a proof of my heart
my heart aches for every person i love, i yearn for a connection that would transcend a lifetime, and i would kill to be able to turn back time and choose a different major — i wish i could tell you that i’ve given two truths and a lie, but i couldn’t. they were nothing but bare confessions from me, a stranger, to you, another stranger.
my therapist told me to write again, to write more. but i’ve been staring at this blinking line for hours, days, months now. i watch it mock my attempts as it slides back and forth. forward, forward, and back, and back, and back, until it becomes completely still. a ghost of words from october haunts my fingers and bones, from when i tried to write in honor of my twenty-first. i stared at the poltergeist in the eye and still i was not possessed. i tried to conjure something in january, to adorn the champagne and the fireworks. but i am still flesh and tears without the need for an exorcism.
i do nothing these days but bathe in my feelings, which has a certain irony because lately i could not feel anything but void or anxiety. i want to create something out of this clouded space in my head, and this is its incarnation — a mark of the beginning of a whimsical idea, a passion project, birthed from months before. i could never write a piece i’ll be perfectly satisfied with, but i am writing still. and here we are now.
where was i with my confessions? oh. my mother once told me i was heartless. not her exact words, but the message was all the same. friends come and later go, as i get uncomfortable with the proximity. i could not understand the logic of having both social and separation anxiety. i love you, i love you, i want you close to me — not too close, my throat feels like closing up. i want to embrace you, be completely covered by you, but i am with thorns, and in the end, we’d both be hurt.
let me love you from a distance. no words nor action could translate this fire. in every moment, i memorize the lines on your face, every hair from your lashes, every mark on your cheek. i feel so overwhelmed by my affection, i grieve for this memory just by standing in front of you. all this haze inside my head. from the outside — i am hollow without an organ in my chest.
sometimes i think i bear the curse of tantalus — always reaching for something staring back at me, but never close enough to hold. my best friend just got into his fourth relationship. or was it the fifth? i couldn’t keep count. my cousin fell in love with a boy, my sister has her favorite girl. i stand still, tending to my pride in independence, but curl up on my bed at night, wishing for something different.
last year, i met a boy. in the loosest definition of “met” because we never actually met. but we talked for a while and he was perfect. in connell’s words from a sally rooney novel, “i’m not a religious person but i do sometimes think God made you for me.” i’ve never really fallen in love before, i do not recognize the shape of it. and so anxiety got the better of me and now i dance with regret. eight months later, i still sometimes think of him. no, not sometimes, always. this is, after all, a confession. but how can you miss someone a thousand times more than you’ve been with them?
i love so fiercely yet contradict it with actions and words, despite all my willful protests. the more intangible it gets, the greater it burns in my head. is it less real then? will i ever turn it into string and hand it to someone else?
perhaps a third confession is one for another letter. i hope this first one has served its purpose of painting the background, of me imparting pieces of my heart — to prove that i have one. in this safe space, i’m a stranger pouring my heart out to other strangers. may these words be of comfort to you as well, wherever you are. i’ll see you after the next ink spills.
This piece was originally posted on Substack on April 21, 2024 and migrated to BearBlog on March 19, 2026.