of my own self. It was within the realm of rationality. You were always here, what was there to pause and reflect on? Yet I had to stumble my way through it alone for once. It wasn't pretty. I made do. 

________________________________________

When you looked into my eyes as I was casually sipping on my espresso martini, your words didn't hit me head on, at first merely trudging through the inebriation. Your facial expressions is what triggered my fight or flight response. Mere hours before my departure, mere days after moving into a new apartment together, here you were, admitting to me we no longer would be, together. It struck me like a hammer. Funny how blunt force emotional trauma can knock the wind out of your sails at a lag. It took a few hours, before my legs went numb and my arms got flabby, but sure enough, the life gradually got sucked out of them. I know reality would tell you that my reflection still looked chubby in the storefront windows as I was dragging my overweight luggage along the sidewalk on my way to the airport the next morning, but I felt all shriveled up inside. 

I didn't see it coming. I didn't understand. You have a knack for surprising me with bad news.

That last hour before closing the door on our new apartment - with boxes, books, and clutter marring the extra space that was initially intended to be our saving grace - was excruciating. Life set in too abruptly, too uncontrollably, too unfairly. You had always been next to me here, in this chapter of my life, save for a couple of forgettable months that I can barely recall. I had always been here because of you. Unfortunately I haven't always been here for you. The preposition, much like the proposition, was misguided. 

And then came the slow cycle through the stages of grief. In swift succession, the brain going through everything as swiftly and rapidly as possible without skipping a beat, to the point that some theoretically discrete steps melded together into an emotionally confusing mumble-jumble, alternating anger and denial, bargaining and acceptance like a world-class juggler. One fringe hypothesis states that the reason why people see their whole life flash before their eyes the moment they die has to do with a last-ditch effort to rummage through the past in order to find a way to, somehow, prevent the inevitable. It felt that way a little bit, despite the rational irony of knowing that was not going to happen. 

This isn't the first time we're on the brink of sinking into oblivion. Records of the past seven years attest to that. Somehow, we always found a way to swim back up and end up catching some air. But the schemata remain etched in stone. We invariably stumble back to square one, repeating the same patterns, growing stronger momentarily before drifting apart at a snail's pace. Temporary bliss pernicious enough to hide a slow descent into irritation and incomprehension. The lines of communication increasingly get hacked by static and we inch apart in bed, waiting for a hypnic jerk to bring us closer the moment you're about to fall off. This was never sustainable in the long run.

I think I am bad at loving people.

__________________________________________________________________________________

When the elevator door opened, my heart felt unfulfilled, yet I was resolved to admit defeat. We can't keep hurting each other if we love each other, I thought. It shouldn't work that way. This year has been a year of pain and you deserve to be freed of that. For the first time, I thought my fight response gave in to my flight impulse. I stood in that metallic box, suspended in time and space, waiting for the fall. But my ears failed to pick up on any sound. I instinctively stepped out. I wanted to see if there was still something there, some sliver of us to protect. And I saw you on the threshold. That's when I understood that it was different. That is when I realized that this was the cruelest, most heart-wrenching moment to date. Because when I looked into your eyes and held you in my arms, the faint words that got nudged between our embrace were truth incarnate. And I felt regret. I just wish they could have come out before it was maybe too late.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I don't know what is in store now. I love you, but much like you I am tired. Tired of feeling like I can't give you what you need. Tired of contending with the wall we keep building up between us. Tired of thinking I am not what you need me to be. I don't want you to leave, but I can't ask you to stay. My hubris and self-centeredness have hurt us enough already, it's time for you to be given the freedom to make your own decision. Oh, karmic irony. 

For us to work, there would be so much work to do, on both ends. So many words to say, so many things to tinker with, so much to try for. We'd both have to accept to give up on our Stockholm syndromes, the inner comfort of our egos, the instant gratification of our co-dependence. 

For us to go our separate ways, one of us simply has to accept to give up on everything else.

I don't know where you stand. There is an odd sense of serenity to be derived from emotional limbo, the calm simultaneously both after and before the storm, when you don't have to fight, you can't flee, you just feel. I am emotionally dissociating so that I can find glimmers of peace in this three-day long panic attack. It's like a cozy slice of life nestled within a waking nightmare. 

The terror isn't going away. 

