Didn't anybody
Ever stop to tell you.
Star's are known to collapse,
So they can be reborn.

A star can't belong to anyone.
Something that dangerous, that wild.
It cannot be tamed.

Something that dark, that light,
Can not be held and confined within a human heart,
Or the heart will shatter
And the star will collapse.

And he has collapsed. And that's okay.
Because he has been reborn
As my Bluebird.
And I love my Bluebird
More than forever.
More than always.
More than the moon and stars.

Close your eyes.

It doesn't hurt at all, I promise.

If you get scared, you can squeeze my hand. I don't mind.

I know it looks bad, but it's okay. It's all okay.

You don't need to be afraid.

I promise.

But when I open my eyes,
I find rather quickly
That there's no one else here.
I was talking to myself.
Reassuring myself.

The room is blank.
Grey.
The light that comes from
The only window
Is dull and grey.
Overcast.

It's the only thing that's comforting here.

It's too quiet. Too empty.
Too hollow.

The silence is deafening.
My chest feels heavy.

If I close my eyes,
For a second,
I can remember another place.
A place with color.
A place with you.

For a second,
I can imagine it.
I can pretend I'm there.

I can almost feel you there,
For a second.

But it doesn't last nearly long enough,
And then you're gone.

The problem is,
This room doesn't exist.
It's a metaphor.

Because the moments in time that I feel (almost) normal,
Where I am (almost) passing for neurotypical,
That's when I see you.
I'm there.
I can almost reach you,
Touch you.
I can almost be like you.
I can almost...
Almost.

I can only ever almost.
And almost has never been enough.

And I can tap my hands against yours,
Or rub my scars,
Or hold my doll closer to me,
Or bounce up and down,
But all the stimming in the world
Won't keep me calm forever
And it won't make me better.

And I just want to be better.
I don't want to be sick.
I'm so sick of being sick.

I've tried accepting it all as part of me.
As it being me.

But I can't.

Because I see the way you look at me.
It's the same way everyone looks at me
When they think I don't notice.
I know that look.
It's the same look that teachers gice their students when they just can't help them with their problem.
The only good thing as that you don't
Use the voice that everyone else does.
I know that voice, too.
It's the same voice people use when talking to a scared animal that might become hostile.

I am not an animal.

I am not a lost cause!

But I see the way you look at me.
I know that look.
Everyone gives me that look,
Once they figure it out.

I am not an animal,
I am not a lost cause.
At least,
That's what I keep trying to tell myself.

But I don't even believe it anymore.

I want to be better.
I want to be better,
But I don't think I can be the better
You want me to be.

I think the reason
Broken people
Are always drawn
To other
Broken people
Is that they
See each other's missing pieces
And they're so aware of their own
Missing pieces.
And they think
"Maybe your pieces can go where mine did,
And mine can go where yours did,
And together
We can be almost whole."

But broken people
Aren't very good at being whole
When they've been broken for so long.
They don't know how to be anything
But broken.

So I end up pushing you away.
I push you far, far away from me.
Because even though I need you around,
And I desperately want you with me,
I don't know how to be whole
anymore.
And that's what you do.
You make me whole.

And I push you and push you and push you
But you don't leave.
Even though you have absolutely
Every reason to leave.
Even though no one would question it.
Everyone would understand it.
Most people would be more than supportive of it.

But instead, you stay.

And I don't know if I make you whole,
But I know that sometimes you push me away too.
Not as far.
You never push me away as far as I push you,

But I am always ready to leave.
Because I've already done the sticking-around-when-no-one-wants-me thing.
And I've learned that there's no chasing people.
If they want to leave,
They will leave,
And you cannot ever stop them.

And everyone leaves, sooner or later.

You can't make a person want you
And you can't make a person choose you.

And someone can want you every second of every day,
But if they don't choose you,
It doesn't matter.

That's what I've learned.

So when you push me away from you,
My instinct is to leave.
I've never really had an actual home
Or an actual family,
So leaving isn't actually hard for me.
As much as I want to stay right here,
In your arms forever,
Leaving is easy.
It's natural for me.
I never knew how to stay.
I've always been a run-away kind of person.
Besides, it never takes anyone long to move on from me.
I leave,
They move on,
Their lives are better.

