I'm sorry.
I'm sorry I'm so hard to love. So fuckin challenging to be with. I have no clue what the fuck I'm doing. For someone who is so used to being alone that the prospect of someone leaving makes no difference, I'm not good at telling people they mean something to me. When I met you, I thought you'd be another someone, just passing by. I never thought you'd stick around. Never thought I'd let you in and for the first time in forever, I'd know what it's like to have someone. I'm still getting used to it.
I'm sorry I don't talk and hold everything in. I'm used to processing things on my own. I'm just afraid I'll scare you away. There have been nights when I had no one by my side and thought I wouldn't survive. Yet I did. The fact that I made it on my own has probably made me who I am now.
But you... You make me feel like I can let my guard down like I don't have to fight my demons alone. You cut me open and look into the parts of me I have been so desperate to throw away. You rearrange every broken piece of me and suddenly there's so much colour I don't recognise myself. I've always been afraid to say this, but If you leave, I wouldn't know what to do with myself. I'm slowly learning to open up, even if it's just with you. I know I can't fuck this up, so please be patient with me.
I'm sorry I overthink. I'm sorry I'm constantly trying to find ways to talk to you. If I don't hear from you for a day, I stop functioning. Trust me, I was never like this. I'm used to leaving messages on seen. I try to hold myself back constantly, I'm still learning not to be a sucker for your attention coz that's not how a relationship should function. I understand you have a life of your own, I never want to be the centre of it. I just. I miss you so much at times it hurts me beyond rationality. I'm sorry I'm afraid of losing you and it's funny that I'm telling you this coz you're the last person I should be telling this to. But there's this voice in my head that tells me that I'll never move on from you. Sometimes I feel like every second I spend without you, we are running out of time. The rest of me is just too much in love with you to notice that when I'm with you, I'm yours and you're mine. I'm sorry I'm a bit too much. I'm sorry I love too hard. I'm sorry I'm all or nothing.
But I don't think I can change myself for the way I feel. I've never loved the way I have loved you...and if the pain is what comes of it, so be it. If I crash and burn, it would still be worth it. I can't be someone I'm not. I can't just don’t love you with everything I've got. I just hope you hold on to me... just a little while longer. I'm trying. I really am. I hope you don't give up on me. Coz through it all, you're still the best thing that ever happened to me.
Someone once told me, that when you love someone with everything you have, you need to know how to let them go. I don't think about you that often anymore. Everything around me isn't a constant reminder of your absence. The coffee mug that once held your lipstick print. The earrings you left behind, the handwritten letters. The bedsheets that smelled of us long after you were gone. I've locked them away. Taken my time to pick them out one by one and erase them. But how do you lock away the memories?
I remember we were in the middle of a fight. I remember thinking to myself that I could walk away from you and never look back. But for a split second, I imagined a life without you. I remember looking into your eyes when I told you I was in love with you. That I had been for a long time now but I never thought you'd feel the same way. That I was terrified of telling you that you were the last person I would ever fall in love with because I knew I'd never had this with anyone else. Because when I imagined a life without you I couldn't think. Or make sense of it. There was nothing there. Nothing to live for, or look forward to. I still can't remember what we were fighting about. But I remember the smile on your lips, the way they moved when they said you loved me back. Just as much and a little bit more. Someone once told me, that when you love someone with everything you have, you need to know how to let them go. Because some people are like daydreams, they come into your life and disrupt everything mundane, everything that hurts and leaves you smiling to yourself for reasons you don't fully understand. I just wanted you to know that I was thinking of you and it doesn't hurt anymore. Because I never lost you. You were never mine to lose.
Of all the things I think about you, perhaps it's those little moments of relatability that hits me the most. I try to undo you from my mind... and yet I find myself getting tangled in this sense of familiarity. I stare out the window as the coffee boils...randomly spacing out and suddenly I feel like my eyes are yours... and how you'd feel if you woke up late on a Sunday morning, giddy from last night's alcohol and smiling through the headache at the blue skies outside. I walk through the busy marketplace and see a little kitten curled up in the dirt... and think of how your heart might have leapt out of your chest and you'd have picked it up from the dirt and brought it home. Someone says something funny, I think of the perfect comeback but the words don't make it past my lips, because I knew you'd have said the same thing.
And it doesn't make sense. Because everything I see around me, from the sun setting in my rearview mirror to the mornings when I wake up and instinctively reach for you even though I know you're not here... every stupid little detail of my irrelevant days...reminds me of you... makes me think of what you'd do or say... if you were here... and it doesn't make sense... because you're not here... and I don't know how I'm supposed to forget you this way? Wait, hear me out. Before you freak out. Before you want to run away and I start to regret everything I'm about to say. When I call you beautiful, I don't mean it the way they call sunsets or cliches or the lilac sky. It's like when I step out on the balcony, some August evening, and the skies outside are dark and glowing with thunder... and the wind carries the smell of faraway rain. There is violence in the beauty of storms.. but they're also soft and breathtaking. How my name lingers on the edge of your lips, much the same way.
