Falling for a Friend

I want to take all I love and press it like flowers in a book. I want to take all your insecurities and hang them to the fridge. I want to show you how proud I am of the person you are and who you are becoming. I urged so badly to spin you like a globe and drag my finger across. I wanted to discover every piece of you that you were hesitant to reveal to anyone else. When we share hidden parts of ourselves with one another, we’re trusting that person with secret sections of our hearts. I just wanted to love the bits you believed were unlovable.

I wasn’t falling in love with him. I walked into a knowing mess, with eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way, believing in destiny and fate. I also believe we are only fated to things that we’d do either way. In any situation, I’d choose him, in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality. I’d pick him. Unfortunately, in my case, God made girls like me to be around when guys needed to get over their past.

We could be in a room full of people and my eyes would always meet his, just to find he’d already been looking. It’s almost as if we had our own language without even having to speak, no one could possibly understand the way we felt, mostly because we didn’t even know. All I know is when he’s around, all of my worries and fears fade away. It’s equally terrifying because I can tell him things I can’t even tell myself. We may just be friends, but we both know friends don’t look at each other that way.

He was fighter, you could see it in his eyes. He wasn’t born strong, he was forced to become this way. He learned to be his own hero. When the world continued to let him down, he kept picking himself up. He was full of cloudy sunsets, I found beauty in him every night, but you have to come to him with caution. His mind swims in a depth most people would drown in.

I was wooed. Differently, amused and interested. My art had meaning to another soul, but mine. For I had fallen into his life, randomly. My mind was slowly encrypted into his portfolios. The art constricted my senses.Tasting his darkest sketches. Losing sleep over the black figure. It was suffocating, seeing him wandering. Smelling the fear too vividly. I began to sweat. I was lost in the corner of the page, and slowly fading into his work. I was compelled. For I too had displaced him. With words like raindrops, my ink had poisoned him. He was seeping into the paper, surrounded and enclosed in every period. The deeper thoughts healed, for as dark as we were, there was light. We were more than just art. It was inexpensive and unknown. An underlying feeling unheard.

I use to play a game in my head trying to find a reason to believe he might not feel the same. There always seemed to be someone better. I decided, if that car turns right, he loves me. If the clock reaches five, he loves me. If the woman sits down, he loves me. If the Earth turns, he loves me. I don’t think I ever believed that game would mean anything, and now I know for sure it didn’t. Every car turned right, the clock hit five, she sat down, and every moment the Earth is turning and still, he never loved me. At least not fully.

When you look into the soul of a warrior, who doesn’t quite know what to do, you see the world. Eyes that run deeper than any crevice. A heart more immense than oceans side to side. I find my recovery in the breathe of a lover. Behind every laugh and every scoff, no matter the drama, I found a lover. A mix of emotion and an ideal relationship, not by most, I found a lover. When he breathes, I breathe. When his soul shines, I grasp onto the excitement. To the day I fall, I will be watching in amazement at all of the astounding accomplishments he seems to create everyday. I stare in awe at who I am when I am near him. I feel whole, a happiness that sweeps your soul like the soft breezes of October sweeps leaves through the frigid air. Something beautiful, magical and completely chaotic, you never want it to end. Even if we fade and the leaves turn grey, I will hold onto the memories of winter that consume my being.

I felt powerless because I was scared. I went on so strongly, clinging to the fear. I remember when I was unaware of him, but something changed along the way. Now he was the reason for the bags under my eyes. He was the only 4 AM thought. It’s bizarre how a person could mean nothing to you, but in an hour, day, or week, they could be the whole world. Even if he made my heart drown in a pit of pain and regret, every breath left behind was a hurricane of bittersweet memories.

Now I’m consumed by streaming waters and silent screams. You know, the kind of screams that feel as though you are drowning. Hitting the wall and screaming for some sort of greater power to breathe into you. Those destroying moments when you can truly feel the pain in your chest and for some unknown reason it makes you hate yourself.

I became that girl, at the bottom of the shower screaming and begging for air. Punching the bathtub, tears streaming down my face and the warm shower strolling down my back. Really, that was the only sense of comfort I could seem to find. I used to believe that love should be like the perfect storm. Passionate, raw, raging, maybe even a little scary. The problem is so many storms have come and gone, leaving me more broken than before.

As I would lay alone in bed, lost in 4 AM thoughts, I would find myself starting to shake. My throat would begin to burn, my heartbeat sped up, my stomach tightened, my lungs felt as though they were closing in on me. Tears would rush to my eyes faster than I ever thought was possible. That was the worst pain I have ever felt. That is heartbreak.

My perfect relationship insisted of you being beside me. You were my moon and all of the stars. You captivated me in the most beautiful, yet distracting way possible. I was completely blindsided by someone who I thought was only a friend. I invested every part of myself to see you happy. I wasn’t enough? Maybe. Probably.

I created walls around everyone so no one would get in the way of what we could be. I couldn’t bare to lose him. The only guy I would lose sleep over, while he slept beside the body of another. The only one who I would never get tired of talking to, while he whispered lies in the ear of every lover. The only one who crossed my mind constantly, while his mind was devoted to others. He was the only one who could make me smile without trying, bring my mood down with every intention to make his better, having complete control over my emotions with every action he took.

I stopped eating. I stopped talking. My headphones became my best friend. Music was the only way I could find any peace. Nothing in my life would be okay. I wasn’t enough. Good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, skinny enough. To even think my eyes were pretty while the glistening sunshine danced in them, would be considered a sin to most.

There is nothing worse than losing who you thought was your best friend. They just wake up one morning and decide they don’t like you anymore and just leave. Disappear into plain sight. Ignore you. Hurt you. Break promises and forget all of the memories. It’s truly sad, especially when you did nothing wrong but love them with every part of your soul.

After I recovered from the pain, I understood that we agreed on nothing and we disagreed on almost all things. Wasn’t love meant to be some sort of spell? Magic perhaps? Hugs and kisses, movie dates, laughing, cloud nine, late nights, a fairy tale that never ends? Yet, with him it felt like I was a soldier constantly on a battlefield. Trying to defend and protect myself, while watching my back. Love is the strongest thing we get the privilege to do, but our love became a war that I was desperately losing. This whole time it wasn’t the fear of love, it was the fear of losing the strongest power known to man.