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I think she can see me. She can see how empty I am, and still she accepts me. She still wants to be around. She noticed my mood shift and asked about it. I said, “Oh, I’m fine,” like I always do. What’s ironic is I used to beg my ex for an invitation to pour my soul out, and when she gave me one, I rejected it. I rejected her heart, her attempt to make me feel better. And still, she held my hand on the train. The whole time.
I don’t even like holding hands. I have abandonment issues. To me, holding hands is dangerous—if I let someone hold mine, they could let go when I’m not ready. But I let her. My hand cramped, but I held on, because I could feel she really wanted to hold mine. It wasn’t casual. It felt like she was gripping with intention, as if she wanted to comfort all the things I wasn’t saying out loud.
I tried to trick her into believing I was okay by pointing out pretty buildings. But she kept holding on. The pretty buildings were like the smiles, laughs, and jokes I use to cover the blank stares. I’m fragile. You know that feeling when you’re fighting back tears and someone asks what’s wrong? That’s me all the time. So I distract, I joke, I laugh—anything to shift the gaze away from the truth.
But the truth is, sometimes I can’t even get out of bed. Sometimes I get dressed only to end up crying about not being able to leave the house. I escape into daydreams just to feel happiness and freedom. That swing between extremes, from soaring joy to crushing despair, makes life feel unbearable. To dream so big and wake up feeling so small is exhausting.
So I distance myself, mentally and physically, from the people I love, hoping they’ll never find out how broken I am. Yet somehow, it feels like I ran across the world just for someone to finally see me—the real me—without my permission.
When she held my hand, she held all the thoughts that she knew nothing about. In that moment, I told her I was going to write a book, and she told me to name it Everything.
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