a worn body, catharsis

desire / depletion by which one accepts what is given while something inside is either still asking or already emptied

i keep circling the feeling of being empty. having a hole in your heart that is so loud and out there that I can even notice when I look at myself in the mirror. but if i look at it directly, acknowledge it, address it, it’ll solidify into something real and then i’ll have to deal with it. currently it’s easier to let it leak into everything else. the way i walk. the way i write. the way my brain either turns completely hungry or completely full.

everything is exhausting and cruel and I can’t help but hold onto something that never asked to be held this tightly. i feel overfilled. like my emotions are spilling into places they don’t belong. grocery store aisles. car rides. moments that should be empty and peaceful but aren’t.

i think about permanence more than i should. about how some things get to stay while others dissolve in the background. i think about skin and time and how certain marks are allowed to outlive us. i am jealous of your tattoos and how long they will stay with you long after i go. the thought feels ugly when i say it out loud. envy disguised as longing. longing pretending to be philosophical.

there was a version of the world where everything almost worked. I know its there somehow and its a place I can never visit. its far from perfect. but its where I would probably feel most content. but can contentment and happiness even coexist? i’ve been wondering that since a conversation with a friend. what I know is i don’t trust happiness. it feels invasive, like it shows up uninvited, rearranges everything, and then leaves before you can ask it to stay. but contentment is the one that scares me. it makes you still. stuck. unable to move. happiness at least feels feral, loud, and reckless and leaves fingerprints everywhere. contentment doesn’t touch things. it sits inside you and waits. it lowers the ceiling without you noticing. and suddenly you’re always ducking and calling it comfort.

it makes you believe this is enough. like a threat. like a promise. it makes your wanting feel embarrassing. childish. something to grow out of. so you start starving yourself. you say no before anyone else can to make yourself smaller less demanding so they dont notice you exist and decide to leave. you become quiet enough to ignore and overlook and forget to be spoken to but never quiet enough to disappear.

the worst part is how convincing it is. how it feels like maturity. like healing. like becoming someone calmer and better and easier to love. meanwhile something in you is still scratching the walls. still wanting and wanting and wanting and you pretend not to hear it because hearing it would mean movement and movement would mean risk.

and the second you ask for a little more, not even demandingly just reminiscently at the times you used to be happy at first, everything changes. the air changes. you feel it immediately. that’s when you know they don’t coexist. contentment doesn’t survive desire. it can only exist if you agree to stop asking. it will give you just enough to stay. just enough to lie still. never enough to feel alive.

i don’t think happiness disappears when contentment arrives. i think it gets buried. watching. waiting. and sometimes late at night it scratches from underneath just to remind you what you gave up. sometimes i can’t tell if i’m at peace or just too tired to reach for anything else.

i don’t know when things become inevitable. when a feeling stops being a phase and starts being a pattern. i keep asking myself if intensity is just another form of misunderstanding. if wanting something badly is the same as wanting it wrong.

sometimes it feels like my emotions rot instead of resolving. like i leave them in the basement of my mind for way too long and they come back altered. heavier. meaner. way less willing to explain themselves. i press on them to see if they still hurt and they do just in smaller, and definitely way more humiliating ways.

i don’t trust my own urgency anymore. i don’t know if it’s intuition or damage. if the ache is pointing toward truth or just repeating itself because it learned the shape of my body. i confuse hunger with destiny. i confuse longing with proof. i convince myself that if something hurts this much it absolutely MUST be real even when it’s only just familiar and the pain is simply just comfortable.

there’s something frightening about realizing a feeling might not be temporary. that it might not be passing through but settling in. unpacking. rearranging the furniture. teaching me how to live smaller to adjust to it. i keep waiting for it to leave and instead it keeps learning my schedule.

maybe inevitability isn’t loud. maybeit doesn’t arrive like a disaster. maybe it shows up as repetition. the same thought returning in different fonts. the same want knocking no matter how many times i pretend not to be home.

and sometimes i wonder if i’ve mistaken obsession for depth. if the thing i call intensity is just me refusing to let go of something that can’t hold onto me. if wanting something this badly isn’t devotion or courage but a failure to imagine a life where i don’t have to ache to feel alive, successful, desired, adored.

anyway.

what I know for sure now is that I fear desire will rip me open again and find me too rotten to attain.