I Need to Talk to You

I need to talk to you.

I'm losing it again. I thought my mind got better, I thought I'd found myself, and then I started sorting through my head and now it's flooding and it's scaring me.

I'm so temporary, with everyone and with myself.

I don't even know why that upsets me so much but it kills me.

And I don’t even know what's wrong with me.

I don't know what I am. I just want someone to take me away.

We lived on the seventh floor of a dusty red apartment complex and I used to sit on my bed and wish for a fire dragon to come and take me away forever.

I would have gone, you know? Right then and there.

It was too bad I couldn’t even leave the house by myself for fear of being raped, being touched, being stared at. Because it wasn’t "safe."

So I sat by the window and watched the cars and I was good. I was kind, I was tidy, I was well-spoken, and when I tried to tell them I had this mess in my head, they said I should stop complaining because I wasn’t supposed to have problems. Boys thought I was cute and quirky and I smiled a lot so nothing could be wrong because my life must be PERFECT.

It's all a script. It’s always "be this" and "be that" and make sure you tick everyone’s boxes and stay perfect.

But oh god, by all means, always be YOU. Because being fake is BAD. Because imperfection is BEAUTIFUL.

So long as it’s someone else’s idea of imperfection.

I was so busy trying to mould myself into all the things that people expected me to be and loved me for that I lost myself. For a long time.

Then I met you. And you were so grey. So dull, so smart, so correct.

And no, this isn’t a love story.

I saw this urgent need to know you, to find you because you were a reflection of me and I needed to find myself and so we built worlds in our minds, fought universes with our words, and burned everything around us. Two model students, intelligent, well-spoken, breaking into abandoned amusement parks when nobody watched.

I asked you what colour I was and you said hot pink and I hated you.

I was the burning flame to your cold depths, the manic creative to your analytic clarity. We intertwined so perfectly that I found myself in everything that you were and were not.

Everyone thought we were in love. Everyone told us we should date, because when you love someone, you have to sleep with them.

I laughed, because I didn’t need somebody to sleep with. I needed a friend.

And then you told me that you were in love with me.

And I hated you because I already knew and because it felt so dirty.

I loved your soul but then and there you were like the others and you betrayed me and you just wanted my body, my body, my body.

But this time I can run. This time I won’t just stand there and let a man touch me.

You didn’t talk to me for months.

Then you told me that I’d misunderstood.

When I'm burning, I don't want people try to and put me out or tame me. I breathe fire. I want to burn everything and everyone around me. And you let me do that, but you never let me burn you. You never told me that "it’ll be okay." You laughed at me and helped me curse the world and it was so horrible and beautiful and real.

And now you’re far away.

I love you.

I love you for everything that you are and because you saw me. Not my body, me.

You loved me, but not because you wanted to fuck me.

And that was beautiful.