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About Love

The fear of loss


We made no sense on paper.
None.

And yet, the first time we met each other's gaze, sprawled out on those hideous couches that smelled of feet and popcorn, the remainder of the room and its occupants faded out of any inkling of mental awareness I had left, because it was as if smoke machines has been let off inside me, spreading a fizzy, warm, dizzying vapor of overwhelming... feeling.

Feeling. The thing I'd been so careful to avoid ever since I could remember. Feeling had always inevitably lead to disappointment. Take it away, and all expectations with it, and you have yourself a bearable, albeit somewhat streamlined, rhythm of life.

You didn't fit into my life.
You still don't.

If we made a list about me, and a list about you, they'd repel each other with such force they'd create a black hole.

And yet, I cannot shake, even these many months later, that indescribable sense of peace that washed over me as we sat, curled up in that old purple couch, just talking. I don't remember what about. Like everything that had constituted the violent whirlpool of slightly self-destructive, acutely cynical, decidedly damaged thoughts, ideas and philosophies that made up my reality just... stopped.

Halted.

Halted... and collapsed into bits.

I used to be completely convinced that I'd die alone. In a large manor. Filled with books. And CDs. And art. And pictures of crazy times. With odd intellectual friends. And a garden. Close to a foggy, grey beach.

I knew that men were only there to disappoint you.
I knew it.
It was an inevitable.
In fact, I'd mulled the thought over so many times that it was a
soggy little puddle of
almost-accepted
fact.


My mother realized this, and subsequently shoved me into therapy.

All those years and sessions and techniques, and you managed to shatter all the damage some thought irreversible in a mere week.

We didn't really have to talk that much. We never really had to finish sentences. It just.. everything made sense. You got it. You got why I didn't let anyone close, because you didn't. You also didn't see the point in romantic entanglements.
To let our emotions manifest themselves properly was terrifying. We had no control over them. They led us to places where we'd be vulnerable.

Vulnerable.
Vulnerable from having survived similar shitty situations growing up. Life-altering, unfortunate events that transpired throughout any fault of our own, and we'd had to pay for them ever since. And we'd both been getting used to our idea of a life of solitude, of protected, distant interaction with others.

And yet we let our emotional armors fall in an instant, and dealt with that shift in our realities separately for the next week.
The pull was much, much too strong for us to hold on to them, despite how much we both fought it.

To let you hold that much power over me?

Devastating.

Shifting a person so utterly paralyzed from years of an intense fear of loss to complete vulnerability?

Truly devastating.

But...thank you.

No, really, thank you.

You changed me.

Fear of loss is a lot worse than losing something. Because the fear of loss makes you avoid situations where you would be in the position to lose anything.
And, well, that's losing all by itself, isn't it?

And now, we're writing to each other. We have been for awhile. They're benign, every day life stories. You tell me about your week, I tell you about mine. We don't do endearments. It's all been said. It's understood. We aren't under the illusion that the other is perfect. Far, far from it.

But we make sense.
Ask anyone in the room that time, with the smelly couches and the pull so strong it rearranged the particles in the air.
it's nonsense. We talked nonsense. It isn't relevant.
But we make so much non-sense together.


You say you could come visit me.
Come halfway across the world for me.

And I can't.
I can't fathom it.
We're young.
This is ridiculous.
I don't know why.
But it is.
...

I think I'm afraid of it. I'm afraid of being that completely vulnerable.

So vulnerable, I feel like my flesh has been stripped away and my muscles and cartilage are being exposed to the elements.

So vulnerable, I feel like every movement is at risk of making my bones shrink until they disappear, and leave me a crumpled pile of mess.

So vulnerable, I feel like if anyone were to touch me, I'd shatter into a million tiny pieces and a thousand tears.

I don't know.

To have my entirely new world - the one where men are humans, who are just as fucked up as we are, but the occasional respectful one comes along - depend on you?

It scares the shit out of me.

I'm waiting for you to fuck it up.
Maybe, if you come, you will.
Maybe I'm afraid you'll fuck it up if you come here.
Maybe you'll come and the pull will have dissipated.

See?
There it goes again.
The fear of loss.

She’s the only antidepressant to have ever worked, for however brief a time.

