there’s a boy in my bed snoring softly. i’m on the couch wrapped in my duvet wide awake. i don’t even know how long it’s been since the last time i was wide awake at this hour.

i don’t know what i want. hours ago i wanted him here, now i just want the queen-size mattress to myself and my two cats. i want to be alone and happily asleep with the two little guys that are by my side through everything. it’s now that i’m really realising what i’ve gotten myself into. it’s that stupid horoscope that’s been on my phone all day. i don’t know why it’s getting to me right now, and i hate that it is. i hate it so much. it said something about being ready for a break from romantic love. am i? what does that even me, for someone like me? someone who thrives off of loving others the deepest and most passionately they’ve ever been loved? friends, family, partners. it’s such a big part of me to love others so intensely. is it telling me i need to slow down? that i need to be more wary of who i give this love to? maybe that’s it. maybe i just need to slow the roll and think before i give myself away again.

i’ve pulled a book off my bookshelf to read in hopes it’ll make me tired enough to close my eyes again. it’s madisen kuhn’s “please don’t go before i get better”. i don’t have many books, but i have too many and continue to buy more for someone who never actually reads. i want to so badly but i can’t focus on just one thing anymore, not unless it’s something i’m incredibly passionate about. but they don’t write books about those things.

this poem is called ‘astronomy club’ and the latter half is what really has my heart in a chokehold right now:

he says he needs to be careful with his heart
and being cautious may pay off in the end
you may end up with less
fingerprints and teeth marks on your ribs
but right now i have no interest
in anyone who doesn’t
want to let feeling consume them
to chase their impulses
into the dark, by the pond behind my house

maybe this is what i want. someone who doesn’t care that things aren’t by-the-book normal, things that are the way they are because they want them to be. i don’t know if i want structure or routine or something that’s to be expected of me. he’s not what i expected though. he was the last thing i ever expected to come into my life at the time he did. and as someone who tries to live her life by the lead of her heart and not her head, who would i be if i ignored him? someone with such a mirrored mental capacity and emotional intelligence is too good to be true. but nonetheless he stands right in front of me, more days than not. on my balcony at 8pm, 11pm, 6am. he makes me breakfast and shares his life so openly with me. he seeks my advice in situations i’ve never been in but can empathize with. situations i’m not sure i ever want to be in but with him would be a daily occurrence. am i ready for that? am i ready to accept such a change of pace? am i able to accept such a change of pace?

its been just over a month. do you know how quickly someone’s life can get intertwined with yours when you’re spending the majority of your time with them, even if it’s just been a month? the cats greet him at the door. i’ve opened my home to him because his son is close. i’ve presented my home, my heart, my love on a silver platter and placed it before him at the table like a perfectly cooked ribeye steak. but i don’t know how to cook, and i definitely can’t cook a steak as well as i think. is it even cooked enough to be safe to consume? am i really using steak as a metaphor for my damaged heart right now? it’s red and raw at its core like a fresh wound. and it is a fresh wound. maybe not fresh, but it’s certainly not healed. and it’s definitely going to scar. i’d send my heart back to the kitchen 100% no questions asked.

i really hold to heart the fact that my life feels like a movie. i love that it’s so exciting and riveting and i never know what to expect next, but i think now my life is more like a tv series that you binge seasons of at a time when you’re alone and in bed depressed demolishing bags of chips like it’s nobody’s business; i can only watch so many episodes before my mind starts to wander and my emotions have come to an all-time high and i’ve cried the hardest i have in months over people on a screen in a different world that i’ll never truly know. and i feel sick from all of the chips i’ve eaten and i can’t breathe right because i’m stuffy from sobbing over the star-crossed lovers that were too good for each other to last.

i miss writing so much. i miss doing this and showing those close to me what i’ve put to paper and getting praise for my feelings that i don’t understand because i made them sound good with fancy words and phrases. but there’s no better way to put it than the cliche of all cliches - the spark is gone. i haven’t had anything to say in years. i haven’t truly looked at the way i feel through an objective light since high school. i guess that’s what trauma and heartbreak will do to a person. make you second guess everything you thought you knew about yourself. everything. i’m almost 25 and i’m so overwhelmed with the amount of possibilities there are for who i could be, the life i could live. who i could live it with. do i even want to live it with anyone? i do. i think. i’m not happy being alone, but i am content. i hate feeling lonely, i want to have someone to kiss me good night and good morning. i want what the books and the movies have taught me what love it. i want that. i really do. but have i fooled myself into thinking i can find love like that in today’s age of fear and arrogance? the only man that i have fully felt myself around and been able to open up to is twice my age and a psychotherapist. not my psychotherapist either, just happens to be one. i wish he was my therapist. it’d make things a lot easier, i wouldn’t have to give that relationship up. parts of it i would, but what i really value him for i wouldn’t. but what is it that i even value him for – the attention? the advice? the way he’s been able to make me feel so comfortable in every aspect of myself? or am i truly just fucked in the head in thinking that someone twice my age with double the amount of life experience could be seeing me as anything other than a body to use? i don’t want to think so, i really don’t think so, but why else would he have stuck around for almost 3 years? i’m losing my train of thought. and that’s exactly what i’m afraid of. i feel like my life to this point has been nothing of importance, just a collection of stories of the different men i’ve let into my life and the “movie moments” that have happened with them.

i feel kind of empty. like just a shell of a human used by others for good stories and to feel human connection when needed. and i so happily oblige every time. will i ever put myself first? am i capable of giving myself the love i give others? i don’t know if i am. is that okay? is my life going to come to a grinding halt if i can’t love myself the way i should? no. the world will keep going, life will continue to pass by at an alarming rate. so why does it really matter? i feel best when i love other people, so i’ll keep giving my all to those who make me feel less alien. even if they don’t want to give it back. that’s fine, at least i know i’ve given my all because at the end of the day i’ll go to bed by myself at 11pm with my asmr on in the background and get a better sleep with my headband around my head and my cats nestled it at my head and my feet to remind me that although this life is short and temporary, at least they give me back the love i give them unconditionally and without question.

4:47am // march 3rd 2023