Exposed.

Vulnerability and all the ways it finds us anyway.

Ah, there it is again, all that vulnerability.

How precious and petrifying and delicate a thing.

I really tried to love two-dimensionally; but I just couldn’t find anything to hold onto.

Heart first, chest bare, veins through translucent skin.

Could I ever really prepare, for the inevitability that this might just be a moment of time? Would I even do differently, if I could see the counting down?

If I knew where all the cracks would form, maybe I’d stop catastrophising them.

Has anyone ever found a way not to be a fool in love? If they have, I wonder if they wished they’d been braver.

My nervous system is fried. It screams at me; all those heart breaks, you silly girl. I remember how it feels when skin and hope melt off the bone. What it’s like to have to pick yourself up in pieces, to have to reconstruct yourself like some monster of a thing, to leave the night light on like someone haunted.

The unravelling tragedy of it all, hope is a very dangerous friend.

No script, no map, no certainty.

Is there a way to have a beautifully deep and wonderful life, without it being equal parts painful, too?

You can’t keep your heart thawing on ice forever, being frozen in time gets in the way of the warmth. Curling up next to them in a hospital bed, a small gift reminder of that thing that was important to you, driving hours and back, buffing a pillow in anticipation for an indent, saying goodbye when it really means I’ll miss you; these generous expressions of humanness demand to be felt, not drip fed.

Please don’t let this go away we don’t love to keep.

How do I avoid all this exposure love fully, the heart needs it.

This is going to end badly there is no shame in risking hurt.

I can’t possibly endure another luke-warm, guess-I-should, this-is-fine kind of liking.

If it wasn’t written into my genetics, I would’ve chosen to love this full, anyway.

So I do the brave thing,

I follow the fear.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us…Your playing small does not serve the world…. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” - Marianne Williamson.

All my love, C x