facelessnik

[facelessnik]

Enough

I don't think I know what it means to love someone. I think that I've done it all wrong, and in the same moment, I think that the reality is that none of us really understand it. I think that we all are making it up as we go, false confidence seeping from every "I love you" because what kind of person doesn't love anything? Love feels like a prerequisite to humanity that you are supposed to understand without ever having it explained. In my attempts to learn, I only grow more confused. I listen to people describe how they covet love, and I know that I cannot relate. I listen to the need to seek it out and claim it as something to be won and placed within a glass trophy case, and I know that I'll never empathize. Because if I must chain my love to me, how can that be something good? If the only things keeping my love is the rope that I have wrapped around it's neck, how can that be kind? If my love would leave me the first chance it gets, how is that beautiful? Jealousy and fear don't dog my steps when it seems they were supposed to if I had been loving people correctly. I thought I may have understood when others told me love is something that oozes out of their every pore. It drips between their fingers and teeth as they smile with heartbreak in their eyes because they give everything they have, claiming peace when nothing is ever given back, but I can't understand this ability to cradle another's heart between your own ribcage while yours is left pulsing undefended on the ground. I can't understand replacing my being with another's so fully that I lose myself in the process. I don't understand what it means to love someone, and I don't know if I ever can. All I can say is that I think I'd die for you. Is that enough? I'd kill for you too. Is that enough? I'd rip any organ from my body with my teeth and hand it to you with a bloody smile. Is that enough? I think I might even live for you if you asked. Is that enough? Because despite it all, I don't think I can love you, so please, let it be enough.

[facelessnik]

Dear Theseus

Your favourite colour has never changed. Your eyes are still so lovely in every picture. Your laughter is warm and inviting always and your touch even more so. You still love with every part of yourself, and sometimes it's too much for you to handle. You cry more than anyone else I know, but you smile just as often too. You have so much trouble letting go, but there is never a hesitation when you get the chance to let someone new in. You have always been my opposite in so many ways, but somehow we have always managed to find our way. You have always been open where I am guarded and kind where I am unforgiving. You have always been the better one between us, yet you still seek my companionship after all these years. You have found better than me in so many, but I can never find better than you. I take careful moments of every passing day to hide away the worst parts of me. I trade my cynicism for something gentler. I twist my roughness into something kinder. I turn my cruelty into something sweeter. I have to change these horrid things in me because I know you cannot possibly want them now that you have seen how much better you could have it if only you left me, but sometimes I fear that each shift will push you away. That you will see how hard I have to try to be something I'm not, something good, something that you can love without regret, and shake your head in disappointment before you walk away for good. I fear that you will look at the tangled mess that is me as I shove it into a prettier box and you will know that I cannot be anything of value. I fear that you will one day look at me and there will no longer be that warmth of recognition in your eyes. I will peel up every rotting board and replace them with something brand new and waxed until it shines with the blood of my efforts. I will tear down every broken mast and torn sail to rebuild with stronger wood and clean canvas to prove how much I care for you. I will do whatever it takes if only you would continue to let me love you.

I am your ship, Theseus. Do you still know me?

[facelessnik]

An Apology

I'm sorry to everyone I haven't loved correctly. I'm sorry to the people I misunderstood. I'm sorry to the friends I mislead without meaning to. I'm sorry that when you called me charming and I called you love I didn't know what you meant. I'm sorry that I made you believe we had a chance for something real when I was only playing a game. I'm sorry I thought you were joking when you said I made you nervous. I'm sorry I toyed with emotions I didn't know were there. I'm sorry that you brought me flowers and I thanked you the only way I knew how. I'm sorry you spoke to me in ways that anyone else would have understood. I'm sorry I didn't have the courage to explain to you that I didn't know. I'm sorry you kept trying to learn me when I didn't even know myself. I'm sorry that I strung you along when all I wanted was to avoid hurting you. I'm sorry you ever noticed me. I'm sorry you wrote the sweetest things about me. I'm sorry I couldn't be what you wanted. I'm sorry I thought that I could have been something greater than what I am. I'm sorry I told you what I thought was true only to hurt us both at the end. I'm sorry to each of you that I don't know what it means to love you. I'm sorry to each of you for playing with something so precious as feelings. I'm sorry to each of you for trampling over the wonders you tried to show to me. And most of all, I am so sorry that you ever loved me.

