https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3GKoKP5GDTiWjk88Q1te3V?si=107339f885fe4342

i am a thinker in all aspects of the word except when it comes to love. then i am ruled mercilessly by my heart. it’s why i am slow to engage, slow to trust and slow to fully let down my guard. once i start to love someone, it feels impossible to stop. a perversion of my heart. a promise made to my own soul, now violated. (i am young and not yet wise in the ways of the world.)

the whole act of love for me is a war waged in my own head.

even as I move on it’s in the midst of some war. if i live life with my heart and my head personified, as separate individuals (an inconsistent team) tied together at the waist, then my fear-hued logic, scorn and spite is yanking the rope, begging to keep moving forward—and my poor heart lies stubbornly on the ground, tear-stained and ghost-eyed, arms wrapped tightly around her knees, fingernails dirtied from digging desperately into the dirt. she whimpers “no” even as I beg her to let go.

my darling don’t misjudge me—i still love him, oh i do. even as i write from my head my heart extends soft, trembling hands to influence my pen, buffer my steel and temper my frost. i will love him for a long time. my heart cannot be simply commanded to release anyone. she must do so on her own. a petulant child. (but a crucial part of me. the brightest part of me. the kindest part of me.)

i feel so many things. empyrean, inexplicable feelings. it is why i am so drawn to art. how can someone feel so much yet be ruled so powerfully by logic? is this a war against my own identity, a dismissal of my true nature, or is it an uneasy coexistence—the intended state of things? my heart and my mind constantly in conflict?

you know, the last time we would speak to each other, the mist boy accused me of being a highly intelligent, unemotional being. that the girlfriend had disappeared and it was like he was talking to a machine—even as i felt my heart splitting in two. he was spilling his heart: vehement and cold and unexpected and violent, and i was sifting through the pieces searching for logic—a desperate quest for understanding.

i try not to dwell on the charged last words of someone who himself was deeply hurting, but i still hunt for grains of truth in that statement weeks later, in the aftermath. because once, a long time ago, another treasured friend of mine called me a robot, in a morbidly fascinated sort of way.

perhaps one day we will love someone who sees the machinations of our heart—the intricate clockwork of a maze of servers and circuits, heatsinks and miles of wires—and is not terrified by the shape of our soul.

because i don’t think there is anything wrong with my soul. or my heart, actually. or the way she fights with my mind. i think that is quite charming. i would like to call that bravery. and bravery without the temperance of the mind is recklessness.

so the conclusion i arrive to right now, at least, is that this is just what i am. and, as is the nature of humanity, i am far from the only person who is like this. i hope to find others. i hope they are artists and writers too. i hope we can find each other: say, “hello, I am here, and my soul is just like yours.”

humanity sending the Golden Voyager into space. a girl writing her heart into the world.

“I EXIST. I AM HERE. I AM NOT ALONE.”