“Good intentions have been the ruin of the world. The only people who have achieved anything have been those who have had no intentions at all.”

Oscar Wilde

I have a hard time discerning what is normal human behavior and what belongs to only me. Are these incredible moods my burden alone? I can go from hopeful to embarrassed by that very same hope so quickly, it astonishes me. I shock myself with the speed in which I turn against my own feelings.

It is as if I am incapable of enjoying simplicity. Nothing can ever be only pleasant. The sweetness becomes an overripe fruit, one that I hungrily gulped down as if compelled by some illusion. Now I can feel it, mushy between my teeth and under my fingernails, and I feel dirty, disgusted, desperate to separate myself from the version of me that swallowed it down willingly.

I suspect this to be self-sabotage, but I truly cannot tell what is real and what I have imagined. That is the ultimate trick with romance; the stakes are so high that you begin to doubt yourself, to doubt your own instincts. I am so intent on not ruining this, the one truly beautiful thing I have managed to weave together, that I am afraid to touch it. I want to leave it on a pedestal in its fresh-faced glory, overflowing with the giddy excitement new love exudes. If I touch it, I will disfigure it; it will become hideous in my image. That is the alternative trick with romance, I suppose. You damn yourself by leaving it alone, and you damn yourself by participation. I curse myself for creating this festering pit out of nothing. Maybe it would do me some good to get out of my head and into the reality of it all, but I wouldn’t even know how to start.

So many analogies. Not many of them good. But all of them painfully tangible.

Until next time,

G.D.

(p.s. – happy October.)