the fear of loss

ph: weepy hollow

We made no sense on paper.
None.

And yet, the first time we met each other's gaze, sprawled out on those hideous couches that smelled of feet and popcorn, the remainder of the room and its occupants faded out of any inkling of mental awareness I had left, because it was as if smoke machines has been let off inside me, spreading a fizzy, warm, dizzying vapor of overwhelming... feeling.

Feeling. The thing I'd been so careful to avoid ever since I could remember. Feeling had always inevitably lead to disappointment. Take it away, and all expectations with it, and you have yourself a bearable, albeit somewhat streamlined, rhythm of life.

You didn't fit into my life.
You still don't.

If we made a list about me, and a list about you, they'd repel each other with such force they'd create a black hole.

And yet, I cannot shake, even these many months later, that indescribable sense of peace that washed over me as we sat, curled up in that old purple couch, just talking. I don't remember what about. Like everything that had constituted the violent whirlpool of slightly self-destructive, acutely cynical, decidedly damaged thoughts, ideas and philosophies that made up my reality just... stopped.

Halted.

Halted... and collapsed into bits.

I used to be completely convinced that I'd die alone. In a large manor. Filled with books. And CDs. And art. And pictures of crazy times. With odd intellectual friends. And a garden. Close to a foggy, grey beach.

I knew that men were only there to disappoint you.
I knew it.
It was an inevitable.
In fact, I'd mulled the thought over so many times that it was a
soggy little puddle of
almost-accepted
fact.


My mother realized this, and subsequently shoved me into therapy.

All those years and sessions and techniques, and you managed to shatter all the damage some thought irreversible in a mere week.

We didn't really have to talk that much. We never really had to finish sentences. It just.. everything made sense. You got it. You got why I didn't let anyone close, because you didn't. You also didn't see the point in romantic entanglements.
To let our emotions manifest themselves properly was terrifying. We had no control over them. They led us to places where we'd be vulnerable.

Vulnerable.
Vulnerable from having survived similar shitty situations growing up. Life-altering, unfortunate events that transpired throughout any fault of our own, and we'd had to pay for them ever since. And we'd both been getting used to our idea of a life of solitude, of protected, distant interaction with others.

And yet we let our emotional armors fall in an instant, and dealt with that shift in our realities separately for the next week.
The pull was much, much too strong for us to hold on to them, despite how much we both fought it.

To let you hold that much power over me?

Devastating.

Shifting a person so utterly paralyzed from years of an intense fear of loss to complete vulnerability?

Truly devastating.

But...thank you.

No, really, thank you.

You changed me.

Fear of loss is a lot worse than losing something. Because the fear of loss makes you avoid situations where you would be in the position to lose anything.
And, well, that's losing all by itself, isn't it?

And now, we're writing to each other. We have been for awhile. They're benign, every day life stories. You tell me about your week, I tell you about mine. We don't do endearments. It's all been said. It's understood. We aren't under the illusion that the other is perfect. Far, far from it.

But we make sense.
Ask anyone in the room that time, with the smelly couches and the pull so strong it rearranged the particles in the air.
it's nonsense. We talked nonsense. It isn't relevant.
But we make so much non-sense together.


You say you could come visit me.
Come halfway across the world for me.

And I can't.
I can't fathom it.
We're young.
This is ridiculous.
I don't know why.
But it is.
...

I think I'm afraid of it. I'm afraid of being that completely vulnerable.

So vulnerable, I feel like my flesh has been stripped away and my muscles and cartilage are being exposed to the elements.

So vulnerable, I feel like every movement is at risk of making my bones shrink until they disappear, and leave me a crumpled pile of mess.

So vulnerable, I feel like if anyone were to touch me, I'd shatter into a million tiny pieces and a thousand tears.

I don't know.

To have my entirely new world - the one where men are humans, who are just as fucked up as we are, but the occasional respectful one comes along - depend on you?

It scares the shit out of me.

I'm waiting for you to fuck it up.
Maybe, if you come, you will.
Maybe I'm afraid you'll fuck it up if you come here.
Maybe you'll come and the pull will have dissipated.

See?
There it goes again.
The fear of loss.