Romantic and Hopeless

You offer me your heart and I accept, softly and delicately cupping it in my hands. You let go of it quickly, trusting that it's safe in my hands. I store it in the safest of places. Here it will be protected with everything I have in me.

Then you ask me for mine. I flinch. It's been a while.

I hold it between my hands and I offer it to you. You cup it, gently, with both hands. But I find myself unable to let go. I know you have it. It feels safe to let go, but for some reason, I can't seem to unclasp my hands.

"You're pretty good at imagining why someone would stop loving you but you struggle to imagine why someone would love you in the first place."

Oh no, it actually hit me right here, where my heart is supposed to be protected by my ribcage.

It hit me fast and hard.

Left a hole behind and everything. I'm hoping to fill it one day.

Am I worth it? Am I really enough to make up for what she gave up?

Some threads I find are so intricately intertwined that no matter how hard I try, they will not come loose.

You hold a mirror up to me and you tell me what you see. You look at my face and see black red eyes, a hooked nose and a crooked, smug grin. You tell me the sharpness of my teeth are unholy and dangerous. You tell my hair is too long, too slick. A mess that I should be ashamed of. You look at my body and see extended features, ones you accuse me of using to entice others in, make them fall for my lies, make them lust after something forsaken, something dirty. You look at my arms and tell me they're grey and disgusting, they look like they shouldn't be a part of the body they're attached to. You look at my hands and see claws, mangled and pointy, best used for attacking people when they aren't looking. You look at me and tell me I am a monster, something even Frakenstein couldn't have created in his worst nightmare.

But I look in the mirror and I just see a girl.

I have never before left somewhere willingly.

So now, as I'm choosing to leave, willingly, wantingly, it has become so nightmarishly hard.

The act of leaving has become something in itself. No longer presenting as excitement or opportunity or freedom. But as a monster.

This monster is not attacking me. This monster does not seek me out. It is quite the contrary actually.

I go in search of the monster, and I needent look far as the monster is always looming.

It stands by the corner of my bed while I sleep. It sits in the back seat of my car while I drive. It walks behind me as my shadow when I travel.

And when it does these things, it speaks to me. Not nastily. Its voice is calm, a whisper. It's whispering every negative assumption about leaving that I have ever thought in my head, and each time it does so, it makes the decision seem worse and worse. It makes the circumstances dire and tired.

And sometimes, when I give in to the monster too much. When I listen to it's words more intently than intended, it will reach around my shoulders and pull me into an embrace.

This embrace is not a comforting one. The weight of the monster presses down upon my shoulders, heavy, until I am slumped over. Then it begins to compress around me, the air in my lungs unable to ever reach capacity. The breathlessness ensues. I know it's determination, I know what it longs for. For I have been in this creature's embrace for all of my life.

It will not give up, and it will not let go until the decision to stay is made.