Stop rolling your eyes. Shut up and listen. Every time I think of you, your hands as they tuck away those disobedient locks falling across your face, I end up smiling to myself like an idiot. Every time I steal glances at you from across the room... and you suddenly catch me staring with those caffeine eyes of yours, I get so nervous I swear I can't feel my legs.
No, don't you laugh at me now. Let me finish coz I have been choking on these words for an eternity it seems. I love how you don't give a fuck about anything. I love how you're fearless, how when you want something, you don't pray to the heavens, you raise hell and go get it. I love how you don't give a shit if people call you stuck up or way too honest for their liking or simply a heartless bitch. They don't know you as I do. They haven't seen you offering your seat every time an elderly boards the bus. They haven't seen you talk for hours every day to that girl after she tried to kill herself. They haven't seen you buying an all-you-can-eat feast for a bunch of street kids. They haven't seen you bringing home that limp, dying puppy, or your tears when it finally started walking.
No, please don't cry. I don't think I can stand to see you that way. I know you don't need to be loved because it's a major inconvenience. I know you're better off without it. So when I tell you that I'm in love with you, it's not a question. I'm telling you because I can't remember the last time I felt this way. I'm telling you because you make me want to be a better person and I don't think I can keep lying to myself that it isn't your stupid good morning text that isn't what I look forward to every single day. You can take my words, lock them in a box and throw away the keys. You can tell me you don't feel the same way, and we can forget about it. Or stop pulling my leg for a second and kiss me.
But I had to tell you, I'm sorry.
You picked up the little puppy with the broken leg you found underneath the storm-tossed tree. You were ten, didn't know better. So you brought it home, hid it underneath the stairs in an old shoebox, fed it and tried to nurse it back to health. Then your uncle found it and said it was dirty. He tossed it out as you stood there, pleading, till the helpless anger boiling in your throat got caught in your tongue and never made it out. You cried into your pillow as the little screams in the darkness outside your window died down to a whimper... then disappeared into the night.
What is wrong with the world? You ask me. I see your brown eyes wandering in the distance, in search of an answer to that dreadful question. You're 25.. and yet I see glimpses of that scared little girl in you sometimes. I see you avoiding confrontation, apologizing for every little thing. Sorry I talk too much. Sorry, I'm so quiet. Sorry I care too much. Sorry I love too soon. Sorry, I overthink. Sorry, I cried.
You become crippled with anxiety when you get interrupted or shot down by words that are hurtful and bullying. But you don't retaliate. I can feel you getting torn inside, between wanting to hurt them back and forgiving. It's a miracle that despite everything, you always choose to be kind. It's who you are and I understand how hard it must be. The gut-wrenching strength it takes to be this way in a world that sees kindness as a weakness, idolizes violence, assholes and toxicity.
I can't tell you it will get better for you. That the world will miraculously wake up one day and decide to choose love over hate. It won't, because human beings aren't programmed that way.
But you. You deserve to be heard without being interrupted, understood without being unfairly contradicted. You deserve to be appreciated for your kindness and grace, for seeing the good in people even when they don't see it themselves.
I just wanted to let you know that you will never be " too much to handle " for me...and the ''sensitivity'' they make fun of? Don't ever change it, please. Because the way I see it, the world needs you to be exactly who you are meant to be. I just wanted to let you know, that I'll love you for who you are, not despite it, but because of it.
This world and mine, get a little brighter every day you choose to be you. Every day you choose to exist. And, now; it's time to say goodbye. But the truth is, most people don't care.
They don't care if you're 22 and suffering from clinical depression, 26 and unemployed, 35 and broke. They don't care if nobody is buying your music, reading your poetry, applauding your art. They don't care if your father is an alcoholic bully if 90% of the money you make goes on your mom's chemotherapy. They don't care if your dog died yesterday if your best friend killed himself if your fiance cheated on you if you dropped out of college and couldn't be a graduate. They don't care if you're looking for jobs for the past two years and every interview has been a dead end. They don't care if you're overweight, or underweight if you handed your heart out like free coupons and it got thrown away. They may say they feel you, they understand, but they don't. Because at the end of the day, everybody out here is scared. Nobody is coming to save you, they're too busy saving themselves. So why the fuck do you care about what they have to say?
Why are you so worked up about the judgements of people who listen to you just to pass their time, bitch behind your back coz they have nothing better to do in their unproductive lives? Why are you so afraid that if you pour your heart out to the world, the world will laugh? If they don't care about your physical and mental well-being if they profit out of your insecurities, why will you hold yourself back if they doubt your credibility? Fuck those people. They don't know your journey, they didn't walk in your fucking shoes, they don't know what it's like to be you. You were not born to impress these motherfuckers, you were born to light the goddamn sky up above their heads. This is your war, not theirs... And their opinion doesn't count because they're not the ones fighting it for you.
In a world that feeds off your insecurities of being unappreciated, not giving a fuck about what other people think is the sharpest weapon you can possibly wield... and tell yourself it's okay to walk out of your scared little head and listen to your heart. Love is and always will be, the biggest middle finger to your haters... But, I believe that; in this world full of nice people, someone would always stand with me like the strongest weapon, stronger than those pills I take before I doze off.