Aftertaste

You will never know the courage it took to look you in the eyes and tell you  I am not happy. How much of me it took to let all my fears trickle out from my fingertips and fall into your lap like honey spilling down your shirt. And when I did, you told me " Everybody has pain". So i watched you swipe your own fingers into my feelings  and lick them like a sticky mess you wanted gone. And I finally learnt what it felt like to be abandoned by people I called friends. 

I keep searching for validation in everybody else  but myself. And i wonder,  when did i lose  who i am so much  that i need your reassurance to make me feel whole.  I didn't realize how empty  I've become, till everybody i sought comfort in were beside me  but i still felt hopelessly unhappy.

I do this to myself again and again. Constantly letting people crawl their way in, letting them see the parts of myself i don't often show. I allow them to plant permanent positions  in my life, and yet i am surprised when they only have temporary love. And once they hurt me, i shove them out so hard that i reel back from the whiplash of it all. But somehow, throughout all the pain i let my guard down enough for them to sneak back in. and the cycle starts all over again.

I keep finding myself running back to you, even when the chains of everything you’ve done pull at my legs to remind me not to trust the shine in your smile.

The search for intimacy started with you. I tried to believe that what your eyes reflected back at me was something good.  Something worth  all the attention  you put in.  You convinced me that the way i feel about myself is the only time anybody hated me. For a while,  you made it seem like everything would work out. But then I started to think. And I started to doubt. And everything fell back into place. I realized that  none of it was real. Frankenstein never had any love for his monster, and neither could you. Real people aren't supposed to love something so tormented. 

How is it that i can want something so bad, want it with every bone in my tired body, and yet my hands won't reach out to take it?  The need for any sort of resemblance of comfort slips past my clingy arms, and i feel hopelessness bubble in my chest. Uncertainty has become the bed companion in a space that feels so utterly alone. Am i meant  to feel empty the rest of my life? Or will i have a stroke of luck that will allow me to have something for once.

Late at night Is when it hits me the most.  My bed becomes a  midnight graveyard That holds the fragile bones I used To call home.

Ever since I met you, I kept you  at arms length for so long. But when i finally let you in, your hands reached between my ribs to grasp at  at my empty chest. And when  you realized how they left me so heartlessly, you did the same . 

If there's one thin g I've learned  from everythin g , It's that sometimes the person you want to hate  the most is yourself . I'm still stru g glin g  to come to terms with that .

I have a bad habit of looking for comfort in the people  who make me feel the most insecure. Yet I continue to wonder why I get taken advantage of.