we made it out to the other side.

I'm trapped in bouts of feeling everything and then nothing at all. If I let it go, I feel it in my gut. I close my eyes and I hear his words and all of the great things he stood for, and then I look at how rapidly that deteriorated. But to put all of this on a man is absurd, inaccurate mostly. Because as wonderful as that path seemed, I was never really following it out of a desire to reach the destination… but moreover because it seemed like the expected thing to do. Still, consciously making the effort to give things a try, to commit to someone (especially with my personal struggles against physical intimacy, being touched, being held) was big for me. Something about being bitten the first time I reached out rings in my mind, but it’s not even that… because if I’m being honest with myself, I’m not really that upset over it. I’m frustrated at the lost idea of what could have been one possibility, one of many.

I’ve been drifting apart from many of my friends lately. It isn’t that we’ve grown apart, even that our interests have suddenly changed. I feel this burden in myself, this raw edge that seems to taint everything I touch. Small and beautiful gestures make me angry, and I don’t know why. People asking me if I’m okay frustrates me, makes me want to bolt. The sadness kind of creeps in on me, and I get angry with myself that I let it affect me so much. Mainly.. I feel like I’m seeing things in a different scope, hearing things on a different frequency, and I can’t even begin to describe the slowness, the speed, the heaviness, the weight, the ache. And that’s what this is—my attempt to understand it, to write it down. Because maybe I’ll make it through to the other side and I’ll be able to look back at this and think oh yes, it was difficult, but it shaped me. It did this to me. It made me better.

Feeling nothing is not better—I’m not disillusioned enough to believe that. The numbness makes it hard to function, and I hate feeling like I’m crazy. I’m so tired, but I can never sleep. I’m existing.


A part of me is happy when I feel it all. The pain reminds me that I can feel things, and I write the best, sing the best, understand the most when it’s there. But it’s taxing, and as intense and bright as it can be, just as suddenly, it vanishes, and things are grey.