I know these things ebb and flow. I know it will pass and I just have to do it anyway. I have to do it alone I have to do it scared but what matters most is that I just have to do it. I live in Austin, Texas and I have so much to do, so much to lose and even more to gain. I just hope it doesn't get worse. I often feel like I'm living a life that's bigger than my fears. There's a whole percentage of the world that doesn't experience the same range and depth of emotions that I do on a regular basis. I feel isolated from people because I feel like much of my brain and behavior doesn't make sense for most people much less myself but I have to remind myself that a lot of human behavior doesn't make sense and that's okay. This is the only consistent part of myself and I don't know what I'd be without it. My worst fear is that I never even tried despite it all. I know that with every hardship I've encountered in my life I've come out of it strong, more appreciative and fruitful. But it's moments like these where I wonder if the exchange is even worth it.

Sometimes I think people who hate themselves will punish you for loving them.

I woke up missing the mornings when this person would leave and I would touch their back and hold their hand because closeness is so important to me. The closeness of touching someone before they get up to leave and holding on to them. I realized that that closeness isn't there anymore and the worst part is that I'm not even sure if it was reciprocated. I was showing up being loyal and emotionally open and I felt that he was still elsewhere. Wandering. Chasing other things that he had no interest in involving me in. Missing exes. Keeping me at arm's length. He couldn't be present with me, not without making me feel like I was in constant competition with ghosts and strangers. And maybe that was easier for him than facing the truth: I was right there. And he didn't choose me. He overlooked me while I was still trying. He kept reaching for someone else while I was holding everything together. And now I'm left with this strange, confusing ache — this mix of being remembered and forgotten at the same time. In a whole new city that I had wanted him to live with me in. And when he talks about his ex, a new girl, and me in the same breath it makes me feel interchangeable. Like I was just another point on the timeline. Not someone irreplaceable. Not someone who mattered uniquely. I don't know what to make of these feelings and I don't even know if it's the reality of the situation. But I was present and I did care. I showed up in ways that cost me something not because I had to but because I wanted to. I feel like I'm sitting here holding the weight of everything that passed between us while the thought of other people before and after me fills his mind. And it cuts deeper than I expected, realizing someone I loved is already trying to rewrite what we were into something lighter, something easier to carry. I miss him a lot and sometimes I really want to reach out and tell him I miss him but the reality is that it'll just push him farther away. He already asked for space. He knows that I miss him — because I've told him time and time again. And yet every time I tell him I miss him he responds in a way that reminds me that I'll never be his first choice.

I came back to my apartment alone today after a full day of making myself do things that would help me feel better about where I was at in life and I think one of the hardest things to sit with is the clarity that hits after something has really hurt you. I don't really open myself up to people because it's normally easier for them to use my experiences against me and half the time I feel like no one really sees me for who I am. I think one of the worst feelings that i've felt in a while was opening myself up to someone who repeatedly told me and showed me that they couldn't reciprocate those emotions and feelings in the way I needed them to. Instead they would say that my experiences were not unique and that they've actually felt the way I have for other people. Maybe they meant it to be validating. But it didn't feel that way. Because in moments when I'm vulnerable and opening up about my pain, the last thing I want is for someone to minimize it by turning it into something about their past or someone else because that's not empathy it's avoidance. When they say "I've felt that way before," it's stepping out of our moment and stepping back into their own history, like they're recycling old feelings instead of actually listening. And that makes me feel even more alone. Like they were never really with me in the conversation. Like they couldn't be bothered to stay present with what I was saying. Just offering recycled feelings that don't actually touch the depth of what I'm trying to say. And yeah of course it hurts to hear that the things I thought were specific and meaningful are things they've already felt for someone else. I wasn't wrong for wanting to be met with care instead of comparison. And I wasn't asking for too much. I was asking to be seen, not in relation to their past, but for who I was to him right then. It's the ache of realizing you were once so close to someone body, heart, soul and they moved through that closeness like it was nothing. Like my character was disposable. Like my care was convenient or an afterthought. A placeholder for real accountability or real care. And it hurts even more because they know what I've been through, they know what I feel and they still chose to leave.

Camus would say: this is the human condition — to long, to lose, and to continue anyway. I knew he was building a life somewhere else, and perhaps I should admire that, but what lingered was not admiration, it was the hollowing feeling of being forgotten in the pursuit of someone else's future. I loved him. Deeply. And even if he couldn't return that love in the way I needed, that doesn't make my love a waste, it makes it proof that I'm capable of a real connection. Which is a beautiful, terrifying, holy thing. I wasn't asking him to throw his dreams away. I was just hoping that someone who said he cared would care all the way through. I can be right that he was struggling, that he wasn't proud of where he was, that he couldn't handle love because he didn't love where he was in life. But I can also be right that I didn't deserve to be the collateral damage for his pain. I'm grieving a future that could never exist not because I wasn't enough or too much, but because he wasn't ready. And I don't have to punish myself for believing in someone too much. Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is stand still long enough to feel everything fully and then move forward with intention.