Recent events have opened my eyes to the notion that there are no promised days, hours, years, anything. We are, unfortunately, not guaranteed, not granted the right to wake up another morning. So how do we persevere, how do we plow through this debilitating sentiment? While a terrifying thought on its own, there also exists a benefit: there no longer should be a need to heed or succumb to inhibitions. This encompasses keeping things locked inside, holding back feelings and words and gifts and talents for some kind of fear. The necessity for proactivity is now.

This being said, it is a privilege to wake and see another day. No longer wishing to take this for granted, I have adapted the situation so that I might be able to become more honest about my own feelings. Vexation swells with each keystroke, but the alternative (pushing back down and ignoring everything) I believe is a much worse decision.

So, the question becomes: how to proceed when you’re trying to protect someone you care about, when you’re trying to spare their feelings as well as your own? How are we supposed to remain blameless in this? What do I even mean by “we”? It’s never been fair to fault you in this … well, maybe once or twice, but that’s punitive considering my laundry list of offenses. I try to keep it in check for both of our sakes, but feel that I’m doing myself a disservice by squelching it all the time.

It’s not fair, and I know it’s not fair, to either of us: me continuing to pine one-sidedly. I don’t want the uneasiness to return, because I feel like we’ve put in work to dissipate that, to dilute it down to something that doesn’t burn so ferociously on the way down. But maybe something has to give, because I can’t keep going back and forth with this. I can’t one day decide to let my emotions run rampant because of some upgrade to my own liberation, and then the next day dial it back to zero to minimize your discomfort. This is not to say that my intention is to disregard you completely, but I need to take care of myself at the end of the day. It is a fine line to straddle, and I am not the most graceful swan in the pond. I have only ever admired tightrope walkers from a safe, and far, distance.

I don’t know what it is about you.

That’s a lie. Yes, I do: it’s all the small things, the tiny nondescript things that, standing alone, are not means for the absolute siege of my head by my rogue heart. Together, though, they are a supernova, celestial phenomenon, one illustrious act of divine intervention and, truth be told, it makes me shake sometimes. Yes, I physically shudder when I think about it too much. You might notice, then, that I am never still.

The unfortunate news is that you are so … everything. You are everything good, and even bad. That’s right, even your bad is still pretty good! This is a lapse in judgment that can only be attained from a complete emotional overhaul. You make me feel so much, so fervently, that when you leave I feel a chasm open, an obtuse kind of emptiness. It fades quickly, but never detracts from the initial sharpness. This, of course, doesn’t last forever, just long enough to make me feel like a completely spineless fool. I know it’s irrational, but don’t roll your eyes until you’ve felt those pieces of you, the ones that shake and rattle and roll around inside, to which you can only identify with one fraught, impassioned word (that word is soul), puddle in a pool at your feet because of the actions (or lack thereof) of a single individual. Maybe when that individual happens to innocently say your name one good time, and a single pulse rips through your entire body at the tone of it because your brain is trying to verify that your heart really actually has stopped this time — maybe you’ll understand then.

Again, please hold the eye rolls. I say that because this is not something I want. I, admittedly, have a habit of romanticizing my feelings to make myself feel better. That is to say, I often choose to believe things and situations are better than they really are in order to provide myself comfort and to ignore the fact that they actually are pretty bad. However, this is the one thing I do not want to romanticize. It already is simultaneously the best and worst thing, so why would I want to subject myself to another infuriatingly intricate layer of it?

All of this wishing: for something to happen, for a progression, for an evolution, has to stop. I no longer wish to ignore the holes in my sinking ship, just to be able to say I'm really enjoying the view. But, this is recurring because I cushion the blow of rejection with fictitious, hypothetical scenarios from which I can glean comfort because only I’ll ever be the one to know their peculiarities. But that is not healthy behavior. It only serves to create more illusions.

I don’t want to hide behind things that are not real anymore. I don’t make the final decisions, and I can in no way control what is inevitably going to happen anyway. Really the only thing left to do is to find a way to be okay with whatever outcome will occur. The first step, always, is admitting it, bringing it to light in order to be able to look at it from multiple angles, turn it over and over with delicate hands until it becomes something recognizable. No longer will I allow my inhibitions to shroud me in shadows. The time has come to finally step out into the light, and shrug the darkness off like the careless flinging of a coat off the body.