i read the book last night. i actually slept with it. i don't know why. it just sat beside me and under me at some points.

i've been trying to think about my thought process through this whole thing, why i couldn't just let myself fall. was it curiosity? scared of getting to that point with another human? was it because you fell in love first? i dont know yet. i dont know why i couldn't put adam behind me. it had a lot to do with how little i feel i had to give of myself, then all the sudden when things ended i had so much to give. it's fucked up. its not something i fully understand yet. i hope i can figure it out. i hope i can learn from this, become a better person. i've done shitty things over the past four years and i can 100% say i was the shittiest to you. to the one person who made my body feel love. every time i would see adam i would think about this night i fell on the ice in this parking lot and it would bring back these memories, the good ones, the ones that made me swoon over this person that made me smile for a couple of months, but i failed to remember how love is more than laughing and smiling, its about connection. yes, i had that connection with adam, but i never fought until i cried and then laid beside him and felt love. sometimes i think i could have gone my whole existence without hearing the words from you and known it all along.

hind sight is 20/20, its a terrible thing and all it can do is help us figure out the nearest and farthest future. for once i lost everything. for once i didn't give my all to anyone and i'm still left with half of myself. its a weird feeling. i'm nervous about how this will all affect me. i've never been alone, like really alone and thats a problem, i know. i look back and i was hung up on a man that was "normal", traditionally handsome, wanted a few babies and a back yard, but he was so normal that all the sudden you seemed like this "weird thing" this person that was so backwards from what i'd previously had. it reminds me of when i thought dating the virgin, because he reminded me of tye, was a good idea. i'm so lost right now, i haven't laid in bed and not been able to sleep in a long time, in tye time.

i guess part of me allowed the "normal"ness of adam define me, when in reality, you understood me.

before i lost you, i thought i could handle it. i thought if i let it go, maybe then i could find myself again, maybe let the normalcy take over again, maybe then i'd feel whole. maybe i'd just play the who cares card for a while, like i have tried in the past.

its a weird thing how i didn't give myself to you fully, yet now i feel fully empty. i know this feeling. i hate how deep i know it, because i know how long it took to find myself after it. this time i don't have to rebuild my whole life, this time i have to rebuild myself though, which might be worse. i've lived my life over the past four years, i've traveled, moved away from my hometown, yet my inabilities followed me. my inabilities to commit to another human in the simplest form, my inabilities of feeling the feelings i felt the first time i was in love and somehow. i dated enough to never love, never really love. Distance and dating the men that wouldn't lay and look me in the eyes, it was simple.

being the person i am, i assumed this is all i would run into, it's all i would date, one day someone would... just fall and i would do the same. when you and i began dating i knew you were different but i didnt know how much different. when you told me you were bipolar i think i lit up on the inside, knowing i wasn't clinically diagnosed, but knowing i was fucked up in some way/shape/form, never being able to pin point it. i finally felt like maybe i met a person as fucked up as myself. that was comforting.

there would be nights i would let myself lay on you and feel it, those were the good nights, then there were nights i would get anxious and need that distance, but want to be near you at the same time. sometimes you would lay there and talk to me and i would close my eyes and listen, sometimes you would talk to me, and i would close my eyes and get pissed that you were talking. i just wanted to lay, close my eyes, and be alone, but have you there.

i think i have a lot of issues, real, emotional issues that make me the way i am, how i can go from one extreme to the other, how my brain has this understanding of love as not permanent. i think of love as 4 years, i watch people leave each other, and it just feels like another blow, even if i didn't know them. how can people just stop loving each other? if you really love someone, how do you stop. it fades, i understand, one day you're better and you feel yourself again. but how do you step away after years of loving another person. i always wondered that when my parents divorced, how they could just stop and not live in that comfort of the home they built together. when my parents divorced i think i lost a lot of the ideals that people still seek; when people talk about the ideals of love now i think how silly it seems, how no one can commit to another human forever, it's impossible. on the opposing side i want it, its just such a distant idea that i dont see how it can ever work. someone always falls out of love, it seems. even if i think it could survive, i also think that just means i cant see past ~4 years. what happens if it ends after i fall? all the sudden i have to rebuild again. no one tells you what to do after that, all the sudden you're on medication and wishing you could just run off the road to make that other person realize they still care.

i do what i do because if i get back to that state, my purest state of love, i'm impossible to beat. i flurish in love, it's why i love it so much... its why i hate it so much. i hate the idea of losing myself again. loving someone so much that i have everything to lose... and it rests in the hands of another person, a person i trust with my heart, they can just.... leave, without notice, without any reason, their feelings can just... stop. i can't even be upset if that happens because its life, but i lost everything. i lost the man, my sanity, and the curtains i picked out in my head. ive never felt loss before that and i told myself i couldn't ever let myself go like that again, i couldn't give everything to someone because i have to protect myself. so everytime i thought i could see myself getting to that point, to the "all in" i would stray, because i couldn't truly see trusting someone with my heart, i could trust them with my wallet, my ssn, driving my car, but i couldn't trust them with what i had just gotten back.

im so scared of getting to that point and when i lost you, i realized i lost someone that i could trust with it and that takes me back to the moment i let go with tye. i was laying rolled in a comforter on the floor with him, we took naps on the floor, i never understood why, but its when i let myself fall, it was 4 months in -- after i saw my ex whom broke up with me, behind tyes back. i called tye and told him and he told me he was leaving louisiana and coming back to alabama that moment. i broke down. he loved me and i couldn't love him yet, because this man (tyler) that i gave my heart was back in my life and now i was faced with a decision.

my decision was tye but when tye broke my heart a few months later, i ran back to tyler. then tye came back. my whole dating life has been fully of people never giving me their all from the beginning, even tye. no one could ever pick me, so it feels impossible that you could have chosen me for good, maybe at some point youd need to leave and it would hurt because maybe i decided to let you in and let myself fall. when you'd leave, it would crush me, and i wouldn't want to feel it, so i'd try and mask it. then you'd come back and i couldn't ever feel secure until a few years in, then ultimately your love would fade, not because of another person, but because of me. youd leave because you had loved me up. you had used all the love you a lotted for me up. i would have to rebuild my life, put the curtains in a real box this time and feel empty.

