Here we are again

I have calloused hands from holding on too tight. A death grip around your heart, trying to keep it in my possession, knowing only too well that I am fighting a losing battle. I push you away with my concerns. Turn you off with my anxiety.

How did we get here, again?

I feel good on my own. I orbit my own contentedness. I become so self-absorbed that the presence of others becomes insignificant. It’s just me and my own mind. Floating aimlessly in ignorant bliss. But that’s when it happens. Like a comet crashing into my side, causing a cavity I know I’ll never fill.

I fall into the black hole of obsession. Chasing you like a drug high I wish to endlessly recreate. All those cracks in me expanding until I am simply held together by virtue of my will to stay a little longer by your side. But I can’t, can I. Because it’s too much and then not enough.

I seek answers in your last love and hold myself against her. I know, I know we are not the same. That what I have to offer will be wildly different. That what I have to teach cannot be taught by her. Yet I will still compare and suck the joy from my veins in doing so. I will worry and plant seeds of doubt in you that grow into weeds, poking holes in what we have.

I tell myself that I am better off alone. That I am better without the complication of another person’s galaxy, causing chaos in my own. That I am safer in my own atmosphere. Calmer. And yet, I know it is implausible to maintain the type of solitude that keeps me sane, as these interactions appear unavoidable. Inescapable.

So here we are again. Here I am with you, hoping upon hope that I can do better than the last time. That I can learn. That I can let this go when the time comes and not force it out the door like I usually do. Not run from it, as though it were a fire I lit, which spread through every room in my once loved home.

I will try to trust until you reveal to me that I was right to worry. I will try until you tell me that there’s nothing left to try for. I will unclench my hands from your heart and release you to stay or go, depending on your thoughts that day. I will accept that maybe the lessons I have to teach you are not the ones you wish to learn. I will stand here in the dark, until you turn the light on and show me that you’ve gone home.