u/Iridescent_Kitten

Loss..

It is not just the mourning of a person, but the mourning of a ghost you were forced to invent to fill the spaces that a person leaves empty.

Don't you know this? I know you do. We both do.

​Our creative minds are cruel curators. They feed us a fleeting vision of the outline and the shadow that remains, long after the subject has walked out of the frame.

I imagine you have a few lingering ghosts. To have not fully given in.

​I try to conjure your face every minute of every waking day. Without a photograph to pull you to reality, I've still committed you to this wretched memory of mine.

Give me something more to go by, would you?

Did your eyes always alarm? Was your smile quite so guarded? Did you always have that cold look in your eyes? Did you always have that worry?

You looked pained. You looked mad. You looked manic, empty even. Sometimes.

A few times, you looked like you loved me.

Those eyes will always be my favorite eyes.

When we first met..

Day by day, your voice caused curiosity, blending into the white noise of my own gnawing, unmet desire. It is a slow erasure. You.

Tell me you don't want me to erase you. Tell me you exist and prove it, please. Not as a demand, but as a testament. That you love me back.

​I find myself asking the quiet question: Does the person I love actually remain? Did they ever truly exist? Fully? Even in your own world?

Do you? I hope you do. I wish.

​You were good at presence sometimes. You could have texted me. I waited. You knew. You could have tried harder. Please do. Don't say it's too late.

You existed in fragments, offering just enough of your soul to be perceived, but never enough to be held. I would have crawled through broken glass to hold you.

That makes me too much, though, right?

I wish to be proven wrong. I would have moved mountains to perceive you. Just to make you laugh. To fall deeper.

For that fear of loss to be conquered by reassurance. To heal you just with consideration. One I wish you had for me. To stay. Every night without you is utter and sheer agony.

Do you feel the same? Perhaps. Perhaps not. A conversation bridges the difference between reality and assumption.

I wanted to see you move out of a still image, to breathe in the scent of your neck as I hugged you, to hear the unedited cadence of your actual voice. To kiss your soft lips, to trace my fingers against your face. To laugh with you.

Instead, I am left with a curated museum of maybe. Uncertainty. Confusion. Pain. Hand-me-down gifts from a past like mine. And that's what confuses me, I understand yet, I didn't do that to you. I am not them.

Why do I have to be punished as such?

I will never be them. I cannot. I trusted you. I don't tell people my full name. Spend as much time as I have around or with them, like you.

I don't tell everyone or really anyone for that matter the things that I told you. For you to have doubted my trust, was because you took that away... I don't say that to be an ass.

I need to know you exist, fully exist. When people omit details to me, it's usually because they've had something seriously alarming or hurtful to hide. Let's respect each other's trauma.

I have no voice to match your frame. Just questions that float to the surface. Don't leave me with your ghost. Please.

​We often cherish something we feel is lost in life, but in order to be lost, it must first have been found. I thought I had found you. Let me?

I thought the quiet recognition passing between us was the tethering of two of the same unmatched frequency.

I didn't want to remind you of anyone but me. I wanted to love openly and not try to fit into a box too small for my frame. I'm not possessive, if anything, I want you to own me. My heart, my soul.

I'd wear your name around my neck.

​But there is a bitter irony woven into the fabric of human desire...we as a species often don't always want those who want us once we get to know them. ​

When I stepped forward, it felt as though you took a half-step back. The moment my affection became tangible, your walls ascended more, it seemed.

Those alarm bells could have been discussed. Anything could be, for that matter.

It is the curse of the abused heart to crave love from afar, but to view it as a threat up close. To want the warmth of the fire, but feel terrified of the burn, so one stands shivering in the doorway.

You would have never had to ask to come in, I would have held you as long as you liked. I would have reassured you as much, too. I say that as tears fall. I know the hurt child inside. I know it all too damn well.

Sometimes..

​It is rare to choose those who choose us. It is rare for us to choose and get it right. ​I chose you. I still choose you.

And that is probably madness. But, I am far from sane. Yet, you knew this of me.

No poet, artist, writer, or visionary or any sort is "sane."

Consciously, deliberately, and with open hands I would have held your affections fully. But your satiation felt like it relied on distance. The closer I came, the more the reality of me felt suffocated in fantasy of us that you kept safely locked in your head.

Maybe that isn't true and I am ignorant, maybe it was all fear for you. So scared to blow it, so you felt like you needed to burn the steel bridge.

I don't know if I'm off base. So to feel untrusted, perhaps slightly just. The bridge still stands, oxidized, and bent. I don't want vitriol, I don't want loss.

I want you. I need you. I love you.

Not as a partner, should you no longer desire that, but as a friend. One that stays.

​I knew of you, but did I know you? ​That is the hardest question to swallow. Six months is often enough time, but I'd spend six more willingly.

I fell in love with the pieces you provided of the man you were terrified to be, yet are.

Don't you know I love you? Like, actually do?

You came first and I stupidly didn't choose you the first time. Look where that got me.

