u/RoutineBlock5319

It’s nuanced, and complicated and messy; it’s mixed with my traumas, my past lovers, lost friends, blood and found families, my history. But it’s real enough. And in a way, i’m so sorry; i don’t want to cause you more problems. I know I’m a mess, traumatized, neurotic, alone, and i don’t want to put any of my problems on you. Life is hard enough as it is, and even knowing you have far more support than i do, that i have no other reason to feel obligated, i can’t help but care. I care when you have a rough night. I care when you have some milestone or obligation. I care when you feel insecure. I care when you have a rough day at work, i care when people are rude or cruel to you. I care when you feel loved and supported by those around you, even if I’m not one of them. I get defensive of you before i realize why. I set aside my own differences with people knowing they support you, even if imperfectly, and find myself caring for those who seem to love and care for you. I feel so hurt hearing about and knowing I have no place in your life, even if I’m kind of glad I dont, for your sake. Even if I know you have your own issues and immaturities. It just happens, and despite my best efforts at hiding it, i know I can't. Clearly. You know I'm fighting to hide it, and failing. And I don’t know if you realize what those moments of mercy mean to me. But in some way, I think you do. And in a way, for both our sakes, I wish they didn’t mean so much.

I’m not asking anything of real life value from you, i know I can’t fill that role for you, or any really. I know you probably see me as some “kid” with a crush. I know I have a lot unconscious expectations I would compare you to and that’s unfair. I know you’re part of a mirror of past patterns I’m still learning to process. I know there are qualities about you I don’t even like. But here I am. Falling for you every time you walk into the room, every time I catch your eyes, speechless, dead in my tracks, scrambling to compose myself. Every time you outsmart and humble me. I can’t help but cave beneath your presence. But I’m stubborn, and choose “exposure therapy”. And I’m trying, too hard, to be a person that can stand toe to toe with you, even though I can handle and process a lot on my own that could likely rival you in some ways, even, maybe, a lot of ways. Ways different from those you endure. But I’m still immature in a lot of my own ways, an obviously young person that can’t seem to hold their knees steady beneath your gaze, of which I’m frequently reminded. It sounds so incredibly cliché and, after all this time, I’m unsure how to process the reality of that. 

I’m not ready, even hypothetically. Not for the kind of love you would require of me. That I would expect of myself for you. I don’t think you would be ready for what I would want. And maybe even that is something I should be reconsidering; I want a kind of intimacy that I’ve yet to encounter, not really. A closeness I’m not practiced for, experienced in, but have studied and tried. Part of me sees a glimpse of potential of that with you, and part of me knows a lot of that is projection. Yet i can’t ignore how visceral my response to your existence is, so here I am in this liminal space, churning the muddy trenches of my heart and mind, hoping to find some level ground. Even if it means, for whatever it means, being completely leveled by you, every chance I get. 

Sometimes i forget how simply, easily, needlessly cruel people can be. So often without even realizing it. Like one’s wounds are no different than the corner of grass cut to reach the parking lot a fraction of a second sooner. Sometimes i forget that most people refuse to reflect. That most people have enough going on in their lives that they have the luxury or lack, of avoiding their flaws, their mistakes, their wounds that bleed everywhere, not hearing the janitors mopping up behind them wherever they go. God forbid someone bleeds on them, they’d see the bloodstains of their own, and faint. 

Sometimes i forget how sensitive others are, for how little they show, how little they engage. I forget that people are comfortable with their struggles, their problems and people so long as they can cope and complain with people that seem to understand them; how uncomfortable they are with themselves. Sometimes i forget how small the world is for so many people, how infrequently they have to legitimately reconsider their world views on something. A paradigm shift, a full blown existential crisis, the HOA would shame and arrest for insomnia. Sometimes i forget how much part of me wishes I could go back to that. To have and attest all these insufferable privileges. How desperately I miss being around people I can be so careless with. Caring is my baseline, whether it seems that way or not. And sometimes i need a break. And i do. 

Held together with duct tape and shoestrings and staples and scar tissue. I show up, over and over again, like frankenstein’s creature, limping and moaning, uncertain of my place in reality. I pity that i pity myself, so I move on. Tireless, a break in the stream of my heart’s musings, avoidant, i carry on. 
Work. Walk. Bottle. Sleep.
Work. Walk. Bottle. Write. Sleep. 
Write. Work. Bottle. Write. Walk. Write. Bottle. Sleep. 
Sometimes i miss smoking. It was cheaper than the alcohol. 

