There's a little house on Paris Street the color of newly blossomed daffodils. The grass is always just the slightest bit too tall, but not so that you begin to wonder what sort of barbarian might live there. On the contrary, the tall grass compliments the perfectly pruned rose bushes that sit just below the white trimmed windows, thus giving you a glimpse at the conflicted personality of the home's owner; she's a gentle soul, torn between being wildly reckless and properly reserved. Just like the ivy that crawls across the once bright yellow walls, the influences of the ever-changing world around her have laced her heart with dark conflict. You'd think just by looking at her that her soul is untouched, but dig a little deeper and you'll find old, worn roots tangled among new life and frightening hope. 

It's moments like these that I miss you more than my heart can bear. You should be with me, staring out the window watching the clouds that will soon be below us shifting with the untamable winds. But maybe you're more like the wind and I the clouds. You're wild, unpredictable, influential, and complex. You move me to be full in who I am, to be beautiful in the midst of your strong heart. We fit together. We were designed for one another. But we were not designed to be still. You are constantly moving, seeking more, and full of courageous force. But, without the clouds, the winds are seldom seen and, without the winds, the clouds are seldom moved. So, although we need each other to thrive as the wind needs the clouds and the clouds the wind, we cannot be still together. When we are still, we are nothing. So we continue to move and be moved. And thus we continue to fall in and out of each other: loving and needing and fearing and missing.

She stood in that old parking lot, arms crossed, leaned against her car. The August air was warm but that didn't change the frigid sorrow that had iced over her heart. The lot was empty aside from her worn down VW Rabbit and his "mom van" that they had always joked about. She turned her head to the left where he was crouched by his van, carefully rolling what had been his only diversion for months. In all of the seven years that they had grown up together, she had never let him see her cry. But the breeze tickled her face until it caught the single tear that had escaped her weary eyes and it sunk deep into the empty place that his betrayal had left in her soul.

A cloud of smoke crawled from his lips and was carried to her by that same stinging breeze as if to taunt her confused misery. As the smoke disappeared with the setting sun, he stepped closer so as to look her in the eye. 

"C'mon. Just take a hit."

Never had she felt more simultaneously opposed and drawn to the sweet taste of distraction but her eyes hardened and she turned away, unable to look at the boy that she thought she knew. 

He stepped around to her other side and, after smothering the joint beneath his foot, tried to catch her downcast gaze.

"I'm sorry." He whispered, recognizing the pain he had caused.

And, in that moment, she realized that the issue wasn't his broken promise, it wasn't the marijuana, it wasn't his addiction to escaping reality. The addiction was all her own. Her unspoken love for him had been her secret, her escape from reality, her drug that had consumed every moment, waking and sleeping, for years. She saw for the first time that the little boy she had grown to love was gone. And, as with any addiction, the moment she no longer had him, she began to fall apart. The love she once had for that innocent, bright-eyed boy, the love that filled her soul and gave her purpose ultimately crushed her.

In every mind, there is a world, a fear, a truth buried deep within a secret corner that is accessible only to the host of it. Very rarely do we acknowledge that corner but it is there and it is the truest part of your soul. 

For years I rejected what I knew was in my corner. I rejected the realization that I lack all ability to love and yet I treasure it above all else. My heart was like a patient fighting for their life; they see where they need to be, they see the healing that could come, and in their minds they are chasing after it, drawing nearer with every shaking breath and then, one day, their body fails. They slip into a sleep from which they will never wake. And the saddest part is that their soul convinces itself they have reached healing because the physical pain has stopped. Their soul creates a world to protect itself from the truth that their body failed.

That is what my love looks like. I try to invest in other people and pour into their lives and when I have almost reached that point, I fall short, and harm and break those close to me. So, I build a world around my dying heart because it cannot bear the truth that it is incapable of really loving anything. 

The worst part about that corner of your mind is that you never see what's hidden there until it has already begun to destroy you. And the battle to break down those walls that you've built around it is one you will face again and again because it is the truest part of your soul and that is something you can never escape.