Can't do it again

I can’t do it again. I can’t be the one to fix and to hold and to solve and to help. I can’t look at you and see the wounds and want to heal them. And I can’t look past the things that are right in front of me that scare me about you, because I’ve done that before and I can’t do it again.

And it’s killing me because it’s so familiar and it’s so exactly what I know that I don’t know how not to do it. How not to be drawn to it and to you and to that.

I need you to want to heal me and to chase me and to solve me. And you’ve done that a bit, enough that makes me hopeful and hopeless, but I guess I want/need/have to have more. And I don’t know how to do that either. To let you know I need more because I’m not sure you can give more.

And I can’t do without more again.

And I adore you, and that’s familiar, too. And that’s what gets confusing and difficult and heart-breaking. I adore you. And when I get near you, I lose all my conviction and just fall into your eyes and into your embrace. And I adore you. And I forget about the flags and the warnings and all the rationales. I just see you and your eyes, looking back at me the way I want to be looked at. And I adore you. And there in your eyes, I see you adore me, as much as you can.

And you’re him and you’re the other him and you’re a bit of the other him and that’s just… too many hims maybe. And I got lost in their eyes, too. And I wanted to heal and to help and to fix and to hold and to solve. And I got lost in them. And they left me standing here, broken, alone, wanting, needing, hoping… and then there’s you…

And there are those moments that are so clear, so crystal, so present, where I’ve seen this in a future moment a while ago, where I’m where I want to be with someone I want to be with and it’s beautiful and it’s perfect and it’s right. And there are moments with you that are so clearly from that vision, from that moment where I saw it, and it takes my breath away.

But the echoes of the past blur the edges of the future and I don’t know what to do.

I want you to get lost in me. I want someone to get lost in me. And maybe I’m so afraid of that never happening that I let myself get lost instead.

And maybe this is where I learn to break this cycle, step away from the familiar, pulling my reluctant heart away from your eyes. Still care, still be there, but just not be all the way there. Stand on the periphery of you so you’re not left alone, because I think you’re very alone and I would never leave you like that, like I’ve been left. And I will continue to adore you, just maybe from a safe distance.

Because I can’t do this again. As much as I wish that I could… as much as I wish you could let yourself go and make this into something, take the chance, take my heart. But you won’t and you can’t.

And I can’t either.