Night Wanderers.

It was her favourite thing in the world to watch how days bled into nights, how the sky turned from blue or grey to orange, laced with shades of yellow and pink, changing into something entirely different if you stopped paying attention for a minute, until eventually the stars emerged from behind the clouds. If anything, nights were what made her feel alive. Nights were for the dreamers. It was the magical way everything seemed dimmer and quieter at night, yet more vibrant and louder. The edges and lines of the buildings blurred together, people’s features seemed softer in the weak light of the street lamps. Laughter echoed through the streets, faint and melodic. The reflections of the glaring neonlights burned in her irises, sharpening her senses and inviting her to burn, burn, burn - burn just a little bit brighter. She shouted words into the night, listening to how the city whispered them back, through tree branches and car exhausts and the faint music from bars and clubs. Every bone in her body hummed to the rhythm of her heart and the blood sang in her veins to join the song that marked the end of another day. At night she could pretend. Pretend that the moon watched her every step, pretend that the velvety night sky held all the possibilities the world could offer a girl like her. In a way, she’d always felt like one of the stars gleaming above her. Tiny, only a fraction of the bigger picture, too insignificant to matter. And yet. And yet she knew that it was where she belonged. Only a tiny pinprick of light, with enough courage and imagination to let herself dream of better days, stranded in a sea of people who didn’t see her. At night she could pretend that when the next day dawned, it would all be different, knowing very well that when the sun had set again, she would be out there again, head lifted to watch the stars, letting the lights guide her home.

Wait for someone who makes grocery shopping fun. Someone who you don’t mind staying in with on a Friday night doing laundry while sitting on the living room floor eating bad Chinese. Wait for someone who makes you happy to be alive because 50 years from now, that’s all that’s going to matter.

I think that’s where I went wrong. If there was something you did that bothered me, I just brushed it off. I gave you chance after chance. I put my wants and needs on a shelf and let them collect dust while compulsively making sure I was aware of yours. Forget letting you have just a place in my heart, I let you have almost the whole thing, leaving just enough for myself so I could keep going. I loved you, but I didn’t love myself, and that was the biggest mistake I could’ve made.