Dear you,

Mama said love was a bittersweet fruit that grew high on trees my father could not reach. So of course I held my head high when I looked for it. Despite constantly tripping and falling to the anger and the sadness beneath me I kept my chin up, desperately searching for a branch to lift me away.

Loving me is like loving a dynamite some days. Slowly flaring up to an inevitable explosion. And other days it’s like loving a shadow. Nothing tangible, just emptiness. My life is a constant battle against entropy. Routine is the only way I can control anything. So I’m sorry for the rhythmic movements every day, the same thing over and over and over and over again. It helps me breathe easier when I follow the steps in my head and earn a result similar to the one yesterday and the hundred, countless, number of days before.

I am ill but it isn’t curable, no, it’s a disease of the mind, a prison created personally for me. Being bipolar isn’t being moody, or temperamental. It is being confined in your own head with restraints that wound you deep in your psyche, enough to inflict pain and destroy everything that reaches close to you. Some days I can look at the mirror and not drive my fist into the reflection shattering her to pieces beneath me. Other days I’m silently screaming for the merciful release of death.

When you look at me and you see my smile your heart is at ease, I love you more than you can imagine because it takes a great strength to let you love me too when I have found it almost impossible to love myself. I want you to know that when I lash out it is because I’m hurt and the thoughts in my head don’t want me to believe the words that fall out of your mouth. Your tongue is pure and mine is numb with pain so when we kiss, I can’t feel anything sometimes. I live vicariously through your laughs and the lightness you carry yourself with. My feet dredge heavy with the weight of unreasonable regret. I don’t want you to love me, you can have so much more. You deserve so much more. I believe that true in my heart. Yet you love to hold my hands and trace the constellations on them and tell me you found your whole universe in my eyes.

I shed tears at night when I lie next to you because the unbearable pain of losing you keeps me up and afraid. I’m afraid you’ll think my triggers, my ticks, my uncontrollable emotions aren’t worth anything anymore. I’m afraid you’ll look into my eyes one day and your universe will be one giant black hole. My anxiety threatens to suffocate me every day. When your arms are around me I feel protected against all the demons I fight but at the same time I feel trapped. How do I tell you? How do I put in words the way my brain makes my heart feel? I walk a narrow plank and the abyss is beneath me. The only thing holding me back from falling for eternity is the softness in your face when you regard me. I try not to obsess; I try not to hold you too close or too far. It seems like I keep pushing you away because my mind is weakened with the idea of what you could do and not reassured with the thoughts of what you have done.

I’m tired of fighting some days and I want to collapse into that abyss and let the darkness envelope me completely until there is nothing left. When you kiss me all I can do is fight against the emotions raging and battling inside of me. When you find me crying and ask what’s wrong, I’ll tell you, “I feel overwhelmed.” Because I do. I wake up every day wishing I hadn’t, but I look over at your body illuminated by the moonlight so brash and beautiful against mine and I’m glad I did.

Loving me won’t ever be easy. I am not delicate like flower petals. I don’t feel the need to skim your fingers across me, afraid I may fall apart. I am an oncoming storm. I’m filled with devastation but when I die down so will the sorrow. Among the debris you will find the love I hold so dear for you.

Sincerely,

Your Bittersweet Fruit