I tend to live in extremes. I love hard, with all of my hope and my heart and my head. When I get hurt, the wound is deep and it takes years for the scars to start to form. Even after something has scabbed over, all it takes is the slightest touch to tear me open again. When someone loses my trust, I turn my back and run as far in the opposite direction as I can. And when I get away, I take a few breaths and then I run a little farther just for good measure. When someone brings me joy, I set them on a pedestal and I crown them victor and they get a golden badge engraved with kind sentiments and I throw all of my love into them at full force.
It's hard to live like that. It's hard to make your way in a world that is so angry and apathetic and aggressive when every slight feels like a sword to the side. It's hard to keep your eyes open when everything is so bright that your eyes sting and smoke rolls in so fast that it makes you blind and chokes you in a second.
There was one ledge I never allowed myself to fall over. I built a wall at the edge of the cliff, three layers deep and tied a rope around my waist and anchored it to the thickest tree stump I could find. I sat with my eyes on the sky and tried to keep my attention away from the one place I knew I couldn't go. I let the world distract me and keep my mind busy.
But years of boredom and abandonment wore the rope around me thin and a few months ago, the last tired thread snapped. There was a freedom that I never knew I wanted and all the sudden all I could see was the wall in front of me. I stepped across the space and I stepped up to the wall and I pushed. And he said all the right things and the wall started to crumble. It only took a few minutes for the wall to turn to dust and I walked right through the wreckage and stared down into the abyss that I tried to save myself from for so long. Because loving him is a disaster in the making. Because falling for him will never turn out right. Because he's the best thing I've ever known and it's bound to break me.
In the ravine at the bottom of the fall was his smile and the way his laughter always sounded like it was surprised out of him. In the ravine was the one person I said I'd never fall for. And then I stepped over the cliff with my arms stretched out wide and let the world go as I fell.
Maybe it was all the years between us that made it feel safer. Maybe it was all the miles that built up between us. Maybe it was the kind words that caught my attention and pulled me in. I don't know. All I know is that I stepped over the cliff and I crashed into the river at the bottom and I didn't even feel the impact. And the daydream I never let myself slip into swallowed me whole.
Now all my bones are broken and I don't feel it. Now all the blood is rushing from my hands and my arms and my heart and the water around me is red and all I can see is the sundrenched sky color of his eyes. Now all I can hear is his voice, even though I almost don't remember what it sounds like anymore. Now, I've broken the last rule and I'm floating in a daydream that isn't real and it's the only thing keeping me going sometimes. Now, it's the only thing comforting all the pain and easing me to sleep when the nights are long and cold and dark. And it's not even real. But it helps me forget everything else, and that's all I really want anyway.
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