Pouring in and pouring out. Loves. Losses. Lasting dilemmas. Splitting hairs that no one saw to begin with, no one sees when I point and stand with. Until it serves them, then it’s the bare minimum. Numbing to feel the torrents, to rinse, to flush. To break my own. To numb their favorite parts. To make their games a touch more tragic. Sometimes i forget that the world is not for most of us. Swept between the cracks, we endure what we can. And perhaps my heart is too big, or perhaps i am too small to hold the norm. 

Sometimes i wish i could forget, i remember far too much. But when i do lose time, somehow it makes things far worse. So i remember. I watch. I know some read my cards, yet know they don't see the other hands. I hold my heart, as we lay under the floorboards, telling it everything will be alright. But i know it remembers. It knows I’m lying. And it knows I’ve lied before, remembers that it helped eventually. Sometimes i forget my heart sees just as much or more than i do. That it knows things I dont. And i sometimes refuse to trust it. I fight it. Accuse it of lies and slander, knowing we’ll get hurt.

Sometimes, i forget, my heart holds me, not the other way around. 

I’m learning to hold this. Not gracefully. It hasn’t been easy, and I’ve been fighting far more of myself in the process of admitting it than I realized. But it’s obvious now, i think. The way i respond to your presence in a room, the way i have to prepare for you with a deep breath and a setting of my mind’s shoulders just to hand you something. The way i somehow have reserves of energy when I’ve been tapped out for days, weeks, just having you nearby. The way you can unnerve and unmask me if you bother to, in a way that’s somehow peaceful, in its own way. It’s little real moments where you do, that mean more than anything else. 

No gestures, no stories, no sharings or keyhole glimpses into what, for me and my life, is pure fantasy by comparison, and beyond my means—a deeper yearning i didn’t realize i had buried. Just something momentarily real, something small, a genuine smile over genuinely real and genuinely boring stuff in passing; one that slipped by me without permission, without expectation, running straight for you. It’s like you were waiting for it (just to be sure I still could), giving it back like you had so casually planned to steal it.

For someone who writes and yearns, dabbles in the poetic and emotionally prolific, i don't aspire to any of these. They’re just place holders. Random jars and plasticware and boxes and pots of text for things I couldn’t find a place for out in the world. Sparks that don’t get a place to fly; spikes that should be left unsaid; gardens that grew from a projected need of tending; pangs of past heartbreaks scars lingering; white knuckles burning where there was nothing left to hold onto before finally cooling. I don’t want these things, i collect them the way i have too many lids in my cabinet and not enough containers. Or the way rain rushes down and out the gutters. Sometimes, like wads of gauze from a wound that refuses to clot. Sometimes all this saves me a couple spare embarrassments and stutters, having somewhere else to set something down behind the relative safety of shutters. 

It’s not for you, not really. If anything, I'd rather spare you from any outpours you inspire. It’s art, it’s afterglow, some shoddy stage magician’s fire. It’s not real, it’s combustion of what would like to be real in a different world. “Beautiful” words are the art of a thief and liar. I’m hiding and spying, steeling with words; I can build my own furnished empire; to be stunned and struck dumb by a reality where words don’t exist; how many little empires have i already willingly burned in its stead? How can I hold all these big thoughts and big feelings in my strange twisted heart and dense little head? Is this really so new? Or have i become so frightened of my own heart? 
 
It feels unfair. To not be able to turn them off without destroying myself in the process. It feels like reality forcing me to play “truth or dare”, after, again, learning some truths are best left unsaid. Daring to hold this in, with all the rest. Not daring to keep you too close. And even still, even if briefly, I’m glad I could play a move of truth. 

I’m learning to hold this. Not gracefully. It hasn’t been easy, and I’ve been fighting far more of myself in the process of admitting it than I realized. But it’s obvious now, i think. The way i respond to your presence in a room, the way i have to prepare for you with a deep breath and a setting of my mind’s shoulders just to hand you something. The way i somehow have reserves of energy when I’ve been tapped out for days, weeks, just having you nearby. The way you can unnerve and unmask me if you bother to, in a way that’s somehow peaceful, in its own way. It’s little real moments where you do, that mean more than anything else. 

