Hiraeth

rainy day, june got too cold too soon.

Warm meal and police officers at the door, I say you really know how to make me feel at home.

We burst into laughter walking down the road, and you'd probably ask how can we laugh right now, but we have no alternative.

My hands no longer hold razors or cigarettes and they can't let go. Instead, I'm holding tinier hands. This is what adult life looks like, right?

Memory torn between nows and thens and poems about growing up with angry men. "This call is being recorded" and carrying pepper spray. I say if our mum's have had your guts maybe we would've had a better chance at loving living laughing.

I had another dream about you,

another bathroom fluorescent lightining one

but this time my stomach hurt from laughter, not pills.

Your hands were holding my face, fingers over my cheekbones instead of down my throat.

We were kissing and smiling and not dying or screaming or fading.

So yeah, of course I woke up in the middle of a panic attack.

Sunday 5:50 sitting on my couch trying to breathe. Chest pounding, not christmas, not tusday, not 7:15. Still dark and cold outside, but not june just yet.

I don't smoke anymore, and I don't carve nightmares into my thighs as proof. I cook lunches in advance now and I work two shifts and I don't have time to lose it, so I don't.

Sunday, 7:30 AM, I have not lost perception of time and space.

I make breakfast for our friend's kid. I smile and dance in the kitchen but my hands shake so much I keep dropping stuff.

No one asks, no one has to.

I remember what you said in the dream and I remember your smile pushing me inside the bathroom. It's sunday 9:00 AM and my chest hurts so much I start coughing.

Your hands and my hands fit perfectly in the dream.

It's sunday 10 PM, last day of may.

she reads me well, she reads me so well. we've been friends through the worst of eachother so the least we should get out of it is a good literary analysis .

says don't you feel more like yourself when you're this angry? over the phone

says she was out of touch with this particular rage, but it feels so much more like who she is

sends me lyrics she wrote, verses and verses about being betrayed, about surrendering yourself to a dream life and then having nothing left, just the memory of who you were before trust screwed you over

she says she remembers when we were both mean and angry together and how untouchable it made her feel

don't you miss being the villan?

but the villan ends up touched and moved and torn up for nothing.

that is the line in which i'm not like her, never quite were. we shared the flames but i am the dragon of my own fairytale. have always been.

except when i played the princess for a while, painted myself rose-coloured and dreamed about castles and children and happily ever afters… what a waste of words, that half-assed romantic bullshit lies rotten on my phone notes.

i am the dragon, i was the whole time, locked you in my tower for years and forced you to agree "youlovemeyoulovemeyouloveme", like that could erase the fear i've always had of you. you, the knight in dark armour, slaugthering the monster, ripping me open, rightfully so.

i laid dormant for almost a whole year, i did. let you have the victory. cause you were the hero and i was the villain, so it was my role to play, playing dead. i stayed on the floor and didn't whimper or cried or moved. i stuck to the script, you run away with the princess and you tell everyone how you conquered love and defeated evil. and i play dead, i don't complain. that's how it was written.

that is until you wake the dragon. not with love, siken was wrong about that one. but you come and you poke it with a stick, hey look, hey look it's me. you have my attention, i'm watching. you show yourself and hide away, like a child playing. and you do other childish things and i know iknowiknowiknow this is how it stars. cause it started like this before. this is how it's written. you do some silly stuff and i get angry. and i reach out. and i set your life on fire and the flames catch my life too and we ruin it all.

we ruin it all and call it love. we let it conquer, think this is a diffent story cause we're special like that. we were never like the rest so you say you love the dragon, come willingly to the tower and we lock ourselves there. our friends watch with facination. then you run with the princess and i play dead all over again, right?

it always starts like that, she says, i've seen it before. she reads me so well. she sends me another song she wrote and i tell her i love it, she suggest i star singing again, says she could record me.

but to you, from you, through all this years, i asked only one thing. sometime past midnight, all that time ago, second year of highschool. sitting on my bed, hands shaking. i said all i want is for us to still be friends, and i said i needed you to promise me that no matter what we would still be friends. and you said ok (you said ok, you said ok). and i asked again, fifth year, drunk on someone else's house, holding my phone like a lifeline. i said i want us to try and be friends and you said we couldn't but stuck around anyway, haunted me, haunted me, haunted me. until i realised the ghost had been me all along, dissapearing time and time again. yet i asked once more, almost eighteen years old, can't remember when or where cause it's all fussy now, but i know i asked and i know the skin on my hands broke on the bathroom floor sometime after.

then you asked. you said you needed to know, you said you wanted nothing else, just to be there, to know and see and nothing else. so i gave you everything, every single thing i could i gave to you cause more than anything you were my best friend.

i know is hard to stay, i know, and i know you sometimes don't want me to exist or at least you act like you don't. but i thought maybe this was something we could agree about. you said it was what you wanted, about a year ago on a park, picking grass from the floor and crying and holding my hand. and something broke along the way but i thought... fuck, yeah i know it is foolish but i've been saying so many stupid things these past few days that i don't care about one more. i thought we were making progress towards that. i thought maybe this was something we could have.