Sleep to Dream or Wake.

I can't sleep, I want to cry and the tears stop at the side of my eyes, the side they wouldn't stop running down today as I talked to Josh.

I spent a full work day at Joshes house tonight and I think the only thing I accomplished was dehydration and finally telling him I love him, which I suppose to be a good thing. Better late than never, may or may not apply to this scenario.

Here's the deal. I cheated on Josh. Josh is the first man that has really loved me in a very long time. He's one of the reasons for this blog, these entries, and this "blog title." A Chest Full... a chest full of what? Its my chest and his; his chest is full of every bit of love you can feel for someone, I know that because his eyes are so full of sorrow and happiness all at the same time, all the time, I know that because when I lay on that chest I feel it all, I feel everything he's ever felt, its like radio frequencies that pound through my ear into my brain and heart. I lay on his chest and everything leaves me, until today. Today, as I laid on his chest, nothing left, it was exactly opposite, everything came to me... it was like for once I felt everything inside him push through me. I know how stupid that sounds, how weirdly Dramatic-Rom-Com that comes off as... but I think words are hard for me because I can't let them leave my body without thinking "god, this sounds stupid as fuck." That feeling, though. I can safely say I've never felt it, I've never listened to another persons heart beat (other than my once semester of nursing school that crippled my soul), I've never allowed myself to be so still on another human as I do with him and today I realized I'd never really listened to what was happening in his chest. Today I noticed everything happening in there, I heard it slow down and when he'd hug me tighter as I begged tighter, it would increase. To know I can make someone's heart increase would have scared me 24 hours ago, now I can say that no matter the outcome, I'm glad I listened.

Sometimes I wonder what's happened to me in the span of the short four years ago that I lost all my given shits. I've hardened, but for good reasons... though, I tend to have more school girl fantasies than ever now. I day dream about a man wanting to really throw down the rest of him life for me, about Saturday mornings in a house that we're renovating as we sleep on a mattress thrown on the floor.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

To know you lost not a good thing, a best thing, a Saturday morning, rest of your life man is enough to make you stop breathing for the moment. It's enough to send you to bed at 8:45 on a Saturday night when your friends are coaxing you out for Irish Carbombs on the most Irish Holiday.

I want to start by erasing everything I've ever said that I didn't mean. I want whomever is reading this to know a lot of things left my finger tips without thought, just mindless chatter, annoying agreeances, and selfishness. I want to really say things, I want to really write here, to really feel something. I feel things, but I forget they're real, I forget feelings are real things that I dismiss as air.

I think I can finally rest now.

To Write Because I Can't Speak...

I'm sitting on my bed with a piece of fancy chicken sitting to my right-- on my bed because I'm a disgusting human being-- yet, I can't choke up the appetite to eat this chicken that just two days ago was prepped beautifully on a huge plate with an orange garnish and a serious glass of vino. 

I haven't eaten all day, who cares, It's just food, I'll live. I can't put the chicken away and I sure as hell can't muster up energy to pick up the fork. 

I had a boyfriend 2 days ago, a boyfriend that was only around for a few months, but I think I gained a chef during that time. He's spectacular and he's the one that suggested I write. So, I will write, because I love him and I don't know if I can write anything to make him love me back enough to forgive me for the things I've put him through over the last few months, but I need to tell someone and no one all at the same time. 

I met Josh January 3rd of this year.

I specifically remember standing at the bar in the Brazilian Cafe waiting on the long haired guy from the dating website I had all but used up by now... waiting at that bar, I was so nervous, it's been a while since I felt nerves like that, my leg was shaking and I made sure to stick my ass out ever so slightly to all but complete my weird Mad Men persona. 

When Josh walked in I knew his hair right away, and the polka dot shirt he was so excited to wear-- I thought it was weird he buttoned it all the way to the top, never been on a date with a man that did that, I had also never had a conversation like the ones Josh and I had on the dating site. Sincere. Adorable. Very shy. Big on talking, less on eating (at that moment).

As the date went on any hope the waitress had of leaving early was shot. We were talking, engaging, laughing... I had know Josh for years, or so it felt. 

Now before I get to the memorable first date kiss, which never happened... just weeks before a man had broken my heart. I don't know what this says about me, that I feel I can place a man in a seat across from me and 25 pieces of delicious Calamari and think he will heal me? Maybe that this man, for the night, will cure me, satisfy my desires, my... needs, maybe he will leave me wanting more, leave me with just the most lingering of kisses...

Josh didn't kiss me that night. Josh confided in me that he thought he blew it that night, he thought we'd never see one another again. 

For once I want to confess how I felt after that date, the real feels... the ones I can't say, mostly because my mouth doesn't work in it's deepest times of need. 

After that first date, I thought of the man that broke my heart, Craig. 

As I walked in the Cafe that night to meet Josh, I was excited, but I also knew it would be hard; I had no idea how much that really meant.