This is a horridly embarrassing snippet of the extent I have gone to reach for love. I willingly fell into my emotions full force, not fighting back one bit. I wanted future me to see writings of someone screaming of desperation, misery, and loneliness. I got tired of pretending to get over situations that my brain held me prisoner to. Although extremely insane and unreasonable, this is how I allowed myself to obsess over a stranger.
I’ve spent the past several weeks filling journals over a man who knows nothing of me. We met once, and from this single interaction, I spun a wonderful mess of dreams and hopes that I willingly wanted to believe to blind me from the lonely reality I have been living. He wrote beautifully, and one thing about me, if you simply write and read I will fall for you. I wanted to feel this empty pit in my stomach, to dive deep into his beautiful mind and poems so that I could have more foundation to build our fantasy life together. I developed this weird obsession with his writing, it led me into a short spell of creating subpar pieces in my journal trying to mimic his intense weary style. I had become fascinated with his ability to resonate through such few words and sentences that I would read ten, fifty, a hundred times because I was so infatuated with how effortlessly he created art. I blurred the line between dreaming and reality because I wanted to, and soon enough I convinced myself that there was this man, who fit the corners and crevices of my every puzzle.
The things I wrote about him, but more accurately about me.
I don't want to finish my phase of mania without bringing down the memory of you with a fiery exit. You will stay with me until my brain sets you free, and thankfully I have no bodily control over that, I have no desire to tell it to stop. I woke from sleep 7 times last night, I dreamed of you 8. Everything good reminds me of you, and everything bad. Why did I meet you? to simply create chaos in my process of change? Is this supposed to produce good, are these words a product of a lesson… What have I learned other than the realization that a perfect human, warm with brilliance and a wonderful mind is roaming the earth with no intention of loving the very thing that lusts over him? My spiral has organized itself into quite an exact and direct line of descent, gathering a magnificent collection of cries for love and loss. It’s scary to think I'd write with such intensity to a man I barely know. I love the thought of you. God I love the thought of you, and I would be damned if I let this fresh wound oozing with blood and shame and opportunity go to waste. You're not to blame, you're not even real and I feel every emotion towards you right now. I amaze myself with the extent I’d go for some feeling of love. I’ve been told I need to become obsessive over a craft or profession in an attempt to make money and become successful in life. Instead, I've chosen to obsess over you, hoping to be showered in the riches of your love. In the pursuit to be written about the way you did to that man whom you loved so dearly, I made the silly mistake of taking the role I wished for you. I’ve filled countless pages with my goodbyes, while you live in peace, unaware, unscathed. I miss the nothing we’ve had.
I don't want to turn my attention elsewhere, even if it hurts. Because the moments I'm lost in a new daydream of being loved, wanted, obsessed over, it feels too good, warm. I catch myself smiling at the ground, completely and willingly absorbed by his imaginary presence, and if I can never obtain what I truly wish for if I can't have this vessel of love and brilliance and confusion and joy, then I’ll settle for the ghost of you, and this temporary dream that is keeping me going. You wrote in a post that you cried this evening, I also cried this evening. I cry every evening when I snap out of our dreams.
I write again, for the second night to you, less a stranger, with more love than the night before, but with a calming sorrow that I cannot have this selfish desire I clawed for within my brain for a week. He’s gone now, but closure feels like a stitch, irritated, messy, clean, final. Please let anyone love you, let it be soon. You telling me “I’m too emotionally unstable and unavailable” is a paradox when I’m writing these things in secret. I would love you from anywhere, maybe you still haven’t read between the lines yet. Read it once again, then again, and once more. Tell me I haven’t expressed my endless fascination with you, because of who I am, and what I am, the dangerous reality is that the ball stays forever in your court. You’ve succeeded in hooking me in, it took nothing but your existence on your part because your presence was colorful and full.
My friend assured me over and over that what I was feeling was not pathetic or ridiculous, but I know as he uttered those words he simultaneously must have thought what an exhausting effort being my friend is.
I like the way I love, something deep down is telling me not to change, at least the obsessive and hard-loving aspect of myself, I like it, and someone else who is odd and unhinged and not fully developed and traumatized and pure and whole, and full of everything good would like it too. I want to force beauty and write emotional and moving pieces, but only pain causes it. I thought by giving in to this delusional situation I could elevate my writing by infusing my heart into each word. It worked… sort of, at the cost of genuinely yearning for this man’s attention. We chatted for some days and held hands as we walked the streets of Rome, it felt like the Universe said “Here, finally, your gift” Then shortly after I was ghosted. It felt like being ripped from an opportunity I was destined for, but the reality was I used the first feeling of hope I had in a while to jam up this hole I so desperately had been seeking to fill. His smile was crooked and his clothes sagged perfectly on his thin frame. He wore the type of clothes that somehow made his every physical appearance appear layered by a compliment. Before his disappearance and after we held hands -mine warm and nervous, and his cold and thin- I had decided this man was exactly what I had been looking for. Patience, rationality, and self-respect are what went out the window that day along with that decision.
I wish to shake you until you submit to your greater self. I mean that to both myself and you my friend. In memory of this damned article that created such a freak out of me. “Goodbye, Buddy.”
"I miss the nothing we’ve had. " :-)
So good! So poetic! Every line.