Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything. -Ray Bradbury

There are all these quotes about how to achieve self-discovery, self-love, and knowing one’s self-worth. But we forget that we are not in this world alone. In order to get to this level of euphoria, one must find the balance between loving oneself and allowing another to share that love. If we give too much, we will end up too dependent, and we no longer remember how to survive independently. Like newborn babies, we must learn to crawl again: Start over. But if we don’t give enough, we find ourselves aliened and alone, and ultimately, guilty of hurting those who have shared their love with us. 

So, powerless I lie, here on this bed. Dreaming of an imaginary state where there are no worries. No sadness. No shame. Don’t you feel it? The sudden thud of your heart when you see, or even smell something remotely nostalgic? Pasts become fantasies, and you aren’t even sure if that really happened. Your imagination creates a state in which everything was perfect, and how you felt was so clearly true. The thud of your heart stopping, to wake you up from your dream state, to remind you that you are still alive, as painful as it may be. Realize that reality is the present and everything you feel now, will soon become an imaginary dream that once did or did not occur. 

But it’s the silence that kills me. I lie every night in this silence. The silence that echoed our words, submerged in the thoughts that clouded judgement and rose our tempers high. All floating in this silence. 

I keep telling myself, this is the last time. Let me feel this way one last time, and I swear I’ll change.