Dear heart. I am the one in charge here. Neuroscience has long taken the responsibility of handling emotions from you. I am in charge of everything in this body, dear heart, I tell you what to do, and you do it. I think we both know I'm the better thinker here.
So why must you ache, why must you suffer for what I do? For every scalding thought you recoil in your cage and pound on the bars of your prison, wishing to be worn on someone's sleeve, dear heart, you've been hidden for too long. You don't know how this world works, and I do, so you must obey me when I tell you what to do. I know it hurts to keep beating despite of how the chemical reactions in my mind may affect you. For every feeling I take as a thought, every thought you mistake as a feeling, we both protest. For a long, long time we refuse to communicate with each other and I know you are tempted to rest, to stop beating because you're the one aching. It's not me, dear heart, that clenches like a fist, crumples inward like a useless scrap of paper, collapses on itself like a star on the brink of a supernova, it is not me, dear heart, that gets hurt.
Why do I only ache when I'm facing a mathematical problem, a complex theory, a questionable logic, a memory-loss crisis, why do I only suffer when I think really hard, even though I am the one in charge of emotions and feelings? Why is it you, not me, that a knife buries itself in when there is emotional pain? Why is it you that has be shredded into blood strings and crimson feathers of sinew, as if you were plucked from an angel's bleeding wings while heaven screeched its protest? Why are you the only one that is punished?
Dear heart, I am sorry. I didn't know why the body is made this way, that you have to be the one on the edge of a cliff while I sit somewhere safely plucking your strings. You are the one facing the endless plummet into a chasm of fangs and jagged rock, and it is up to me to make sure you stay alive, why, dearest, dearest heart do you have to be shackled to me with a silken collar? I can control you, but you have the freedom to fall, and if you do, I will be the one to grab at a protruding edge somewhere on the face of the cliff, and I will pull hard to get us back up.
Because if I don't, we will both die, and I'm the thinker here, I'm the one responsible for both of us, dear heart, I am the one in charge here!
You won't survive on your own. That's why I'm here to take care of us, because neither of us would exist without the other, without me you will be dead, without you, I will be worse than dead, so dear heart. Dearest heart, let me take the reins, let me hold the strings, let me tell you what to do, I'm sorry you can't be free. I'm sorry I hurt you with the thoughts and the memories inside me.
Let me control you. Let them call me abusive, let them call me terrible, let them call me cold and cunning, let them tell the world I am foul and violent, I don’t care!
I am here for you. I will take care of you. And when all you wish is to cease the wearying repetition of living, I will give you reason to keep breathing.