my greatest talent, my greatest fault, my greatest

everything

is love. i need everyone to love me, i want them to, desperately. the why is complicated, but i’ve learned over the years how to love, been conditioned to need it desperately, and that, my friends, is survival.

thank god i had to survive. thank god i learned how to watch faces for signs of disapproval and adjust accordingly. thank god i learned how to speak to people in ways they would listen. thank god i learned how to give authentic compliments, how to catalyze smiles, how to get all those lovers to hold my hand.

but because i want it so bad, when it’s missing the gaps feel monumental.

i was in seekonk yesterday. i was wandering the streets we walked together that one night, i drove past the big warehouse that keeps dark games of mini golf within its walls. i wasn’t alone, but i felt like i was.

kidding. maybe i wrote that in case you’re reading, because i rarely feel alone. and the time i feel least alone is when i’m thinking about you.

what i really feel is embarrassed. embarrassed when the love i shove into people’s faces isn’t received, heard or reciprocated. embarrassed by my grand gestures that did nothing but liberate me (and thank god they did). embarrassed by all your tendencies to pretend i don’t exist so you can avoid the suffering of loving me.

i can’t tell you what the right path is, but i’ll try to.

love me. stop running from me. it’s selfish perhaps, but if i needed your love i’d be at your door and in your phone. still, because i know you, and mostly (well, only) because i know love i know this:

running from the people you love, or, to put it in the lies you tell yourselves, the people you loved once, will only make you suffer.

haven’t you learned that already? hasn’t the universe shown you that to be the case? haven’t you seen my olive branches, haven’t you seen that i miss you? i value you? i appreciate you? i don’t mean to ruin lives so

accept every opportunity to have your lives fill with a little more love. here’s your first one.