Lately, for at least a few months, I’ve found my life to be a delicate, sensitive measuring scale.
I’m constantly competing with myself, shifting between personalities with the flip of a switch, each side of the coin trying to tip the balance in its favor.
I’ve been aware of this for a time now; perhaps I finally stumbled across the right metaphor to write it out.
On one side of the scale, there’s me. Her favorite color is pink, all shades, and it spans across every aspect of her rose-tinted life. She always has an Airpod in her left ear, she drinks her fun little drinks and hugs her friends a little too tightly.
She sketches her dreams on white sheets of freshly made ice. Her blades are the paintbrush of her choice for the masterpiece she’s dedicated her decade to. Minutes passed on the red digital clock have turned into moments in the montage of her life, ticking down into the cold ground with each fall.
My favorite flower is still a hyacinth. A fact, a certainty, an indisputable, reliable piece of knowledge that rests in my mind and will until I’m long forgotten.
She has a birthmark in the shape of a heart on her forehead that only appears in flushed moments of hard work and careful devotion. She gets attached to her water bottles and usually understands what’s going on in about half of her classes. She has a Google Doc, full of messy emotions waiting to be sculpted into something reasonable, open at essentially all times. She knows who she is because she’s herself when she’s with the red-painted twin flame that completes her.
On the other side of the scale, there’s it, which is also me. The shapeless blob. Waiting to be told what to feel, what to think, what to do. Always waiting. Because there’s no one telling it what to feel, what to think, or what to do.
The pile of nothing hates sitting on the scale. Being judged, being weighed, being reduced to nothing more than a comparison. But that’s all it deserves.
Because that indistinct form has controlled my life for far too long; it spills into my brain through my eye sockets. It begs for a hint of an answer, and it only wants to be led by the masses.
It wants to be loved, to be held, to be seen.
So, it stays liquid. It stays moldable, waiting to be loved, waiting to be held, waiting to be seen.
My favorite flower is still a hyacinth. A fact, a certainty, an indisputable, reliable piece of knowledge that rests in my mind and will until I’m long forgotten.
The nothing’s favorite flower is whatever you tell it it is. It wants your validation; it’s all it’s ever craved. It only does what it thinks you’ll like, and it hurts when it guesses wrong. I hope someday, it melts into me and fuses with my fake confidence, saving itself and me from a life of aimless pining.
