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Eventually it just doesn’t feel like enough. Eventually the feeling that came so naturally is replaced with a feeling we’re tired of fighting. Because we started using compliments as chances to smile at the breakfast table but I started hiding behind pancakes, and while we stumbled along down cloud 9 I was on the verge of falling while you were dying to keep flying. You told me, “In the end it’s not the bridges you burn but the fires you walk through” and with the third degree burns left of you and me I’m surprised I’m still breathing. But the sun burn will soothe and the roses will wilt and the waves will turn to ice. The fire in our hearts that carried us here is now no more than a flicker of a candlelight over a dinner of forced laughs and ducking our heads to check our phones as our apologies. Eventually we’re going to run our fingertips along our burnt skin and realize that we’re too far burned to keep trying.

I think we only have one real love of our lives, looking back at it now. We say goodbye when we really mean, “stay, even if it hurts to.” And we’ll fill the voids in our hearts with anyone that has a smile that looks like theirs once used to, we’ll swallow cheap liquor that sets our hearts on fire and burns our throats because it feels like falling in love and having our heart ripped out all over again. We’ll do anything to feel the way we once did, the way we probably only feel once, one real and consuming time in our lives. And this is where I’m supposed to say that you’ll get better, that you’ll move on from your heartache. But we’re just convincing ourselves that we’re capable of loving someone else when we know we’ll never be in love the way we once were.

Now you cling to what you miss more than to what you love, because it’s easier to feel numb than to risk being broken again. It’s easier to tell yourself that this time things will be different than to start the process all over again. It’s easier to believe that this once in a lifetime won’t happen again. You’ll never love again after you find someone to miss.

This is where you tell yourself “I’m over it, I swear to god I’m over it”, but you’re not, you never will be. You can’t move past the person you’ve become, now a series of undeserved apologies and reckless mistakes, carelessly throwing your heart around to anyone willing to receive it, use it, teach you to keep it hidden away deep down in your chest, or steal it. You are a record of every right and wrong you’ve had in life, every “I should’ve known better” to every “you are the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.” Some of these lessons come with hazel eyes and stories under their skin, who show you that love doesn’t last if you let your feelings win and that every great love story has an inevitable beginning, a middle, and an end. The ones that know that “I love you” can turn tears into liquid sunshine and the ones who will make you feel like you’ve got the world under control after pouring yourself endlessly into picking up puzzle pieces and bandaging your heavy heart with their apologies. This is for the night you let him hear you crying on the other side of the bed, trying to be strong enough to say “I love you, but I have nothing left.” It’s 2:16 a.m. alone in an empty bed and you’re sobbing “I’m over it, I swear to god I’m over it” until you’re tired enough to believe it. But the feeling’s never left.

As the conversations got shorter and the plans less significant and the dreams harder to realize, I got used to it. And more time passed between wondering whether we were okay and trying to fix us, and even more between the time in which you’d say ‘I miss you’ and I breathed in hard enough to exhale and repeat it. It became a “what did I do wrong” beginning paired with a “I’m just tired” end. It became a “I promise I’ll make it up to you” that sunk my heart so deep I didn’t know whether I was sadder about the repetition or what made me sad in the first place. And now I wonder, was I sad for the fact that our love was over or was I sad that I wasn’t convincing enough for you to believe it? But I remember now, what hurt the most was the fact that no matter how deep your love for me was, I became too scared to feel it.

I didn’t mean to take the world away from you by trying to cut myself loose from the tongue tied conversations and itchy wool sweaters and thoughts that were too hard to articulate outside of my own head. I didn’t mean to stop you from falling in love again even though you could see I was slipping away from you. I didn’t mean to look away when you asked if I wanted this anymore, I didn’t mean to make you cry over the phone when I told you I was the one making myself unhappy, I didn’t mean to make you feel like you had to save us on your own. But you can’t always save someone from breaking their own heart when the way they see love is different from the way you feel it in your own heart. You can’t stop the world from turning the way you can’t stop a heart from feeling what it needs, and what it wants to. I didn’t mean to take the world away from you when I never came back into yours again. But I can’t keep spinning around just to see you happy anymore.

I’m going to stop loving you first Before you get the chance to see past all the things I keep to myself Thinking that if neither of us fully trusts one another then what we’ve got going is A game of cards on a shaky table With two players afraid to look anywhere else other than into eachothers’ eyes Knowing we’re both going to fall apart anyway Scared to say that we’ll be okay Knowing that every time I thrust my head under tubs of water and scream it’s just so you’ll fall a little more in love with me A little more in love with the idea that I’ll make you happy And with my head under water I’m Falling in love with the idea of you falling for me But I breathe out knowing that I’m too scared to let you break my heart So I’ll break you because I’m too selfish to let you in to me We know there’s no swimming in the deep zone but you thought my shyness was just timid intimacy Fear of falling into an inevitable infinity No use of letting love go even though we’re already sinking I’m going to stop loving you first Not because I’m terrified of drowning But because I know I’m going to take you down with me