[achingchest]

it feels like I’ve gone through every stage of grief except acceptance.

even on the days I swear I’m over this, I still feel. denial, anger, denial, bargaining, anger, bargaining, depression, anger again. I’m getting closer. the next day I pull back. I think I’m there. then I’m not. in and out. back and forth.

that was always the allure of this for me. the rage, and then infatuation, vulnerability bonding me to you in trauma, and then the gnawing of the pull away. the rage. infatuation. vulnerability. feeling my feelings. that’s what I considered it, anyway. I loved acting on emotion. the instant gratification. that was what you were for me.

and that’s why I struggle with grief. it’s too irregular. erratic. takes too long to know if it’s working, the way instant gratification doesn’t.

but the truth is, so many nights, when I was with you, all I could think about is when I could get away from you. my anxiety would siren. I was scared of you. I was scared of this. I was scared of being let in, and letting you in, and so I didn’t.

I’d leave, go home, and I’d think. I’d process, dissect, pick apart what you said, remember because when you said it, I couldn’t process it then. go through social media to try to figure out who you are because I didn’t know how to ask you. couldn’t process shit quick enough in person. couldn’t be cowardly enough to bring it up through text. couldn’t see past my emotions. didn’t know what I wanted. I was afraid you weren’t going to live up to the expectations in my head.

and you wouldn’t have. I thought if I lived in my feelings, I wouldn’t have to face the fact that you couldn’t give me what I wanted. I wanted to live in my own reality, rather than in the reality of what this really was, and what this really is. the gray area. nothing truly black and white enough to evoke the rage, infatuation, vulnerability, trauma bond, gnawing that I felt.

but I’ve found that if you love feeling your feelings, you create feelings to feel. I buried you in emotions because I know they root deeper than facts. it was sick, but I loved it. the way you were based more on soul than what we did in real life.

I still feel crazy for that some days. I feel crazy for still thinking about you, like you were special, when I made you up in my head. I feel crazy when I still talk about you. but you know, some days, I really fucking like talking about you. muting your stories, then unmuting them during difficult moments even though I know I shouldn’t - that’s what I need those days. I needed the lessons I taught myself through you. I’m still learning them. that’s why I still go back to them some days.

but then I breathe. click out. it’s not a spiral anymore. my emotions don’t always have to overpower me.

I used to think I loved feeling my feelings. but acting on feelings isn’t really feeling them, is it? it’s the opposite, really. to get rid of the feeling, I gave it what it wanted. ran back for infatuation. that’s on me.

but the moments without you and my feelings controlling me are getting longer now. they turn into minutes and suddenly, it’s months later, and I’ve never felt further away.

acceptance. freedom. even if it’s just closer to it. even if it’s only just for today. 

[achingchest]

how many times have you been here before? walking through thorns to decorate an abandoned house, covering the bleeding parts with band-aids, breathing life into somebody else’s compass, trying to unravel their truth. every single time you have tried to dig up the grave, you have found only you. because this is your story. you have never been secondary. every single time you have asked the universe which road leads back to them, you have found a better road - the one that leads back to you.

[achingchest]

it still feels as familiar as it did the last time, years ago— curling up in the car, putting on sad songs to get rid of this emptiness, trying to cry until the tears are flowing so much I can’t breathe, sitting on the grass, throwing up in the backyard, staring at the stars, wondering how things got this way. I am so tired of fighting for things that will never be mine, trying to explain how special people are to people who will never see them in the same light as I do, loving people in ways I am scared to say out loud— I want you to know how badly I miss you the second I leave but I don’t think telling you would change anything. I don’t know how to change anything. I don’t know how to make you want me. I keep fucking up because I don’t know how to be anyone else but me. I feel inferior. I wish I could change things. I would do literally anything to make you feel the same way as me.

