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and sometimes love travels in time, doesn't quite land until it's too late, and wills are written in favor of daughters never quite acknowledged until a father meets death in a dark corridor, and he discovers that fear is as black as it's eyes. when he realizes that love waited patiently, and the peak of a thrill never quite compares to that warm coffee, or fresh linen. that ever present creak in the sofa, and the cushion that always caught their weight.

I did everything I was supposed to. It's been years of coming to grips with it. I was never meant to be seen in this family. As much as I fought, and as much as I've tried to push forward. As much as I've bled and scarred over the process, it was never meant to be something other than what it was. And I chased it ruthlessly. In the one's who'd given me that pain, and to others who mimicked it.

Today I live in my new apartment. Still with roommates, but with more conviction. This is my last pit stop until I move onto something else. And maybe Texas won't work out. Maybe this is an opening to another path that will eventually lead me to something else entirely. But I'm going to try anyway. Not for a relationship. Not for family. But for myself; for my own simple curiosity. My own ignition built and lit up by only me. I do this because I want to this time.

Love has led me there multiple times. Curiosity of the person I fell for. Felt so much things for. I don't do any of this for them. I do this for myself only.

Against my mother, my grandmother, my brother, my uncle, and anyone who wishes to stifle my own light. I do this because I crave my own freedom. I crave a beautiful life. A life I can build for myself and myself alone.

I want to feel beautiful and SAFE. I want to be free to be myself. Not angry. Not resentful. Not being held back by my parents childish decisions. Not because I'm fighting anyone. I fight for only myself and my own autonomy and spirit. I let go of everything else.

I went through so many scary things on my own already. Health scares, surgeries, losses, family traumas. Being hurt and hurt again. Having my own family trying to quiet my own voice..

thats okay. time moves on, and you didnt love me. you always made it seem like it'd be easy to move on for you. maybe it is. maybe you never cared. that's okay.

i loved you so dearly. i wonder if it ever moved you. if it mattered. i try to be kind, but i wonder if it matters. if others absorb it; if it echoes in them with meaning, too. i cant crack open someones mind and read their thoughts. i've never been able to. maybe that's why i study it. maybe that's why i was so intrigued. so close to the surface, but never quite there. never comfortable enough to reveal.

i'm always bleeding aloud. i always let others know when i'm in pain. not to suffocate, or take, but to live in the company of comfort. because i need it sometimes. it's human to cry. i am utterly human.

i think i'm curious by those who seek to separate themselves of their humanity. in a way it brings comfort. like maybe i dont have to face myself, too, with facing them so intimately.

there's something so sacred, so vulnerable about it. sharing with another. committing to another. yet i wish to experience it. i think i'd savor it so much i'd forget its only a blip in time. and one day it'll be gone. i'll be gone. they'll be gone, and "life will move on."

i think i'm scared of the end. i think my intrigue of people so scared of themselves stems from my own fear. but to be with someone who accepts life so easily, who knows that it'll end one day, and wants to hold my hand until the end of it. well, that'll do me in, i think. i think i'd wither away. i'd wilt at the end. i wont burn, or sink, or scream; i'd feel it all beneath my skin as i turn into dust and then into air.

i'm scared of the end. but the end is inevitable. and will i want to keep going forward without love?

i don't know if others feel it when i give. i think i try to coax people like that into feeling it. into easing them out of fear, so that we can be scared together, and walk through it beside one another. someone who also knows, just how devastating life is when loss follows. someone who chooses to walk into the fear, beside me. tense, bracing for the end.