Work Text:
There is something that I do in my brain, it’s something I wish I didn’t do but I truly cannot help it. I take every good thing in my life and try to figure out how it will end, as I am so utterly convinced that it will end, so that I may be prepared for it. I train myself as to how I will react to the emotions I will feel, I learn to manage them before they happen. I predict the end of things long before they begin, a coping mechanism born of the only unending thing in my life, a series of endings. I fear that there may be no way for me to prepare for the end of this. I fear that I have fallen too far, that the water I am afraid of has already downed me and I have not noticed. Far too distracted by her eyes, and his voice, by their existences in my corner of the universe to notice that perhaps I am too far gone.
My mind is in a perpetual state of contention, swerving over the double yellow lines dividing the ending in the future and the utter contentment in the present. I can say I love you and mean it while still thinking about how much it will hurt me when they say goodbye. There are universes in my mind that I can visit where we are together until the end but life is short my dear and the years stretch on for so long, I am worried you will grow bored of my ramblings. I am worried you will grow tired of my hesitating silences, my reliance on body language and physical touch to communicate rather than words. I can write with the best of them but you both know that speaking is not my strong suit.
I do not know how to tell them that I have seen a thousand of our endings although we have barely begun. How do you tell someone that you love them and in the same breath say that you are so used to goodbyes that you are already practicing for theirs. Teaching yourself how to make sure it does not kill you, attempting to make yourself grieve for an ending you have been through but have not yet experienced. I hope they know the amount of effort I am putting into being here, with them, rather than in the future where stars have collided and volcanoes have erupted. I want them to be in my universe forever, their warmth and energy fueling a planet that I was so sure was dying.
I am learning of new kinds of catastrophes, I am learning to think of futures where we are all together, the three of us. I am learning to want things again, learning to want to keep the things I have been given. There is a split horizon, one where we are together and one where we are apart. One where I have learned to rely on people I love, one where I am once again broken.
The ramblings of a broken man, who has pieced himself back together, trying to remember that vulnerability does not always mean destruction.
That love does not always equate to pain.