i’ve started dragging my feet again. and it’s getting harder to raise my arms. i’ve almost forgotten how to shrug.

my skin has grown transparent. the blood in my veins, almost white. i feel like my bones are starting to disappear as well, give up on me as well.

i’m so fucking tired. i can’t even remember the last time i felt like this but it tastes all too familiar. i’m always sick and i’m always tired and i’m sick and tired of always being sick and tired. i guess the fault really lies within me for thinking that i needed someone to save me. at the end of it all this weight falls on my shoulders and i’ll always need to do it alone.

i really wish i had the power to foresee heartbreaks. cause lord knows i never saw this one coming. never even thought it was possible.

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i feel strongly that i have run out of things to write about when it comes to you. i love you too much. way too much. there is bram in the air, bram everywhere, and bram forever.

look.

2015 | 2018.

i am in awe of how this universe works. whether it be god or an energy we can’t even begin to imagine or atoms or some other shit, there is something working. i read the alchemist in my freshman year of high school and it is a book full of quotes i can write all over the walls, on my skin, everyday and forever, but one stuck: i love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you. there are some things that i don’t think humans will ever be able to explain. some things have catalysts, but some things, i learned, you just can’t explain.

i love you because the entire universe conspired for us to be together. i have been through a lot of people in our time apart and i wondered why it always felt like something was missing. some of them even made me believe that the problem lay within me; that i was the root of everything wrong in the relationship. oh but with you everything just feels so right. i know i struggle with personality disorder, i know i struggle with a lot of mood swings, i struggle with a lot of doubt and insecurities and damn do you get the worst of that. but i also know i struggle with not being able to marry you on the spot when we are in bed with our legs all tangled up and i’m whispering “i wish i could just melt into you. why is it that even when we are skin to skin i still wish we could be closer.” i struggle with not being able to contain my love for you, even when i am in class, even when i should be writing an essay. i struggle with not being able to explain where you came from, how we got back together, where we’ll go from here. i just know that it’s a we thing from here on out, i know that because the entire universe conspired for it to be that way.

love you. it is the september 3 years after that first screenshot and i love you more.

lately i have been so much in love that i admit i’ve forgotten how to feel anything else.

there is a brochure in my mom’s filing cabinet, in the drawer labeled “old goods.” it is titled “tamuning elementary: rising stars,” and your name falls under the leftmost column. mine falls under the middle. 5th grade, it says, you are 5th grade, while i am 4th grade, and i am ashamed of how much i don’t remember. i don’t know if we got this award after the whole coconut tree incident and i don’t know what i was doing when they called your name. was i biting my nails? was i talking to my classmate about pokemon? was i watching you walk on stage? and what were you doing when i received mine? did you look twice? did you look at all?

there is a warmness between my legs, it’s not wet at all, it’s really just right. in 7th grade my mom said, “mahal ko, make sure that the boy who deflowers you is one who loves you.” in 7th grade i said, “ma, i know.” i am 21 now and i can say with all my heart that he loves me more than i can see, more than i can feel, more than i can say. there are thousands of words i have of his stored deep within my heart and still they do not suffice.

whenever i take deep breaths i feel pain between my shoulder blades and behind my ribcage. my mom says, “mahal, maybe you should go see a doctor. how long has this been going on?” i say, “ma, it’s been 12 years. i think my heart has grown too big for my chest.” funny enough, the pain does not make me want to run away. i so easily embrace it. if this is what loving you feels like then by all means i want it more than i can bear.

:

at my restaurant job i work about 36 hours a week. sometimes more sometimes less. at my university job i work 10. never more never less.

that’s 46 hours a week spent refilling drinks and taking out entrees and writing on cakes and asking “do you want to hear about our special dinner menu?” in a high talking-to-tourists- voice and typing away on my laptop while my professor talks about how much he hates semicolons and saying good morning back to the students who feel like making my day.

and there are 168 hours in a week. that’s more than 1/4 of the week gone, lost to my slaving away to make a living.

i sleep about 8 hours a night. add the 1 hour it takes for me to get out of my bed every morning, that same hour i spend telling bram over and over while half-delirious “i want a baby.” 9 hours spent in bed per night/morning, that’s 63 hours a week.

46 + 63. 109. i have 59 hours to spare.

i love the days where i get to lay in bed and watch jane the virgin. but now that i’ve finished the season i don’t feel like starting another show.

