02/12/18, 12:21am

I have asked for three days of space, and in the aftermath of the request — an unfussy affair, a quick text and only a few minutes of heart pounding, conceived of and solidified during my evening shower, Nujabes echoing on the tile — a strange combination of blithe, anxious, dreading, and then nothing at

2/11/18, 8:52pm

you convince yourself: you don’t need to worry about your phone, you don’t need to worry about checking for his responses. you know he’ll respond eventually. but you tell yourself this: it doesn’t matter what he says. and yet: an hour and thirty-eight more minutes of this before you let yourself break.

1/29/17, 11:07am, messages from him on mute

You remember, and maybe this is the beginning of the problem: You’d made plans that night. He’d bailed, for a reason. You’d semi-bailed, for a less good reason. You’d tried to meet up with each other, and finally you definitively bailed so that he would not have to leave his friends. Something external changes, you

where have I been?

You’ve been extremely good, a little lonely, content with your friends, feeling alienated from close friends, feeling alienated from fading friends, feeling like a second-class friend, suddenly ready to cut people out, exceedingly comfortable with the people you love, willing to reach out to people you’ve looked over, unsure if this was out of desperation,

11/09/17, 8:23pm, dorm

you decide to prioritize him in your life as much as you perceive he prioritizes you in his. so, you decide to cut him out.

11:03pm, 12/07/17, dorm

HOW IS IT THAT I HAVE NOT PROGRESSED

11/07/17, 10:53pm, dorm

I guess the gist of it is this: you don’t need me, and yet, somehow I have let myself need you. Really, this is completely my own fault, not that I didn’t already know that. I know I shouldn’t live my life refusing to need people more than they need me. But right now, I

12/07/17, 10:46pm, dorm

Today, I practiced breaking up with him. I took his pictures off my wall. I tried it on, this feeling of gone. I rolled it over my tongue. I have decided to avoid him tomorrow. How many times I can pull this red flag before he pulls a white one?

when I sit and really think about it

I want to take up more space in his life and I worry or convince myself that he doesn’t want me to, and so I retaliate by taking up even less space than he wants. And I save myself a little from the risk of ever feeling unwanted.

what is this feeling

I want to see him so badly and yet I deny myself that at his expense. And so I avoid him: avoid his messages, avoid his reaches for connection, avoid his plans. Because if they aren’t exactly enough exactly when I need them, I decide they are all facades, all the time. And because they