Uncut Knots and Untouched Strings

“You’re not really going to, right?”

I smile and nod

and nod

and nod

to reassure the people around me that I’m not, so they can smile and walk away and not wonder all the while if they’ll see me the next day. I’ll go cliff-diving if I want, surf at night if I want, cry to sleep if I want and that’s no one’s business, is it? Imagine that--being a perfectly normal person with a perfectly normal family and perfectly normal friends, choosing to get dragged down by the weight of someone else’s abnormal problems. Now that’s crazy. I have no grudges against people for wanting to assure themselves that they tried and then leaving unscathed by the maelstrom brewing under my fingertips, before I reach out and taint them, too

paint them this miserable hue

pain them to a bruising blue

gain not a friend but a fool because which idiot throws away their happiness for their friends?

I guess I did.

I hate myself for saying this only because Society has taught us to love unconditionally and give limitlessly and if you choose to mind your own business then you’re not minding the depressed girl in your English class and you should feel guilty when she bites it. But damn, if you’re giving limitlessly then you’re pulling out the heartstring tangled up inside you to sew someone happiness and you’re cutting at the knots and you’ve never done this before so what happens

when you build a cocoon that’s trapped both of you together, instead?

Now you’ve doomed yourself and helped nobody nowI’vedoomedmyselfandhelpednobody because instead of slowly winding together a sturdy rope and pulling him out, I dove down headfirst on a whim and the string snapped and we both ended up in the

C M

H S

A

Yeah, I’m a horrible person, but I used to believe in something good, and if I can tell you not to be so naive then maybe I can stop you from losing yourself, and that’s good in itself, isn’t it?