On the ledge of someone else

It is hard to want to remain put and hide selfishness of doing things for yourself when there is no one in the world you would truly miss having the presence of. Even if you had once experienced it in the past, thinking back on that tugging and pulling at your two hearts, attempting to elastic you back together again is too much for your mind to comprehend unless experiencing it physically, at this moment. Guilt and disappointment may flicker a short beam of what it would feel like to miss the being of another. The, letting them down feeling or the thought of leaving behind the idea of their tiny droplets that add to your glass that make it feel half full over half empty. But to truly miss someone is to not feel sorry for them that you two would be no longer. To miss someone is to thrash around in a heated bubble where your own skin can not calm down and become comfortable again. You feel deeper than empty, almost the opposite, as if you are filling up with a ball of density and you begin to sink, exponentially, to where you can’t move to even live. Your eyes sting. Your hair finds itself entwined on every end from your lack of desire to help yourself any longer. What is to help yourself if you can’t bring back your heart to kickstart your soul and want to have the life of your own, with them there? Your stomach growls and churns as your pantry goes untouched from the clouded thoughts of hunger by the rose-colored images of their body, what you crave. You feel that constant tugging that causes you to become disgusted and angry toward everything else outside.

But to not miss anyone in the way that your own miniscule ways of life aren’t altered in the slightest is where you find yourself missing you. You lie in bed in the dark, listening to the fan above whir softly, thinking, why am I in this place right now? If I don’t even find joy in it for myself, then what is stopping me from going away? You then begin to explore a million different possibilities added on to your already widely dreamt about plan that just makes you seem more and more of an unrealistic, laughable character to those around you in your current place of real life. You are the tattooed, nose-pierced, black box dye haired boyfriend of the parents’ daughter that makes them scratch their head with a glass of bourbon when she’s out with him, making them sigh, “it’s just a phase, she’s not like this, this isn’t real.” And so you're here in bed, it’s dark, you cry, “I’m alone,” you tell yourself. “I’m wasting my life. I am nothing.” Just cliches that run around everyone’s head when it’s past midnight and you’ve been awake with just yourself for a while, the yourself that you always claim to hate, so what terrible company, right? You then wonder that if you had someone to talk to, (someone you could miss, maybe?) that these wild possibilities would be at bay, because you don’t want to leave where you are, with them, and you could carry on with your sufficient and current way of living. But that journey to The Alps. That RV that would be so much cheaper to live out of and travel the country in than continuing with your four-bed-three-bath suburban home that’s “just outside of the city” as you tell the people you make small talk with on those same family Disney trips. They could happen maybe? Back and forth, back and forth with what you want to do until in the end you just will pass on without doing anything except wondering what to do. 

But at least you weren’t missing anyone, right? At least you didn’t have that awful sensation that drags you through the mud and up the ladder until you’re standing on the ledge wondering how to fill this pit that someone has created even though they are nowhere near you. Well, some may say that ledge is that out of the ordinary possibility that those who miss not a soul ponder about at night in bed. The ledge leaps with the feeling that your mind grasps onto something so tight, something just for you, that drives people to go jumping through all sorts of hoops just to find that one person again. So maybe those expansive possibilities open up with being strung along with missing someone. “But I don’t want to feel hurt like that,” is what comes from being comfortable with real life. But although everyone here doesn’t get to sleep at night no matter what the circumstance is, having that one to chase, that one to hope for, to long for, to live for, that pushes people out of their nine-to-five where you are asking yourself why you are to lazy to cook and grabbing takeout for the third night in a row. You don’t want those things is what you know you feel deep down. You hide them under your insides because your life is steady and maintainable as it is. You’re content. Well, you would be happier if you moved out of the country to that small European town where you wear flip-flops and eat fruit off the neighbors trees. Hush! Those thoughts are unrealistic and laughable. But if you pretend that the person that made you want to rip your hair out because they weren’t lying next to you anymore was in that small town, the thought of traveling that journey shows to be more colorful, more realistic. It hums angelic hymns and you’re already typing away on your laptop to buy a one way plane ticket. 

It’s hard to settle so far into someone who eventually leaves so far away, to where the thought without them brings you up onto that ledge. Hence, why so many will say no! They prefer the life they have with their group of 12 friends who all have lingering, unanswered texts of “sorry, can’t go out tonight, just so busy,” when in reality they just don’t want to spend time around those 12 that they really wouldn’t ever deeply miss. 

To truly miss someone is so rare. So beautiful and is the height of all your thoughts, all your actions, where selfishness isn’t even in the dictionary. To find that place you want to go or to bring yourself to finally follow through is to miss someone. It’s who turns life into living.