an overthinker's safe haven

I am so glad our paths crossed And I wanted to walk with you Through times of sun and frost But I began to care too much And I stood in a mess of feelings, lost

I curse my heart for reaching for you I wish I was strong enough to stay friends I don’t click with just anyone And I’m sad that this is how it ends

You don’t know my name But you left fingerprints on my heart And you’ll be one of my what-ifs Till the day I part

There are lines I drew That I told myself I shouldn’t cross But with you, I crossed a few And that’s all it took to fall

I know it’s pride month. I know companies milk the LGBT+ representation for good PR. It still feels hard to tell people that I’m bisexual. Because I know there are people out there who would gladly ship me off to a mental hospital to “cure” my queerness. But a small silver lining is that most of the people my age don’t intend to be hurtful, there’s just a lot of ignorance around this topic. I have told a few people in passing, when I felt that I could handle the reaction whatever it is. One thing I’ve gotten better at doing is sounding confident and assured when I’m not; so people don’t pick on me as much. I have to thank Toastmasters for that. But back in school, my lack of confidence made me a soft target. But that doesn’t stop me from wishing that I was not queer sometimes.

But when i entered the place, i was in for a shock. The girls there were dressed like they were going for a fashion show. And my dress was semi-formal if you were being generous. It didn’t get to me as much as it would have a few years back. But i did get some odd looks for dressing so simply in a fancy place. The truth is, even on the days I dress up, I dress androgynously rather than exactly feminine. Eyeliner, lipliner, lip gloss, lipstick, powder. And then a cap, hoop earrings, tank top, denim jacket, and jeans. The food was amazing (I inhaled my bowl of pasta and chicken and washed it down with tropical punch) but I couldn't help but feel out of place as I saw hyper-femme girls with their arms around their guys. I have seen people online say that bisexual people have “straight-passing” privilege in certain spaces. Maybe it’s true to an extent. But I've always felt a bit out of place in predominantly straight spaces. The girls have a moment where they all talk about their boyfriends and how they miss them. And they love to dress up. Some days, I do too. But some days, I don't feel like it. 

I can’t blame it fully on them though. I know a part of it is the imposter syndrome I’ve always felt since I was a kid. But a part of it is because I’ve never really been romantically seen by anyone- men or women. And dressing hyper-femme feels like a bit of peacocking to me. And i don’t care if women do it, i really don’t. I just wish that no one tries to force that on me. My mom already does, she doesn’t get why I don’t want to shave my arms and legs and look pretty half of the time. I don’t feel comfortable going to a parlour and having a stranger spread hot wax under my arms and rip off hair. I do get my eyebrows done, rarely though. It’s a lot of pain to undergo for a tiny difference. She makes fun of me for my hairy legs and of my self-consciousness to go to a parlour and get waxed. But she doesn’t like it when I wear tank tops either and always tells me to “cover up”. “Cover up” your scars on your thighs, because what will people say? God forbid a girl has body hair and doesn’t want to shave it off.

In every poem I try to write, You colour my words– And you burn steady and bright– In the memories I’ve lived and heard.

They say you can’t love someone, Without loving yourself first– But that’s what I’ve always done– And it hurts me the worst.

They said that it’d be roses all the way, But this rosebush has sharp thorns– And now all I feel is pain– My heart; crushed and torn.

It’s the same old story with a different cast– A copy and paste of a mediocre past– Me chasing someone who doesn’t even care– Who doesn’t even notice if I’m not there.

it feels unfair that no one that i've loved has loved me back. it feels unfair that it costs me energy, it costs me time, it costs me sanity to keep pouring and pouring into someone who doesn't even care about me that way. people say stop, reduce contact, as if i could ever forget. as if i could ever forget the fingerprints you left on my heart. as if i could ever forget the closeness born out of care and pain. as if i could ever forget how you pushed me to do the right thing. and i'm embarrassed. i'm embarrassed i let you see me at such a low point in my life. i'm embarrassed that you somehow put what puzzle pieces i gave you and formed a shrewd idea of what the context was.

and…the thing is, i didn’t quite think she’d be capable of doing something like this. People have said i am naive and see the best in people. And…that experience changed me. Since then, i haven’t let anyone in as much as i did her. People who don’t know me as well, even people i am close-ish to - they may say i’m guarded and that is true. Because what better way to protect your heart than building a fortress around it? What better way to protect than building sky-high walls with spikes on top of them? I thought if i isolated myself, no one could hurt me. That backfired rather spectacularly, if i do say so myself.  And as i wandered, hungry for connection no one was ready to give, i found people who actually listened. The bar is in hell, but they were there for me. They were kind. 

