They don't brush the hair from my face, and wrap their arms around me; they don't whisper in my ear as they comfort me, and rub my back with a hand.
And I hug myself as tightly as i can at night, as my heart aches, and my body screams: 'hold me, hold me, touch me, love me'. submerging myself in layers of blankets and clothes because its so cold and it's so lonely.
I'm starved for something I hate, and yet my body reaches out in desperation for it, as it recoils in disgust all at once.
Time is a quiet kind of wealth. It doesn't ask to be noticed, doesn't demand attention, yet it shapes everything we are and everything we become. We treat it like something we have plenty of, until we don't. We spend it carelessly, postpone what matters, assume there will always be another moment to say what we didn't, to do what we delayed, to become who we thought we had time to be. But time doesn't return what it takes.
If you knew you only have few moments left, what will you do? Everyone is busy. Everyone has something to do. But, somewhere between all of that, there's always time for what truly matters. Sometimes all it takes is a minute - To remind someone they're loved. To say what you've been holding back. To not let time take something you still have.
Because in the end, It's never the things you did that stay with you - It's the things you didn't.
Not since the chemistry balance in my brain became unbalanced and self hatred became normal.
Birthdays became a reminder of my failure,
of expectations i'm yet to have filled,
responsibilities i'm yet to take care of,
roles i'm meant to have played and be an expert in.
It became a reminder of:
Another year of nothing.
Another year of the same cycle i promised to scrub clean and yet is still just as, if not more, dirty than the year before.
I made a deadline with myself some years ago.
If i made it to a certain age and i haven't yet gotten parts of my life starting to come together, then i was done.
But here i am.
Another year.
I hit the deadline last year, and i didn't have my goal completed by the end of the date.
Because i don't want to leave.
I know that leaving isn't the right way, it isn't even the easiest way out.
I don't want to leave; i just want the pressure to be lighter and things to be the slightest bit easier.
I changed my thinking.
Sometimes it's hard to keep that mindset.
The mindset that keeps me going, keeps me here, gives me a purpose, a reason.
I didn't get this far to ONLY get this far.
If my brain wants me gone, it's gonna have to grow hands and do the dirty work itself because i'm not doing it for it.
My birthday is soon...
and i am tired.
I am a year over the due date of my deadline.
It was never a goal i knew i'd complete.
Just a goal to reassure me there was an escape.
Because that's all it is, isn't it?
There's a comfort in knowing we don't have to do this.
But we do.
We choose to.
Why wouldn't we?
We know what happens if we don't stay,
but what happens if we do stay is unknown.
I will stay to see another year
and then another,
and another,
until life decides to have mercy on me.
It is not a fight.
I am not fighting it.
I am simply existing in the state it placed me.
Did it want me to fight?
I won't.
I am content in floating on the waters of my solitude, of my loneliness, my lack of everything i fail to accomplish.
It is cold and quiet.
It is dark and empty.
It is everything and nothing.
I started my 20s last year.
I have done this cycle for twelve or more years.
I need fingers and toes to count, and soon, i will not have enough digits to count.
I am young,
but i feel as though i have been here for too long already.
I am not an 'old soul'.
I am not 'wise'.
I am do not 'see things that others miss'.
I am a thing that grew up too fast because everyone missed signals and signs.
Everyone missed my subtle ways and ignored blatant asks for help.
I am not loud in my ways.
I am not dramatic.
That is not me.
I am breaking
and part of me looks forward for the day i lose control.
But control is something i have wrapped around my finger too tightly.
It is knotted in multiple places and tangled up.
I can not lose control.
I have tried.
Losing control is not me.
I am still a kid.
I am still a child in a growing up body that people expect me to be something different when i was never taught how to.
I am given roles and expectations with no guide and no manual,
then they scream when i get it wrong.
Then they point fingers when i burn out within seconds.
I am a candle with a dying wick that keeps trying to relight, but has never had the maintenance or care it requires to burn as bright as the guide says it will.
The wick is black and curled up.
A tiny bump and the wick snaps off.
How do you light a wick that is hardly there?
Maybe it's best to break me into pieces.
Melt me down into a new mould.
Place a fresh wick and start again.
But that requires time, patience, energy, and resources i don't have,
and may never have.
My birthday is soon.
I don't really care.
Another year will be spent in the mattress already indented in the shape of my body.
It'll be spent looking at the mess i let pile up.
Maybe i'll buy something that the inner child inside me always wanted.
Something that'll make them finally uncurl themself from behind my heart.
Something that gives them warmth.
And hope i don't destroy it.
Our trust, even in ourself, is thinner than the cliché fraying thread.
Before you get mad at your partner for not doing what you expect them to do, Stop and ask yourself “have I ever communicated to them that I have this expectation?” If you have not, it’s unfair to expect them to read your mind.
