She was now a creature of darkness. The red static burned in her eyes and used her however it wanted. She has no idea how to stop... or if she even wanted to stop. The rush of euphoria from the darkness was overwhelming and she was drunk on it every second.

Then he came into her life. He knocked her shoulder for just a second. The contact temporarily shaking her from the red and grey vision she had been trapped in. For just a moment the world flooded with color, his face at the center. It was a violent kind of light that stained the scene and made stars float in her eyes. She felt a sharp pang for freedom from what she had once wanted so much.

She wondered if the stranger’s light would be enough to overcome the darkness she had allowed in herself. She would do anything to feel the light again.

I just want to

Dive right in a pool

Feel the euphoria of the cold water

Encapsulate me

Hear nothing but the silence of the water

And the flow of my own blood

Singing in my veins

I’d keep staring upwards

At the false lights shining outside

Until my lungs become desperate for air.

So I could realize

No matter how much

I talk about the end

I really do care about my life after all.

Let me tell you about

My worst paradox

It's weird knowing

That sometimes

When people tell me they love me

They are really so completely afraid of me

Their eyes give them away

And when I wonder why

I look down at my feet

And I smile

Remembering that the skin enveloping every inch of my body means

Bad

Trouble

Dirty

Unworthy

Impolite

Loud

Scary

But I have only ever tried to be

Hopeful

Kind

Loving

Accepting

Brave

Strong

Unapologetic

So you do not get to try to take away what I really am.

I will not apologize for my color.

I will not be robbed of what I am.

They reach out to you from the darkness. They are red, vibrant, beautiful. You shelter them from the light, protect them from prying eyes. You build them up, their static forms shooting higher with every word of praise until one day they offer to pay you back for giving them enough power to accomplish their purpose. You smile as they whisper in your ear and tickle the soft skin of your neck with their sweetly sick words.

Soon they are in your eyes, their filter overcoming the world around you. All you see is red and grey. And all you want is to write the stories they tell you. And before you know it it’s too late to change who you are. They already own your heart.

What would it feel like to carve myself into something that wouldn’t hurt so much?

Could I slip the knife between my ribs and pull out what makes me hurt?

Is there some way to extract the anguish from my blood so it doesn’t fog up my body?

The slickness of blood against the softness of flesh would make my skin prickle and I wouldn’t even think of it as pain because I would be free from it all.

But then you would be here. Alone.

I always thought love was a feeling. But it isn’t. Love isn’t even an emotion. Part of the reason love is so indescribable, and so misunderstood, is because love is an action. It’s something you do, is to love. I can tell you that when I’m hungry, my stomach feels like a mountain avalanche is happening inside of it; rumbling and shaking and growling, screaming to be fed. But when I’m driving, it’s so hard to explain that to someone who’s never driven before. I just drive. Start the car, change my gears, accelerate, brakes, turn signal, whatever. I just drive. I can’t explain well enough how I drive. And everyone has different ways that they explain how they drive, but it’s hard to understand until you do it yourself; then you have your own way of explaining it. That’s love. The problem with that is, you can love just about anyone or anything. I love my mom and dad. I love my sisters and brothers. I love my cat and my dog. I love my car, roses, the smell of New York City, chocolate, cheese, being warm in the winter. I love all of these things, but there is no way to really measure that love. Do I love cheese more than I love flowers? Do I love my mom more than my dad or my sisters or brothers? Just because I have any favorites, does that mean I love the color yellow any less than I love my new shoes? Love isn’t less or more. What you’re willing to do for the things and people you love, that’s what matters. I’d be willing to learn to fly using just my own two arms for my mom, I’d be willing to walk the long way home for my brand-new shoes, and I’d be willing to climb 70 feet to save my cats. If these things weigh differently for you, they may weigh the same for someone else, or in different ways. I can tell you, when I’m sad, I want to cry, I want to lock myself away, and I want to be alone. When I love, I want to save the world. Their world. Whatever it is that I love, I want to save it from harm, even from a speck of dirt. When I love, I don’t feel anything inside of me. Love isn’t how romance novels make it out to be. My heart doesn’t flutter, and I don’t lose my breath when I hear someone say, “I love you.” I don’t feel nervous to say it back anymore. I’ve only been nervous to say it to people I date. Because what if I don’t love them. What if I’m only saying it to feel something, to feel what love-story novelists say I’m supposed to feel. What if I force myself to feel that way, what if I’m tricking myself. That was before I knew the feeling doesn’t matter. What would you be willing to do for the people you love? What would you be willing to do for the people you think you love? What would I be willing to do for her? Would I be willing to fly?

In the good old days, time went by fast. Days blended together and all sadness was forgotten. We never even dreamed of the future because we didn’t care. We didn’t care about what might happen to us, what would happen to us; only what was happening to us. It was easy to forget that the present is the future that already happened. It was easy to be carefree when almost everything was already decided for us (to an extent.) To us, the next few minutes were all that life amounted to. We didn’t have any expectations or plans or thoughts about the future, we lived on whims. We did things because we wanted to, not because we were told to or because we felt we should.

Call it reckless. Call it stupid. We called it living. But that living changed to surviving as we grew older. Freedom isn’t really freeing, it’s responsibility and fulfilling expectations, all while acting ‘maturely.’ Think before you speak, they’d say. We were told not to follow our hearts and to be levelheaded. Our hearts were broken, put back together, and broken all over again. Eventually we didn’t even try to fix them — we just went on with the few scraps we were willing to pick up. We wouldn’t ever fully love again and we knew it. Each heartbreak stole a piece of us. And eventually we were nothing but the shell what used to be.

And when you couldn’t handle it all yourself, you depend upon drinking and drugs and meaningless sex. Trust me — I’ve done it all. They don’t make you feel full or good, really, but they don’t leave you feeling empty. And that’s probably the best thing you’ve felt in a long time.

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Trying to pull away from everything that hurts.

A mass of veins pulsing to leave your heart and let the beat die. The veins leap under your skin and slip around muscles to try and be free.

Trying to pull away from the good and the bad.

Nothing like crushing the sweet so the bitter haunts your tongue no more. Burn all the smells together in a fire of our best sins and you smell too much and feel too much and hear too much and in that moment you are nothing.

Seriously devoted to eating giant banana pancakes, researching homemade rabbit costumes, and thinking about the faces people make during sex. Seriously engaged in irreverent bathroom stall philosophy, in leaving drunk voicemails, and watching awkward flirting in the wild. Seriously invested in hanging by my fingers from this tumbling little planet as it zooms through the cosmos. Serious is as serious does, after all.