I keep turning around after the most meaningless, trifling and mundane thing happens, a Pavlovian urge to share every single snippet of life with you, no matter how inconsequential. Maybe the smaller, the more valuable, because you and only you deserve to be let in on those trivial secrets. I keep mentioning your name in the same breath as mine, as if "I" had been iron-branded with "we" all over its proverbial body. There is not a single page of my life over the past 7 years that you have not inked or been inked onto. I keep frantically and manically trying to adjust the lack of a necklace around my neck. I simply lost the key to my happiness when I stopped understanding how to love you the way you needed me to.

Much like up until three days ago, you still permeate every waking second of my life. I can feel your presence even though you are not around anymore. It's as excruciating as it is comforting.

Right now, you feel like a phantom limb.

________________________________________________

As I walked up to the counter gating the deserted TSA lanes, the impassible lady sitting behind the desk unexpectedly glitched in the middle of her rotely memorized routine

"ID and licence please... sorry, ID and boarding pass. It has already been a long day."

"Tell me about it."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIZTpB7lisM

White whale

I was on way back to the apartment, quietly riding in the backseat of the uber, when it hit me. I really don’t wanna go home. I don’t want to go back to the place where the smell of our failure is pervasive and poisons my lungs every breath i take. I don’t want to worship a shrine built out of dried-up bones and pretend we’re still alive and well. We’re not well. 

I don’t know if we’re still alive.

I didn’t want to get back to you, because there is no solace in either your silence or your smile anymore. It hurts to see you drift away, it hurts to see glimpses of you clinging onto us. You could cut the disingenuity with a better knife on both ends, and there’s nowhere to hide. When love becomes a requirement. We both lose. It’s the prisoner’s dilemma’s worst outcome where we both cried out and got the maximum sentence. 

I did not want to come home because seeing your face is painful. Hearing your voice is painful. Thinking about you is painful.  No matter how many seeds of pre-emptive loss I plant in my skull, I can’t seem to get numb to the prospect of its death thereof. I pace around in the office, I crawl around in my head, and your being here is emotional waterboarding. I can’t recall how many times I have stared at my suitcases this week, trying to muster the cowardice to pack up and leave. 

I did not want to come home because you were here. 

Which is also why I couldn’t wait to get home.

And that’s the very crux of the conundrum. I don’t want to lose you, but I’ve lost you, and yet you’re still here. And I can’t help but want to cherish every second of that, despite the trail of sanity I leave in my wake. My rational brain is clamoring for me to call it, but the rest of me won’t budge. Because at the end of the day, once you’re gone, what am I going to be left with 

But those moments spent with you?

And as counterintuitive as it sounds, life is still churning out tons of them. Ungrateful trade-off or desperate plea to make sense of it all. I want to say I wish we had more time. That’s not true.

Because I wished time would never be our enemy ever again.

Just like the dead battery running my watch stopped its hands in their tracks, I hoped we could be suspended in time. But I foolishly forgot to factor in growth. 

I grew closer to you, you grew apart. 

And as fast as I am trying to run towards you,

You’re running away faster.

So when you’re finally out of sight and I’m off your mind, what is left of us? What is left of that piece of life we shared together, of the smiles, the tears, the laughs, the resentment, the fogiveness, the love, the friendship, the kindness, the bursts of anger, hope, doubt, loneliness, happiness? What will be left of us beyond the innumerable pictures that captured people we no longer will be, a reality fabricated to fill the hole we left in each other’s past? What will be left of us but those souvenirs I wear on my body, on my skin, in my head like talismans to ward off the part of me that yearns to devour us whole and leave nothing behind, except for a gaping hole replacing the painful yet beautiful? 

So beautiful. 

In the end, what will be left of you

But those memories to be?

 https://youtu.be/YJ35gwz7AS0

Bojji

I don’t buy into the healing properties of writing. After all, no utterances have never soothed my pain. The words that remain too often have the opposite effect - like a pernicious fire that turns things to ash without cauterizing the wound. Yet spewing nonsensical subjectivity has always been the only way I know how to catharsize, as made up as it reads. The only chance I get to give my woes a distinctive shape so I can visualize what I am afflicted with, to try and understand what is causing the autophagy. What’s the diagnosis doctor?  It does not help solve it, there’s no cure, no remedy. But it helps come to terms with all the ugliness inside.

It’s therapeutic verbal acrobatics is what it is.

