What am I doing? Is this enough, or is it just better than nothing? Once again I find myself doing something stupid. Once again I find myself doing something that I know is causing pain, and will probably cause more, because I'm too afraid of what I'll lose in the present moment. I'm too paralyzed to prepare for the future. I am. I'm afraid. I'm afraid that I'm alone.
Sometimes I think to myself that I'm growing, I'm maturing, I'm gaining experience. Sometimes I think that I'm more in control of myself and my emotions than I used to be. And then other times, out of the thin blue sky when I least expect it, I feel my heart sink. I feel the weight of Atlas when I had thought I was in the clouds. It's almost as if I keep myself so busy that I don't realize that I'm sad. That I don't realize this is hurting me. And sometimes when my guard is down and I'm not paying attention, my heart throws it at me all at once in a desperate attempt to get me to listen.
Sometimes I think I haven't gotten better at controlling my feelings, I've just gotten better at fooling myself.
How do I feel about you still? I don't know sometimes. I try to act casual. I try to act natural. I try to just act like a friend. I try so hard that I believe myself sometimes. But then other times when I'm alone and I think of you the sadness hits me so hard that it's like a steel mallet to my chest. As always, I stuff that feeling away. I don't even think about what it means. I tell myself there's no reason for the feeling, and that I'm just weird or crazy or it must be around that time of the month. I don't allow those feelings any validation. But what if there is a reason for them? What if they're real? What if I'm not over it? Maybe it's just stewing inside of me, maybe it's fermenting, maybe it's growing, secretly, maybe it's rotting.
I don't know. I'm afraid to let it out, because I need it to go away. But I'm also afraid to keep stuffing it inside, because I might be doing damage that I don't even know about. I'm so good at pretending I'm okay, that everything's fine, that I'm doing fine, that sometimes I even believe myself. That's actually my whole game: pretending so hard that I believe it. That is my whole game. That's how I keep myself okay in bad situations. But the thing is.... I might be making myself pay for it down the road. It might be that every time I do that, I'm just taking some mess and throwing it in the closet, or sweeping it under the rug, and I can't see it anymore so I think that it's gone, but maybe it's actually collecting rot and maggots and rats and getting filthier and filthier in the closet and under the rug. Maybe it doesn't go away when I pretend I'm fine. Maybe it just gets uglier out of sight, and maybe it continues to hurt me more and more, and I don't even realize it.
Maybe not. I don't know.
I don't know how to talk to you about it. I just wanted so badly for things to go back to normal between us. And I feel like quite a bit of time has passed now since that night that I told you I loved you. And I feel like the more time can pass without me acting like I love you or mentioning it again, the more comfortable it will be for us to hang out. I know you don't want me to feel this way, and I don't know how to deal with it besides to talk to you about it but at the same time I feel like maybe you think I'm over it, or mostly over it, and I know you want to think that and I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable so I kind of feel like if I can just keep up not mentioning it or acting like it then I won't lose you. And I know you said you're not going anywhere but to me going anywhere isn't a physical place, it's a state of mind. It's a place in your heart. You can be right next to me and be universes away. I know. I've felt it. And I don't want that.
But I'll never be able to be truly close to you if I can't talk to you.
I guess you don't want to be "truly close" anyway. You just want something casual until you find the person you want to spend your life with, or so you said. Not in exactly those words, but that's basically what it is and we both know it. I just don't understand. You get upset with me for not talking to you sometimes, or for being bad at communicating about how I feel. But the thing is... why do you want me to be good at communicating about how I feel? If I were to communicate all those things, I would be telling you about how I feel not just about myself and my life but about you. And you don't want to hear that. And if you do want to hear that, then how can you say you just want something casual until you meet somebody else? That doesn't add up. When I trust somebody enough to completely open up to them, it's because I'm invested in them. It's because I'm trying to build something with them, trying to work towards something with them. And why would you want to do all that with somebody that's basically a placeholder for your vague, blurry future wife? I feel like that would just be wasting my time.
Besides that, it's already hard enough for me to have a real conversation with someone. It's possible, but it's extremely rare. You've already told me you and I are not going to happen. If I were suddenly able to do that with you, it would create, at least for me, an undeniable connection between us that is so rare for me and so important to me. I couldn't stand to have that with you, to open myself up and let down all of those walls, knowing that there was no chance. Knowing where the finish line was. Do you understand that? I'm not saying I can't open up to someone unless I know we're going to get married and have a million babies and a dog; not at all. Not knowing is half the fun. What I'm saying is that when there is a clear end line, when there is a clear marker that says "this will not go any farther than this line here in the sand between us," I can't do that. I can't let down all the walls I've spent my whole life building, establish a connection with someone and a trust with someone that I've never really had before, make myself that vulnerable, and everything, knowing with 100% certainty that you were never going to choose me. That we would never make it past the "keeping each other company, friends, having someone to make you feel less lonely while you pass the time until the right person comes along" stage. You can't ask me to do that. Not when I feel this way about you. You cannot ask me to do that. Because the second I let those walls down and I let you in and I trusted you like that, which I've never really been able to do before but for some reason I feel like with you, I could, the second I did all of that... I would just think of you as mine. You would be mine and I would be yours in my head, and that would just be the way it was. I would just think of you as my person. My one person. That one person that people find sometimes that they don't ever let go. And then eventually some girl would come along as you'd fall in love with her and I don't think I would ever finish picking up the pieces of my heart.
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