[achingchest]

i don’t regret my decision even though some days, i question it. i wring it out to dry and make myself explain it. again and again and again and again, i tell myself why letting go is the best decision for me. i am no longer speaking to you. i don’t know you. i am thinking in third person - i wish i could be there with him. i wish i could be there for him. but i know he doesn’t want me to be. it’s that easy.

i keep thinking about what i’d do if he ever came back and i know that, of course, i would be there with open arms for him. i still want to be the kind of person who would thank him for opening up in a way he never has before, because i know how hard it is to open up to those who don’t deserve what you put them through. it’s harder when you don’t have a reason. harder when you know i am here thinking i should have cared more. should have showed him more love. should have been there as if in a second, he could have been gone. i miss him. think that if i did all of this shit for him, maybe he would have liked me. think if i told him that i valued him, it would change things. but also,

i want to thank him for leaving, because without his absence, i would have stayed stuck. would have never thought about how he never did anything for me either. had me still imagining a future when he won’t even reach out. i want to reach out. i’m sorry i haven’t reached out. but there’s only so many times i can do that without an answer without eventually feeling like even if he answered, he’d only be answering as a pitty response.

[achingchest]

everything comes back to you. the bad days, the chances you never gave me, the you never knew what i was going throughs. i always think about how much worse shit is going on in the world than just a person who didn’t care as much as i wanted him to. but there’s so much real shit in my life, too. there’s so many things that are more concrete than you. but my head is stuck in abstracts. in things i never really even knew. i guess what i’m trying to say is that i’m embarrassed by how much i miss you. how i wish i could blame my bad days on you. how i always wanted you to come home to. how i hate opening up, but i really wanted to open up to you. i wanted you to know me, but you never gave me the chance to know you. i keep subconsciously thinking this is some deep thing, but i know it comes down to the fact that you never liked me as much as i liked you. and yeah, it’s okay. it’s fine. i’m learning to live with it. but the truth is, on the bad days, all i think about is how you would react to this.

[achingchest]

things are getting hard again. some days i convince myself that being alone is better than getting hurt by the outside world, spilling pieces of myself on the pavement, and letting my emotions hold weight. sometimes i’m right. sometimes i have to stop myself from saying what i really want to say. sometimes life is so much easier in my own head. nobody can tell me i’m wrong here, or make my feel like my feelings aren’t mine to feel - here, i never have to watch what i say. here, i can scream and cry and curse out everyone who has ever wronged me. i can tell you i miss you without fear that i shouldn’t or the pressure of being naive. i can say that i’m tired, even if i don’t deserve to say i’m tired, because so many people are so much worse off than me. here, i can say all of the things i’m too scared to say when i’m standing in front of people, when i find it so difficult to just be me. my anxiety is getting bad again. i don’t know if i’m doing the right thing. i want to be a transparent person, but to be honest, i don’t like me when i’m like this and i don’t want to be seen.

[achingchest]

the first day i met you, i thought about your energy. how i always feel people as energies. i thought about your aura. about red and purple and green. i thought about how i knew you would be important to me. i knew it then. it hasn’t changed.

i thought about putting words to this, about telling you how i feel, but it’s too much of a feeling. a knowing. a tingling. the words never sound right. not enough happened for me to feel this strongly. but the truth is, you could do anything and i would still be in love with your energy. it’s not logical, but i don’t fall in love with character traits. i don’t fall in love with people. i fall in love with the very first way they made me feel. that very first day.

and i’ve been thinking a lot about manifesting lately. about the energy i put out. the way being needy, even internally, has the power to turn people off. i’ve been thinking about the universe. about wavelengths. about the power of positive talk. when bad things happen externally that upset you, it’s so easy to harbor them internally and then put them back out. it can be an endless cycle of negativity. the way anxiety triggers anxiety triggers anxiety. the way, “i’ve been super chill - why don’t they like me?” is really radiating bad energy, because the universe doesn’t ever reward you for pretending. and people can feel how you really feel in less obvious ways.

