14 april 2026
I Need a Distraction
For as long as I can remember, I have been in a perpetual flight of sorrow from my own afflictions. Today is no different - an unbroken continuity of evasion. When I survey the pains of my life, what I find most clearly is an individual hollowed out by dread. I anticipate the most evil in every person I encounter, not out of cynicism, but out of self-preservation - because to extend trust blindly is to accept devastation. I cannot claim to have many intimate companions. I am surrounded by acquaintances, by ghost of other people's relationships, yet only a precious few occupy the territory where I would permit myself to be genuinely known.
I carry within me a desperate longing to trust - it may be the most fervent want I possess, yet I am purly incapable of discerning the treacherous from the devoted. I have concluded that I am safer enshrouded in uniform wariness than I am offering anyone the benefit of my vulnerability. What torments me most is the knowledge that there are people who care for me. That awareness fills me with a particular revulsion - not at them, but at myself - because I cannot reciprocate with anything of equivalent sincerity. I am ravenous for human connection, and yet when I discover that I am genuinely cherished by another soul, what floods through me is not warmth, but the cold weight of obligation, the mechanical performance of an affection I cannot authentically feel.
To love someone, however — that is an altogether different form of torment. When devotion seizes me, it does not arrive quietly; it obliterates. I cannot think with any coherence, cannot sleep with any peace, cannot eat with any appetite until I have confirmed that the object of my devotion is safe, unburdened, and content. Remarkably, reciprocation is immaterial to me. The act of loving, in and of itself, is its own sufficient justification. I do not require - nor do I want - the one I love to love me in return, for that would constitute a kind of selfishness I refuse to indulge. My only ambition is that whoever holds my devotion should move through this world in the absolute certainty that they are, without condition or reservation, profoundly loved.
I exist in maddening bifurcation - two selves occupying the same body, irreconcilable in their natures. One is a tenacious, aching interior, still persuaded, against all evidence, that goodness persists in the world. The other is a desiccated shell, paralyzed by the possibility that its faith may be misplaced. To live suspended between these two states is an exhaustion I carry without respite. I need an out.