A life spent wallowing in self-loathing and bleeding wrists because it was the only thing I was good at. The only thing the bullies said I was good at. I was always on the outer at school, never truly engaged in the social aspect of life, just there to be a helping hand to friends by listening and helping solve their problems and be dubbed ‘a nice guy’ whilst they went and flirted and laughed and gossiped and fulfilled their lives. I was never happy. I was oh so jealous of my better looking counterparts, how they had everything handed to them on shiny plates. I watched love flourish but never took part and I was green with envy. It was brutal watching what I want pass me by, but severe depression and chronic antidepressant consumption froze my tongue.

It was at university I learned of non-reciprocal love. I fell head over heels in love with the girl who is now one of my best friends. I loved her more than life but she resigned me to the friend zone and it stung more than anything. My face is still salted when I remember and I still feel the odd pang of jealousy when I see her kiss her boyfriend or watch her smile as his face greets her touch screen. I’ve had people tell me that we would have been perfect together and that I should have pursued her. I take this with appreciation and offence, which is a strange feeling to say the least. But I have stuffed my feelings for her down too far to ever want to see them again. I already hurt too much as it is.

Anyway, she arrived in a flurry of gorgeous red hair and pale skin and we awkwardly acknowledged one another, she too was at school but she was as shy as I was and thus we had never spoken. Quiet, reserved, petite and quirky, she spoke softly and gave nods to indie fashion. I congratulated her on her acceptance into university and she proposed that we catch up some time. No preconceptions or anticipations, I accepted.

The day we saw one another again in the corner of a quaint little café was the first time in my life I’d could ever truly say I was happy. Her life was wrought with struggle, self-hate and depression. Liberation washed over me and we bonded over our mutual traits. She was me. And I loved the view for the first time. We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting about a scarily large number of commonalities, tottering around campus talking about indie bands and cruelty and animal rights and blueberries. This will come off as stupid, childish and naïve but I was in love with this girl, despite our short time together. I had forgotten the previous yet still fresh hurt of a love unconsummated and her voice funneled honey into my veins; everything she said made perfect sense, I could relate and didn’t have to posture to feel at ease. I left her with a warm smile, an exchanged phone number and a promise to meet again soon. We did, many times, chatting, empathising, trading mixtapes, laughing, professing our mutual feelings for one another, I fell asleep on her and listened to her quickening heartbeat; it screamed of a nascent relationship. Reciprocity was amazing. She gave incentive to what has otherwise been a pathetic existence and it validated all the hurt. I was fucking happy and I was for you.

A month or so later, she told me she was seeing someone who she is now in a relationship with. She said she really liked me but nothing could eventuate. It was as blunt as that. I cried and shook and vomited and bled into the basin. My stomach was in my chest and my heart was in my mouth. She told me she wasn’t entirely sure how she felt for him, yet flirts with him in a public forum. She tells me she still likes me a lot, and she also flirts with me still (of which she admits to doing). I don’t want to bury my love for her but I cannot deal with the awkward and ultimately unfair ambiguity anymore. I hope you see me whilst I’m still here. I love you.



Problem...

i wanted to let you know how frustrating our situation is for me and that’s the safest way i can put it.

hah, see, i can barely put my feelings to words-- rather, i can’t put them in a way that you’d be comfortable with. we’ve had talks like this before, and i always have trouble getting to the point because i know that if i say something too intense or too emotional, you’ll shut yourself down. then everything after that would be like talking to a block of ice; you’d be melting away as i speak until there’s none of you left. just an empty space. and i hate that about us.

don’t get me wrong, every other aspect of whatever-it-is-we-have is fantastic. it’s almost like our lives were written out by Sarah Dessen; our relationship is a sappy, teen-romance novel. but that’s the thing. it isn’t quite that. i mean, it starts out with the cliché: you and i are two totally different people. you are quiet and shy. a man of few words. but, hey, when you start talkin’, things start to make sense. you make every word count. you think before you act. i, on the other hand, am loud and friendly. most people say i am the jolliest person they have ever met. i blurt out basically whatever comes to mind, in hopes that nobody will care ‘cause they’d be too fixated on my enthusiasm. similarly, i am rather impulsive. so we are completely opposite. but, somehow, we click.

we hang out two to three times every week. we stay on the phone for long periods of time. we send each other silly blurbs and inside jokes through text message. we hold hands. we cuddle. we spoon. kiss. we eat dinner at each other’s houses with each other’s family. we call each other adorable and cute. we’re there when one needs the other the most. we tell each other everything. we’re virtually best friends. how generic-couple are we?