i’ve been here before. i feel like i’m forcing something. last time it ended badly and i had to use you to teach me something. i want to let go. and not in the way that i want to get rid of this. like, if you texted me right now, of course i’d answer. be kinder. i feel it’s only right after all of this. i value the time i spent with you, the avenue of dramatics i went down with you; you taught me that i deserved better than what i had. i don’t usually believe in fantasy things, but i believe you came into my life at exactly the moment i needed you to, and you taught me something. maybe you served your purpose and i don’t need the lesson anymore. maybe you’ll come back to me. but now i want to be calm. i want to be as calm as i pretended to be.

so i’m working on my energy again instead of my character traits. i’m working on letting go instead of being so controlling. getting out into nature again. staying up writing at 2 am. i’m remembering that i was made for whatever is meant for me. feeling a connection with someone is not an excuse to ignore their qualities. missing the way you felt when with someone isn’t an excuse to settle for less. i’m gnawing the cord off with my teeth. laughing at all of the times i’ve thought - i can’t believe i let myself go through something that bad for me just to write a poem i’ll end up being embarrassed of.

i’ve been here before. you’re not a bad person. you’re just not right for me. i feel cleaner when i don’t harbor the negative jealous dramatic energy. i think i need something less. something that puts me at ease. i think even though i love yours, i need a different energy.

[achingchest]

i love waiting until things are broken bloody bruised shitty fucked up horrible before i choose to leave. i stay and i stay and i stay and i stay until i don’t remember what the other person even looked like when they were smiling happy so this time, i am trying to leave on good terms. it’s a foreign thing to me, remembering how it felt to kiss you and never feeling the kiss turn black and coat my lungs with smoke. it’s feeling numb instead of chasing you down the stairwell crying my fucking eyes out just to feel alive, being the crazy girl even though god it felt so good at the time, but i am thinking in future tense and i know i don’t need the adrenaline rush to know i deserve better and if this is the last snapchat story i knew you’d view, i’d never post another one again, because it hurts that you’re gone but i don’t want to let another memory be tainted.

[achingchest]

old me downs six mixed drinks and laughs when I press send, but new me drinks nothing and ends up six years deep in your instagram. and for some, that’s still crazy. but for me, it’s progress. because every day, I obsess a little less, and sometimes even if it’s for just a minute, without you physically here to remind me, I really do forget.

I still hate being hopeful because when the glimmer is gone, it feels hopeless. but I'm not afraid to say this hurts because it deserves to. I don’t care if it’s crazy that I really liked you, or that I still do. the nagging thoughts still ask me what I could have done to make you stay. what did I do to make you feel this way. and how can I make it better. how can I make you realize that you can come to me for whatever. just tell me what’s wrong. what’s going on. I won’t mind, I promise. I'll swallow all of my pride, my emotions, for your comfort. and though sweet, that’s truly the part of me that’s craziest, and I am tired of being walked all over.

I know I did nothing wrong in this. I know the aftermath of instant gratification hurts more than the feeling of what could have been. I know that if someone ignores you, it’s because they don’t want to talk to you. that’s it. reaching out to you would only cause more turmoil at the end of this. if it was something I said, I can’t take it back. and if it’s because of something I am, I am better for it. is it another girl? I know I'd go through every one of her photos and compare myself to her. if you just need space, I’d have nothing to respond to. too busy with work? okay, I know texting only takes a second. I convince myself it doesn’t matter, I just want to be friends, that’s all, but I know that’s a lie because I’m not ready for it yet.

the truth is, you’re a nice guy, so I don’t trust you to be honest. and I don’t know you well enough to interrogate, so for now, I’ll stay silent. if you can’t communicate, go ahead and leave, I can’t change you. but if you come back, I'll be here ready to understand— that’s what makes me better than you.