59 hours. i have taken for granted so much those 59 hours. i am sitting behind my students with an after-crying headache and swollen eyes because last night my best friend told me he felt like he didn’t know me anymore. that he didn’t know anyone anymore. and it hit like a bomb. that for more than 168 hours he has been crying for help and we have all been so caught up in our hours that we couldn’t even spare one for him.

if there is anything i learned over the span of my 21 years it is that time is not afraid to slap me right in the face. i have underestimated it time and again (to the point where that pun wasn’t intended) and it has proven me wrong repeatedly. i think that it is too slow and i blink and it reminds me that it is fast as fuck. i think that i can only go forward and it reminds me that it can repeat itself.

i think that i have so much of it but it reminds me that i don’t.

there are these hours every day that i spend doing nothing. laying in bed not replying to people because i am too lazy to. laying in bed not replying to people who need me more than ever.

it’s almost my lunch break and before that hour comes i need to make a phone call.

>

when the semester ended i thought to myself: i will write i will write i will write all summer. i have all the time in the world all to myself and there are no excuses.

oh. is it really the end of june already? have i really posted nothing, started on nothing, edited nothing? jesus no wonder why i’ve been feeling that tug in my stomach every day since i flew out. i thought i was pregnant. turns out it was just guilt.

i love you, bram salas. you are the only person in the entire universe who has made me so happy that i have become crippled. writing has always been a part of me, has always been an extension of me, has always been something that i’ve felt flows straight from my heart down my arm to my fingertips and onto paper, has always been innate. but since you. i have to force myself to write. writers love sadness, people say this all the time. they love sadness because it makes writing so easy. but god damn. i don’t even remember the last time i was sad with you.

i am sorry i haven’t written.

but if i could i would tell the whole world about the way we made love for the first time. there are a million words i could let loose from my fingers, my mouth, all of the places you’ve touched. a million. how i waited 21 years to lose that part of myself and how i know right well i will never regret this. there are a million words that, if i put together, could tell the story of how i felt when i watched you take that part of me and claim it as your own. how you looked me in the eyes afterwards and told me “you are the love of my fucking life.” how i cried a few minutes later because i didn’t think it would be so good. it. all of it. my life. you. us. that moment. everything.

i love you, i think of you so much. how you have never given me a reason to feel insecure. how you allowed me to buy la taqueria three times in a row. how you always make that stupid face whenever i try to argue with you. so i forgive you right away and all is well. how you are now “uncle b” and “diego” and “jake” and “auntie christen’s special friend” to the girls who make my life a thousand times better. you are my favorite, you are my best friend. come, let’s get married, let’s live in a house together.

i am sorry i haven’t been writing. i’ve been too caught up in you to. forgive me.

is it really the middle of may? already? has it really been seven months since you touched me last?

people still come to me and tell me about you. and you know. this shit hurts like a bitch. that they know i still care. that they know i still think about you from time to time. sometimes when i am driving with my windows down my heart wants to listen to kendrick lamar’s LOVE. but i tell it it can’t. it can’t do that until it can listen to it and not think of you.

when? never?

i can still feel that slow fucking smile against mine. you know the way our lips were so right together. i know you know that, you were the one who pointed it out. i can still feel those hands. those legs. those smooth motions you always used to do when we were kissingthisfuckingsucks. youfuckingsuck. i used to think how the fuck is she not over him yet when my friend would tell me about you months after you left her. shit.

and you know what else sucks seeing you on instagram stories wearing my shit wearing your glasses wearing your black longsleeves ohmygod i used to kiss the back of your ear and say “you should wear a black longsleeve everyday” and i’m happy to see you listened to me. wearing your high socks with janoskis. god damn if i ever saw you one last time i don’t think i’d be capable of working up the words to say i hate you.

ihatetheway you make me feel like loving you was the only thing i was good at. i hatetheway you make my words move so easily i hatetheway you hide your words from me i hatethe way you’re so scared. i just wanted to love you god damnit. i just wanted to love you. youshould’veletmeloveyou you should’ve let me kiss the backs of your shoulders even though you’re ticklish there. you should’ve let me meet your mom. you should’ve let me in. you should’ve let me love you the way i have to do quietly because you won’t allow me to do it loudly.

i’m scared that years from now this feeling will still be there. goddamnit matt just fucking talk to me. i don’t ask for much. i never did.