____________________________________

_________________

I shouldn’t be missing you while you’re still here.

The arrow of time is all fucked up. The timeline is all tangled up. And I can’t live in the moment. 

Because the moment hurts too much. I am conflicted between hanging onto our past as tight as I can, wrapping that security blanket around me to protect me from the bitter truths and harsh realities, deafening me to those memorical soundbites that I can’t shrug off - How could I? When you get stabbed you’re not supposed to pull the knife out 

Lest you bleed out - 

And looking ahead to a foggy, murky horizon that looks as unwelcoming as the mess in my head. You’re here but you’re really not. I’m here

But I no longer feel like I am.

There is such a thing as overfeeling. As wearing your heart on your sleeve not by choice, but out of necessity. I am not cut out for this, and neither is it. 

What am I but a kaleidoscope of my past mistakes?

I don’t consistently see the glass as fully empty for the masochistic arousal of self-pity. It’s because I can’t do otherwise. My crippling fear of abandonment, covert social inadequacy, and inability to put a leash on my feelings make it impossible for me to entertain hope. 

It would quite literally kill me.

I don’t know how to express love the way I am supposed to. It inflates like I’m high on helium, too quick and too big, to the point that it slips out of control before I even realize it. Maybe my love suffocated you, or maybe it stifled my growth. Maybe it got so big it flew away before I could give it to you properly. Or maybe it blew up in your face without your asking. At the end of the day

I don’t think I’ve loved you right. 

______________

____

There is this game, called Passage, that lets you simply walk through life for a handful of minutes, from the moment you take your first breath to the moment you die. It is one of the most straightforward, unadulterated piece of existence one could experience and presents you with one singular choice: do you want to go through all this pointless, morbid irony alone, opening more paths for yourself in a maze of identical possibilities - or would you rather have someone by your side to hold your hand, no matter the struggles, no matter the closed doors or slow pace. 

A few years ago, when I first played that life a few times, I would consistently pick the easier option and explore as much as I could. After all, why shackle yourself to a lesser future?

I don’t think I quite got the point back then.

There is no satisfaction to be found in an experience devoid of challenges. Easy does not, actually, does it. It has been difficult, it has been challenging, it has been fragilized so many times I have forgotten half the times we should have shattered. And yet that’s exactly why it has been rewarding, why it has led to so much joy, what has made us grow.

Together.

You can’t truly know the other without staring at the swamp of ugliness within, and accept that it is part of the background. There is no understanding without temporary disconnection, because it’s impossible to fix what does not appear to be broke. There is no love without flaws. 

We have survived each other as much as we have life’s curveballs. 

That’s why I really wish I could have gone through Passage with you a little longer.

Cheekbones

I’ve forgotten how to start these

Phew…

Here goes nothing

_______________

______

__

It has been a challenging three years,  on the macro level as much as on the micro level. A time during which fleeting happiness and temporary bliss have too often had to share a house with underlying despair, unrelenting pain and unspeakable guilt. Papy is gone. Half my dreams were buried shortly after he was. But in all of that, you have always been my constant. A defective beacon whose light shines haphazardly, dangerously, radiating the place over like a feral beast. Yet, thanks or despite all the hurdles, it always allowed me to bask in the embrace of safety.  

Things have not been perfect. After all, they say that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

But what about two broken clocks?

We’ve made do. We pushed through. Against all odds we made it past every conceivable ordeal life was ready to throw at us. Like puppets we danced, patiently, hoping that the strings would bring us closer together, time and again. We were right. Until we weren’t.

Until I no longer was. 

Or until I was no longer right for you.

______

I can’t wrap my mind around the concept of a dying love. I have seen the kind that ends up in fireworks, multiple successive arsons that ripple through the heart and bleed it dry. I am all too familiar with the implosion that wipes out everything and reshapes the landscape in ways you couldn’t fathom. But never had I experienced the cold embrace of a slow death, when love fades, gradually, like a dying houseplant whithering away. It’s silent, it does not make a sound, it does not cry out for help. It just goes into the night. I guess it is akin to what scientists refer to as heat death - stars slowly dying around you, one after the other, until you are inevitably, eventually

Left alone in this cold, deserted universe of yours.

Is that what happened to us? Is that what is happening to us?

