Soul To Steal: A Paper Hearts Collection

I’m supposed to be packing. I’m supposed to be dreaming of my next big adventure. Dreaming of summer days off that can be spent under endless blue skies, drinking tea and chasing away the dregs of a snowless winter. But what am I doing? Curled up under the duvet, my anxiety bubbling inside me. I can’t even place what I’m anxious about. Everything. The future. My job. My surgery. My relationships. My life racing ahead of me like a freight train that’s about to crash into a crosstown bus filled with children and there is nothing I can do because no one ever fixed the emergency brake! Everything is screaming. I think I may have screamed too. I don’t know. 

Despite the warmth of the air outside, I’m shivering. I think I might be getting sick. Or it's my anxiety causing me to shiver since it sometimes does that. I don’t know. Everything feels like a worry these days. I guess anxiety is better than depression. At least it’s me questioning everything and everyone rather than assuming they all hate me-no, no, anxiety does that too. It makes me feel like a burden, a joke and an all-around annoying fuck. 

….

Spring is blooming around me and I almost feel, hopeful. This is the time of year when I always feel so alive. Everything is new, I’m all new. For the first time in a while, I’m thinking ahead I’m thinking of the future. The warming sun against my pale winter skin makes me long for the days I spent in New York City-the beach, Coney Island. Those warm holiday memories coursing through my veins. I can almost taste the popcorn. I need to do it again, even if its a day trip or something. Use my sick time over the summer before its too late and take a day trip down there on a day off and make sure the day after I have off so no one can bother me. Find a nice little Airbnb for a night and just let loose. I want that sea wind in my face. Usually, I hate the sand, but right now I want it between my toes hiding the tattoos that cover my feet. And I wanna swim. God, do I want to swim. 

….

My mind goes to the warmest places when I think of him. His warmth. His kindness. How he treats me as if I’m a person, not some sort of thing. He brings the humanity out in me; something that I’ve long buried under layers of scar tissue. He is the sun, warming my skin, melting the ice that flows in my veins. I want to bask in that light, feeling small buds of hopefulness taking route in me. Is this the start of something new? Or is this the start to one of the greatest lessons I’d ever learn? I don’t think that I’ve ever loved someone in this way before. Hot, passionate and all-consuming love that drives you to the brink of madness? Yes. A dull aching, pining love? Yes.For the first time in decades that I don’t feel the monsters. The ghosts hiding in the shadows. The demons clawing at the walls. Everything is silence. I feel a calm that I’ve only dreamt of. Our likenesses bind us, making me feel less alone. Making me feel more apart of something. I’ve never been welcomed into someone’s life like this before. I want to sing of my joy from the tops of the trees without the fear of falling. Falling like a star in the autumn night sky, you bring a beauty out in me. No longer does the devil control me, painting the walls of my soul hideous tones of black and blue, bringing out the worst in me. And now all I can do is picture a future with you, for whatever time we have I want you to put your hand in mine. 

....

And I don’t want to think about the worst possibilities when I think of him. I just want, for once to be swept away. Where I can be treated like the prince, no I’m reaching too far here, like the human, yes that’s better, that I always wanted to be seen as. I want to be loved for me, not disillusioned paintings of me. Despite my fear of it, I want you to see mine through my eyes. See the things that I like about myself. See the things that I hate about myself. I want you to see the happiness, the soulfulness, the depressiveness and the rage dominated parts of me. I want you to see every inch, every aspect. I don’t want to shy away, hiding in memory boxes waiting for my perfect one. For so long I invested my love in the wrong men and women, never realising the truth until it was far too late; it left me bruised and belittled for quite some time before each punishing move was made. And I don’t understand why I did it at all. 

I fell for women with soulless eyes, the total opposite of everything I wanted in a woman. Thin, shy, unintellectual. They were beautiful for their darkness, their pale skin that contrasted their pale skin, but really, what were they all to me? I loved them for their personalities, their sarcasm and for the pale blue tones of her eyes, and the dark hazel from the others. Their dyed black hair and psychotic depression were the two things they had in common. That and they loved lying to me. I’m not sure if one ever loved me at all, and I’m sure one did, but she allowed her self-loathing to tarnish what we had. In the end, there wasn’t room for me in either of their hearts. And then I fell for them. Dreaming of fairy tales once again, chasing ideas of love that were neither realistic or true. I was blinded by my lust, by my adoration for those before my eyes to see what was hiding beneath the surface. I ached to be loved in the way I loved these men, never realising they were only out for theirs. Through the ups and downs, I explained away anything that would shatter my fantasy. I needed to believed that I was loved, that everything as okay. They were polar opposites in many ways. One was flamboyant and loud, the other chubby and quite. I never quite knew what I was to either of them.