The hard part isn't leaving, for me.
It's forgetting.
Because I don't forget,
I can't move on.

Everyone I've left,
Everyone that has left me,
I remember.
I remember the hurt.
I remember them.

I'm not afraid to leave
When you push me away
Because I know you'll move on quickly
And I know you'll be better off
When I'm gone.

But when I push you away
I'm always so scared you'll go.
Because I don't want to move on,
And I don't want you to think I'll just forget you.
Because I won't.
Because I can't.

And I know it hurts that I'm so quick to leave,
And I know that knowing that it's only because I'm so used to going
Doesn't make it better.

I'm going to try to stay,
Because you stay.
Because I won't ever forget you,
And I don't want you to forget me.

I used to think
That once you love someone--
And I mean really really
Love them,
With every part of you--
I think once you love someone,
Well...
You never really stop.

I am hyper aware
That my skin is cold
That I am not being touched.
I am uncomfortable
Like my skin is crawling.
It's almost like when I am being touched,
Because I hate when people touch me.
But instead of wanting to rip my skin off my bones,
It's like I don't even have skin to begin with.

I want to be held by you,
Loved by you.
I want your kiss to quench my thirst,
And your hands to hush my growling stomach.

I am skin-starved,
Touch-starved,
And it's making me drift away.
And I don't want to be far away,
But I know that I already am.

I need your love,
Your heart,
To help anchor me back down,
So that I can stay.
So that I don't
Drift away into volatile nothingness.

I've been thinking alot
Lately.

I've been thinking a lot
Especially
About something someone once said to me.

"I just want you to know
That the kind of love you deserve
Is unconditional.
You deserve someone
Who love all of you, every part.
Who doesn't require that
You change somehow.

Because all of these horrible things that happened,
They're a part of you.
They are woven deeply and intricately within your heart.
And this boy, I hope you know that he would absolutely
Take the opportunity to change these parts of you.
I hope you know that he would jump at the chance.
And you deserve so, so much more than that.
You deserve a type of love that is unconditional.
You deserve a type of love that loves and accepts and cherishes every single part of you.
Even the broken parts.
Even the parts that aren't very pretty to look at.
You deserve so much more than anyone would be selfless enough to give."

The last thing I ever said to him was that he was wrong.

I am that person
That is slightly off center

My moral compass
Almost always
Points North,
But I have a tendency
To get lost.

I am told that I am "good".

But please,
Define "good"?

Because there are twisted,
Inky black parts to my heart.

But I will always
Try to be stronger
Than my darkness.

It is hard to pretend
I am solely a creature of Light,
But if I don't,
Then I will cave in
And be consumed by
My own shadow.

"Darkness, real darkness, is more than just a lack of light."

I should have known this was going to happen.

(Because this is what always happens.)

I fall for you. You fall for me. I try to keep myself from getting too attached. You knock down all my walls. I try to warn you (before it's too late) that this is going to happen. I tell you to leave before it's too late. But it's already too late. Because you become attached and I seem like I'm so good, and so willing, and so very desperate to be loved. But I am only one of those things. So I seem like a great option. A great prospect. Trust me, you aren't the first boy who has wanted to marry me in such a short amount of time.

(But you are the only one who actually did.)

But sooner or later, it starts to happen. I start to feel you drifting. I start to feel you pull away. And maybe I'm just imagining things, but then I start to withdraw. I pull away. I try to pull away from you as far as you will let me go.

Because, y'know, I run. That's what I do.

But for some reason, with you, I will only go as far as you are willing to chase me.

I guess it's because some part of me believed you. Some part of me believed that this time was different. That this time, I would have enough love to give to make someone stay. To make you stay.

But I am a hypocrite. Because I believed that you would stay when I have never known how to do that myself. At the very least, though, I am learning, slowly. Because you have taught me.

And even if I was right, and even if I can feel you slipping away like how it feels when you pick up a fist-full of sand, I want you to know that I still believe.

I still believe in this. In you. In us.

And even if I should have known this would happen, it still might not happen.

And even if this is always happens, I still fell for you.
, and that is reason enough to believe.