Burning Beneath

Tell me how to close the door again.

Tell me how to stop my thoughts from rushing through it.

Tell me how to get a grip again on myself, on my behaviour, my actions, my reactions, and the thoughts that seem to move faster than I can catch them.

The gate is open.

Not entirely by my choice, but because a creature entered my life without warning.

I’m not saying that creature is responsible for everything happening inside me right now. That wouldn’t be fair. But I know for a fact that my interaction with that creature forced me to see the sharp contrast between two worlds.

There was the world I had built so carefully around myself.

A world I held tightly together because it protected me. It helped me navigate the stress, the anxiety, and the loneliness. It gave my life structure. I filled it with activities, people, responsibilities, projects, anything that kept me moving.

And maybe, from the outside, that looked like living.

Maybe it was living.

But it was living with something always sitting quietly in the shadows.

Loneliness.

I knew it was there. I could feel it. I had simply learned how to keep it wrapped up, weighed down, controlled enough that it wouldn’t take over again. Because I know what happens when it does. I know how easily it can pull me somewhere very dark.

And then this creature appeared.

And somehow, the walls of that carefully constructed world started collapsing.

Because suddenly I experienced firsthand what intellectual compatibility could feel like. What intimacy could feel like. What physical presence and proximity could do to me. What it feels like when another person reaches parts of you that you had almost convinced yourself no longer needed to be reached.

The timing could not be more wrong.

Absolutely, completely wrong.

But I had a taste of something.

And now I know it exists.

That is what I am fighting.

Not only for myself, but for that creature too.

Because that creature needs time. Space. Healing. Maybe they are not ready to belong to me, or to anyone, for that matter.

And understanding that intellectually is easy.

Living according to that understanding is something else entirely.

Fighting my own wants and needs while trying to respect theirs might be one of the hardest battles I have ever had with myself.

And so far, I keep failing.

I think one thing, then do the exact opposite.

I regret it.

I correct myself.

Then I repeat it.

Thought. Action. Regret. Restraint. Longing. Action again.

A vicious little circle I have not yet figured out how to break.

One thing that creature once said keeps coming back to me:

What if this leads us somewhere neither of us has ever experienced before?

I honestly don’t know.

I don’t have an answer.

All I know is that the gate is wide open now, and everything I had kept behind it is flooding through.

Maybe the answer isn’t learning how to close it again.

Maybe I’m not supposed to rebuild the exact same walls.

Maybe the point is to learn how to stand there with the gate open without being swept away by everything rushing through it.

To feel without immediately acting.

To want without immediately reaching.

To care without possessing.

To hope without demanding an outcome.

To allow something to exist without forcing it to become something before its time.

Maybe that is what letting go actually means.

Not losing control of everything, but accepting that I cannot control everything.

And learning to trust the process without trying to drag it toward the ending I want.

I just hope that while I learn how to do that, I don’t hurt anyone around me.

Especially that creature.