_________

__

Since you uttered those words I can’t find myself anymore. If it’s not my fault, if you still love me, then why? I know I am shortsighted, and probably still see the world through a kid’s heart, but how can we turn into broken memories if we are still holding hands? How can our future vanish if we’re here?

How can I lose you when you still smile like this?

I know I’m not exactly perfect. I am plagued with the survivalist selfishness and artificial self-centeredness that result from an overdose of introspection; I am not impervious to occasional bouts of  cockiness, stubborness, and other hubris-related diseases. Too rarely do I lend a listening ear or offer a helping hand, because I am clumsy, awkward, unfit and I’m scared of pretty much everything in this world. 

Everything but you. 

We created a bubble that let me be happy. Nevermind the bursts of anger, the violence of words that pierce like daggers when we cry for help but things get lost in translation, or the misery of daymares. I am happy. I was happy. Because at the end of the day, I got to hold you, look in your eyes and see honest, genuine love. 10 years running after something so elusive, so precious that I had started to gaslight myself into believing it was a myth. But it’s not. Because you’re here.

But I guess the bubble is not making you happy.

I know I am far from perfect. I took you for granted because deep down that is probably what I wanted, to believe I no longer had to fight for something. I failed to pay enough attention to your needs because I was too focused on my fleemsy desires. I looked inward when I should have peeked outward, swallowed the bitter pill and accepted that I couldn’t do it alone. It takes two to tango, but I guess I never could accept that you would know the steps, that you could take the lead and we could face the music

Together.

That’s what that happens when the hero complex metastasizes. It refuses to die and starts spreading to every facet of the relationship, turning us into me, turning me into a hypothetical savior.

And a real-life asshole.

There is nothing perfect about me. But I tried. 

Simply not hard enough.

Yet you’re still here. And my heart can’t compute. How can you be here and gone at the same time? How can there be a countdown to the moment you are no longer by my side? How can the outcome of love be uncertain if it’s still here with us?

I wish I could carve the sound of your voice saying I love you on my eardrums before it fades away. I wish I could store the sight of your smile behind my pupils to replay it forever, for it is the most beautiful thing that I have ever been given the chance to lay my eyes upon. I wish I could etch the exact hues of your hazel eyes onto my brain, let them plant never-ending butterflies in my stomach forever. I wish I could brand the feeling of holding you hand onto my heart the way you tattooed those dotted lines on my arm, for it is about as close as I have ever been to experiencing true happiness. I think it is true happiness.

The second tattoo you gave me sits on my wrist, hovering above my pulse. I don’t know what that means. But it’s here. And I can’t erase it. It will forever remain unfinished, it will always feel like something is missing, that something about it is not quite right. But it’s always going to be right there, reacting to the drumbeat of my heart. There will forever be room on there for you, just like there will always be room in here. Because it’s you. You.

I just wish our love was enough to make you stay.

https://youtu.be/ixP0PZZx7t4

725

Hey Emma,

It's been some time uh? I hope you are well. I genuinely do.
We need to talk.
Or rather, I need to talk.

It has been almost 6 years. That's a long-ass time, 6 years. Enough to get into you own head and dwell on the littlest things until they drive you crazy. Enough to self-sabotage at every turn, because I am not fooling anyone, I've been plotting to fuck up every single one of my relationships to keep the spot open for you in case you'd come back. You won't come back, but it did not feel like any of them was worth it anyway.
Nostalgia goggles will do that to you.
Nobody could ever live up to your legacy, to who you were. Everybody always came up way too short. You left me stranded on an island of my own making, and it is true that as time went by the sea eventally simmered down.
But it did not matter.
I was still lost.

It does not feel like I went through the 6 degrees of separation. It feels like I went through dozens of them. And I would fail over and over again, trying to switch gears to no avail. Rinse and repeat this cycle of self-imposed misery.
The memory of you was an obstacle I couldn't overcome despite my best intentions. I tried, mind you, but probably not that hard though. So I crafted a reality where you were nowhere to be found and yet ubiquitous. I made you a deity in this universe, some almighty idea that governed my world and possessed my heart. I prayed to the memory of us and preached to others. I locked myself up in a cult built around the idea of you.
Not even us.
Because I barely remember what we were like together.