No gestures, no stories, no sharings or keyhole glimpses into what, for me and my life, is pure fantasy by comparison, and beyond my means—a deeper yearning i didn’t realize i had buried. Just something momentarily real, something small, a genuine smile over genuinely real and genuinely boring stuff in passing; one that slipped by me without permission, without expectation, running straight for you. It’s like you were waiting for it (just to be sure I still could), giving it back like you had so casually planned to steal it.

For someone who writes and yearns, dabbles in the poetic and emotionally prolific, i don't aspire to any of these. They’re just place holders. Random jars and plasticware and boxes and pots of text for things I couldn’t find a place for out in the world. Sparks that don’t get a place to fly; spikes that should be left unsaid; gardens that grew from a projected need of tending; pangs of past heartbreaks scars lingering; white knuckles burning where there was nothing left to hold onto before finally cooling. I don’t want these things, i collect them the way i have too many lids in my cabinet and not enough containers. Or the way rain rushes down and out the gutters. Sometimes, like wads of gauze from a wound that refuses to clot. Sometimes all this saves me a couple spare embarrassments and stutters, having somewhere else to set something down behind the relative safety of shutters. 

It’s not for you, not really. If anything, I'd rather spare you from any outpours you inspire. It’s art, it’s afterglow, some shoddy stage magician’s fire. It’s not real, it’s combustion of what would like to be real in a different world. “Beautiful words” are the art of a thief and liar. I’m hiding and spying, steeling with words; I can build my own furnished empire; to be stunned and struck dumb by a reality where words don’t exist; how many little empires have i already willingly burned in its stead? How can I hold all these big thoughts and big feelings in my strange twisted heart and dense little head? Is this really so new? Or have I become so frightened of my own heart? Afraid of other’s hearts.
 
It feels unfair. To not be able to turn them off without destroying myself in the process. It feels like reality forcing me to play “truth or dare”, after, again, learning some truths are best left unsaid. Daring to hold this in, with all the rest. Not daring to keep you too close. And even still, even if briefly, I’m glad I could play a move of truth. 

I don’t trust you, but I can still appreciate you. Sometimes, the heart wants what the heart wants. I never really understood that until more recently in my life. And at that point, there’s no fruitful arguing with it. I can either fight/numb it, let it have its way, or some path between the two. At this point I’m just cycling through my options. 

You feel too familiar. And maybe I’m doing violence to myself by choosing to be around you, adapting to your presence more, acclimating to these new sets of norms and circumstances. I yearn for the familiarity your presence presents to my psyche. Consciously (even if just to placate and reason with my body, my nervous system, the parts of me that see you), I doubt we would even be good for each other in a partnership, but that doesn't negate this care, or desire. Perhaps, if I had more areas of my life more healthily balanced, and we still grew closer over time, would our dynamic be more familial? And in some ways, it already does seem to have that potential, yet it doesn’t. You mirror me, my family, people I’ve known and loved, and it baffles me, even triggers me. I’ve been forced to work through more traumas and triggers because of how I react to your presence and life and history than many of my own past experiences. 

Contextually, I often wish I could get away, from you, from my work, from my lifestyle, from this sense of self I’ve been stuck in. Even still, I find you, your life and those in it, adorable, and precious, and problematic in very real and human ways. You inspire me, or something in me is inspired by something reflected in you, something that strikes chords deeper than most in ways I’m still learning to better comprehend and integrate. I may never reach your inner circles, and maybe I would never really feel comfortable there, and perhaps that’s for the best. Even the fleeting fantasy of being some active part of your life fills voids and gaps in mine—ones I wonder if I will ever manage to heal around and over in my lifetime. And I often realize that my habit of empathizing with you forces me to feel and confront far more than I initially bargain for. 

Life can be unfair, unkind, even seemingly needlessly and haphazardly cruel. I’m very aware of that. When life beats me down, when rolling with the punches becomes just holding on to whatever is available with white knuckles, those moments I’m sure I can’t do it any more, that resurfacing rock bottom feeling, I seem to turn to you just a bit more. When feeling is unavoidable again, I find myself dwelling on you again, a sort of pseudo-light at the end of the tunnel. And maybe I’m just another person you know, acquainted with, eye candy on good days, an annoyance on the bad, but you feel like a dose of home I’m so desperately sick for. Sometimes I just want to thank you for sharing little bits of your life with me, because it means far more than I’m willing to admit, and oftentimes, more than I’m ready to feel. I may not understand all the mechanisms behind my feelings for you, but, regardless, you are appreciated.

