444. it depends

The day I dug myself into a hole when I called myself a 'writer'.

A label that has stuck somehow, although I am now 24 years old, from the days when I surrounded myself with purple prose, when I was inspired by the emotional ramblings of other people - convoluted, unbridled, neurotic. But that's just it, it was raw, no filter needed - for what? In all honesty, that, in itself, was probably a filter - a shield from having to put in the simplest and most straightforward of terms that I'm hurt in need desperate alone.

Does it have something to do with my entering a Communications school and taking a journalism module? Direct, they said. Don't put into three words what you can say in one. Don't write things that people don't understand or have to read twice to get. I scoff at the thought that a single module could somehow change the very way I write, but indeed, sometimes a moment is all it takes. Was there even a way I wrote at all? I can't place the moment when I decided that I couldn't write anymore whenever I wanted to - or rather, when it became something external rather than something from within. Dependent on you this that them, anything anyone but me.

I am many other things too. Some identities fall away. Is this one I am no longer willing to embrace?

435. stay

You came like a sudden burst of light that shone so bright; it blinded me, petrified me. I didn't have time to prepare —to present only the best of me, to make the best impression so that you wouldn't run away. You came and saw the truth, imperfect as I am. You came and saw all the reasons why you should go, and still, you stayed; you said you would never let go.

I thought maybe we would just be passer-bys in each other's lives, a momentary blip in this long expanse of time. Who knew you'd be my mainstay? So many ways the world could have come about, my mind still cannot fathom how we came to be here, together, at this point; but I no longer doubt that it was always going to be you and I. It was decreed that it would be you for me and I for you—this I know. And oh, you don't know how thankful I am that it was you He gave. No one else would do and I guess He knew because He gave me you.

434. words

Why I don't write about you

Because my heart gets full and the words get caught in my throat, and the thought springs in my mind that nothing - no words of mine - could ever sufficiently capture all that you've been and all that you are to me - so often in ways that I myself don't even know.