I have always felt like a wildfire raging across a forest, reaching and consuming everything around. I have felt both out of control and uncontainable and destructive and relentless all at once. I lived in chaos and war for so long anything else is unfamiliar and scary. I used to come here to this blank page to bleed out the pain or sadness or darkness when I felt like I was drowning and suffocating. Words and emotions would flow out of me like screams that I could keep away from everyone. Have you seen the fear in people’s faces when sitting around a campfire and they hear the lone wolf howl at the moon? No, of course the sound of my screaming and howling are only the dancing of my fingers across a keyboard under the cloak of night instead of audible howls.
But I stopped writing. I became so consumed with others, that I put my emotions and feelings in a box so that I could think of them and only them. And in that, once my emotions were locked away, I ceased to exist beyond what was needed of me. I watched my world crumble to pieces without leaving their sides. I watched myself wither away to fight for healing them.
And then I made the hardest decision to leave. I packed up what was left of my life, and I drove away. And every step since has felt like concrete. Every step has been stumbled with the twisting of ankles and tearing of tendons.
But then I met you. Ashton Blake, I feel like you cannonballed into my life scaring me with the waves you created. Once the water settles, my inferno sprang to life ready to receive you as we had every one else. And then you were nothing like anyone I had ever met. There was no mystery to you. You blazed into my life raw and open as the day you were born. And each day I spend with you only further confuses me and excites me. You create chaos in me that is new and unfamiliar. My soul reaches out to you while my brain panics about stranger danger. You make my body feel things while my mind screams at me to run. It’s intoxicating and infuriating. I want to run but I can’t tell if I’m running toward you or away. I just keep looking at you trying to find out all the parts of you.
And you. You are a wonderful, amazing, considerate, kind man. What do I do with you? You are insanely thoughtful and genuine and I’m almost sure you shouldn’t exist. There’s magic in you, did you know? It’s in your eyes that see the person they land upon and take them in with kindness, seeing their pain and happiness alike. Your magic flows from your fingertips as I watch you constantly helping. I feel it too, when your fingers dance across my skin. You watch the world around you as a man with scars and yet you look for opportunities to manifest sunshine and kindness. You enter a room, and your calm reaches out soothing those around you. Your smile uplifts the broken hearts. Your hugs put the shattered pieces back together again. You are magic without card tricks or spells or a wand. It is your entire being. Not many have magic like you, who carry the scars of the past as kindly and gently as you do. There are too few words to really encompass you. You are human and flawed and that’s the magic. That those amazing things can all simultaneously exist within one body, one heart. Within you.