I have forgotten your laughs, I have forgotten your smiles, your little quirks, your voice, the way you looked at me, the way you looked at the world, your tears. After a while, I started forgetting you and you more by the day. So I glorified who you used to be and made someone up in my mind, a phantom that would stay by my side and help me plough through my crippling loneliness. It was not you. It never really was. But it did not matter, I was a vessel to corrosive regrets and noxious depression. It was retribution, it was my way to atone for my sins. The only way I could come up with.
Hurting to stop hurting.
It did not work.

And so I was stuck, I was stuck in a life where I would do anything to get away from your invisible, smothering grasp. I fell at every single turn, trying to take my heart off of you. The more painful the better. The rationale was, if I can find someone to hurt me more than you still do, it will conceal you somehow.
Peel off my skin to remove the scars.
That's how I accepted to be treated like shit, that's how I was okay with someone physically and emotionally battering me. Heck, I secretly reveled in the idea that it would distract me for a hot minute.

And it became a masochistic addiction.
Scour life for anything that would give me a kick, anything that would make me feel alive beyond you.
Fuck me up, fuck me up, fuck me the fuck up. I'm too far gone now anyway.
Sure, I would go cold turkey every so often, sometimes for long periods of time. But I relapsed every chance I got, because I couldn't quench my thirst for that high I got when I stooped to low.
Fuel my self-loathing, nurture my seething anger, and don't forget to crush my trust in others in the process.
I wanted to believe that my heart was broken beyond repair and embrace the shards, feel them dig into my skin and make my soul shriek. I just longed to feel something again.

It's been almost 6 years during which I lied to myself to keep my promise that I would forever wait for you.
So I tried to make do with this wreck of a heart, to free up some little corner in this factory of sadness, but it was never enough, because you take up too much damn space.
6 years of living with a ghost by my side, day in and day out, of sharing who I am with the festering corpse of our relationship.
But the time has come for me to kick you out
Because it's finally time for someone else to move in
And she needs the space you're still taking

 _____________________________________________________________________________

___________________

It took me 6 years to find you. Or rather, it took you 6 years to find me. The longest game of hide and seek in my life.
It took you a mere 5 weeks to convince me that I was not a hopeless piece of shit. It took you 4 more weeks to prove it.

I was not expecting you. You just appeared one day out of the blue, without warning. I guess that's always how it is.
You kept knocking on the door, ever so gently, so patiently, and I was itching to open, I was itching to connect. But I waited. I waited for the timing to be right because I understood that for the first time, I wanted to let someone in.
Because I knew
That you would change my life.
Because you don't feed into my addictions. I don't feel that temporary bliss just to collapse the very next minute. You don't hurt like... Wait, you just don't hurt.
Shit, I am not hurting anymore.

I know it is not as simple as we both wished it were. Because my time here has an expiration date. And it is a weird thing for a relationship to have a set date when everything will change that you can actually circle on the calendar with a sharpie. It is at once depressing, disconcerting, and oddly reassuring. Because I will be gone in a few months, and it is something we have both accepted.
Or something we both pretend we did, when neither of us is actually okay with it.
So we freak out, it's inevitable. Every once in a while, everything suddenly goes south and we have to sink or swim.
But I truly believe we can swim.
Because I'm tired of sitting idly by on this tiny island in my head.

She does not need to show me colors, or sounds. She sobers my heart up and it stops retching and throwing up.

I know y'all tell me there's the age gap, you tell me about the cultural barrier, about the ticking clock,
But who gives a shit
Look at her
Look at how beautiful she is

Look at how her smile is thz antidote to all the sadness in my head. Look at how it breathes meaning into a life that has felt so full of shit and so empty of hope for far too long. Look at how it awakens something strange behind this ribcage and fleshes it out every time she looks into my soul with those hazel eyes.
Look into mine, look how wide I can open them now that she is by my side. I no longer need to squint and pretend that beauty is out there somewhere. It is right here
You are right here next to me

Listen to her laugh, listen to how my heart skips a beat when she cracks up. Listen to how it's playing music again at every teehee. Listen and shut up, just like my head for as long as she has been here. Listen to the silence of my self-diagnosed chemical imbalance, of my crippling depression and sporadic suicidal urges. Listen to her, listen to her voice and how it soothes me when I feel like falling back into the same old patterns, to how she can pull me back up with a single word and make life almost as beautiful as she is.

