Too late.
Everything surfaces when it’s too late.
I dread the days to come, those that I will surely spend alone, but it doesn’t matter anymore. The days of striving to make friends and please people have ended, and I only want to retreat into a shell and hollow myself out. These emotions and the pain that ensues: I can do fine without them.
These people that watch me as if I am a pathetic insect—too meek to stand up for myself, too dull to approach for a friendship—they could just crush under their expensive shoes: I don’t need them anyone.

What the hell was I thinking? Believing things had changed and for the better, at that. Carefully stepping around others never amounted to anything, and I finally realize that… for the third time in my life. Finally feeling wanted and loved is such a risky place to be because not long after, the unraveling begins. The petty drama that tears you apart, the stupid arguments that form salty streams, and the flickering will power to stay away when more than anything, you just want it back. These are my friendships, different people with unique personalities, but one equation that can only have one result.

Friend: (n) a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection

The definition is a rather tenuous one, if you ask me. Hardly what I would consider a friend. But maybe I’m wrong here. My ideals are often based on what I have never had, and thus, my expectations soar, making every aspect of my life all too easy to crumble with disappointment.

What other reason do I have to move along as best I can with the rapidly flowing currant, people as a whole traveling from Point A to Point B, and their worries barely seem in sync with mine. I can’t help noticing the color of my skin, how it’s shades different than any human being on Earth. I listen to my meticulous words that drop to the ground, a failed attempt to convey how the gears work in my brain. I calculate my actions only to find myself back at the bottom, and no one understands the absolute sincerity behind “Fuck my life.” Everything becomes evident far too late.

Here, when I’ve wasted seventeen years trying to find a place, building and rebuilding, goals at hand but always far too distant to reach, and I come up empty. Two breaths short of human.

I picture myself wandering the streets alone, eyes downcast, an obvious show of my insecurity… but also, apparently, a warning to keep a safe space between. I know the loneliness that manifests when I rewind empty thoughts. Oh the things I could be doing right now. And I know the cocktail of devastation and rage that boils underneath my composed outer layer. I want to throw things. It’s an internal struggle between what I want and what I need.

Before turning away from it all, and subjecting myself to the slow deterioration of what remains, I step back. She held out a hand and talked me down, completely unperturbed by my disturbing inner toils, and he returned my love, turning my ordinary train wreck into a glint of excitement. Collectively they turn some nights into recollections that don’t hurt to recount.

But none of that would matter if I just lost it all.