leah-camille

[leah-camille]

low, quiet constant

(I wrote this open letter type deal as a sort of therapy. I spent 4 hours compiling thoughts and word vomiting so I’m posting it. isn’t supposed to be good lmao)

I think about your eyes more and more, the longer I’m deprived of them. The longer I’m safe from them. For a long time I mistook the look that never leaves them for kindness. 

I didn’t see them when we first met, didn’t want to. I didn’t like you. 

I don’t know what I feel when I read people. Waves? Energy? Aura? Vibes probably, but who the hell knows. Whatever you call it, yours were somehow screaming in complete silence. Radio static. A buzz that stayed no matter what you were saying or expressing. A faint inkling that every time you spoke you were lying. 

A low, quiet constant.

You payed attention to me, I noticed shortly after. Nothing mind blowing. Same way you payed attention to everyone, probably. You tried to make eye contact. You checked in on me. 

But something was wrong. 

You talked to me. And I couldn’t read you. 

I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand you. I couldn’t read you. 

That’s what first hooked me. 

Yes, you did treat me with kindness. 

Yes, you were conventionally attractive. 

Yes, you made me feel comfortable in a new environment. 

But when I look back, what made me finally look in your eyes, made me accept the kindness I found, was the need to figure you out. 

Unravel the low, quiet constant. 

No matter how close we grew, I couldn’t figure you out. Nothing about you made sense. Your actions contradicted what you said were your wants and desires. You had tells, but they were random and led nowhere. You gave up everything and nothing. 

Something was wrong. 

It felt like the more I knew you, the less I could figure out. You were impossible to read.

I learned your mannerisms. I learned what certain words meant to you. I learned to recognize the tiny pull in your voice when you were upset. I learned how angry you could get. But it wasn’t the same.

You seemingly gave me enough to read you cover to cover, and yet I couldn’t. I still don’t 100% understand it. 

I wanted you by my side until I could see it. Who you were. What you wanted. Why the hell I couldn’t read you. I admitted defeat a dozen times. 

Only to be drawn in once again by that low, quiet constant.

I remember the first time I cried in your car. You didn’t bother parking. I sobbed until I wasn’t making sense. You looked at me like I was made of glass. You tried to tell me truths I already knew and lies I could never believe. 

I let my guard down. 

Grasping for the kindness I knew would be there, I looked into your eyes. Deeper than I ever had before. You had let your guard down too. 

That low, quiet constant became so loud. 

For a second, I glimpsed it. And then it was gone. 

You asked if you could hug me when I finally stopped sobbing. I said yes, of course. I laughed at you for even thinking you had to ask. 

That was the first time I realized I was gone.

I don’t remember how many times I cried in your car. The kindness in your eyes beckoned me. You never shamed me. Never gave any indication I was overstepping. Some days you outright welcomed it, whispering to me those sweet, sweet lies you’d told me countless times before. But I knew better. 

Everything will work out. 

I always knew you were lying. 

I’m here for you.

I could still tell when I was being lied to, even if I couldn’t read you. 

I believe in you.

I wonder if you ever truly meant the words that saved me from myself. 

You are so amazing and strong. 

How pathetic, you saving my life. 

You are loved. 

Always the same words, rinsed and reused time and time again. That’s when I should’ve figured it out. 

But I let you see me first. Somehow, somewhere along the line. You got me to show you who I was. For brief moments, seconds. Couldn’t have been longer.  It was enough. 

I was lonely, broken, pathetic. You could’ve given me a thread and I would’ve seen a vine. I was desperate. So desperate to ignore the lies you told and believe you cared. Meanwhile you held strong, giving me nothing but perfectly sculpted words.

And that damn low, quiet constant. The one you were noticing that I could hear, too.

I was in love. 

Foolishly. Stupidly. 

The biggest mistake I’ve ever made. One I was and still am completely to blame for. I knew I was being deceived. I was being fed lies. I was entertainment. A funny little doll that cried and played pretend and would give you attention if you looked at it enough. 

But I ignored those feelings. Because I trusted you. The first person I truly trusted and loved with my entire being since moving halfway across the country. 

I believed so badly you were my friend. 

I needed it to be true. I told you as much a number of times. 

I no longer worried about not being able to read you, or understand you. Being near you was enough.

I gave myself over to the trust you had built and the kindness in your eyes. But you broke that trust with a white lie. A tiny, innocent white lie. This tiny incident somehow managed to damage me beyond being able to believe you anymore.

That was your undoing. Then, and only then, was I able to read you. See you, for what you were. 

Whenever I looked into your eyes, I no longer saw kindness. 

Only pain. Loneliness. Anger. So much anger it suffocated me and I had to hide somewhere to cry. It overwhelmed me. 