[achingchest]

i. you were this pretty foreign thing and i was searching for a way to dig myself out of the dirt. you made me feel like i was worth something. i never knew how much that wasn’t a good thing. ii. you told me you felt famous because i wrote about you. i didn’t know how to tell you it’s never been a good thing to be my muse. i only write about people who suck and you really suck sometimes you iii. make me feel like my words don’t matter. make me think about how many friendships are based off of convenience. how many “i don’t have anyone else but at least i have somebody”s. how many “i deserve better”s that end with walking away with nothing. iv. loneliness comes with an agony i can’t scrub out. when we fight, you tell me what i mean to you as if telling me i am of worth will fix anything. i know i am. that’s why i’m tired of settling. v. there’s a difference between standing up for yourself and wasting your breath. i’ve wasted so much time obsessing and obsessing and obsessing over what i should do and say to those who hurt me to make it right. i go home now. i try to forget. i turn out the light.

recluse

[achingchest]

I try to swallow my hurt these days, but it comes out anyway. in little things-- the smallest smile, one line in a song with a familiar melody, the word choice in an essay. more often than not, I struggle in describing my feelings. they say your subconscious mind is more powerful than anything. that over 95% of your actions are dictated off of your inner being.

I’m trying to be in touch with myself again, but I've gotten so used to pretending, even I act shocked when someone asks me how I am. instead of answering, I'm apologizing for not pretending efficiently enough this week. instead of answering, I’m trying to divert the focus anywhere other than me. I’m trying to act normal, be normal, be the person everyone wants me to be. I’m trying to be grateful and stop hurting over nothing.

I've spent so much time with my unconscious mind that way. burying and burying until my thoughts spill over to my consciousness. when I was younger, I wasn’t as efficient at being silent, but picking my battles has made me quiet. there are only so many times you can spill your thoughts to the wrong person before they use it against you. and it hurts. it really does. so I shut up, stand tall, and try to be positive regardless of my mind and others trying to hurt me over little things. I know I am strong and I know I am not wrong and my conscious mind knows I shouldn’t even be hurt over people who don’t know anything.

so I shake my head and shrug it off. I’m not as good at that as I pretend to be. sometimes I can take my conscious mind off of my thoughts but they’re replicating underneath.

they say intuition is based on that, you know. why I can look at a person and just have this feeling they’re lying is based on the lies I've been told. that bad feeling in my stomach that I just can’t put my finger on about a person. and the way I know something bad is going to happen. I try to stay optimistic but it always fucking happens the way I think it will.

and so many times it feels like me against the world. so many times I try to rely on people and I end up getting let down. how do I become someone who stops being let down? how do I become positive without burying?

because I'm tired of looking at beautiful things and running my fingers over the cracks. I want to see something other than the past.

[achingchest]

“some people just make your life worth living.” you’re sitting on the floor again downing beers and cleaning the blood off of your thighs. it’s not right to say, you know. how you could ever think somebody else could always be the moon when the darkness lives inside of you. how dark your life lit up when nobody was home. how many split ends you had to go through to learn what fullness feels like and the way you confuse fullness with home.

when you’re alone all that’s left is the chains around your neck. do you ever wish for once they’d be strong enough to keep you in. do you ever wish for once you could know what it’s like to be dead. do you ever wish for once you wouldn’t confuse this pain with it.

some people just make your life worth living. some people are the reason i’m still here. some people are the reason i rot like a flesh wound. some people feel like veins flowing like a river. it’s the contribution and dehumanization of people that make or ruin this.

you touch me and it doesn’t feel the same. when you’re so used to your feelings not mattering you really start to believe it. i don’t know how to make someone else feel how it feels to feel worthless if they’ve never felt it. i wish i could scream that it feels like this.

one scar for each way we don’t get each other in the way i once thought we would. some people you can wear your heart on your sleeve with and they’ll still say they didn’t know you had a heart. a scar for not special. a scar for not important. a scar for every time your life became a barrier you had to break through.

people don’t like thinking like me. people don’t like different. like maybe because someone else wouldn’t feel the way i’m feeling that means i shouldn’t be feeling it. maybe if i were anyone else i wouldn’t still be collapsing over this. maybe i love harder than anyone you’ve ever met. maybe i just have a more difficult time showing it.

