u/MemoryMaleficent1139

but cuddling, letting me stroke your hair and tracing patterns on your skin with my fingers feels intimate in the same way that kissing would. but kissing 1-1 feels too intimate? but you are always talking about wanting to kiss your friends and we hang out all the time?

so one of those is a lie or you are just the biggest baiter in the whole world which i already knew

and id never hold it against you bc that's your choice but it fucking hurts because clearly everything you say is meant for our other friend and not me. whatever

im actually just unlovable

but everyone already has too

ive decided im just gonna exist as a shell of myself

masking is easier

that way the only person i can hurt is myself and im not getting my heart broken or my feelings hurt or anything else by anyone else

truthfully it really just doesn't matter whether i do anything or nothing

i have never mattered to anyone else except maybe my mom (but even then ive been kicked and punched by her, just my price of existing i suppose 😋), so why would i or anyone or you care if i never show up to anything again and just disappear?

i have always known that there is no hope for me--so why do i ever get my hopes up?

never again!

too many times is enough.

im broken and im done

its over. im done

im sorry for everything

you're free from me forever

around 2 years ago (it's unclear when, exactly), at my apartment complex, behind the main building and in front of the garage, on the ground, about a foot and a half to the left to where i keep my car parked every day, a splash of white paint appeared.

it's not large. it's rather small. it strains against the darkness of the asphalt around it. it's impossible to ignore

i figured it would disappear. that over time, it would fade. maybe the rain would wash it away. maybe it would be scraped away under the creaking weight of metal machine-beasts. maybe the sun would bleach it out, logging each day as the paint shrunk from a chipped outline, to a smudge, to nothing.

but it is as bright and visible as its ever been. it leers at the darkness of homogenized rock melted around it.

a splash of white paint is just a splash of white paint. it's a boundary break when precision is required, it's user error, it's an unremarkable mistake given an outsized impression due its surroundings.

the remarkable thing, then, is the shape and form of this splash of white paint.

day after day: to go to my car, to return from the store, to spend time with my friends, to drive aimlessly, hoping something, anything was different--to do anything outside of the shelter of my living space,

i must encounter the splash of white paint

i must encounter the feather

that is you