Oh.

Now I know why.
These echos that still haunt me, the screams that constantly sing my insufficiency. I can't think of a time I wanted to hurt myself more. Maybe its just characteristic of pain, of heart ache, of sickness.

I almost told someone today. I was tearing away the last trinkets, the final gifts, practically shouting the futility of romantic relationships. Sebastian was staring. He expressed that he thought I was improvising a soap. I would have corrected him, but the bell rang.

The thing with telling people is that they always understand in their own contexts. They say "Oh great noodle flakes, its so true" but because of their own relationships. The only person who shares this kind of hurt... is you. And you, you can't matter.

I don't want my circumstances right now. Math team, stats, ELA, humanities... I can deal with them, but I hate waking up every morning in complete opposition to the idea of making progress. I want to give up. I tried so hard, but the little advancement I make in cold, miserable perseverance is always erased in a single night's indulgences. Like, that condom was hilarious. So many parts of my days are funny and enjoyable, but it all falls barely short of meaningless. I don't want to participate. I'm so tired.

On good days, I do.
But only because I'm not done dealing my share of heartbreak.

Holes.

I have one more story that I think needs dredging up now.

Retreat was held at Carthage College. I rave about running through Pioneer Park, but Carthage is where I fell head over heels in love with God's inexplicably beautiful creation. This is where I felt the purest compassion and remorse, the shaking grip of my soul being violently cleansed by what I know to be the Holy Spirit. This is where I was okay. This is where the rising sun ceaselessly floods the lake. This is where I sat on the rocks, utterly alone, singing I Will Rise to the crashing waves.

This is where I stood, one year later, behind the doors of the sanctified praise and prayer night room. I was trying to forgive someone; I was confessing; I was crying; I was giving up the iron fist of my sins. But none of these thoughts were heard. He wasn't listening. After so long, he still didn't understand. One of my best friends turned down my offer to pray for her. And it went on. People did not want me to pray for them. I was terrified because something was wrong. Something fundamentally wrong with me made itself so obvious. Our pastor warned us about people of other belief systems. Their prayers brought demons. These people... like me.

But I want to say this. Regardless of my questionable, endless corruption, there was one moment during last year's retreat that shook me. It happened outside those doors. Another friend asked to pray for me. He was a character intertwined complexly in the realm of relationships, especially this one. It was not to his fault; my affections for his friendship are completely assured and without a single thread of anger. He prayed not in tongues but in truth and ingenuity and absolute friendship. We sat apart, hand in hand, and the tide of unprecedented, unstained understanding and gratefulness washed through. And then we stood not even an inch apart, and everything I thought I believed about my circumstances was broken.

Although hindsight bias can make moments a lot more dramatic than they are, I spent the rest of the night shivering uncontrollably and in mass confusion. And this is where I could no longer tell anyone the truth, and so then, two holes were shot through my life. One is bitterly crumbled in stitches, closed. One is vacant, and I expect it to never be fully occupied again.

We can bump heads. We can have the hardest conversations about love and hurt and pick up emergency Skype calls immediately. We can build memory palaces together. We can run and sweat and you can surprise me from behind and tell me your deepest faults. You can tell the most wonderful, stupid jokes in the world. You can teach me everything about those forbidden topics. We can be blatantly honest and wholeheartedly loving, but that little hole is reserved. Reserved for no one left.

Its best this way.

Mattering.

I think its time to talk.

It was mid-September. There wasn't a single week since the summer in which there was a night that I didn't cry myself to sleep. Every day was an argument, a fight. He called me names I never imagined. While I waited to hear him speak again, he came and left and came and left. Midnight was punctuated with meaningless apologies. They say (and by they, I credit C.S. Lewis) to love at all is to be vulnerable. I was undoubtedly shed of every protection I ever knew. Parts of me were completely foreign; I made them up, so I could construct more love, more desperation. I expected weakness to become strength, but instead, it destroyed me.

I fought it. I begged. I have never begged before, but now, I was pleading on my knees.  I drew copies of Bone and Calvin and Hobbes, pictures of immortalized friendship. They are still tear-stained. I sent unreturned messages. Everything I did was through a blur of tears. I went to school every other day with my eyelids stuck, still swollen. At assemblies, I sat, immobile. Then I got up and cried in the bathroom. I begged, come back. Please come back. Then it was the only thing I ever heard. I sat in history, English, physics, math, hearing only one thing in my head. Come back. And all he said was go away. For every go away, there were a hundred come backs.

He said he was lost, lost without me. Lost because we used to know each other's deepest secrets, and now we were afraid to share. Lost because we could pray into each other's shoulders. Lost because after a long day, we were each other's light, a little comfort in this phony world. But boys are so dumb. We were lost a long time ago.

One day, I woke up, and I was done. In a split second, my heart closed. My emotions froze. I got up and smiled at my teachers' jokes and appreciated my friends' love stories. Slowly, I started throwing things away. I shoved clothes into the basement. These belongings were forgotten, because you do not belong in my life. The pain all but disappeared, because you no longer matter.

We talked recently. You shafted me, again. You said you cared; you said you wanted to be friends again. But in truth, I could care less. Do you remember when I begged you? I'm sick of you.

Here's what matters now. I'm also sick of relationships. I barely believe in love. There's no couple in this school or college or world who can convince me that something deep and genuine can result from romance. There is no man of any stature or intelligence or suavity that can steal my heart. But here's another matter - I love all relationships. Without so much expectation, they are so easy. My friends, a great deal of them, especially, hold a standard of the golden zero. Disappointment is replaced by careless acceptance. I find a great deal of meaning in friendship, in chilling. I am done lying and hiding.