Don't Expect Much.

Just to make things very clear right here and right now, this is not a poem.

This is not any sort of lovely language and I won't be using even one subtle little rhetorical device. This is not from inspiration but from loneliness and the loneliness is honestly not stemming from the fact that tomorrow is Valentine's Day, one where I am very much alone. Well, it might be stemming from tomorrow just a little but not in the way you think, I promise, because if you could ask me an hour ago how I feel about tomorrow I would have poured my excitement into you like the peppermint mocha I let burn my tongue week after week. But now, now an ice cube has been dropped and it has attacked the heat and while the sweetness is still there, it has gone stone cold.

I was excited, see, because I truly do love love. I do. Ask any coupling of people I find to be good friends, and they'll tell you how much I fawn over their every move. I know I'm alone but I find happiness in others and their happiness, and I was so very excited to share a bit of happiness tomorrow because I have a plan, see, I actually have a few plans but one of those plans has been stopped like a broken heart because you see I always forget to not count too much on the people I am closest to. Why, why, why do I always get closest to the people that will hurt me the most at the most inopportune moments? Or is it they are able to hurt me most because they're the ones I let get closest to me? In any case, they're close to me for a reason and then I am inevitably let down and I guess that's life, you're let down and you have to find your own way back up into their arms because God forbid they know how much you're aching. 

You see, I used to be the person- she is still inside of me, trying to get out- that would've taken all of this pain out on the person who inflicted it and I hate to admit it, but I am rather good at making people feel bad. Oh, how I hate to admit it, but by now you know I manipulate words like any other writer and oh how I HATE to admit it but I have used that to my advantage before. Sometimes it's rather necessary and sometimes it is not, and tonight is one of those nights where it is not, but it's hard to tell that to something so desperate. Even now I almost hope this is read by that person, though I know it will not be because that person never actually bothered to read my writings anyway. Oh, be proud, show me off when I am show-offable but laugh it off nervously when I am not because I am not exactly like you, nor any of your other friends, and that is both why we are so close and why you grow embarrassed of me; please don't pretend otherwise because I know my own roots better than anyone. To gain your approval I almost would have chopped those roots, and truly I almost did a while ago, but I stopped myself because I knew that they were stronger than ours will ever be,

and these roots that have grown since longer than I knew who you were are the ones that keep me going sometimes, though sometimes I trip over them and sometimes I feel as if they're in my way, they are still the gentlest roots I have and this has almost ceased to make sense but stick with me because my fingers are on an absolute rampage and there is no stopping them when they are in this state,

and I think they just want you all to know that this is not what you should expect from them, this tirade of salty, salty tears cascading- literally cascading- down my cheeks and the fact that no one at this moment knows this is happening to me, and I have so much to be happy about and so many people on my side yet why am I so alone? Why does the future scare me so much when it is all I want anymore?

I know tomorrow is Valentine's Day, but it's very important you know that that is not why I have been so upset, because I am not as typical as some would make me out to be and believe it or not, I am still excited for tomorrow. Because even when I'm the one initiating it, the small human connections I have planned for tomorrow will still let me not be so alone, if only for a moment, and hopefully that will make it all worth it; hopefully someday it will all be worth it and I'll find people who care as much as I wish they will.

Honestly, I'm sorry, but it all had to be said.

love always, laura elizabeth.