don't break my heart

love is not trustworthy. then what is?

would i like to find someone? of course.

am i worried about it? of course.

i fear all the problems, i analyse them obsessively—because i need reasons to abhor what is commonly known as love.

i analyze their relationships to the core, granting judgment at their tiniest error. i wait for them to trip over the flaws just to say: love isn’t trustworthy. love is what breaks you—even though i’ve never experienced it myself. but i’m the couple therapist now. everyone asks me for help. because i’m objective. that’s what they say. objective.

i see it clearly, like the blinding light of the sun, and i wait for my rebellious eyelids to close. making my eyes burn is kinder than letting my soul break. never broken. stranded in a hundred pieces—my soul, my mind, my heart. all three reeling to get together, to feel whole once again. whole from myself.

i’m the crasher—the one that kills everything before it has been touched by anyone else. is it egocentrism? is it that i want to be the hand that holds the hammer? not trusting others not to leave only ruins, only ashes that scatter through the winds.

love is not trustworthy.

then what is?

friendship? not in my experience either. that is something—a relation, an emotion—i’ve spent most of my life searching for. something my heart craved more than love. it was friendship.

is friendship love?

the ancient greeks thought so, and they had the word for it; different words for what we collapse into one—as if one word could hold all of that without buckling under the weight.

maybe that’s the problem. maybe i’ve been afraid of the wrong thing all along. the wound of having no ‘belonging to.’ that is the wound i’ve been calling by the wrong name my whole life.

what is love then?

i can’t find a definition in my mind that reflects the meaning behind it, because there are no experiences to argue with, no memories to fill the word with their weight.

loveless.

that’s what i am?

that’s what i am.

someone who never let herself form a connection so profound—because after all, everyone leaves.

“wherefore Love flees terrified to my heart, abandoning his every enterprise, and weeps and trembles; there he hides and no more appears outside.”

terrified. i wander in my thoughts until my heart terrifies itself with the possibilities it doesn’t catch.

she feels so far away now—so far the blurring is entrancing. and i don’t remember. she is so far away that the face is morphing, altering itself into someone new, someone else. she is so far away her thoughts are a mystery to my mind.

sometimes i fear i might be possessed. i fear there is some leashed power in my soul that will make me do unimaginable things. is there a monster living inside of me that i am not aware of? am i the monster that traps the soul, and the unrestlessness waivers to get out? the fog that blinds in its nothingness, in its deadly embrace where air escapes and returns, escapes and returns. escapes and returns.

after the fog, what remains? after the white frost and the empty embrace—does anything remain? or is it the void that looms in our innermost parts that brings us to this heavy, inextricable tedium.

i find myself often—almost obsessively—thinking and rethinking, ruminating between myself and the me inside my head, about how little i have lived. about how these so-called “best years of my life” passed like strangers, like waiting for a speeding fine in the mail.

and all that’s left to me is what? what remains?

after the photo for the license plate, after the camera catches the flash and waits for the next car—i keep watching what passed streak away, indifferent to the fine that will arrive at home.

after passing through the dark years of thick fog, after passing through the dark forest that blocks my vision beyond my own fears—i feel spectral arms pulling me constantly back down into this candid membrane of soft rarefied air and black wigs, which has nonetheless given me a sense of belonging to the grotesque.

i became the woman who watches couples hold hands in the street and envies them. the one who sees two lovers kissing and imagines how it would be to be kissed with that sentiment. the one who watches elderly couples and feels the ache of wanting someone to remain. just. remain.

i yearn to live everything. not just experience, but really live.

and it’s true: i like to be cynical. i like to psychoanalyze other people’s relationships because i am miserable not having one. and it’s not the not having it—it’s being comfortable with my ending. i’ll be the cool aunt then. just that.

once—as a child—i was so sure that by this age, by 25, everything would look a certain way. how strange it would be to go back and tell her. how strange, maybe disappointing, for her to hear that we aren’t married or in a relation, haven’t done any of the things that were within our prospects. a lot has changed. indeed, a lot has.

a lot of layers have been added to my figure.

first came the soft things—the ordinary coverings, the small politeness of not saying what you mean. then something harder. then something harder still.

the armour is so heavy. i built it to protect myself from love, and now i can’t take it off. i’m trapped inside my own fortress, and love is trapped inside me.

i’m tired of being tough. i’m tired. i’m fucking tired of being so strong. the armour is so heavy. i want to put on a flowing dress and go run in the grass. i want to be delicate.

i’m so tired. i’m tired, i’m tired. i feel all the heaviness upon me, and i just can’t stop being so fucking strong. sometimes i would like to lay down and rest forever.

to be helped.

to be known.

i’m tired of being so strong. the armour is heavy. i’m tired of being strong. i’m tired. i’m tired, i’m tired.

i would like to be loved.

i would like to love.

so please. don’t break my heart. i’ve already done that myself.