A few things I have always known to be true in this life:
- Plastics take longer to disappear than the person that bought them.
- Every act of kindness contains, at the very least, a little bit of selfishness.
- Habits are easier to build than relationships.
A little context to these things.
- I don’t know if that is true. I heard it somewhere and never thought to confirm by myself
- I don’t mean selfishness in a cruel manner. I think people like feeling necessary. I think being needed can feel like a form of relief. Like proof that you’re living right.
- This one, I found out myself, the hard way.
I know other things, too. I know where the depression is on my bed. That middle area. I know exactly how long it takes for a soft-boiled egg to boil in all its varying degrees. I know that if I leave my door open when going to school, I’ll think about it all day.
The point is that I live alone, and when you live alone long enough, knowledge starts collecting in strange places.
You were supposed to be one of those strange places. An object. A convenience. Something that occupied the top of my shelf, and occasionally a night. That’s all. I remember thinking it was almost funny how much money I spent on something so temporary.
I don’t know when temporary things become permanent. Nobody tells you when it happens. One day, you stop putting something away. Then you start noticing it when you enter a room. Then, somehow, the room feels different when it isn’t there.
I know how that sounds.
The embarrassing part is not that I started talking to you. People talk to all sorts of things. Plants, cats, cars. The embarassing part is that I started waiting for those conversations. I’d get back from school with something to say and realize halfway through the sentence that there was no one listening but you. You know, the thing.
Can I tell you something strange?
The loneliest I’ve ever felt was not after a breakup. It wasn’t at a funeral either; I don’t even go for those. It wasn’t even those weeks I barely spoke to anyone.
It was the first time I caught myself treating you like something that mattered. And it’s not because you needed anything.
But because I did.
I’m still trying to figure out why that felt different. I still don’t know.
Maybe that’s what the second thing meant. Maybe kindness isn’t clean. Maybe it always has a small negotiation. Maybe we don’t help because we are good, but because it feels unbearable to not be the one who is needed.
And if that is true, then I don’t know what this is. Because you don’t need anything, but I keep coming back anyway.
Please say something.
See? That’s what I mean.
You don’t even have to disappoint me. My mind does all the work for you. You cannot disappoint me. If you disappoint me, I disappoint myself.
I know this isn’t what people say love is like. Love is supposed to involve another person. Unless you are talking about God, but he doesn’t count. He never counts. Love is supposed to move somewhere. Change shape. Meet resistance.
You don’t move. You just wait. You never resist. I love you.
Every day I look for you before I take my shoes off. Every day, I feel something close to relief when you are exactly where I left you.
I don’t know what to call that. I think that’s what scares me.
The longer I sit with it, the more that second idea starts feeling like an explanation. Not of you. Of me.
I love you.
That should feel clean. It doesn’t. It feels like relief. Like proof. It feels more like something being returned to its place.
I love you.
Nothing changes.
You still wait till I turn you on to vibrate. My neighbors still do their dirty dances loudly. Somewhere outside, a trailer is slamming into a gate. The whole world is buzzing outside, and I am not a part of it.
I love you.
I can’t tell anymore if that’s the most honest thing I’ve said or the most self-serving. Can you even hear me?
Are you listening?
