how do you deal with the very real fear that someone is falling out of love with you?

i’ve been drawing a curtain over my face all weekend, curling my my fingers inward, and depressing my tongue with the sharp edge of words unsaid. has my spirit gone out, snuffed like a chemical flame deprived of its reactants? people kneejerk themselves into knots, while i remain outwardly inert, even though my gut roils, my mind spins, and my heart is a wounded creature, snagged on a trap it did not see, but it fights and runs and bleeds.

how do you deal with the very real fear that all your fears exist in your mind?

the romance of solitude is poisoned by the insecurity of an untethered mind that had been moored on people who’ve drifted far and away. i wept real tears over what felt like abandonment, but i knew, i know that it was only seven long days. i don’t know when i became a person who needed people. perhaps that’s always been the case, but i’d never been so unfortunate to be completely alone. (perhaps that’s still the case)

2016 was a year of small injustices, marginally larger victories that dot the usual swathe of mundanity and bland existence. It was so unremarkable that I’ve already scrubbed most of it from my memory. I’m still in love, still succeeding at law school, still loved (as far as I can tell), and still generally lost and disappointing myself. I feel as though I haven’t moved, but of course that is ridiculous, because time constantly pushes and pushes towards me towards an edge I am bound to fall or fly off.

(I know I am likely to fly, given the kind of person I am and have always been, but I do sometimes entertain the idea of just succumbing to gravity, of folding in my wings, and simply diving into a wasted destiny, a hitherto unknown depth. But I won’t. I hope not to.)

I hate how relaxed I was about most things, which led me to be extremely stressed for brief, but intense periods. I hate how I am incapable of forgiveness, how I am still capable of envy and pettiness. I hate how I am old and getting older, but no more wise nor capable of being a fully realized person. I did work hard, but that I have to convince myself and everyone around me is even more tiring that having tried in the first place.

I didn’t read much. I didn’t read or listen to much poetry. I didn’t write. I didn’t do much of all of the things I love or used to love. I found that I wasn’t any less happy. In fact, I was mostly happy in 2016. Law school has not completely altered the kind of person I am - I am still wont to waste a day just lying down - but it has made me shed certain excesses, made me retreat further into this self-made fortress of solitude and isolation.

2016 was a year of loneliness and complete freedom to bask in that loneliness. 2016 was the year I let my social anxiety get the better of me at times. I hate it, but I am filled to the brim with all my flaws that they just spill over before I have any chance to catch them. I want to be better.

I never did a 2015 retrospective, because the writer in me is dead and I was never good at anything else. I admire people who express themselves in language that is functional, but not beautiful and are content with simply conveying their message. I had so much faith in words and their power to fire up one’s nerve endings and summon surges of pure emotion. And I still do, though not in my ability to use them to that effect.

I no longer hate everything I write, because most of my output, if not all of it, is just another academic requirement, a means to an end. There can’t be any hate, when I’m writing just to pass a class and my submissions are deemed satisfactory. No passion projects, no growth fuelled by a genuine desire to discover inner truths; just soulless legal writing that I have neither confidence nor pride in.

I can’t remember the last time I wrote something. Maybe the last time sadness carved me hollow. I haven’t been truly sad in a long time and perhaps that’s to blame.

2015 finally brought me the coda of a relationship I thought I was in control of. How it ended wasn’t my fault, but that it lasted for so long was. The relationship was pure poison at its worst, but still produced several spells of real happiness and contentment at its best. It cycled through peaks and troughs so rapidly, it was inevitable that we’d burn ourselves out. I always knew we had an expiration date; I always knew you weren’t for me and that I wanted more and better, but my fear of being alone kept me from cutting you out of my life. I selfishly wanted you around for every milestone in my life, because my twisted, sad, lonely soul needed a warm, breathing body beside me through it all. A shoulder to cry on, a hand to hold, a hopeless, angry little boy to save. We broke up a year too late, maybe even longer, but I don’t regret the time we shared. I’m glad you didn’t agree to get back together when I wanted to. I was just being petty and prideful; I would have broken up with you the moment we got back together. Read no malice, no sarcasm, no iota of bitterness in this: You seem happy with the girl I always told you you’d end up with; I sincerely hope you are. Thank you for your companionship. I hope that we can be friends in the future.

2015 was law school and boardgames and you. I haven’t thought of a tag for you yet. We’ve been going out for more than half a year and I already see a future with you that I never did with my previous partner. It scares and shocks me to the point where I wonder if I’ve been beguiled by a combination of my lack of sense and your unique charm or if previous experiences have just warped my expectations and standards. Nevertheless, writing about you makes me feel weird, because I’d really rather just talk to you about lightsaber replicas, legacy games, radical political views, our daily injustices, or anything. Really, anything.

2015 was a full-blown stop, a screeching brake that burned skid marks into the hardening asphalt of my heart. For a while, however brief, I was stalled for fear of breaking into a heap of scrap, but I remained intact. I cried more in half a month than I did the rest of the year, but found myself completely okay and very nearly in love with another person a month later. I barely passed a class. I made it to the honor society. I didn’t do much else. I played a lot of games, but didn’t play a whole lot more. I found a new passion, but I wonder if this is just a flash in the pan. I have no hopes for 2016, only expectations that it’ll be difficult and long, but inevitably over too soon. Just like 2015.