[facelessnik]

Shoes

You're always the first person I reach out to when I slip my shoes on for a walk. You almost always agree to come with me, but sometimes you're busy. I tell myself that's alright because when you're not, your eyes alight with joy each time I approach your door ready to see what the world has to offer that day, and you grab your things to join me, fast as can be while I linger at the threshold. You tour the world at my side, allowing me to see everything through your wondrous, marvelous eyes. Allowing me to take notice of the mundane in ways I hadn't before. You are the very essence of life when we traverse it as one, and when you aren't beside me, I find myself pulling off my shoes and staying home because I have tried to walk alone, and all I seem to do is wear blurry glasses that look vaguely like your own. I remember the words you spoke and the creatures you saw with a dreamlike clarity that pulls them from the vibrancy of reality. When you're not there, I feel your presence like a funeral shroud wrapped around my bones, missing all of the vitality that makes you the being I know. You are everywhere that I have brought you, and sometimes I curse myself for it. I share all of what I am with you, and you take it all in with warm smiles, but I am the only one who knocks delicately on the doorways between us. I am the only one begging for scraps of effort that is given when asked for. I am the only one that squeezes our lives into something that feels like tandem heartbeats. You allow every closeness and never so much as falter. I could pick up the phone knowing you'd answer me every time without a wasted ring. I could bring you lunch from our favourite spot knowing that you'd put your life on pause to join me without hesitation. I could ask you for anything from your doorway knowing that you'd give it up without so much as a question of why. I could ask you for anything, but I don't know how to ask you what you'd do if I never said anything. I wonder with suffocating curiosity if you'd wait for me while I stop to tie my shoes.

[facelessnik]

Every Universe

You ask me if I think we're friends in every universe. If we find one another in every lifetime. If we hold this closeness in every existence. I know that you want to hear about two flowers twisting together as they grow. About foxes chasing each other in circles. About rough river rocks being smoothed by the same current. You want us to find ourselves in the mundane, to see a past, present, and future laid side by side for all of time. I know you want to comfort yourself with the idea that you won't lose what we have. After all, how can you lose something that is woven into the fabric of creation? I don't know how to explain that a fated design breaks my heart sometimes. That the idea of loving you being nothing more than a fact of life feels like drowning. That being destined for an endless loop of finding and loving and losing simply because it is meant to be carves a hole into me. I learned you on my own. I share myself because you ask. I love you because I want to. I cannot fathom turning this bond into something as common as fact or as cheap as fate. I don't know how to explain the selfish need I have to keep the existence of us as something just for me and you. The only thing I can tell you when you ask me if we're friends in every universe is that I wouldn't know, but I know in my heart that I hope that we aren't because no other life could hope to replicate what we have here and now without complete corruption of what we are.

[facelessnik]

Love

People tell me that love is a sacrifice, that love is pain and joy entangled up in one another, that love is overwhelming, that love hurts while it heals, that love is compromise, that love is everything and more. It makes me think that maybe I've done love wrong. My anger is not my love. My sadness is not my love. My love is blind nudges whenever we're near. My love is intertwined pinkies while we're waiting. My love is holding out my hand knowing it will be taken without pause of question. My love is laughter during a film we've seen a hundred times. My love is laying in uncomfortable positions because that's how we ended up next to each other. My love is something gentle and sweet. My love has never hurt because that's never what love has meant to me. My love coexists with everything else I feel without becoming one with it. I have to wonder why people tell me about love's hardships as though that makes theirs stronger than mine when I know that my love is untouchable without tying it to everything. Love doesn't need to be everything to be meaningful to me. Love only needs to be love.