Fall makes me think of a time where I thought I had the world in my hands, or so I thought. But now, the nostalgia of autumn sits on my shoulders and reminds me of all the things I don’t have. Even though I have so much… What is it about the memories that linger in the air and the trees subtle shift in color that make it so impossible to forget? Forget the pain and the confusion? It still feels like I’m drowning in puddles and puddles of confusion. Except no one else seems to be confused.

These tears sit in the back of my eyes and linger. Soliciting on the outside of my mind, and I’m not strong enough to tell them to go the hell away. Crumbling. I’m weak and I’m a hypocrite and I’m… I’m so imperfect it hurts. This insecurity sits in my gut and makes me feel scared enough to never leave the warm confines of my dorm-sized, just over five foot three sized bed. It’s an irrational fear (or so I think) but it’s a fear nonetheless: that my emotions will never, nor have they ever, mattered to someone.

What I feel and what I say have so much worth and value and substance but this… insecurity takes away my right to feel worthy of occupying this overwhelming, all-consuming, pressure-building space. Isolation, the only friend allowed into this twin-sized cave that I’ve built, where sad songs and blank stares at ceilings are the wind and the stars.

In this sheltered home, I am safe. Safe from rejection, safe from inadequacy, safe from feeling like my love keeps getting taken and taken and used for everyone else’s benefit but my own.

Myloveis mine and mine alone, and when my loveenters the space I am oh so rightly occupying it should be my elixir, my power, the mechanism used to express all of me and not induce the feeling of drowning in a cold and apathetic ocean.

The shore of surface-level bullshit can’t be my resting place anymore, because I can’t confine myself to a tiny patch of sand in the middle of this dark, treacherous ocean, whose inhabitants consist only of those who have ripped me apart, but never bothered to put me back together when they were done, paralleled to the deep and unforgiving currents of this sea that surrounds me.

No… this time, I demand the mountains… the tall, towering, almighty mountains of eternal and abiding acceptance. And these mountains will allow me to grow. Grow to embrace. I’ll wrap my arms around the collection of things that I wish were different about myself. And one day... one day my truth will become known to someone and instead of running away, they’ll run with me.

They’ll grab my hand and instead of making me feel like I have to pull and push and mend under the pressure of the waves in order to be something else they’ll tell me to be still like the mountains and finally… I’ll feel okay being this statue of a human for just a moment.

This imperfectly perfect human.

Still.

And finally… whole.