"I don't know what living a balanced life feels like. When I am sad I don't cry, I pour. When I am happy I don't smile, I glow. When I am angry I don't yell, I burn." These are not my words, they are Rupi Kaur's, but I feel like she wrote them for me. I have never known balance, I have always lived in extremes. I have never been able to wear my heart anywhere other than my sleeve. But the problem with wearing your heart on your sleeve is how accessible it is. It's right there. You held my hand and it stuck with you after you let go.
Although I am hardly religious, I have always believed that God created us all in his image and likeness, you are exactly how He intended you to be. I believe that everyone was born with a set of numbers. Your numbers are dates, the dates of everything that happens to you, birth, death, love, heartbreak, everything in between. I have always believed that home isn't an address but, the security you feel when you fall asleep knowing the person you love is right next to you. I never knew that one person could come in like a tsunami, so quickly and unexpectedly, making the ground beneath my feet feel so unstable and leaving me so defeated it didn't matter how strong the waves would become afterward, nothing could ever outdo it.
I used to believe that everything happened for a reason. I used to believe that fate played a twisted hand on our lives. When it seemed like I was on a rollercoaster that only went down, family members would offer condolences in the forms of "It will get better" and "Everything happens for a reason". I believed that you were put in my life as a blessing, I believed you were given to me by God, or the fates or whoever it is up there messing with my life. But I've learned that this is completely untrue. For what reason did my aunt lose half a dozen babies to miscarriage, stillborn, and premature birth? For what reason did an aneurysm explode in my grandfather's brain? For what reason did you make yourself so temporary in my life when I reserved you a permanent place?
Here is the problem, you can't fall in love with someone else until you've already fallen in love with yourself and nobody understands that until after it's too late and you're already heartbroken. I've always been strong, but never strong enough. I was the kind of strong where it was the bare minimum, it was just enough for people to not see me as an easy target. Except maybe that was the problem for you, you liked the challenge. You absolutely weren't my type but it was undeniable that I was attracted to you. That was confusing for me. We all have that one person that we're weirdly attracted to and can't figure out why and you knew this. You loved the chase, you chased me for almost a year. Who would ever spend that much time chasing someone who may never want them back? Now of course I entertained it, I didn't know if I liked that it was you chasing me or just the idea that someone was so dedicated to pursuing me. It wasn't until you stopped chasing me, stopped trying, and left me alone that I realized that it wasn't the chase I wanted, it was you. I knew you were in the process of trying to forget me but it hardly took any effort to get you back. A few small gestures and you knew you were all I wanted.
From this point on, you became my world. Isn't is amazing how you can spend so much time pushing someone away but once you stop it takes only a small fraction of that time for them to become your entire world? The second I stopped pushing you away long enough to let you in, everything snowballed. The next thing I knew I was saying things like "I love you" out loud, I was protective and defensive of you, I was fighting for you. I think this is what scared me the most, especially since I didn't see it coming. I didn't know how easy it would be to give away every piece of myself to you. I was planning for the future at a time when the future is what scared me the most.
As time went on I noticed myself changing, becoming a more domesticated version of myself. I bought you food and clothes, I drove you places and picked you up at any given hour; I put my own work aside to fill out numerous job applications for you, I became your servant. I'd never been in love before, I didn't know what to expect but, I didn't realize how easily it could become so manipulative. You made me think that if I wasn't waiting on you hand and foot I didn't really love you. I was always going above and beyond for you but why did it never occur to me that you weren't doing the same?
