Keeper Of My Heart

Since the beginning, I've been in pain. I wished to get rid of it, but no, the world is not a wish-granting factory.

Now all I'm feeling is fabricated rage. Rage that my heart has been compromised. That I'm making the same mistakes I've made before. But mostly rage that I stopped caring. That the not caring feels worse than the pain. I want to care, and pretending to be angry is the only way I've found to feel something again. It's not much, but it's more than nothing.

He doesn't want to hurt me, but he's an idiot if he thinks that I won't be hurt. He doesn't realize that he already has, because there's no such thing as 'no strings attached,' not for me. But strangely, I like the aching. It's a pleasure to be heartbroken by him. And if I'm going to be hurt anyway, I might as well choose him.

We share a place where we're not apart, but we're not together either. Sadly, a colon and right parenthesis don't reveal the sadness behind the smile. The lips forced upward, never reaching your eyes. You don't realize that when you say 'always' and I say 'okay,' I see a promise that I'm not sure you'll keep. After all, how can you if you never know you made it? Maybe you'll keep the promise anyway, but I can't expect that of you, and it hurts even though it shouldn't. No, you don't see that pain, always demanding to be felt.

You are like a book everyone should read, but I don't want to share you. I keep you to myself, as if that makes you mine. It's selfish, and I have no excuse other than that I'm selfish. I don't want to see a world without you, but I'm not going blind either. I'm saving the pain for a time when I need it.

We're only young once, and I want to be stupid someday, before it's too late. I want to ignore the consequences, but I can't. My every step is full of questions and worries, and my existentially fraught strolls through the cemetery don't allow for ignorance.

I could wax eloquent about the injustice of scrambled eggs being stereotyped as breakfast food, or the strange nature of architecture. I could comment on the inevitability of oblivion, that no matter how deeply we are loved (and it is better to be loved deeply rather than widely) we will all one day be forgotten. I could expound upon the existence of universe, and how it gravitates toward consciousness because it just wants to be noticed. But I won't, because even though I wish it all mattered, we already know that the world is not a wish-granting factory. And besides, this isn't meant to be a philosophical reflection. It's meant to be a eulogy.

Have you ever noticed that when you lose someone, they're the only person you want to talk to? I've never written a eulogy before, but I think I've realized something. The eulogies, the praises of the deceased, the words of attempted comfort- those are for the living. Honesty is for the dead. They deserve as much, don't you think?

I've never written a eulogy before. And this one isn't for you, it's for us. We're running out of time. Time screws everybody, and you and I are no exception. Just as Augustus Waters ended, so will our infinity end. In the middle of a sentence, just like life. Humans tend to leave their mark in the form of scars, a hidden reminder of the loved and the lost.

But love lasts as long as life does, and I'll carry these scars with me always.