A vital lesson I keep unlearning is that you can’t overwrite internal monologues with socially scripted conversation. If there is something that wants to be verbalized for whatever intuitive reason you cannot simply replace those words with alternative talk, but instead you fall silent. Or even worse, you babble.

When other people matter your thoughts begin to look like them, your feelings get attached to them, your mood begins to act on them, and if they matter long enough you inevitably begin to see the world through their eyes. The people you love become the windows on your walls. You measure everything, including yourself, according to the expectations you expect them to have.

There is such a person in my life. I give him credit for my happiness and I blame him for my sadness. In my mind I am his fault. Completely. And this makes me violent. A virtuous part of me tells me to let him be but a hungrier (thus more convincing) part of me finds it easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine a world without him. I don’t mean to be dramatic but there is a chaos in my heart. Obviously I am not going to say those things. Instead I am going to practice keeping myself silent or safely confined in oblivious chatter until I master the art of emotional repression. This makes no sense.