The thing nobody tells you about falling for someone is that you could fall for someone even when you’re not ready for it. Even when your heart is still hurt from the previous bruises. You see it happen in real time. You see the cliches of it all, how scripted it all seems, and you’re skeptical. But being bisexual doesn’t erase your attraction to men, and suddenly you’ve fallen again. It’s the same story, same patterns, same you, but a different person you fell for. And maybe you fell for him because deep down, he does remind you of her. And that’s the thing, right? There’s something holding you back from being fully honest with him about how she broke your heart because (a) you’re not sure how he’d react to gay shit and (b) it’s too much vulnerability on the line. At the same time, you say more than you planned around him. Your heart instinctively reaches for him, has put him as a safe person to trust even though he hasn’t proved it yet. And for someone as guarded as me, that’s fucking terrifying. 

as I look at myself in the mirror, I dont feel the self-loathing, but I feel a dull sense of nothingness. I wonder what is it in me that makes me invisible to men. I hate that I care so much. I feel starved for romantic attention in a buffet where everyone is well fed. I chose to choke on my feelings in the dark. but sometimes I hate it. it hurts no matter what I do. I miss you so much.

I say I'm okay with us being friends. and I am. but a part of me wants something more. and the scary part is wanting more when you've been scorched before. I want and want till it fogs up my breath as you run through my mind and I fall harder. the distance between us has hurt more than it helped - because now I miss you - not just because I like you - because I miss you, sky - the friend who showed up for me. every time I think of sunrises, I think of you.

God. I wish I'd worry about something like my grades, finals or getting an internship. instead, I'm worrying about a boy who may not even like me back while people my age are building relationships and futures. I hate that I miss you so much, sky.

I was a sponge - I endured so much. You took my trust and threw it away. Did our friendship mean nothing for you to throw it away? What was your thought process behind being so cowardly? I would have forgiven you if you asked. But you fucked up and cut me off and left me to sit in the mess of my feelings, burning humiliation and then you come back a year and a half later, wondering if i’d take you back? I loved you. I loved you before I even knew what love could be - loved you before I even realized I gave myself to you in that way. I let you get away with so much. I should have questioned more. I agree that I was too milk-and-water - I let you push me around and hoped you’d be careful with my tender heart. I trusted you - and maybe that was my first mistake. I thought you’d be careful because you cared. But I wasn't selfish enough to see that you caused me too much damage. But on some nights when I feel lonely I still miss the conversations we had, texting until 2 in the morning before we had school the next day. I miss the way we’d snark about teachers, and the secrets and stories we shared. You were the first person I told that I was bisexual. 

You knew so much about me - my scars and my mental health issues and you still hurt me. You kissed the brick before you threw it. You lost a friend group, but you still have people who make excuses for you. I got called too harsh for cutting you out. But being called harsh when I protect my peace is a price I'm willing to pay. God, it feels illegal to say that I miss you, but it’s true. You don’t forget when you click so well with someone. Maybe our hearts were cracked in the same places, but the difference between us is that I turn the hurt inwards and you turn it outwards.