“here i am, this is it.” i’m here. sitting on the carpet. i’m not always the person other people are pleased with. i don’t need to put on a show. i just need to let go. but the truth is some people just make your life worth living. the truth is it’s so lonely to be on your own.

[achingchest]

There are a lot of shitty things this world has to offer, but the worst two ones? One’s being the heartbreaker and one’s being the heartbroken. And I know it hurts on your end. I see it in your eyes. I see it when you cry, when you wake up at night and scream my name in the darkness, when you whisper to your friends about all of the things I can’t change, but I wish you could see how this is tearing me to shreds too. How I stay up wondering why I’ll never be good enough for the only person who made me feel something. Why I messed up too badly for this to ever work again. This side hurts too, I promise. It’s sitting up subtracting your future from mine and coming up with a number so negative, my bones shake. Because you’ll love again. I have no doubt about that. You will love again and it will be more beautiful than anything you’ve ever experienced, because one day you will find someone with the capability to love you back. And they will be lucky. They will be so goddamn lucky because when you love, you love hard, and you will love them. You will love them so much, you won’t be able to breathe, but they will finally resuscitate you when you are feeling these things instead of plunging you under water, and it will be so beautiful and so worth this heartbreak, my heart won’t be able to take it. Because I’ll never be able to love like you do. Because someday you’ll move on and I’ll always have to live with this. And if it makes you less sad, I’ll say I’m sorry, because I am. But the saddest thing about this is that you’ll be okay in the end.

A letter from the heartbreaker to the heartbroken (via achingchest)

[achingchest]

you ever think about how you use people as scapegoats. like there is no reason i should be upset so i blame it on something that happened a month ago. what this person said to me before that i brushed off then - well actually, now it’s bothering me. when the sadness hits, how important become the little things. the things people didn’t do. show up. listen. but what did i do besides care about my own feelings.

you know, maybe happiness is really the comfort in i don’t care. because sadness brings sadness even when there’s little there. isn’t it scary. how there are times i could have everything but it’s still not everything and i am still not happy. how you could try and try and some days you just won’t get through to me. some days it feels better to write poems about who broke you than to admit it was nothing.

[achingchest]

i know i’ve done it thousands of times too many - run back to you, despite everything you’ve put me through. written a poem about leaving and woken up next to you. sometimes i’m picking up the pen in my mind when you’re right next to me. i know you feel it too. and it scares me to think that even though you’re not the one for me, that maybe i’m not the one for you.

isn’t it crazy. how i get offended when people don’t want me when i don’t want anyone. how i let you treat me well even on the days i want nothing to do with you. how i’ve turned into the villain in this story and i don’t know how to thank you.

and i’m used to it by this point, people blaming me for being stupid in a way they don’t blame you. but i don’t think i’m stupid. i still think it’s you.

and i don’t take it personally anymore. i’m happy those people have never been as lonely as i have been. i’m happy they don’t have to lie awake with our insecurities eating each other alive at night.

but there’s a difference, i think, between knowing you’re good enough and feeling it. between wondering why nobody wants you and people actually trying to get to know you. body counts. asking you out. the competition feels so real.

and i don’t expect people to know how it feels to hook up with someone who has cheated on you, either. to feel good enough. to feel good enough. god. it’s crazy. but i only feel good enough when i’m with you.

so i guess the truth is, this isn’t about you anymore. i’m not crying because i’m without you; i’m crying because without you, i have nothing in my future to look forward to. it’s easier to pretend i’d be happy with you than it is to imagine me with anyone else. being single for years does that to you, you know. i’m watching everyone around me settle down and wishing i was settling down with you only because i want to settle down too.

because when it comes between choosing you and being alone, i am always going to choose you.

because no one ever shows up for me the way you do. you’ve been a friend to me on the nights i’ve had nobody. i guess it comes down to the fact that i love you and i wish you were the one for me. that if we lived in a different time period, a different life, if we were different people, it could be. but every story i rewrite for us ends in us ending so i don’t give myself time to write. i just run back to you.

