I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair – it just won’t behave, and damn Katherine Kavanagh for being ill and subjecting me to this ordeal. I should be studying for my final exams, which are next week, yet here I am trying to brush my hair into submission. I must not sleep with it wet. I must not sleep with it wet. Reciting this mantra several times, I attempt, once more, to bring it under control with the brush. I roll my eyes in exasperation and gaze at the pale, brown-haired girl with blue eyes too big for her face staring back at me, and give up. My only option is to restrain my wayward hair in a ponytail and hope that I look semi presentable…

*Throws book into fireplace and rubs bridge of nose with thumb and index finger*

Enjoy your day, ladies.

I’ve loved and I’ve loved being loved…

She has peeled back my layers of bravado and bluster to expose a fractured psyche. My wounds were made as visible as the vulnerability exhibited in allowing them to become tangible. She has allowed me to see the strength in my weakness. Intimate conversations are held without a sound seeping from either pair of lips; instead an extended gaze speaks words that touch the back of the mind and the center of the heart.

I have chipped away at the uncertainty that lies behind her mascara to find what lies underneath is a beauty that Clinique has not been able to bottle. I let her hazel eyes paint the pictures she has etched in her soul onto my tongue. I make love to her insecurity, give birth to trust, and raise her expectations of what the men in her life are supposed to look like. Her heart will never be stolen; I have no need to burgle what she is becoming increasingly comfortable to give to me.

I’ve loved and I’ve lost…

I have held and I have hurt. I have shivered in my sleep and lingered in my shower while scalding water assails my back as I lean against the tile. Each sleepless night leads me back to the same reality: I don’t want to be here. It all seems so mundane, this existence.

I have denied the existence of these feelings. I have refuted human nature so convincingly that I now seem impenetrable. But I am not whole.

You see, it is not her that is slowly killing me; it is this cycle and moments of weakness that allow me to believe that this is healthy. This is a drug. This is insanity. She is merely the vehicle that allows my dependence to progress into something so terr…