enough to be my tipping point

A letter, to you --

The time on my phone reads 1:04AM, its bright white digital display of numbers searing into the back of my mind as my tired eyes struggle to read it. Even the smallest task I struggle to perform takes an effort that brings more ache to everything that I already am. I know I shouldn’t still be out this late, but the wooden park bench that calls me a friend gets lonely around this hour, and sometimes I just need to be alone with someone who will care and that’s how it usually goes down. The bench is especially cold tonight after the new rainfall that left glistening drops on its now-rusty metal edges, but I don’t mind because I’m too numb to feel the cold and even if I did I’d just pull my black cotton hoodie closer and hope that I’d stay warm enough to make it a little longer. Somehow I doubt that would help ease the icy feeling inside that sends shivers down my skin whenever I’m trapped in sickening realities that I just want to escape.

I’m heartsick and I know it. I’m sick of hearing shouting downstairs drone on over and again until it’s stuck in my head when I can do nothing about it. I’m sick of staying up late because I’m too scared to fall asleep for fear that I’ll die once more in my dreams and you’ll do nothing about it. I’m sick of crimson-tinted lenses that make me tremble but I can’t seem to give up living through. If I still had the strength enough to speak, I’d whisper to you my last words or maybe they’ll die on my lips along with my heart and you’ll find them and cry yourself to sleep beside my lifeless body and wish that you had cared before now. Then those words will torture you forever as they play through your mind and haunt your dreams until you can recite them from memory and decide to carve them into your skin, because now you know you were both my reason to live and to die.

It’s a lovely moonlit night in the park but I don’t think it’s quite time for me to leave yet, because my heart still feels restless and I’m not sure that I’d make it home if I left now, if I can really call anywhere home at this point. I guess that I’m just wandering along waiting for something magnificent to happen but somehow deep down I know that nothing will. I’m tired of being the strong one who’s expected to save everyone else because I know that I’m not strong enough anymore and for once I just want to be the one that’s too weak to go on and then maybe you’ll decide to save me instead. But for now I’ll just count the streetlights as they blink and hopelessly try to stay awake to brighten the night until the dawn rises to wake the rest of the world while it lies oblivious to my painful contemplations. Everything is at peace but me because there’s an endless storm that rages no matter how hard I try to settle it and now I think I’ll just surrender to it and sink beneath the waves because nothing I do is ever good enough to make a difference. Here, beneath the waves, the sound of rain upon water will calm my mind until the world fades from blue to black.

The damp 3:13AM air keeps my eyelids open as I try to fight back the thoughts that would kill me if I allowed them to take over. That’s something you’ll never realize, I know, that every moment for me is a fight between life and death, and you will never know that sometimes, sometimes you are enough to be my tipping point. You are the line between embracing death and risking a life where I die each day without you.

But that’s what sacrifice means, to give everything you are -- your love, your life. No matter the cost to yourself. But you must never expect them to love you back. And that’s the part that I forgot about and that’s why I’m so beautifully broken at this starlit hour as the twilight paints shadows across my face. Because I know there are some dreams that can never come true.

Turns out, curing writer’s block is a lot easier than curing heartbreak.

Sincerely,

--
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