and yeah, i admit i freaked out a bit the other night, but the nightmares were already there and i was tired and anxious and sick sick sick way before that. so there's no excuse really, nothing to say.

i never hid anything from you. never had a reason to. been as clear as i can be. nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to lie about. it's not about sparing feeling either, it's about living with the consequences of your decisions and letting the other live the consequences of theirs. my life is this, your life is that. so why did you feel the need to hide?

i know you're happy, i already said cookie cutter love and several instagram posts to prove it. here's one month and here's another month and here's something i used to call silly and used to say i didn't know how to do for you. don't worry, i think it's cute, i think you're growing.

and i thought you were growing last week too, thought it was maybe a step forward. i know we were never good at being friends, but you told me once that nobody understood the way i did and i told you nobody has ever known me like you. so being nothing sounds idiotic to me, sounds like something we also tried many many times and failed at. so for a foolish moment i thought here's us being acquaintances, being allowed to be a distant yet present part of eachothers life... i don't know why i thought about that.

i think i give you too much credit, to your growth and to your pride. i think i overthink because i spend too many hours awake. so now i'm writting this instead of taking a nap before i keep working, and putting it out there so i don't have to swallow this little rage that's bubbling inside me.

i think you're a coward. and i think i'm done playing the mature one or whatever i told our friends when they asked questions. no, i have nothing, not a single things i want to hide from you. and yes, i would have liked things to be different. but here's a cheer to modernity's tools and another one to doing the childish thing and giving up.

you don't know how hard it is to move on after you've been turned into a ghost. you don't, i was never able to do this to you, never had the nerve to erase you. but when you have been, your mind does this, and it's not easy to explain how hard it is to try to love, to laugh, to be, when you feel like nothing at all so often.

i took blame for us, for the longest part, i woke up from nightmares and called them karma, told myself i did everything wrong. believed i did everything wrong, and kept waking up from dreams and enduring, waking and enduring, and waking and waking and not feeling strong enough to wake up at all, but getting up anyways cause it was my fault

i'm willing to be the dragon that destroys it all, to be the villain of the story, i am. but i only need you to admit to this one thing... can you really, genuinely, tell me that you didn't know you were breaking me. that on the two, almost three, years I begged and cried and told you to please please please understand, you didn't think just once to ask? i know i made the rules, doesn't matter if i did it for you or to protect me, i still made them. that's my fault, i know. and i know i wasn't good at first so yeah, burn me at the stake, i wouldn't be opposed. i was scared, and i wanted to prove a point, to tell us both that i wasn't one hundred percent yours, tied to you, bounded for life because for some reason i couldn't feel real anywhere else... i was a kid and i was terrified of how much i loved you, of how much i was willing to let you hurt me, so i did some messed up awful things about it, iknow that too, i hurt you and i did it on purpose and i could have all the nightmares in the world and that would still not be enough. don't know if there's a point in saying it now, but im sorry i hurt you and im sorry i made those rules.

but the thing is, you said yes. you agreed, never brought it up again, acted like it was ok. and yes, at some point i realised you didn't like it, but you still played by them. so I figured, in my own messed up way of figuring love out, that we were both protected.

but things changed, i know that you know that they changed, that i changed. i can't pinpoint the exact moment it happened but i can put a pin on when i realised it did so i'll tell you: 2022, you had already tattooed my chest and were going to tattoo my ribs. i had fantasised about you and the needle so many sleepless nights back when you were pretending i didn't exist, thinking it would never happen and yet there we were, happening. "let love in" center of my chest, i told you it was a reminder, i lied. it was a promise, i wanted to let you in, to stop fighting to protect myself from you...and i did. we were so good then... you were coming to my place during the week and i felt like eating togheter was ok and we went on a vacation and i told all my friend how much i loved you... i wanted more, more more. i had never been so happy and i had never felt less like dying, i wanted a life with you. so yeah, that's when i noticed something had changed and that's also when something started to break.

you'll think I'm silly, or that i'm reusing the same old excuse. but i never had more, spent my whole life wishing to not be alone and suddenly everything i had always wanted was right in front of me, after a lifetime of wanting, and it terrified me. i was so in love with you i told my friends you were going to leave me, over and over again. and i would stay up at night reminding myself of all the times you disappeared, i would text you just to see you hadn't blocked me, and have nightmares about not being able to call you. i wanted to tell you that the rules could change, i wanted to see you every day so that i could sleep peacefully, i wanted you to know i had let you in and couldn't think about you getting out.

and then, just as i started to spiral, you met someone else. so no, i didn't change the rules, and no, you did nothing wrong. but i remember crying on a supermarket talking about it with someone, and then crying on your bathroom floor cause you'd been texting her and making plans for the next day. and i know you remember me crying and being angry. i'm the villain, lets not forget this, but can you really tell me you didn't know? can you really, cross your heart, tell me that you couldn't tell it was tearing me apart? when i begged you for more time together, asked you to talk, two whole years before the last time, when i cried and cried I cried. i know i was bad, that you never said it but i still was. but i said it, i told you "you're making me feel like im nothing" and you got angry and ignored me and made me so scared.