The low, quiet constant morphing into loud, bloodcurdling screams. 

I wonder if it haunts you, the fact I could see you for who you really were. I didn’t excuse your every mistake like before, like everyone else. I called you out for your bullshit unlike before, unlike everyone else. 

It registered a few times in your carefully crafted facade. The realization that I saw you. 

And you never let it show, not once, just how much that got to you. But I knew.   

I felt it in the way you looked at me when I had my back turned. 

The way you stopped offering me a shoulder. 

The way you became quieter. 

I need you to know that I realize how I acted those final weeks was ultimately uncalled for, even through all the shit I was dealing with. But I won’t apologize. Especially with how you responded. How you reacted like a child. Then again, I don’t know what I expected. But still, you didn’t need to completely abandon me.

Did you laugh at me? 

At this pathetic, broken shell of a person, who had never trusted the way she trusted you. Did you laugh when you left her alone when she needed you more than ever? When the world became so much she finally broke, did it bring you joy to finally be rid of her? 

When she cut her skin open and chased pills with whiskey until she felt that if her eyes closed they'd never open again, did you feel alive?

Was it everything you hoped it would be?

I don’t understand how I feel about you. Even now, after all this time. 

I tried and succeeded at hating you. I think if I ever saw you again, I’d throw every insult under the sun in your face. 

I want to scar your pretty face. 

I want to make you cry so hard you can’t breathe. 

I want to feel your bones break under my feet and against my fists. 

I want to kill you with my bare hands and feel the blood drip from my fingers. 

You are not kind. You are hateful. 

I think people mistake the pain in your eyes for kindness. I think everyone around you doesn’t realize how hard it is for you to be kind. 

You have anger surrounding your heart in such a thick fog and nobody is allowed to come or go. 

You look down on others who are objectively better than you. 

You are a bad person.

You are a liar and a manipulator. 

You are me. 

You are lonely. 

So lonely it shatters in my chest. You get so overwhelmed, surrounded by people who trip over themselves to tell you they love you. You never believe them. How could you? 

You have no idea what you want and that idea alone is enough to crush you.

You are so insecure it’s crippling and there are days you wish nobody could even remember you. 

You’re too much of a coward to kill yourself so you hurt yourself instead. 

You are so broken and don’t know how to ask for help even though it feels like you’re always screaming. 

I want to cry with you. I want to feel you. 

I want to hold you against me until you no longer feel the weight of the world. 

I want to tell you that you are the most amazing and complexly interesting person I’ve ever met. I want you to look at me with that sadness and pain you’ve so expertly crafted into faux kindness. 

I want to call you right now.

I can feel it down to my bones. That low, quiet constant. 

It still hasn’t left me. There have been nights where I’ve cried and begged for it to stop until I can’t physically speak. But I know why it won’t leave. 

I’m still in love with you. 

You are me. We both built facades of ourselves and we both showed each other who we really were. And hated that it felt too much like looking in a mirror. The realization that we are both angry, and not the kind people we tricked each other into thinking we were.  I think we both got scared and reacted the only way we knew how. 

Push away. 

I’m sorry. I’m sorry for mistaking the cry for help in your eyes for kindness. I’m sorry for missing the reason I couldn’t figure you out until I wrote all these thoughts down.

I’m sorry I let myself and you believe I hate you.

If you called me right now and I could hear that pull in your voice, I’d be there. Because I don’t know if you’ve shown anyone else since. I don’t know if you are still lonely. I don’t know you anymore. 

I figured you out after trying for so long and you left my life without a goodbye. Then again, I purposefully didn’t say goodbye to you either. 

I have no idea if this has the possibility of reaching you. I can’t figure out if I’d want that or not. I’ve made some bold claims. I threatened your life at one point. 

I admitted I love you. I admitted I miss you. 

I started this with a much different goal and ending in mind. But I’m tired of pretending I only hate you. Of forcing myself to only remember the bad so the pain of no longer having the good will hopefully stop. 

You hurt me. In ways I’ll never recover. 

I hurt you. I hope you never recover. 

I know it’s a groundless hope. But I need you to feel this pain with me. 

Even if we never speak again. Even if we’re thousands of miles apart. 

I need to be going through this with you. 

I need something connecting me to you. 

Because I’m selfish and pathetic. Because every time I read the sentence “if we never speak again” my heart breaks all over again. 

Because I miss you. God fucking damnit I miss you. 

I miss your laugh. I miss your voice. 

I miss the way you talked about things you were passionate about. 

I miss just looking at you and knowing you wouldn’t care. 

I miss the dumb faces you would pull to make me laugh.

I miss the lies you told me. I miss believing you. 

I miss the low, quiet constant.