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by its_petrichor

by its_petrichor

it's only been a couple of hours since we got back
but I am trying desperately to be okay again
I didn't want to stay
not like last time
but there was a part of me that didn't want to come back to this life either

in London
I kept thinking
what if this was all mine?
what if I never had to leave?
but something about it didn't sit right with me in the moment
so I tried and tried to come up with what was holding me back
and it's this:

I couldn't bare not speaking my language
I couldn't bear not hearing it
couldn't go a week without my people
my places
my lifeline

because I fucking love this country
in all the ways it has broken my heart and swallowed me alive
I've never once dreamt of leaving it
I have thought about it
and I have tried to convince myself that I could
but I have never wanted it
sometimes I wish I did

my birthday was a no-show this year
and as I was wandering the streets of Cambridge
I almost wished I was cooped up alone in my bedroom on a school night
so that I at least had a reason to want this to be my last

I have never been good at birthdays
it had to have gone wrong at some point
but I don't remember how or when
I suppose my little heart has always just wanted to be loved back and needed the love to be a blast
a fucking hurricane
for it to be felt

and it's not that there is no love
there is some
some times more than others
but it feels so far away
so out of reach
and I am so tired of going out of my way over and over again to reach for it

or maybe I just haven't yet come to terms with the fact that no one could ever blast me with love on my birthday like those three girls from middle school could
the same girls I grew up with
the ones I loved so very dearly
so fiercely
so sisterly
the same ones I lost somewhere along the way of growing up

but it is always the growing up part of life that bends us in the most painful ways
isn't it?