Deeply flawed.

In the corner of the room, a young man sits on the faux grass, his hand holding a letter he had written. He seems crestfallen as if he shared a personal conversation with this letter. For its content, while painful, holds a glimpse of what he was like before he came to realize who he is now.

Holding a couple of people close to him, he is ever so grateful of their presence in his life though his actions hardly reveal and his voice don’t vocalize enough. He knows he is not the person past lovers fell in love with, or sought for. The girl they fell in love with was a lot more desirable and loving. Though complex in thoughts like trying to solve puzzle pieces in her mind, she got anxious over the years about herself, about himself.

The obsession over the tiniest details, the increased rigidity and aloofness. Perhaps in the public eye and of his safety concerns, he allows flickers of the young girl to pay a visit, but she doesn’t overstay her welcome back at his place when it’s just him alone in the apartment. For the most part now, that girl is gone. How can anyone possibly love him and stand by him despite the drastic changes of identity he has gone through over the course of time?

He clasps the letter close to his heart and feels a sting inflicting him, invading his space making him wish he had ignored his voice. The suicide attempts. The thoughts of erasing others, and ultimately himself becomes the bane of his existence. Days of unconsciousness and panic attacks were better off masking the ill manifestations. The countless promises he has made to himself where he would get back on track, but he’s still trying. With all his effort, he is pushing through.

Time and time again, he is reminded of how his body wasn’t that of his own. Society incites a slow painful death on him, with the repercussions of his anger like a cherry on top. Words are not much aligning with his actions of late, the language between everyone he tries to love in a state of confusion and complication. His presence shrinks when the words “I love you” leave his lips for they searched hope desperately, like a scavenger would and waits to feed on the dead.

The glassy stares.

The emotional unavailability.

The sleepless nights.

It’s on him.

The rejection he gives out to people gets exhausting and depressing, and mostly, just nothing to his family. With trust comes trauma, with trauma comes intimacy issue, with intimacy issue comes pain, with pain, comes an unwanted feeling in the center of his world. Some days he cannot comprehend why he abhors himself and vehemently rejects the care of others. Out of fear, maybe. Out of love? For who? Himself? Himself.