I saw the kindness you stifled, the humor you kept as a shield, the profound depth you kept entirely to yourself for safe keeping.

Imagine if you had felt comfortable enough to unlock your full potential. Imagine if you had laid down your arms and allowed yourself to simply be known.

Would it feel like a cigarette after a stressful day?

​But loving potential is a dangerous game. Right? No I believe, potential is just the start. I refuse to believe I was loving an idea never meant to come to fruition and that would be the definition of false hope and cruelty.

But maybe I am wrong.

​I spent so much time knowing it wasn't about who was wrong and who was right in our quiet bouts of attrition. You, for retreating? Me, for advancing? It was never about winning an argument. No arguments to be had.

Just two wounded people trying to renavigate how to love.

What if it was just about keeping you?

I wanted to keep you. You wanted to keep yourself safe. So did I. And after what just happened to me, I feel inclined to have your understanding.

I understood why you were concerned, yet I needed you anyway. Those two desires could never coexist in the same breath. Could they?

I believe so.

I don't rely on statistics of gaps in age or any semblance of bullshit to pry me of my narrative of love. I've known you long enough to know I do. Since I met you. No bullshit. No lie.

​Life often tells us that true love is unconditional.

That to love fiercely is to pour yourself out entirely, asking for nothing in return.​ I believed that. I sat in the silent space you left behind, tending to a garden you didn't yet walk through, believing my steadfastness would somehow heal your fear of connection.

I thought if I just loved you enough, without conditions, it would bridge the gap.

Unconditional love can not exist without understanding, though. I'm not your past. I'm not those people who did those awful things to you. ​For love to be unconditional, it must first be an exchange. Of the very trust you questioned from me.

It requires two pillars to hold up the roof. If I am the only one left with understanding, it isn't unconditional love; it is simply self-abandonment. So stand with me.

Let me hold you when you're hurting. Let me help you when you need comfort. Let me reassure you when you're having racing thoughts that you don't have to carry alone anymore..

Or simply tell me you don't want me, ever.

You can not endlessly pour water into a cracked jar and call it an ocean. I mean, you can, but why limit yourself there? The unconditional has to be reciprocated to be real. Otherwise, it is just a hostage situation, where I am the captive of a shadow. Is that why you thought you were setting me "free?"

You liked the romance of the unattainable in books because the unattainable demands nothing of you in the present moment. However you look at it, ​I am more complex or simple. I wanted the messy, beautiful, "mundane" reality of a shared life.

​I used to ask the universe why. Why you felt like it had to end, why I stayed, why my thoughts of you insists on lingering like a phantom limb.

But I am out of questions. ​I just wonder why our time was so short. I'd do it again. Restart the pleasantries. Everything.

If it meant not losing you.. but perhaps I am mad.

​Perhaps it was short because an outline can only hold a story for so long before the paper tears. I am choosing the reality that wants you but will choose my own open hands over fragile paper cuts a thousand times over that end up requiring stitches.

Unless you were the one to tourniquet me.

Paper can be replaced. You cannot. You deserve to know that. Please make the next choice now.

The next step in communication or break the bond we share and potential. I'd be willing to forgive all the avoidance if I just had a semblance of understanding or examples, so that I could at least learn.

I cannot thrive here in the dark much longer, so please make a decision soon.

I had to shake myself out of my hurt. I don't want to feel bitter. I want to feel better.

Love,

☆PAROXYSM☆

Use knock offs for good luck

Ativan seems to only be a script I can take through the hospital facilities here, as the IV drip always quells a breakdown and helps numb and reshape my head, at least for a moment.

Even a momentary semblance of peace

in the destructive chaos is better than consistent

torment.

Propranolol is good for the tremors and heart palpitations, but aside from that, it doesn't work anywhere near how Ativan does.

I've been going through alot emotionally / mentally & medically / physically. I've been advocating for myself with all of my doctors, but I'm not seeing consistent relief.

I'm literally on 9 different medications at this point and nothing helps with the cyclical thoughts or TMJ /Muscle tension.

Advice?

​

​A test of virtue

Stark and grim

As circling vultures

Shadow, dim

The silence

Once a soothing balm

Corrupts the night

And kills the calm

​Your silence

Holds a choice

Distinct

From torturing the voice

No slaughtered tongue

No sutured smile

Though agony remains

Awhile

​It tears the flesh

From fragile bone

To leave

The altered mind alone

What is reality?

Who learns

As still the heavy wheel

Now turns?

​Through fractures

That the soul endured

By subtle lectures

Reassured

Perception warps

Assumptions bleed

And poison

Plants a bitter seed

​A written list

Of haunting names

Of players trapped

In twisted games

Ink stained within

The visitors' log

Now lost inside

A mental fog

​It drove

The willing captives mad

To mourn the ghosts

Of what they had

They kissed the chains

They praised the floor

And begged the guard

To lock the door

​For sanity's

A fragile thread

When living men

Envy the dead

The vultures land

The circle breaks

And silence

Is the path it takes