The Idea of You

I knew I was adamant but I didn’t know to this extent. No matter how much I try, I can’t distance myself from these dubious proclivities; hanging over me like your morning dose of nicotine and refusing to dissipate until I Stifle to death.

I don’t know when your charm, reeling me in like an insomniac child hugging his teddy bear close at night, started feeling less like comfort and more like suffocation. I should be thinking about how happy I am to have you but all I can think of is being alone.

I don’t know how your uplifting presence, enjoyable like the music lessons I could only dream of attending, stopped uplifting and started tormenting. Perhaps I would be grateful for your mellow tenderness…if it didn’t feel like an outright harassment; a piercing trill insisting on agonising me for as long as I breathe. I should be dancing to the melody but all I can think of is silence.

I don’t know when your touch felt more like disgrace and little like embrace or when your texts and calls and pictures and voice notes became increasingly reminiscent of a bleak facade. I should be ecstatic that someone cares so deeply but all I can exude is apathy. 

Your thoughtful messages and enthusiastically planned out dates only met with half-hearted replies and last minute excuses, your romantic gestures with my inscrutable expressions.

What was once a dreamy fairy-tale was now just a silhouette of deplorable not-nows and maybes. But this time, it wasn’t your fault.

You were my knight in shining armour but I was your worst nightmare; only in love with the idea of you.

Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash