reason to live (short story) - (UPDATED)✔️

manufactured love.

  i wanted to need someone the way that i needed myself. admire someone, feel the luckiness of having a presence, and dread the moments spent without. i knew my curiosity was a curse,

that is until i met you.
—
we build to tear apart. what once was ours is now lost. i wanted something so badly, and i knew, the moment i looked into your eyes. we can't continue to grow like this, we're only spreading ourselves apart. i wanted love, something so deadly, something so brilliant

something so damn terrifying.

i wanted to lose faith and sleep, i wanted pleading cries and weeps, i wanted to build and build. what if you did this alone? what if everything that we brought up to become, was nothing at all in the end? what if you were just a lesson to be learned?

that maybe, i don't love myself the most but if i didn't i wouldn't be saying this in the first place. i don't wanna be conflicted, truth is i didn't see it from the second we connected, our brains stimulating a factor of which we play like a puppet.

what if i loved you so much that i forgot how to love me, then what?

do we drift within the clouds of misery in hopes to find what once was ours in the first place? i love you, i also love me. it hurts. it sucks not knowing how to trust because i don't actually know if i love you or if i wanted to give you broken trust in ways i did.

did i reflect that pain onto you?

i never tried to, i never trusted much. never depended on people towards my emotional capability. it's so hard knowing what you feel when you're not actually familiar with the feeling. i don't know love, i don't know comfort in ways you might've from how you might've grown up, and i still find broken breaks through your gaze.

i'm dying trying to work for this
but you're dying trying to work for me.

i love you, i just don't know how.

"stop." we look at one another, one needed word. you know, i know you know. "stop thinking like that." i give a humorless chuckle at your ability to read my expressions, i guess i've never been too good at hiding that side of myself from you yet.

"i'm scared, every fucking day i think i might lose you. just don't give up yet." the words escape the grasp of your lips in pure bliss. fuck this, fuck you for making me feel like this. i want to reply, i want to tell you everything is going to be okay, truth is i have my doubts.

"i'm not leaving you." I reply.

i won't take that part of myself.