A Little Less Lonely, A Little More Empty
My emotions tend to run my days, my hours, sometimes just my minutes, making decisions for me before I can comprehend what is happening.
I’m trying to understand how it’s so possible to be filled up with so much emotion, to feel everything with so much intensity, yet I feel so empty.
Tonight I seek instant gratification, in any of its unhealthy irrational forms. Doing things, without thought, without reason, searching for something to make me feel alive.
I search for a foolish and wreckless way I’ll ruin my life, and tonight I’ve found three.
A boy who worships my body with his words and with his touch. A ghost of man I use to know, who for years broke my heart, never choosing me. Now he’s turned me into an icon, his manic pixie dream girl, as he clings to me and our unspoken history to find the version of himself he has lost. I know I remind him of what we both could have had, and he holds me with expectations I will never reach. We are unhealthy. As he puts his body against mine, I feel a little less lonely, but a little more empty.
A boy who gives me his time and attention, never missing a single beat. We are souls of the same passion, singing along to There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, making me believe it could be true. While he’s there for me at the snap of my fingers, his temper and actions can snap just same. My time with him is a ticking time bomb, anxiously awaiting for his next explosion, praying he’ll wait long enough for the wounds from the last round of grenades. His hand pushes my hair away from my face, kissing my lips as he says “my friend.” I’m okay with this, as long as he doesn’t treat me that way tonight. We are unstable. Wrapped in his arms I feel a little less lonely, but a little more empty.
A boy who knows me, understands my words before I say them, or so he says he does. He rides along with my moods and tells me I’m crazy, that no one will ever love me as much as he has. Believing him is easy when he’s telling me how I’m the only he has left. Usually he tries to hide the woman he left me for. Tonight, however, he is alone. He needs to be in love with someone and I need to feel loved by someone. Tonight I’m not his second choice. But even so, at least I’m on the list. We are messy. Listening to his lies I feel a little less lonely, but a little more empty.
Choosing to keep them in my life is a battle my mind does not quite understand. If there is fine line between love and hate, then it feels like I’m never close to finding the middle ground, I’m either living on one side or the other. All it takes is one word, one laugh, one single touch, to go between the two. These three fall into the only pattern of relationships I’ve ever known: Unhealthy, Unstable, and Messy.
I am messy.
Though my brain can’t ever seem to make up its mind, I pray, and hope and beg they won’t leave me. My life feels as if it’s been nothing but frantic efforts to avoid being alone, fearing people could leave me in an instant. And tonight is no different. So God forbid they leave my life. Even when I say that I hate them, even when I should, I’ll take what I can get.
I’m terrified they will leave. Terrified everyone will.
That can’t happen, I won’t let it happen, doing whatever I can to make sure it doesn’t. Even if I have to leave myself. I’d rather leave than be left.
So tomorow will be another night, fighting to be a little less lonely, yet still a little more empty.