a man cannot be a prisoner if he himself sees no imprisonment in lack of freedom.

You can overflow around me/

Emotionally or sexually/

Your choice.

I dated/or perhaps fucked is a more accurate description

People/ a person

Who made me feel like I was too much/ I think they just couldn’t and didn’t want to dive into me the way people really must to get to know me

So they teased me every time I was something that didn’t fit on the palm of their hand/ small/ they tried to shrink me every time I was too much myself

It conditioned me to be afraid of being me

Now it feels like I can’t be me, without repercussion/ they made me forget other people out there would actually love me for me

How tragic to loose myself in somebody that didn’t even know me.

Waking up wanting to write is an out of character feeling

I usually do my best writing when I’m sleep deprived, late night, after drinking

But this morning

I woke up thinking of you.

I always thought it would happen like a tsunami, you know?

Like the big change would just wash over me in this big monumental way and that I would be forever different.

One moment scared and anxious and wondering where I was going

and the next my feet would just know where to take me.

I was never taught about how it happens slowly

and how it takes work and planning and practice and patience with yourself

To fail and fail again

And that it’s the small changes that start to stick

I was never taught that you can take it one day at a time

But God damn what a relief .

Perhaps you’ve found a “love” to try and replicate mine

Perhaps it fits the molds

And you’re doing all the things we did and didn’t even bother to change the pillow cases we slept on or the sheets we fucked on

Perhaps you are content with this “love” that feels the same to you than the one we had at 19, at 20, at 21.

But I don’t want that.

I want different.

I’m striving for more/ for better

And I’m waiting/and I’m patient

I want a kinder love that doesn’t hurt

Even in the nice ways I used to enjoy

I want nothing like what we had

So enjoy the loop

I’m moving forward.

I don’t think I can be this anymore

The helper/the healer/ the one who gets text messages about broken hearts I didn’t break

I feel it too much

It fills my heart with something that seeps down to my stomach and makes it sink / that and a bit of jealousy

I am here/ see me/ feel me

Not for what I can do for you but for who I am

It is not my duty to help anybody but myself

But I do/ time and time again

I find myself wishing I could say

stop

Say

I don’t have the emotional space for my own overwhelming feelings

Yet I am here, Tearing myself apart in search of maybe new places to fit emotions that aren’t even mine.

Is it a good thing or a bad thing to watch so many shows with people who show up at doors in the snow to confess their love for another

I know that good vs. bad is relative

But is it bad? To crave the story

The one where I’m somewhere in Spain sitting outside a coffee shop

Or in Ireland bringing the best pint to my lips

But I think of you and yours

I think of you and yours

And I’m filled with cliches

Is it good? That everything I feel I feel strongly

It gives room for fine writing

It allows exposed guts and feelings on paper at 5:13 a.m.

strong feelings that sometimes don’t even have an owner or a purpose

they just exist inside me floating like a lonely balloon

Hoping to find something worth tying it’s string to

Perhaps it’s bad

Perhaps I need some grounding

When I’m laying with a person who doesn’t love me and barely knows me

And she says I’m too soft, with a mocking  smile

And I let her

I don’t fight her, i don’t tell her being kind is hard fucking work

instead I try to be tougher

What a foolish thing to do to be any less myself

But is it bad? That I’m craving that knock on my door

A door I don’t even have because I’ve been couch surfing, avoiding decisions

Waiting for something that probably won’t come and if it did I wouldn’t know it

because I have no idea what it looks like.

I’m sorry that I ever did any damage.

Not in that bogus way that people throw around apologies to make themselves feel better.

I mean I am sorry.

I feel, even now, whatever sadness I might have caused you.

I didn’t mean to, I was trying to grow

and sometimes the growing wasn’t like a fruitful tree climbing towards the sky.

It was more like like a wave, growing and receding, taking with it the people on shore that were too close.

thank you, for letting me keep you up at night bouncing countless ideas off you, manically.

Thank you for the persistent adoration in your eyes when I said things that were scary.

When I said things you had to pick through like an assortment of mostly bad fruit until you found the few good things.

Thank you for telling me what I was even before I realized it.

Thank you for seeing me.

Thank you for understanding me.

I’m convinced I had all the answers when I was young

And that I’ve lost them along the way.