I am so good with her. I don't live in fear of everything that life could throw at us, I don't feel inadequate in a relationship for the very first time. It does not just feel right.
It is right.
I don't know what happiness is supposed to look like, but there is one thing I know for sure
If happiness has a face
Then it looks a whole lot like you.

You make me happy like nobody ever before, and I am failing as a translator because I don't have words to convey what you mean to me. You've flipped the script, you've changed the game. And when I go, it is gonna the hardest thing I have to do in my entire life.
But that's okay.
That's okay.
Because every second life gives me with you is a moment I will cherish forever. Every time you breathe on my chest I take a mental snapshot of the rush I get, every crumb of this slice of life we're sharing is another star in my eyes that life won't ever be able to take away from me. Every joke, every  touch, every look, every text, every grimace helps me picture a future where you are holding my hand for better or for worse.

And yesterday when I was tailspinning, you sat there next to me and waxed newly-acquired knowledge about coffee, and I looked at you. And I realized that everything so far had led up to you.
It won't be easy, but as long as we are together
We'll make it through
Together
Thank you for that, and so much more you don't know.

So, farewell Emma. Once upon a time I loved you with all that my heart could bear, and I thought that I could never do that ever again, regardless of how much I grew up or at least struggled to.
But someone is proving me wrong every day now, and you can't stay here. Because I don't want you anymore.
I want her by my side.
And nobody but her.
Thank you for everything, I hope you're happy.
Because thanks to her I am.


Hi Alex,
I'm sorry, it's a little messy in here. But I believe that after some cleaning up, you will feel right at home. I really hope so.
Welcome to my life

Moose

I find it almost riveting how some people in stable and long-standing relationships seem to rejoice in just sitting back and watching others struggle to utter words that must be very right at a very wrong time. How pawning off their butterflies and dreaming by proxy seems even more exhilarating to them than sitting in the driver's seat . According to some who have experienced this bliss at my own expense a couple of times, it procures more than just collateral temporary ellatedness, but rather a strong sense of achievement - the substance of which the recipient gets none. A hapless circus animal that has to carry out the routine as best it can sans rehearsal, while the trainer receives all the laurels at the end. I does not feel good.

I had not felt goosebumps in a while. That is mainly because I do my utmost to prevent getting myself in a position that would trigger dicey stomach movements and excess sweat. See, I despise not being in full control of what is happening to me - even when I get out of my comfort zone, I make sure to take my security blanket with me.
I hate goosebumps for I am a chicken.

That is why I have long thrown in the towel and stopped hoping for love to come out of the blue. Because even when it does, my right brain is too gauche to make anything out of it. To my defence, my only real relationships both ended in a disaster, completely different they may have been. 2 really does a number on you. It has taken a toll in the long run and hope has grown scarce. It hturned into where's Waldo? and my heart is terrible at pinpointing hope's location or even coming up with a consistent pattern for finding it. As a result, I have worked into my brain the assumption that it was not worth it, that this whole thing had hit a point of diminishing returns, and I am not interested in chasing a downward spiral anymore. Look at me, I am all grown-up.

I don't have an explanation for what happened. It was Sarah all over again and I fell right for her magnificent awkwardness. The booze helped. Fatigue helped. The others' excruciating banter helped.
And I guess resignation did the rest.
I gave up before my eyes gazed into hers. I did not care much, I just wanted to get it over with. There was nothing magical or enjoyable about these few seconds of inflated self-consciousness.
I do not know how it works. Last time I did something this cute and stupid it was with Marion 9 years ago. Look where it got me. I know what I am supposed to say, how I am supposed to say it, the face I am supposed to make. My brain has learned to pull a fairly good impersonation at my heartstrings. Yet nothing never goes as planned. I botch it and have to break out of character, stuttering what gibberish my brain jettisons from my sanity.
With you it was when you opened your eyes wide the very moment I dropped beautiful.
I could not see it to the end as scripted. I forgot my lines and made a fool of myself in front of what was then my own world - you.
But maybe that is what makes me human? Maybe that is what birthed this tornado of uncontainable feelings I cannot figure out how to get rid of.

I have been feeling small, miserable, incredibly sad, ludicrous - you name it. You kicked me out of my safe haven without even trying to get in. I got the eviction letter too late. My cynisism is withering away and I am afraid what's been buried deep inside might come forth.
I hate you hope, because you stop making me feel like shit to make me feel something way worse.
I feel like throwing up every time my phone rings. My heart is throbbing every time the screen lights up.
Which is unfortunate because I am not young enough anymore to believe you would call.
So why does my body display such insubordination to my brain? Why did Heart back up such a mistake of an endeavor?
And why don't Guts speak up against this nonsense?

