Swimzilla Publishing House

we love you.

[swimzillastudios]

This is about you.

Where do I fit into people. How do I factor into lives. I don't know what spaces I fit in, what niches I fill. For people, most people, I'm not important. For some people however, and it is not many, I've been given some measure of importance in their lives, and the scariest thought in the world is that I don't know why. One wrong step and I'll no longer be doing whatever it is they needed me for and then I'm gone. Or maybe they simply won't need it anymore.

I'm thinking about slipping away completely. Just leaving behind anyone and everyone for whom I don't know my niche, and with whoever's left try to make something. It would be lonely and it would be hard but it wouldn't be so insecure and it wouldn't be so scary. I'd rather be six feet under solid ground than twenty feet above it on a tower of sand, where even a slight tremor could send me tumbling down.

The worst part is that I might be right. Usually, in circumstances like these, the emotions in my mind can be restrained. I can logically understand that they're not true. But not anymore. I see more signs that it's true than ever. Measurable ways in which they all care for each other more than anyone could care about me. Even simple observations of the complex interactions of the people in my life often do show how little of a role I play in theirs. What am I for. What do you need me for.

You are someone special to me. You are someone important to me. You make me happy. It's getting less and less believable that you could say the same about me. Maybe you could, if asked, but even asking is too much pressure. I want you to already want to say it, and I don't know how to get to that point.

Do I only have friends because they all think I'm important to someone else? Am I only still invited because nobody bothered to check who actually wanted me there? What does it even matter. Maybe I should just enjoy the warmth and the music while it lasts, so when they finally come to their senses I can hum the notes in the cold, kicking stones across the asphalt, with finally nowhere to go.

That's nonsense. That's stupid. Why would that ever be true. Maybe to you it seems obvious. Maybe to you I have everything. But I am not you, and I do not see it. You sure as hell aren't acting like it's stupid. "Just talk to me more," you say, "I love talking to you," but then the hours go by. I think a lot about you, but even when I need it it seems as though I'm just an afterthought.

The way you speak to me doesn't help. Short, dismissive, aggressive. Maybe I'm just reading into it. But then again, it's not just you. Every time I go to have a conversation and get pushed out with barriers as impassible as small. You say "ok" and I feel a lump in my throat, "what" and my chest tightens up, ":/" and my head starts to spin. There's nothing I hate more than all the ways you dismiss me. Let me back into your life. I'm sorry that I stopped being whatever I was to you. I'm sorry I can't fill that niche for you anymore, but I still need you, now more than ever. Please stay. Please don't go.

Please don't go.

Please don't go.

Please don't go.

please dont go.

[swimzillastudios]

Like a snap, feelings can change in an instant. Not too long ago we were sitting here on this log, together, looking out across the lake. Calm as it was, talking about something. We could always talk about something. That was special about us. No matter the season, no matter the reason, there was always something or other to discuss and we always had fun doing it. I'll miss the way you could talk for hours about anything just because I was there to listen. I'll miss every part of you I lost when I stopped caring. But I won't miss you. This lake was where you spread your grandmother's ashes. I remember you were close, she asked you specifically to do it here. Apparently she met her husband by this lake. We always thought that was poetic, since the lake became our spot too. There's nothing poetic about it now. It's just a spot we used to meet. It's somewhere, but it's just anywhere now. Part of me was hoping you'd be here, sitting by the lake, maybe crying because I'd left. Part of me wanted to see you, the visage of you that I'd built up in my mind. I wanted to arrive, having left the real you behind, and see the person I always believed was underneath sitting there in the shade with a frangipani tucked behind your ear like I always used to do for you, crying because I'd left. Part of me was broken when I arrived and that impossible thing was not true. Impossible never meant anything to my feelings. I always believed you could change. I suppose this is the last letter you'll receive from me. For the record, I still believe you can change. I just won't be there to see it.

[swimzillastudios]

Ghost

Your ghost haunts these streets. Everywhere I go I can sense it. As I'm passing by I grab a hint of your name, a note of your scent, a memory of you, destitute on the asphalt. Gone but still here, out of reach. What happened to you? In a word I could not describe it. It's not loneliness, it's not grief, and it doesn't really feel like loss. It just feels— off,,, without you here. It's off, how much you were in my life, yet nothing else has changed now you're out of my life. It's off, how everything and everyone else is still the same. Why aren't they affected, why hasn't this changed anything. Why the fuck aren't they destroyed by this. Drop the FUCKING act. Stop FUCKING pretending that everything's okay because it's not. It's fucking not. Because you're gone. And there's no way I'm getting you back…

I know it wasn't healthy, I know I couldn't live like that forever. You hurt me over and over, you cut me off then begged and begged to come back and I couldn't resist. Every time I couldn't resist until I was worn down to the bone and still you asked for more. You'd leave me alone for days with my own thoughts, isolated, worried about you, fearing the worst, and then you'd pick up right where we left off and call me insane for thinking anything was wrong, that's if you even kept talking after I brought anything up. You fucking sucked, and I loved you, and I love you.

It was the hardest decision I have ever made. Broken and battered yet still divided on whether or not your attention and affection is worth everything else. Because there were good times when you loved me without hurt, just for a little, and even now sitting here some part of me regrets it. But I'm not coming back. You destroyed me and I don't even know if you knew what you were doing or if you just as I were engulfed in the fantasy, it was almost too bright to see what was happening but there was always darkness. You cast more shadows than most.

Maybe you loved me, maybe you still love me. But the things you did broke me. I wish you were able to love without those barriers, whatever internal walls you put up to protect yourself from the vulnerability it takes to love without pain. I know you were hurting too, I know you are human too. I don't think either of us wanted this, you couldn't possibly be that twisted. You were afraid, and your fear turned to anger, and your anger turned to hurt, and you took it out on me because you didn't know what else to do. I wish I didn't understand you so completely to know that you loved me. I want to brush it all away, to say you were some 2D cartoon caricature of abuse with no depth or meaning behind it. I want you to be a monster, because that would make it easier. I wouldn't still love a monster.