[achingchest]

i thought things were getting better, but here i am, on the floor again. staring at the bottle of pills and wondering if i’ll just throw them up with everything else i did. and i’m thinking about what would happen if it didn’t work. of my parents hunched over a hospital bed. and how you’d think all of this was your fault. and maybe it kind of is.

but the truth is, i’m tired of being talked out of suicide by the same people who made me contemplate it. of always having to rip open my scars because you don’t know how to be honest. but i also know i was born more sensitive than the average person. that somebody’s harmless can make me fall on the floor again. i’m truly starting to believe my bones are made of glass. and it’s nobody’s fault, in the end. and no one knows how to make it better because we know it’s hopeless.

they say when you experience trauma, you’re supposed to let it out of you. that it’s the only way to make things better. but i’ve talked about it. and talked about it. and talked about it. and at this point, i am begging to forget it. because the more i talk about it, the more i realize it’s never going to change. that it’s been years now and i’m still in the same place i’ve always been in.

but i’m still writing, because i don’t know what else to do. because if i stop writing, i’ll have nothing but the bottle of pills. so i’m breathing i’m breathing i’m breathing i’m choking up again and i’m breathing and i’ve never felt more ugly i’ve never felt more broken i’ve never felt like this life was worth less. it’s not fair. i wish i could give it up to someone who deserves it.

[achingchest]

surviving trauma feels like replaying images over and over and over again until you forget the logic in them. it feels like was this traumatic enough to be considered trauma? daydreaming in anatomy class about throwing your working body against the sidewalk, because going through this feels like being so invested in emotions that the memories of everything are blurry, creating segments in your mind of what traumatic event goes where in this story, but i still remember exactly where i was through a lot of things that shaped me. it was cold out. i was having a mental breakdown over something stupid as usual and you couldn’t wait to get away from me. and i’m sorry i always freak out when things don’t go my way. so many people have told me that about myself but the hurt just never seems to go away. i don’t know how to make people understand how it feels to take a handful of pills and to have every one of your friends run away from you when you are this way. god, what i wouldn’t do to finally be happy for once. because i know my sadness always ruins everything. never being happy always makes people think they’re not enough for me. that i’m too high-maintenance. and i know i make a lot of things about me because in the contest of who is sadder, i always win and it makes me so mad that other people aren’t hurting the way i am. so i know i never loved you the right way, but i swear to god i loved you in the only way i knew how to. i’m sorry that isn’t enough. i’m sorry i hurt you because i hurt you, but especially because i ended up hurting myself to the point where sometimes looking at you can trigger a breakdown. and you look at me with so much love until i can’t look at you and you always find someone who makes you feel more loved than me. because i’m hostile and unforgiving and hurt and hurt and always hurting but if there’s one thing i know it’s that you love me because i know no one else would tolerate me. and my heart says, “this is the only thing you’ve ever really wanted and it’s here now, it’s so close, just say you love him and everything will be okay,” but i can’t because my emotions are drowning me. when i finally get one second of peace, my mind tells me this isn’t going to work. there’s too many things working against us. it’s not our fault. but then my emotions are throwing a temper tantrum, throwing my body against the cold bathroom floor, i’m bleeding out again and it hurts so badly i don’t know how to explain it anymore. i don’t know how to explain how it feels to cry every day for two months straight. every single day is always the same. i want nothing more than to die, to be reborn, to live a life where this will work, but i don’t know what to do. no matter what, it always hurts.

i’m sorry