but my dreams, they aren't as empty, as my conscience seems to be

There are nights where I want to start screaming and just...get everything out. I don't, because first, I'd have to explain why, if I wasn't around people familiar with everything, and second, I might not stop. And I have to stop.

Or not start. It's easier just not to start.

All right. Breathe. Breathe. You can do this. Just relax.

Too much instruction in how to sing a scream, I think. I can't just yell myself hoarse. I'm not performing anymore and it's still there in the back brain--must never damage the voice. It takes too long to heal.

Of course, so do other things, and that never stopped me...Girl has a brand after all, I didn't get that accidentally.



I'm watching myself make all the right moves and all the wrong moves and my hands itch from wanting to seize my own shoulders and shake some sense back into me.

You haven't needed gills to breathe for a long time now. Just calm down.

I can't keep insisting nothing's wrong. I can't keep insisting everything's wrong. There's a middle ground, damn it. Somewhere, there's a center point. I need to find that, figure out where it is. Figure out why it is.

Figure out how to keep it in view.



Past pattern reflective and back again, and I can't even say this is a new situation, that's the utterly galling thing. I have been here before, damn it. I have stood on these shores. The bones in these sands are not recent, and they're not all mine.

I have been the one deciding the relationship can't continue and I've been the one who's told the relationship can't continue, and no, I don't mean ending things, I mean, the choice to end one aspect and retain just the friendship.

Though I will say, of the times it's happened before...I don't have those friendships anymore, either. Something else always got in the way.



Breathe. Breathe. You have space now. You have time. Everything is not on fire.

Are you sure?

And the tender car's been full of coal and it's been full of cavorite and at least once it was blood frozen stiff and solid and now, now, I think we're on charnel bones and fractured bits of personal history--

The whole point of the exercise is to stop making the same mistakes. Why am I making the same mistakes?



And I'm still getting it wrong, and I have no clue if there's a way to get it right, and the shards are poking through the bandages...

In. Out. Count if that's all you've got. If you control nothing else, you always control this. Over-control this on occasion, far too often. Slow it down and concentrate. Live second by second if you have to. Get. A damned. Grip.

I feel too much when it doesn't matter, and when it does I'm confused on what I feel at all, and this is drowning, not waving, but maybe I just need to sink...Maybe I forgot something on the ocean floor.

Maybe I brought the train up too soon. Maybe I should have stayed in the sea.



Ultimately, it's simple. Complicated and frustrating and obvious and stunningly arduous, but...simple. I have. To stop. Using people. Just because I'm flailing, just because I'm confused, just because I'm in freefall again because I'm trying to overcompensate...I need to stop. I have to stop.

Because it's not fair to them, it's not fair to me, and it won't help, and it needs to help. I need to help.

I need help.



And ring the changes rung before, again again again and for what? I left the doll long ago and she's back watching me, I never had the little to leave, and I've never felt smaller when anyone holds me now. I've walked away from everything so many times, did I just drag it all with me? Don't I know how to let anything go?

Just breathe. Just breathe. You bypassed easy mode a long time ago because you didn't learn the lesson. It's not one and done yet but it's getting close. Just. Calm. Down.

It's not even that there are no second chances left, it's that there are too many second chances and too many choices and too much could go wrong and too much did go wrong and it's too big. I can't contain this.

You're not supposed to.

I'm supposed to let it go and pick up the pieces later, but there are too many pieces--



I'm not okay.

You're not supposed to be.

I'm trying to be.

Too soon.

And I'm existing in a vacuum on top of everything else, all raw nerve endings and exposed organs and shatterglass eyes, and I did this to myself, damn it, and--

I need to stop.



--I need to rely on other people, and--

It's terrifying. It will never not be terrifying. It will never stop being necessary. It will never stop being hard.

There are too many directions to go and not enough of me to path them all out and I can't move, I can't MOVE--

And when one holds me I can breathe...And when the other holds me I can start to put the pieces back together...

Okay. Okay. I'm breathing. I'm not good at it, but I am breathing. I'm not good at trusting other people, either. I do trust, I do, but...I'm not good at it.

Time to learn.

And far past time to move forward.

Move forward.