Asterisk*

Wishes and Warfare*

*Regarding the mental battle in the mind

Agonizing pain,

Shutting eye in death,

Sleep never wake,

Life never end.

But living;

In a matter that crucifies,

Is another matter entirely,

Maybe it's hard enough,

But not enough,

Enough of the matter, the end.

Apollo

 There's something about living a certain way that you can't replicate with anything else. I know that now. But I didn't know that before. I spent a huge part of my life searching for that feeling and thinking it was truly unattainable for me. I saw other people living that way and I wanted it. There's something about wanting to do it all that keeps you from doing it all. You start to overthink everything, and then you can't live life the way that you want because you're scared. Terrified. Then you stop wishing for the idea to live because you feel like it's an impending stress every step of the way. That's not how living should feel. It should feel like you're weightless, like the world can carry you around and place good things at your doorstep. It should feel freeing, like the jacket you had on for all of winter can finally come off. It should feel really liberating, and if it doesn't, you're not living just yet.

I thought I was living before, I really did. But going back, I wasn't. I was pretending I was living, trying to convince myself that I was really doing something great. My mind was a battleground, one half telling me to give up the act and the other telling me to keep it up. I had it up when I first came here, but the first side won the war when I started meeting the people that meant everything to me now.

Kyra, Jinx, and Marcus were all like these magical elves, coming together to almost fix me up to be who I am right now. They were these insanely different people that I would never fathom together, yet they somehow managed to bond seamlessly. Even Kadance, the person who I thought would be weirded out by our weird jokes, ended up fitting right in. Maybe he was just being nice, but there's a difference between acting and doing something. That wasn't acting. I guess it just goes to show that different people can come together and make something beautiful, like a stretch of yarn that could never break.

Jinx, Kyra, and I were all back on campus now. I had picked Jinx up from his mom's house instead of where I dropped him off, but I didn't want to ask any questions with Kadance in the car, just in case he wasn't comfortable with anything. Kadance drove off in his own car that he had parked on campus once we got back. Marcus was coming back in two days and classes started the day after he came back. I had no idea what I would even say to him. We both said a lot of things that neither of us expected for us to even really say out loud. I know it might not seem like a big deal, but it should be.

Every word someone says is a choice. A thing you have to think about when you do. I have been the person who doesn't really think about what they say until after they've already said it. I still kind of am. It's interesting talking to Marcus because sometimes he'll take a minute and just sit and think, formulating a sentence in his brain before he says it. At times, I'll try to guess what he's thinking, trying to remember synonyms of the words he says after he's done thinking. There's never one time where I felt like he didn't say the right words. I guess the takeaway from that should be to think before you speak, but I just can't, otherwise I would never say anything ever again.