Jealousy changes you—it completely shifts your mind and paradigm and way of thinking and way of seeing things.

Jealousy  makes your brain cloudy with anger, unable to think clear.

Jealousy makes you succumb to the gruesome power of fear.

Jealousy raises up your ego in a heartbeat, making you defending yours like your whole life clings to it.

Jealousy takes your will to love—if it's still there at all. Because who knows loving someone could be this exhausting?

Jealousy makes you a repugnant, revolting human being.

...and jealousy has successfully done every single thing above, to me.

on the worse days,
i do not let it show.
i watch the ones whom i love most
out of the corner of my eye.
their faces are bright.
i watch them - hope and love and surety - and think,
i am sorry.
i am sorry.
and i do not let it show.

everything is loud around me
and i am an apology left unheard, unspoken;
i myself am left deafened,
too lost to speak.

my love, my love,
i look at you and think:
i am sorry.
do you know? do you know?

do you know:
i am a plane crash,
i am leaping off this cliff that is my breakdown,
i am drowned in my own waters.
do you know, do you know?
my ribcage has been paper-thin for so long,
and my own heart is knocking it down
(it pounds so loud);
and so i am trembling fingers and empty feet,
burning palms and everyday fatigue.
i am the moment
the calm leaves the storm
and everything comes crashing;
i am a star about to die,
and not once did i ever seem to shine;
i am an explosion,
and do you know:
i am so terrified
you will be caught in my aftermath.

in the end,
none of the metaphors will ever fit:
i am sad.
it has been this way for some time.
do you know?
if i think too much my eyes might tear up,
and this is why i can never seem to meet your gaze.

no; of course not:
my apologies are always unspoken.
i am sorry;
perhaps one day the bravery will return
(if it was ever there)
and neither of us will be so lost.

my love, my love,
i am sorry. give me time.

my love,
worry not about me.
not yet, not now.
your quiet love - it is bright,
and i think: no,
you do not have to know.
for this moment, i will be all right.
i will not let it show.
(i will try to stop apologizing for faults that aren't mine.)
my love,
stay with me in this moment.
i ask for little more.

fear is such an ugly thing;

it gives you a sense of insecurity,
knowing just how many things that can go wrong.

it gives you a sense of uncertainty,
unknowing just what are the odd
of the things that can go wrong—
or would they ever happen at all.

it numbs you,
making you lose the ability to feel.

because why would you even choose
to feel only to get hurt,
if you could shut yourself down
from the whole world
before you got hurt?

it alters your mind,
turning you from a logical human being
to a big incoherent, irrational pile of mess.

and the most frightening thing of all,
is that fear scares you so much
that you can't do anything
but giving in to it.

They don't care why.
They don't care why.
You can laugh maniacally,
burst in screaming, burst out crying,
and they will look at you cheaply.
You can lie fetal and slam
your fist down repeatedly.
And they won't care why.
They don't have the patience
or the sympathy, to dissect it.
They act in a societal manner
and expect you to reflect it.
The only thoughts your outburst
evokes in them are those of how
their lives are affected.
They don't care why.
They don't care why.

it's strange,
but it is always after the storm that i feel the most hope.
call it faithful, maybe brave;
but possibly i'm just naive.

to me this is proof the fight is still in me.
somewhere, a small spark, in hiding.
but not gone,
and this is the most important thing.
i am alive still,
i whisper to myself,
and it means the most:
that the breakdown has not broken me.
that i have survived still,
and will continue to survive.

call it gullible,
but i still think to myself:
if i can survive this,
i can survive most things.
what is everything else
compared to what has just been?

in the face of this,
what else matters.
it becomes difficult to concentrate on trivial things
when larger moments stare you in the face.

in the face of this,
my hands lose power, start to shake. my mind strays,
falls to thoughts of sadder days.
the art either loses meaning
or transforms into something
i do not wish to create.
in moments like this,
when the world grows too big
for me to inhabit it,
when the worlds within me
are turned to dust by the sun,
i can only hope to stay stable,
stay clinging.
i fear the alternative is crumpling,
a breaking no one is ready to see,
a void -

and isn't that strange,
to be filled with empty?

so in the face of this,
i can only stare the sun in the eyes,
meet it glare for glare.
i am hesitant to mutter the word breakdown
in the fear that it will all turn real,
and the world will shatter around me.
right now it is paper-thin.
fragile glass, and i fear the firestorm brewing within me
will set everything ablaze.
i ache;
each breath heavier than my heart.
try my best to swallow the scream churning in my throat.
blink to keep the burning out of my eyes.
my bones creak whenever i move
like a rotten thing. a skeleton.

i stay here,
stay clinging.
wait for the firestorm to fizzle into a kind wind,
fizzle into nothing.
it takes its own kind of eternity.

still, clinging, i wait.
here, it is the most i can hope to do.

it is bad enough by now
that i can pinpoint when it starts.
the slow ***** of downhill.
the soft lull of descent.
it is quiet and deep and pulls me in without a thought,
a noiseless explosion.
i explode,
but only inwards.
i crumble,
but only from within.
there is no collateral damage
except to myself.

and in this knowledge,
i would excuse it as okay.
who cared, anyway.
it was okay as long as i kept it silent;
a survival that only goes one-way.
shows only one side.
i would wait for the storm to pass with baited breath.
for the earth to stop shaking, the waves to quit crashing.
ran, lost.
tried to find a way out of the calamity
that was myself.