I’ve never been in love, welcome to my diary.

For too long I have had things all wrong, for too long I have begged for other hands to pull me out of the fire, for too long I have put my heart in the hands of others that were too small to hold all of me, all I had. How tragic is it to feel like you need to confine yourself to the parameter of others so you could be the perfect amount for them to keep. I keep thinking of all the “more” that those hands could never hold, what happens to it all? Does it just get left behind like the waste after a crash on the highway, or does it disappear into the depths of the fire the rest of you got pulled out of? Why couldn’t all of me fit into the hands of those who claimed that the stars were jealous of my more.

It started to feel like the more was less, that it wasn’t important. I allowed small empty hands to hold only parts of me
and called it love.

When your more becomes less, even the loudest screams lose their strength to cast themselves above the quietest whisper. You start to burn in the fire that you were saved from anyway and the begging and pleading is lost to the whispers of those who can’t grab all of you. The burning of your flesh hurts, but not as badly as the pain to quiet parts of yourself to be someone’s perfect shade of paradise because you are still living in your own hell, but calling it love. This is love, they love me, they saved me, but why does it still hurt?

I learned it still hurts because the more was thrown away and you were made to feel like you were too much, too much for someone, and you begin to believe that all the perfect pieces of your soul that were abandoned now reflect faults that kept them from holding all of you. I learned that the hands you beg for to pull you out of the fire are sometimes the same hands that put you there in the first place because of all your more that they couldn’t hold, and yet
it was all the same.. you called it love.

The walls are black with jagged rocks that cut away at your hands from holding on, blood trickles down to your wrist and then your elbow. Your feet are wedged in the cracks right above the fire. You reach and reach for the hands that said, “I love you” and still it isn’t
enough. You start slipping until you can feel the fire breathing at your feet and when you look up there’s the hand, telling you to grab on, that they have you.

But, what if you didn’t? What if you fought for your more instead of burning it away? What if you grabbed on and dug in and fought for your own more? What if you got yourself out of the fire with your more. What if the more is what could save you? The more they kept telling you was a waste? What if that’s the secret to saving ourselves?

I realized recently, I’ve never been in love. I claimed to be, I wished to be and I even told multiple people, “I love you.” But I’ve never been in love, I’ve never been held by hands that could hold every piece of me, my story or my heart. I’m not sure what romantic love feels like, and I’m not sure I’m the person that will be able to identify it right away, I think I’m the kind of girl that real love from another human being will terrify. For too long I allowed half filled hands to carry me, and I called it love. I lost my more because people told me it wasn’t valuable. I used to be neon, and now I’m a faded blue scrambling to find my footing on the jagged rocks.

I allowed portions of myself to be emptied with nothing to replace them until I became a shell of someone who begged to be loved even if that meant losing my more.
I wonder if anyone else has dimmed their neon because someone else needed sunglasses to experience them. I think the most tragic crime though, is thinking that the faded blue
is prettier than the neon.

I’ve never been in love but I guess I’m thankful because now I know what love isn’t ya know? I’ve never found big enough hands to love all of me until I looked at my own and it was the perfect fit.