I wish I could commit to one emotion - hate or love - but it’s really more complicated than that. No matter how much I say I hate you - a part of me still loves you. And somehow, that’s more terrifying than hate. How can you be so hurt by someone yet still have a soft spot for them? The worst part is that there’s a part of me that would let you into my life just to feel something again. I go against that part, but it still exists. Because at the end of the day, I'm just a girl with a broken heart. I hide that part of me because people are seldom kind when they see someone hurting. I act like I hate you because it’s easier than saying I felt something. I act like you cutting me off didn’t affect me. I say “trust issues” when people ask why I’m so guarded. It’s a half-truth. It’s easier than recounting this entire story head to tail. Queer heartbreak is less visible, especially if you were never dating. The erasure hits hard. And I freak out when the next person I like has traces of you - assertive to a fault, headstrong, confident, blunt and emotionally unavailable. He’s not you, but i find myself bracing for the moment he’ll break me the way you did. I leaned on him the way i’d lean on you, and then pulled back like i’d been electrocuted. But that’s another story. 

I hope you realize you fucked up and understand the pain you put me through. I wish you’d stop lurking at the periphery and fuck off cause girl…what you did was too little too late.

Yours frustratedly,

It’s been one year, six months and twenty-eight days. And i know that i’m not that scared sixteen year-old girl; nor am i the frustrated eighteen year-old who didn’t know any other ways to inscribe her pain. But god, it’s always so easy. It’s so easy to start again what you finished years ago. I know I'm stronger than this - that I'm not just the pain I so vividly feel. But I feel sixteen again, when my i-don’t-care mask was just a facade to hide a girl who was scared shitless. A self-hatred so powerful I could only inscribe the shards of self-blame into cuts on my thighs. It was so easy, a pink razor drawing bright red blood. They said I was always a bright student, what happened to me now? The red that pooled in the shower was brighter than the smile that I wore like a mask. It was brighter than I used to be in classes. I act like I can't see them - the crumbly purple bruises that faded to faint scars where I used to inscribe my pain. But no pants can cover the hurt I went through. No smile can hide the pain wholly. Not if it doesn’t reach my eyes. 

And I know those days were years ago - the first time I'd cut - it was after an argument with my mom. Something about me not trying hard enough, neglecting my studies and her not able to hold the pain I came to her with. At the end of the day, you can’t change how someone sees you if they don’t want to see you any differently. But how could sixteen year-old me know that? I argued earnestly - because I cared. I argued earnestly - because I thought if I tried harder I could convince her. But I got no sympathy, no empathy - just misunderstanding and pain my mom didn’t process properly. I was sixteen, the girl who always smiled. The girl who hid her pain under a mask because she’d been told that it was too much. No one questioned what it cost me to keep smiling. And when my grades fell, so did my fragile sense of self-worth. I had no words - no medium - to express the pain and hopelessness I felt. Add to that falling in love with someone you can’t have and who you shouldn’t be loving - and of course the self-hatred that dysfunctional parenting built up in me - I was miserable. I hated myself. I wished I wasn't bisexual and didn’t feel so much.

It’s been four years since the first time I cut. But god, this scene feels like it was copy and pasted from four years back. Me snapping when my mom checks my grades. Not the wisest thing to do, all things considered. I can’t change her. But i’m nineteen, for fuck’s sake. I’m tired of being treated like a disobedient child. I snapped at her trying to defend my boundary. And that’s all it took. The thing is, my friends who went through the same shit advised me to keep quiet and then the screaming petered out. It’s easy to say, Luna, you should have shut the fuck up. And I did. I didn’t snap like I did when I was sixteen. I shut up, after I realized cutting remarks would just aggravate her further. I tried to put up the don’t-care mask again. But it was too little, too late. I kept tapping at the laptop as she stripped me to my worst insecurities and amplified them to the bone. The thing is, on the surface, everything seems fine. You wouldn’t be able to see how dysfunctional my family is in photos or chats. And I think that’s the worst kind of dissonance - the kind that masquerades itself as normal care when in reality it’s something much worse. 

