alyssalibby

and it’s not really non-fiction, but I like it.

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I. Listen to me.

Pain behaves in several ways. A stubbed toe or a fractured arm is one kind. Those are purely physical: when bones, muscles, tendons, nerves, or joints are incapacitated in some kind of spontaneous clumsy or unlucky moment in your life that possibly requires a trip to the local hospital. Emotional pain is totally different; that style of pain happens completely in your head. There’s a reason why your brain is the highest place on your body—it’s the most important. Keep it safe. Being heartbroken has nothing to do with your heart beating in your chest; the love you felt took place in your brain. Listen, there’s no use trying to understand. It’s not heartbreak, it’s a brain-break. So let it rest. The heart is a symbol of love, nothing more. Nothing less.

II. Trust me.

But don’t hold me to my words—I’m no better than what you expect of me. Who I am is characterized by these letters in particular combinations on the page. Come to your own conclusions. I love you, I hate you, I want you, I remember. You hold the power to use these letters in combinations in whatever order you choose. Trust me. Help me. How will you control it? Maybe you’re not in control, and maybe that’s how you prefer it.

III. Dig.

You have no reason to agree or disagree to these fragmented thoughts tumbling out of my brain onto this page. Why should you trust someone who hasn’t been where you stand? I can’t understand, because I’m in love: with her, with life, with blue skies, fresh air and the moment after making a snow angel when the world is still and all you can see is a cerulean backdrop and crystal flakes falling onto your eyelashes. And you, your head’s too far underground to see the sun. But that’s the thing. The farther you dig that hole, down through the crust, mantle and cores of the earth, the closer you are to reaching the other side.

IV. Control

Maybe you don’t want to listen to me. Maybe there is no such thing as trust. To trust something or someone makes everything so fragile and real, as if you’ve finished a sandcastle you’ve been finely sculpting and working on for an entire day and you see the waves starting to lap steadily at the base, getting closer each time. It’s hard to leave fate in someone else’s hands. You can’t control the ocean, no matter how hard you try. That job is up to the moon and the gravitational pull, which is pulling us at 9.8ms² down into the Earth, into each other.

V. Let it go.

Say you will, and follow through. I’ve seen love and loss, and this, as well as everything, will disintegrate into jumbled and biased memories in the back of our minds. You will remember it one way, and I another. That doesn’t mean one is false.