The fortress I have built over time has not allowed me to feel the world adequately. Love, or even just infatuation remains to me a  much hostile unchartered territory.  I feel through thoughts like a teenager and think feelings like an adult. This discrepancy fucks it all up - I don't know which I should follow.
I am more alive than I have been in years, and it hurts so bad. My brain had no grounds to rope me in. And now disappointment is lurking and waiting to wolf poor little heart down.
Well, I guess I had it coming after crying wolf so many times before.
A cautionary tale for...what for exactly?
I can't help but believe that degausser failed for a reason. It was not an overlook or bad design, or even an unfortunate chain of events.
She was simply stronger. Her eyes thawed my stone-cold ribcage while her smile was busy fleshing out my flatlining feelings box.
I had lost before she said anything. Just look at my entire body smarting because I am stupid.

You had me before hello.

Now what is funny is that from your perspective, I was surely no more than a clumsy creep who gave you a number you will make sure never to call. Yet, despite the fairly staggering ache I've been saddled with, and even if just for the stilted "sure",
I guess it was kinda worth it.

I am still the exact same fool. I still snowball little nothings into dreams way bigger than me. I still make a fuss and become a mess for no reason. I still pull an Icarus even though I am far too weak to actually reach a single star. And I still forget to ask the names of the ones that make me waste hours on end on this shameful and self-centered diary.

In the end, I had yet again lost the race, but I guess I still wanted to cross the finish line one more time, hoping that maybe, one day,
I will be holding more than the baton my former selves keep handing off to me.




Shit, I really hoped you'd call.

_________________________________________________________________________________

I turned up, and the moment I saw you waiting tables,

I knew I had to stop just waiting for tables to turn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXp6dq5jg1g

My crooked bed

We were having dinner at a very nice restaurant yesterday evening. I was there with my mom and Nat, who had not seen each other for like, 5 years.
I had had a terribly shitty day. The kind of days that make you wanna quit without sleeping on it.
And as mom scrolled down and swiped left and right on her phone to find some picture - and it felt kind of like she was actually trying to find her way in a giant matricial maze to little success - she happened to come across a picture of me and her.
It did not take her long, as she seemed to instantly realize the pecadillo, to change course accordingly - and yet it awakened the dormant sadness melanoma in my guts. Its roots expanded to my brain and to my heart and I felt sick to my stomach for a moment. I calmed myself down eventually, after a few never-ending seconds of hard work.
The remainder of the evening went fine.
I was exhausted upon coming home, and on the way back I really, truly thought a singular thought,
God I miss you.
And what I missed at that moment was not just the affection, the false sense of love or the shallow desire for physical mingling. It was you I missed, with all your faults, your ugliness and everything in between.
I felt terrible when I finally laid down in my bed. Trapped, in a game of monopoly in which I can seldom afford anything without it being taken away, and unable to drop out. Going in squares.
Because going in circles certainly is counterproductive, but at the very least, the angles are pretty smooth and the trajectory straight-forward, or at least so to speak.
With the square, you do feel like you're doing fine: you just have to go ahead, period. Even easier this way, right? The problem is, at some point, you run into a corner. Literally run into it.
It kind of mars the whole my-life-is-going-okay vibe you took time to build along the straight line.

The both of us, we were a crucial mistake, a heavy misunderstanding. But we weren't heavy per se.
I mean, 250 pounds together, that sounds about right.
Yet my bed is a piece of junk, just like most stuff in my place, and a couple days ago it broke for no good reason. Now I have to sleep in a crooked bed because of you, even though you are nonexistant in my present.
This sucks.

It's not the only consequence of my putting too much hope in a story that was dead on arrival- I all but hate my study material, and it's almost succeeding at disgusting me of one of the things I hold dearest to heart altogether. The only buddy I could rely on to get me through the day is not here half of the time - and while I am in class cursing myself, he is shagging my ex.
I write, even though I don't enjoy writing; I even took up drawing again, all to take my mind off the fact that this has probably been, all things considered,
The worst year of my life so far.



2017, dude, I'm so looking forward to meeting you.