And I guess she’s won. Because she’s cracked my don’t care mask. Does she get a twisted kick out of seeing me cry? Why does she not fucking stop? I didn’t shed tears when she cut me down, but I've been told I'm easy to read.  She insists she’s not my enemy, that she’s entitled to see my grades because of whatever reason. The thing is, I wouldn't hide my grades if she didn’t act all okay with them 90% of the time then use them to put me down in arguments. I guess she doesn’t remember how much she did that. But my mind and body remember. Luna, be more assertive. God, I’m trying. But how the fuck do you get the courage to be assertive when you’re torn down, by people who’re supposed to protect you, insecurity by insecurity when you do? I’m not the girl I was back when I was sixteen. I’m the future Vice-President of Education of my club. But the pain feels all too familiar. I hate hiding shit, sneaking around and doing all this. But it’s not like she gave me a choice. She doesn’t even know the real me - she only loves the image she yearns to protect. Because what good is public support if it turns sour the moment i don’t abide by what she says? What good is conditional love? 

She’s told me that I'm too weak, too emotional, too this, too that. Maybe it’s because she’s seeing me become something she wasn’t allowed to be. She tells me that my brother’s stronger than I. and that men are stronger than girls. But the girl she knows is the image I project. The girl she thinks she knows? She lost me once at sixteen, when I opened up to her and she called me crazy in private and sympathized in public. She lost me for the second time at eighteen - when she forced me to tell her about the boy i liked - and proceeded to show me eighteen reasons why i shouldn’t have told her. She lost me for the third time at nineteen, when she would praise me in public for my work in the club but put me down for the same in private. She doesn’t even know me - how can she tell me how strong I am? At sixteen and seventeen - two heartbreaks, academic downfall, and toxic friends. At eighteen - mental collapse and bad health. It’s easy to nitpick and say I could have done it better. But what do you know? Hardly half.

And to make matters worse, I still had sleep issues. I struggled to find my people at college. No one gave a shit about me. And maybe that’s better than everyone hating you. But god, the apathy hurts a lot. But life doesn’t stop even when you get hit from all sides. It doesn’t stop to let you process the things you went through. It keeps going. I’d attend classes, talk to someone, think I found a friend, then realize that they didn’t value me, and give up. My grades were good but not the best. Everything was boring and dull and mundane but I still kept going. Wash, rinse and repeat. Until toastmasters. I joined three clubs, and toastmasters was the one that started activities earliest. The smaller club size definitely helped too. I kept going not just because of the prestige, or because of the name. I kept going to club sessions because, when you’ve spent a lifetime being mistreated and invisible, it feels addicting to be seen. It feels addicting to be treated like a person instead of a nameless, faceless void. That’s what I thought when I jotted down “rinse and repeat”. Sitting through life even when it seems mundane. 

On the day of the date, she felt off. She’d nearly cried trying to defend herself in an argument with her parents. But she decided to go through with the date anyway. She had spent days planning things out. So she wiped her tears, washed her face, dried it and dabbed powder where the tear stains had once been. She drew eyeliner wings and pulled the dress over her head. Was it just her.. or did she feel awful in that outfit? She could feel it outlining every flaw she’d hidden under baggy clothes. But she paid no heed and set off to the restaurant.

She’d arrived at the restaurant hardly a minute late, and when she caught sight of him waiting at the table, her breath caught in her throat. It’d been nearly two years since she’d first known him, but he still had that effect on her. He was wearing a blazer - she’d always liked when he wore blazers - she loved how they hugged his shoulders (she didn’t blame the blazer - for even she; the one who despised hugs found herself craving his embrace). And when he looked up and smiled at her, she didn’t feel butterflies. She felt warm. She felt steady. She felt held even when he wasn’t holding her. He reached to clasp her hand under the table and for a moment, she forgot everything. She forgot her worries. She forgot that she was crying less than an hour back. 

But the rest of the date was…underwhelming to say the least. After placing their orders, they sat in silence, both of them on their phones. She didn’t hate it. She swore she wanted to see him. She wanted to have fun and bicker and banter and kiss him on the lips. Not this- the suffocating silence seemed to speak louder than her internal thoughts. She knew that being vulnerable wasn’t a sin but- god. She felt like shit and she was lonely and sad and no amount of smiles or jokes could change that. 

