There are a million things I want to say to you but all I do is watch from distance. Self preservation is, after all, one of the only things I did right when it came to you. Ever since I met you and left you, I have loved and lost. I have climbed small battles, won small victories and gone from 22 to 24. Naive to sharp. Broken to bolder. And yet, you. You wouldn't leave my mind. You wouldn't leave my mind like you wouldn't leave me alone. I wish we could meet again. I wish I wouldn't be betraying myself by meeting you again. I wish I could make sense of what we had. But I'm afraid I never will. Some feelings are meant to be present, not for you to understand. And that was you. The person I was with the most present. The person who gave me only moments of highs. If only you were also the person who understood me. If only our situation was something I could grasp, perhaps it would last longer. But perhaps then, I wouldn't still be remembering it.

I want to leave this city. I want to leave everything and everyone I call home. Because what's the point of a place you call home when there is no one you can relate to and no one you can talk to? School friends with their boyfriends and jobs and things you always thought you were too good for. College friends with their careers and plans you always thought weren't for you. Family who cannot fully free you. Colleagues you can never get close to. Jobs that no longer fulfill you and hanging spots that make you lonelier and lonelier. Where do you go and who do you find?

I step into your cave with my hair on half my face. The nervousness in my breath reflects in your shaking legs. Your eyes beckon, lover or predator, I can't tell. Rush, rush, rush of emotions. Touches touches everywhere. I can't tell where you started and where I began. I fall as I'm captured in your hands. I like you, I like it. I don't want it. I don't know what it is and you're there. You're too much there. Your eyes are gone. I'm not the beautiful girl you fantasised about anymore. I'm your pleasure. For the moment that's all I am. My senses are too strong. Was that an indicator that my heart is in fact too warm? I need those breaths back where my nerves lay. I need to trace out every moment in this time. But you're annoyed. You're annoyed. You say, stop, it's annoying. And that's the first time you break something that is mine. I let it be. You let me be. And for once there is calmness—until I get greedy. Not even greedy, why can't I want the same pleasure you just got from me? And so I try. And that's the first time I regret you coming into my life. I seek pleasure but your eyes once again say goodbye. I decline. I decline not for the first time. But it's the first time you don't see me as that pretty girl. You don't see me at all. And so you don't seek, you push. You push and you know. You know you fucked up. You know it and I know it too. And that's the moment we should have never gotten to. Two seconds, all of two seconds that I disappeared before you. Irreversible damage it did to me, and I know, to you too. My silence or your apology, not sure what was worse. We packed our bags and left it as it was.

Heartbreak? Can I call it that? I'll give myself permission to do so, because if I don't find the words to describe it to make it feel more settled, my heart might burst from this pain. I'm sorry I kept repeating. Because of the hurt I caused you. I couldn't do it. At the end, I couldn't explain to you what is wrong, what went wrong, why I'm crying and the extreme lengths I'm going to. And that's the answer right there. Because you cannot see my pain, cannot see and provide what I need from you, I had to leave you. I had to leave you. I had to leave you. I repeat like a mantra.

마음이 아파요.

I feel like I'm 12 again. We were 11 when all my friends started developing crushes and had a boy or two who liked them. And i thought 7th grade, 7th grade would be my time. 7th grade became 12th grade and by then i had lost all hope of having a boyfriend and also lost the desire for it. College was it. College was supposed to provide me with everything I had missed out on. It was supposed to transform me into a blossomed flower with beautiful bees and plants and birds around it. College was supposed to be it. But what I had were a year and a half of feeling not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough, however being lucky enough to find a place within a kind-hearted and hilarious group of girls. And then COVID hit of course. Life started back, mine did too. Painstakingly slow, I felt like I had started living again. Men were still nowhere to be seen. And it took too long for me to realise I'll have to seek them out. Hence, dating apps. Somehow every person who's a chronic social media user has delved into them at some point. Dating apps weren't exciting for me. They felt like a supermarket with items I couldn't read the labels of. I had no idea what the products would be like once I used them, and so I didn't even pick them up. Until I did once or twice. Until, I bought an item, took it home and tasted it once. It went bad very quickly. What else do you expect from a cheap store-bought product? The problem is now more than ever, I want more. I want that same taste, only made of organic ingredients with longer shelf life and sold not in a supermarket. I feel like I'm 12 again, because I was 12 when I last felt this particular sense of boredom and loneliness. There's a huge difference between being 12 and 22. Or maybe not. If they can both feel so lonely. If both my best friend at 12 and my mother at 22 can say you look sad these days and I have to lie, both times.

Need more books to talk about the pain of the younger child when the older one moves away and the younger one is left all alone dealing with the shit at home wanting to escape but knowing if she does, the family will be left alone.