I’m becoming afraid of everything. My feet are firmly placed on the ground- I don’t think I can move forward with this- there are too many feelings, too many fears, too many barriers.
I’m discouraged- beginning to lose faith in relationships, and love. As I watched my relationship of over four years disintegrate to nothing, I managed to keep at least an ounce of hope by my side- so hopeful that falling in love was in the cards for all of us. But maybe it isn’t? And if that is the truth, why would any of us continue to put so much of our time, our efforts, and our love into someone else when the ending is predictable? I simply cannot understand how two people can want the same thing so much but forget that so easily once it is in their grasp. If the argument is simply that it is not necessarily falling out of love but instead becoming comfortably acquainted that prompts changes than I beg to differ with the definition of being in love. I’m not okay with normalcy. I’m not okay with just being content. I want to love uncontrollably, with every ounce of me and be loved just the same and maybe that means that I’ll never find what I’m looking for. The question is whether or not that is something I am willing to accept over a mediocre love.
“Unconditional love. That’s what this is. I love him, as is, fully. I’ve had to stop arm wrestling with the facts. Why me? Didn’t I already have a big love once? And lost it? So why should I get it again? I’ve had to stop trying to look for cracks and flaws to prove that it’s not as good as it seems. Because it’s as good as it seems. Even when we fight, we fight inside the container of good.
Somehow, through a flip of the coin, I ended up here. Feeling like somebody at the top of the heart-lung transplant recipient list. Damaged but invigorated and fucking lucky.”
“I close my eyes and I let my body shut itself down and I let my mind wander. It wanders to a familiar place. A place I don’t talk about or acknowledge exists. A place where there is only me. A place that I hate. I am alone. Alone here and alone in the world. Alone in my heart and alone in my mind. Alone everywhere, all the time, for as long as I can remember. Alone with my Family, alone with my friends, alone in a Room full of People. Alone when I wake, alone through each awful day, alone when I finally meet the blackness. I am alone in my horror. Alone in my horror. I don’t want to be alone. I have never wanted to be alone. I fucking hate it. I hate that I have no one to talk to, I hate that I have no one to call, I hate that I have no one to hold my hand, hug me, tell me everything is going to be all right. I hate that I have no one to share my hopes and dreams with, I hate that I no longer have any hopes or dreams, I hate that I have no one to tell me to hold on, that I can find them again. I hate that when I scream, and I scream bloody murder, that I am screaming into emptiness. I hate that there is no one to hear my scream and that there is no one to help me learn how to stop screaming… More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to be close to someone. More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to feel as if I wasn’t alone.” — James Frey
I need to do this- for me, for my piece of mind, my sanity. I need to resist. Pull-away. Retreat. If I don’t feel anything at all, I can’t feel what I feel now. What I felt yesterday- the negative whole, dark and dreary, that I constantly have to pull myself out of. So many books remind you that without feeling anything, you are depriving yourself of happiness. But, how good does that really feel? It’s a feeling that’s hardly steady, barely existent, mostly felt only in brief moments. Maybe it’s me- my insecurities, my emptiness, my inability to truly love anything or maybe it’s just that I love everything far too much. Perhaps it’s my sweetness- my too-big of a heart, worn on my sleeve, discouraging anyone from ever really loving me. If those are not it then it must be the walking warning sign that I’ve become wearing bright flashing lights reading “BEWARE: TOO DIFFICULT TO LOVE.” Either way, whatever it is, I have found it to be entirely discouraging and discovered that feeling less instead of more is much easier.
“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It’s like the tide going out, revealing whatever’s been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future. The ruin you’ve made.” — Margaret Atwood
“He loved her for almost everything she was & she decided that was enough to let him stay for a very long time.” — Brian Andreas
A dreamscape for once (by lichtmaedel)
I couldn’t explain why I felt feelings of such extremity- and certainly not now. When I was sad, I was really sad. And when I was angry, I felt like I was bursting at the seams. The strangest part was the incapability to recognize who it was or what exactly it was, that was the cause of possessing me with these feelings that were comparable to my heart breaking. There is nothing more honest than your bodies’ natural internal interpretation of external factors- there to physically remind you of how bad it really hurts as if you didn’t already know. It was this feeling that was all too familiar- I knew it too well. But the feeling wasn’t the worst of it. It was the permanence of it: the feeling that you were stuck- So entirely consumed in negativity that you found yourself gasping for air, begging to see the light, on the verge of drowning in it. It’s always at the most inopportune moments that you realize that you are truly alone, isn’t it? Right when you’ve taken the leap, reaching for someone to pull you up and there’s no one there. I suppose your only option is to swallow each negative thought as an anchor and allow yourself to sink- allow it to consume you entirely or to recognize the fleeting moment that these thoughts are encompassed and pull yourself above the surface because we all know that no one else will. That’s the son-of-a-bitch part of life and the people part of it. Like those negative thoughts, you don’t recognize their impermanence while you’re allowing them to consume you entirely: your time, your energy, and your every emotion. No matter how much you once loved someone, in past tense it loses its love, it’s meaning, it’s everything- It becomes dispensable. That’s when I started to spend my life trying to learn how to feel less. If I didn’t feel for anyone, how could they feel for me? And if I didn’t have that, I would never feel burdened by the thought of drowning on the dependence of someone else or being alone unjustifiably because this time I chose to be.
“The past only had whatever power you gave it; life was what you made it and if you wanted something different from what you had, it was up to you to make it happen.” — Sara Zarr