“How’s your week been?” she asked, and he began to regale her with tales of the funny things his roommates were doing, and how that took his mind off exams for a bit. She smiled and laughed, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She knew that he could sense something was off. He wasn’t teasing her like he usually did. Could he see the water brimming in her eyes? The tears were going to fall. She smiled and smiled and smiled, as if that could conceal the pain in her eyes.

“What about you?” he asked, and that’s all it took for the dam to break. For all the makeup she’d been applying to get washed off. 

He looked alarmed at her burst of tears, and she would judge but she was too busy mopping her face and smearing all her hard work. An hour of makeup - gone. In an instant he was at her side, asking her if she was okay to be hugged, and enveloped her in a warm embrace. She stayed there for a while, crying in his arms. He stroked her back and whispered words of comfort in her ear, but words couldn’t change the mistakes she’d made. And that thought brought another flood of tears.

“Wanna leave now?” he asked.

“But what about the reservation and date night?” she countered.

“Y’know, I wouldn’t have been mad if you’d asked for us to postpone date night if you weren’t feeling up to it.”

“But what about the food?”

“We’ll pack it.”

Two bags of takeout, and one long drive later, they were at his place. This time, she was the one who reached for his hand, and he gently held hers in his. She could feel the roughness and the callouses at his fingertips, and she looked into his eyes. 

“We can watch movies and just chill with the takeout,” he suggested, and she agreed, but they both stopped paying attention ten minutes into the first movie. Not that she’s complaining, because she’s in his arms. She didn't know why but she’s crying all of a sudden again. And with the tears came the shame. 

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he said, but that only made her cry harder.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, and she shook her head no.

“Just want a hug,” she choked out, and she was sobbing into his shoulder and he was awkwardly cradling her. He didn’t know what to do, so he stroked her back and let her cry.

“I messed up your blazer with my snot,” she added, making a face.

“It’s fine, the dry-cleaning was overdue, let’s just change into pajamas,” he suggested, and she agreed, before realizing she didn’t bring anything with her. He tossed her a shirt and some shorts to wear. After they’d both changed, she cuddled up to him again, the tears all gone.

“Someone’s very affectionate today,” he teased and her cheeks flushed scarlet. She didn’t know where she found the courage, but she leaned him and pecked him on the lips and started giggling.

“Maybe you should have kissed me sooner, then I’d have stopped crying,” she said, mock-offended.

“Maybe I should have,” he agreed, and there was silence again, but not the suffocating kind, and they just sat in the moment.

“I’m sorry, I should have told you that I wasn’t up for the date today,” she said.

“It’s not your fault, it’s on me too, I noticed you were off but didn’t know what to do.”

“How’d you know, though?” she asked, curious.

“I’ve known you for a year and a half. When you get upset, you go a bit quiet, and your smile doesn’t reach your eyes.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. And I see all the pain on your face, and I want to take it away, but I don’t know how. I can’t help you if you won’t let me, love.”

She ignored how she felt even warmer that he’d called her love. “It’s on me too. I’ll tell you when I’m not feeling up to things, but I was so excited to spend time with you, I didn’t want to ruin my one good day with you-”

“Hey. It’s a good day if I spend it with you. I don't care what we do, but I don’t want you to hide your unhappiness and put up a front not just for me, but for anyone.”

“That was cheesy.”

“I’m taking that back,” he said, mock-offended, but they both knew she didn’t mean it, and she giggled as she leaned in to peck him again. She nearly lost it at how speechless and drunk he looked.

“Next time we’re arguing I’ll just kiss you so you shut up and I win-”

“Not if I kiss you first,” and he leaned in and really kissed her, not just a peck.

like stains of acrylic paint my feelings can't be erased and thus i lose myself in this maze i'm the one who needs to be saved

i know you knew i wasn't okay "are you okay?" you all asked twenty times a day but what could i even say? i'm in love with you and about to break?

i tell my heart, stop, we'll get hurt this time too but my eyes always find my way to you your warm voice, your broad smile your bright eyes, your generic style

your broad shoulders, your blunt words your calm confidence that makes heads turn i know i'm far from the only girl who's fallen so i hide the fact that my heart is stolen