So many arguments are saved by just opening your mouth and saying “hey hun, in the future can you….” Whether its articulating how you like to be loved, supported, or communicated with, you have to open your mouth. Your soul mate (IMO) isn’t the person that just always knows what you need when you need it without you telling them. Your soul mate is the person who hears your needs and thinks “I have no problem doing that because I love this person with my whole heart”
So check your attitude and open your mouth. Closed mouths don’t get fed.
You ever realise how one day we'll die and everything around us will be somebody else's?
We'll end up being nothing.
There'll be just black.
Just darkness.
and the place we called home will become somebody's place to call home
and maybe they'll have kids.
Maybe there'll be marks left of pen lines on the wall from tracking their child's height, or maybe something will break and it'll never be fixed, then maybe they'll move and this'll become someone's childhood home as it becomes yet another's home.
Maybe one day no one will touch this place, and it'll become abandoned, left with stories to tell, but no one to listen. Maybe they'll be a box of old belongings left behind that someone might find.
Or maybe someone else will move in and own a bunch of cats. Maybe there'll be chipped paint and scratch marks. Maybe even little paw imprints on the wall or floor. Maybe a few stray strands of fur.
Maybe people will take photos as memories, and someone else will be like, "Oh, i know that place. That was my childhood home." and maybe they'll get to know each other better, bonding through stories they made in this place, and maybe they'll realise they love each other.
History remains even when we don't, even if it's just through pictures or a person whose memory still exists of you and they speak about you to others.
I guess you never really die til your name is no longer spoken and there's nothing left. I guess immortality is really just leaving a big enough imprint that makes it hard to forget and i'm not talking about an imprint like changing the world, but doing things that remind people in the stupidest of ways.
I'm reminded of an old friend because they nicknamed me 'mouse', and i remember them every time i hear it.
A man in the store once played a guitar behind his back when i was waiting for my mother to finish her shift; both me, her, and her co-worker remember him because it was so unexpected and funny, yet impressive.
I have a bean bag thing my favourite teacher gave me ten years ago, i remember him every time i see it.
I remember a man learning how to play the flute on the street, and no, he wasn't good at all, but i remember him, and i wonder if he kept up with it.
My mother worked in a carehome years ago, she still speaks of residents she looked after even though they're no longer here.
A heavily tattooed man once told me that his tattoos were not to appear "tough," but they were all dedicated to people he'd lost, like his grandmother, mother, friends, an unspoken lover. He said its to keep them permanent, to keep them alive, that they live through him. He tells their stories still and said they die when he does, but that is not true, because now i know them too.
I change my ways and then slip again like running on tiles with socked feet.
I am always reaching for something that seems so close,
yet feels too far.
The stretch and pull is too much for these weak muscles and shaky bones blanketed by thin flesh.
People speak words of advice and suggestions and it replays in my head like a checklist;
one that I tick, repeating the words
"Failed",
"Gave up.",
"impossible".
I was born with my veins spelling out the word 'disappointment' in cursive and my heart is the thing that keeps the red blood cells of my suppressed rage pumping through this body.
This act that I do and this nonsense that I spew is an outlet for all the things deemed unacceptable and unsavory;
It is an attempt at ridding myself of the sins that keep my soul grasped in its hands.
An attempt at keeping myself sane, keeping something to remember what I can of myself
because the hands of time keep moving forward
and each tick only sends me further back into a pit of darkness with starved beasts, who lick their cracked lips at the just the scent of me,
Walking the block, the way I do when I’ve got nothing better to do, just a shuffle through the Florida streets, the kind of streets where you know what everyone’s paycheck looks like without asking. Modest houses, tired lawns. The air was thick with heat, the kind that clings to you like regret. Then, out of nowhere, a smell hit me—just for a moment.
It was gravy. Not just gravy. Her gravy. My mother’s.
It stopped me cold. I could see her in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, stirring like her life depended on it. She never measured a thing. Pinches and handfuls, a splash here, a stir there, and out came magic. Smooth, creamy, like it had no right to be that good. It went on everything—potatoes, meat, whatever we had. And the potatoes, oh man, the potatoes. She turned those into art. Mashed, roasted, fried, didn’t matter. Always perfect. Always hers.
I stood there on the sidewalk, the smell fading, and felt something gnawing at me. I never told her how much I loved it, her cooking. The way she made those plain meals taste like something special, something worth sitting down for. I watched her sometimes, just a kid, leaning on the counter, and she never looked like she was trying hard. Like it was nothing, just another day.
But it wasn’t nothing. It was love, I think. In the way she stirred, in the way she smiled when we asked for seconds. It was love, and I didn’t know it then.
I walked on, that smell gone now, replaced by the usual—a mix of hot pavement and someone’s dryer vent. I kept walking, but I was already somewhere else, back in a little kitchen that probably doesn’t exist anymore, with her standing there, stirring. Always stirring.