I don’t realize how much I hide my feelings for you, until I’m away and they seep in through the music I choose, the reflections on the day, the ones I get lost in. I don’t realize how much I fight to not think about you until I wake in the middle of the night and find you in my mind and heart once again; at least in the privacy of those hours, those feelings can exist more freely, no worries of projection or accidental expression, confused intentions. I realize I can’t entirely hide my feelings, nuanced or not, and now that you are at least partially aware, I see you observing me, my tone, my body language, my intent, the shifts, the masks. Mirroring one another in subtle distant ways. Two silhouettes slowly signing in the fog, whether to one another is a different question, but mutually reconsidered.

Appreciating you, learning, observing, practicing. Balancing the weight and whimsy of reality as I reinterpret my image of you, your inner world, wondering what all glinting glamors or gravities have drawn me to you, where they lay hidden in your soul, or in mine. It’s obvious in many ways, subtle in others, and the mystery itself can be enticing. But the balance comes and responsibilities ask to be dealt, inverting the attraction where I see and appreciate a different side of you as I’ve had to move through life in different ways respectively, realistically with all the gritty frustrations that the context may bring, ones more real and present, self aware even, yet there’s a deeper softness as well. Whether you primarily indulge me, or move cautious and curious with this new found side of me, it’s been a fascinating dynamic, one more innocent than I’m used to, one where I see potentials of a genuine and deeper friendship emerging over time, even if part of me still wonders more, I know I’m too far from ready for what you deserve, even hypothetically.

I wish I could see more of the way your eyes change in the sun, and I’d like to learn to cultivate and inspire the light that erupts from within them, even if in distant doses. Moments like those, they quiet questions of “why you?” and “why now?”, as important as they may be in greater perspective. Reminding me of beauties intrinsically part of a strange reality.  

Talking with you has become the highlight of my day. I didn’t realize just how much I look forward to those moments, even if they are cut short, savoring them for what they are, and how they linger and flow through the rest of my day. Whether you genuinely appreciate my company or indulge what must seem—and very well may be—my delusions, in payment of grounded flattery, compliments, the hinting tensions of lust, and a sense of being seen, I appreciate the time, the attention, the shared presence, the chance to admire you in real time. Seeing you, less masked, it feels like an honor, something to be appreciated with care and awareness, to be met with respect and reciprocity. And if you decided you wanted space from me, I realized that I’d be able to accept that if need be. But until that’s made clear, I continue looking forward to the next sharings. 

Despite my progress regulating all that I experience in my daily life, I still catch myself slipping up when you’re around, comedically so at times. Sometimes I wonder how much you notice, and sometimes I wonder how long I've been doing this and not noticed. You disarm me, in ways I would have and did unconsciously overcorrect for in the past, and I’m learning to relax into this dance unarmed, surrendering to the currents yet keeping my wits about me, knowing you can be quite sharp, that I don’t fully understand what all is at play, even if it is just that. I like to think we both recognized familiarity years back; what form that familiarity takes is up for discussion and formation. Even with how passionate we each can be in the ways we experience and express, we’re also each quite practical, and I trust that dynamic to move forward at its own pace. 

There are times I want to admit just how much I think about you, in ways you may not expect. To admit that your absence and presence both unexpectedly steal my breath in different ways, more so than I can’t help showing. That when we are actively talking, or teasing or laughing, it’s the most grounded and spontaneous I’ve felt in years. That somehow you have woven a way into reflections and considerations when I make various decisions and choices throughout my day, even if just passively. And I can’t help but wonder how long my crush on you will last, this infatuation, when and if it will be surpassed, how long the shadows of my past have been cast; are you a role my deeper psyche has been fulfilling? Or is this something I’ve yet known? 

I have a pattern of falling for potentials, the breadth of people and their experiences, their capabilities, in ways that sometimes overshadow who they are in the moment. Even if this is just a crush, I want to take it seriously, really appreciate you as you are, who you both consciously and unconsciously reveal yourself to be. And yet in many ways, it’s already been the smallest moments and vulnerabilities compounded over time that formed the gravity that pulls me to you now. Perhaps, the practice is allowing me to reveal myself in the same ways, realistically, consistently, presently, daily. Illogical as it all may seem, I feel as if I have no other choice but to explore here, following Ariadne’s thread through this maze. One way or another, I think others down the road will have you to thank for the lessons I’ve been learning, improvements in how I arrive. But for now, I arrive for you.