I am afraid of you now ...

Yes, you... I guess I always have been, somewhere. People always seem terrified of the ones they love best. The ones who have nuzzled down into your heart and you know if they came out you would bleed to death. Wow. That sounds dramatic.

I am afraid of you so I sit in silence and listen to your silence and the space of everything we're not saying and yet I cannot feel that you do not love me.

All of the actions, inactions, nonactions... the nothing that is between us now: most people would say let go - it's clear he's gone. He doesn't want anything to do with you. He doesn't love you anymore. But there is this heart string attaching us... a tiny wire made of ether running straight from the tip of my aorta to yours... and it says to hold on. This little voice inside me whispers to me "Don't let go."

So I can't manage to cut the string.

But I am afraid of you when I see you online. Afraid of it's instantaneousness. I would reach out and you would KNOW and I would know that you knew, and you would know that I knew that you knew... and in that moment of too much knowing, the string might snap.

No. No. It's better this way. I will send you letters very seldom. There's so much safety in letters. They can get lost in the mail. They can be misplaced. I cannot know that you got them, or aren't sleeping with them under your pillow, or aren't crying into them with devotion... I can't know, and because I can't know...

hope can exist there in that space - the space between everything we feel, everything we want to say and the nothing that we communicate.

I can't tell you how long I will have hope... you see, the string is there, and I can feel your heart still thumping even if the connection is bad - it's there.

I can't tell you if the string will be pulled out, if the wind will whip it suddenly, if birds will nest on it and weigh it down, if in a fiery rage I'll rip my own chest open and dislodge you from my heart where you've nested.

They say love is a choice - but honestly, I don't feel very choosy right now. There was the cute guy on the train - witty, helpful - there was the cute, new guy at church, the man making eyes at me on the train - my eyes glazed over with boredom... I'm sure they're lovely men, but my string is attached only to you. I considered the possibilities, I reasoned with myself "It's been months... why not try something new? You don't seem sad - this could be great for you!" And yet, I don't want them. I don't want them... If love is a choice, I feel like I've already signed my name. I'm sitting here quietly living my truth.

If you never come back perhaps my name will fade and I'll feel free again - but oddly I never felt more free than in the prison we built together. And true freedom is terrifyingly lonely.

And I'm not angry... I'm not bitter... I'm not desperate... I'm quite calm - the string, I'm letting slack out, giving you plenty of space, giving the string room for you to wander around - if you detached your end I might not even know for a while, but the occasional twitch tells me you're still there.

Others... I'm also afraid of others - but only sometimes. If I saw myself I would think I am pathetic. It's only because I don't see myself, I feel myself, that I can feel the iron core deep within me, that heart full of love pumping strongly. I'm not wasting away - my cheek isn't wan, my muscles not weak, my conversation not droll, my ideas haven't gone flack - loving you silently isn't taking it's toll on me. It's not a weakness, this vulnerable, strange, silent love - no.

I am terrified of you, but part of me has also never felt so sure. I'm terrified of myself, of what will happen, of everything in the future, yet I only see one path among a labyrinth of choices and I keep plonking one foot right in front of the other one - taking ground into the impalpable mist.

I keep moving forward, and yet all my choices are seeming to lead towards you but they are for me... they are not choices motivated by you, but by me, but this string in my heart... the attachment never lets me forget. Would that I could settle into a harmony with myself... like fingers of the same hand that work together seemlessly - my heart and I - alas, no, I must move forward, seemingly toward you, but not for you, but for these big things ... one step plonked in front of another... and I can't let go, and I can't forget, and I can't turn or I'm no longer in truth.

I am afraid of you, the way all people are terrified of the ones they love best.