the answer is not at all.

if we were a generic couple, we’d be fine right now. i’d be fine right now. sure, we’d have our ups and downs, but like every good Sarah Dessen book, we’d find a way to figure it out. but how can you figure something out if you don’t even put any effort to it? we don’t acknowledge the problem, let alone try to solve it. you must be thinking, “nothing’s wrong. this chick’s insane. we’re totally fine.” see, i used to think so, until now. it’s been building up for a year and i can’t stand it. i may be insane. i don’t know. but here goes:

the problem is that we are not dating.

because you said you don’t like me that way. no matter how many times we adventure or chill in each other’s houses. no matter how much you hate the phone and still insist on talking on it with me. no matter how hard you try to make me smile on the rare occasions when i’m down. no matter how many times you tell me how smooth my hand is and how it fits perfectly into yours. no matter how much you initiate each embrace, each kiss. no matter how much our parents think we’re getting married. no matter how much you stare at me lovingly. no matter how many times you’ve been there when i’ve needed a ride home, or am scared, or have had an asthma attack. no matter how much you share with me that you don’t share with anyone else. no matter how close we’ve become. you still say that you. don’t. like. me. that. way.

and i don’t get it.

because today, i heard you say you love me. clearly. when you thought i wouldn’t hear.
and when i asked, you denied it.

the problem is, i don’t know where i stand.
the problem is, i don’t get why you won’t just accept the fact that you might
actually like me.


With You...

You make my head feel like a busy, New York City street the second your name lights up on my cell phone.

It doesn't happen often, and it hadn't happened for a year and a half until recently, but when it does i don't know how to feel.

You were my first love, and first loves are hard to forget. I truly believe that the first person you fall in love with will always have a piece of your heart. It's never whole again- no matter how much you move on, how many more people you fall in love with, or how much you give to the next person- there's something special about the first time you give your heart away. Or maybe it's because your first love usually ends up in your first real heartbreak and you never quite get all of the pieces back.

I don't know what kept me with you for all of those years. I was young, naive, and immature i guess. But i loved you. Oh man, did I love you. I think i would have fought to be with you until i couldn't go on. I would have been content being with you and only you forever and ever. But you didn't feel the same. And to fight any longer would be foolish. You gave up on me not once, but twice, and it broke me down more and more. You treated me terrible in those last few months, as if I were a stranger you never even cared about. You left me a ghost. You left me broken. You left me.

It took so long for me to get back on my own two feet and finally feel anything again. And as everyone would tell me, time did heal. But no one ever really listens to that phrase...time heals. But healing doesn't make it go away, it just makes it bearable. It's like a scar. There's the initial wound and it hurts like hell, almost to the point where you think you'd rather just be dead at this point, and then slowly but surely your cut closes up and then there is the scab. You pick at it a few times and it hurts all over again. And eventually you have a scar, and it fades and fades, but it's never gone. There's always something to remind you.

And then i met him, and he swept me off my feet. He showed me what it was like to truly be loved and he gave me everything you never even thought to give. Everything that hurt finally went away with a flash of his smile and with the touch of his hand I felt like I had found my real forever. A month into the relationship I could see myself with him fifty years down the road. I had never loved someone this way before, not even you. Months in though, little fights started poisoning our relationship but we worked at them. I still love him with my whole heart and i still fall asleep next to him but every now and then you slip into my dreams, out of nowhere, just like in real life and in my dreams I miss you.

I never thought, in a million years, you'd come back to me again. I'm over you, I am, I worked way too hard at it not to be. But when I get a text alert at 2:30 in the morning, and i see your name on the caller ID, my head and heart start a war. I don't think it's love, i think it's missing who you were. I have this idea of you at sixteen in my head but six years later that isn't who you are.

But for some reason tonight, it hit me hard. You know me way too well not to know how to win my heart, even for five seconds. I hate you for making me feel like this. I hate you for what you did to me way back when. I hate you for making me second guess the perfection I have now. I hate you for never really disappearing from my life. I hate you for having the nerve to ever even think I'd take you back. I hate you for your late night texts. I hate you for who you've become. I hate you for it all.

You texted me tonight and said: "I just have a weird feeling that our story isn't over. But clearly I'm the only one thinking that."

And I'd never admit it, to you or myself out loud, but...I've never stopped thinking that exact same thing.