• I made myself get out of bed mostly because if I didn’t then, at that exact moment in time, I probably never would. It’s funny the way that life works like an elevator, this constant up and down. And no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that you’re the one in charge, pressing the buttons, an unwelcome circumstance, and bam tower of terror, back to the first floor. For a while there, I was accelerating. I had lost all the weight, not that much in reality, maybe only ten pounds, but to me, there hadn’t been a whole lot of weight to begin with. And those ten pounds in particular, they’d always bothered me, sat on my skin like excess, excuses for why I wasn’t exactly who I wanted to be. And without them, and with you, and without the make-up and fake friends and everything else pretend, I’d felt alive with a realness and truth so safe I was sure it was permanent. But then bam, elevator buttons, tumbling hills, and oceans and oceans of tears. I’ve been here once before. It was back in high school. It’s amazing how the distance between particular years of your life can grow and extend in your imagination. Sometimes you can hide all that you used to be in this back corner box of your brain and you were so sure you’d taped it shut so it could never open again. But surprise surprise, the tears turn the cardboard into mush and all those demons slip out from the wasted material, singing in you ears those songs of sadness. Sadness. You don’t know how to change the channel, dress it up into anything less defeating. It becomes you. Your entire body curls up like a disease and your bed and your room are the only things that you know will accept you like this, as you are. Other people, the outside world, they don’t know how to handle you. You need special gloves and bubble wrap, but at the same time, the very fact that you know this makes you want to disappear. You don’t want their sympathy because if you talk about it, it only shows stronger. It shines through your skin, ripe banana bruises, and those tears, those tears, you just can’t control them. It’s so inappropriate. That’s the first word that comes to mind. If you saw this affliction on somebody else, would you really want to be their friend? Comforting. It takes so much energy. No matter what they say, it still won’t fix it. They can’t help you. You can’t help you. The only thing that can is time, and time passes by the way it always does, unaffectedly, unaware of your own crashing world. You want to tell him because you can’t contain it all. If there’s another person who knows, maybe he can help you feed the monster, scare it away. Afterall, that’s what love is. Love shines through tear drop rain, ignores words like “breakdown” and “unstable” and “absolutely terrified”. Underneath all that gunk, he still thinks your amazing. So why can’t you see that for yourself? There’s another person who might understand but talking to him means pressing the buttons and zooming backwards to your former life. You don’t want to meet him under these circumstances. “I’m worried because I care,” that was back when you actually were fine, despite all outward appearances. Now that you could actually use him, you’re no longer someone he can recognize. It would be dangerous to loop him into this, the story of your life from which he was already dismissed back five chapters ago. Bringing him back means regression. It makes it real. It makes that happiness, that ultimate goal, that pass the finish line collect the gold medal feeling from the end of the year suddenly seem unstable. But you were so sure! And you still are. There’s a part of you that can dream past this year of blankets and separation, of too much time and the word ALONE pounding drum beats in your ear. At least this time, you have a time frame, a definite promise. One year. 365 days, and not even all of them without him. It’s better than last time. But your older than last time. And your surer, and stranger, and closer to the edge than last time. Is it wrong to make the comparison? Do these two chapters belong in the same book, even? Learn from your mistakes. You thought you had. This new way that you love Dan, you have pin pointed the difference. You never felt the weight of Matt’s happiness. He held yours like an infant, singing it to sleep, and you were too caught up in your high school world and hopes for the future to even notice how delicate the contents were of the package you carried. When that ended, it took so long to rebuild. You don’t want to talk about that any more. That world of memories is a whole locked up room. That one you’re sure you swallowed the keys on.

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