you can believe what you want of those last months, you really can and i won't correct you cause i can't recall half of it. this is not an excuse, this is evidence. i know when it started though, the end of the end. i had written a poem, months before, about how i needed you to leave fully and not have me waiting. yet waiting is all i did. it was the night my family left for holiday, i was coming down from the stress of a busy year and doing my last exams, i knew the adrenaline crash was going to be bad but i wasn't expecting the anxiety attacks or a chest pain so strong. i wanted you there, i needed you there. my family was leaving for vacation and I was in pain but excited because I thought that'd mean you'd stay there the whole week, cause when we did that at your place the summer before was the first time i felt truly happy and at peace. but when my family left you were at her place, and i waited till you came home drunk at four am. laid down next to me and i can still recall the particular stink of your breath, it tore open something i didn't knew i had yet to break. i waited too the next day, when i asked you to stay in front of your family and you said no, don't know what for but i waited, for you to take it back maybe. i know i wasn't good to you, not a good girlfriend, not a good fuck, no good at all. but that's the thing, in my head, i was nothing at all. i had already ceased to exist, again, i was gearing up for the final act, the last trick. i felt out of control so i controled what i could and what i couldn't i let control me, stuck frozen to the spot cause i was terrified. skipped meals when you weren't there, stayed awake, felt tired and weak and small. felt myself disappear and felt you pull away and felt disgust every time you touched me cause i kept thinking of the ways you'd touch her that night, and hating myself for being the way i was, for not playing a sport and for not having long hair and not being enough. so yeah, i didn't want you to touch me, i didnt want to be aware of myself, felt like you were going to notice i was broken. and thought it all i kept asking, tying to prove myself wrong, asked you to stay, asked you for more, asked you to marry me, to have kids, asked if you loved me, if you knew you loved me, if you knew why and how and when, so that i could prove you loved me. i know i was too much, you told me i was too much.

so when the chance showed up, to be on equal footing again, i took it. i thought thats what you wanted, less of me. and yes, i felt seen and i felt pretty and i felt important, and i hadn't felt that in so long i was ecstatic. this is why i am the villain, i know. i'm not making excuses, i'm dissectioning my own brain in public cause i didn't get a chance to explain this. I'm saying all this cause i need someone to know, to know that i knew it was happening and that it was my fault. i'm saying this cause i'm sorry. i'm sorry i didn't trust you and im sorry i ruined things. i'm sorry i pushed you away so many times and i'm sorry i said stupid things. I'm sorry i didn't speak up when it was the right time, I'm sorru i couldn't show you how much i liked you and i'm sorry i made you feel bad. i'm sorry for hating how happy you are now, i'm sorry i'm still resentful and I'm sorry i think I'll never be happy again. i'm sorry i believe you broke me, and that you turned me into this ghost. I know there are no villains, that this is no fairytale, but I'm a ghost and i wish i wasn't so that we could've done things the right way.

most of all, i'm sorry I hurt you.

i know you believe in karma, and that you probably believe i have this one coming... but I'll ask one more thing anyway. if you're willing to accept you knew, maybe you can give me this too.

now that you know how i feel, please. believe me or not but give me this.

i won't ask you to compare your cookie cutter love now to our patched up attempt at it. but you know i loved you, as much as i could ever love anybody. you know i still do.

i'm tired and sick and i know you're happy and in love and i know you know i can't. it's not your fault but you know i can't, could never. you know how to make me disappear and i don't, not sure if i want to.

i know i'm too old and too sick to pull sleepless weeks like i used to, but my head's a pond i'm currently drowning into.

you see, when i woke up from today's nightmare i was frozen.

breath coming short, stuck to the spot,

i felt seventeen again, dreaming about you and waking up in the middle of a panic attack.

the room was really cold, the light outside not enough.

i keep having these dreams, on and on and on

i call them nightmares, cause that's how they feel when i wake up,

i also called them nightmares back then,

but they weren't, not always at least.

sometimes, yes, i used to be dying in a bathroom floor while you held my hair.

and yes, sometimes i'm screaming at you but my voice won't come out and i cry and cry and cry for you to look at me but you never turn around. i've woken myself up screaming more times than i can count now, sitting up and counting the things i can see, the things i can touch... some days I'm too scared to speak after these dreams, just in case my voice won't come out, or worse, it will come out broken and shaky and so, so weak, pleading just a second of attention.

some other times, you're just there. we talk, on the phone or we see eachother at a concert. sometimes we argue, long time coming fights you took from me when you disappeared... and i feel raw despair upon waking. tears cold on my cheek, some word stuck halfway down my throat.

we don't always argue in my dreams, though. often, we just talk, you tell me about your day and I tell you about mine... i don't need to explain how it feels waking up from these, do i?

today i had one of those ones. you reached out over some silly thing, kept making conversation, told me you missed talking to me... so i woke up and had a panic attack about it, felt hollow and cold and broken all day long, made plans and cancelled them later. couldn't talk to anyone, go anywhere, be anything.