there is a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from being physically stuffed to the brim while the mind continues to pace the floor, screaming that it is starving. my stomach is stretched, taut, entirely finished eating. my jaw aches from the sheer mechanics of chewing for too long, just trying to occupy the restless urge. yet standing in the blue glare of an open refrigerator late at night, i find myself staring into the cold shelves, looking for anything to put in my mouth, eating whole bags of chips i do not even enjoy, simply because they are there and the clock says i’m still awake

it is never about hunger in the gut, nor is it a simple question of control. you cannot out plan a hunger that does not originate in the gut. it feels far more like a primal, irrational panic like i have to eat, or i will die.

i am hungry

in abbey, mitski says

i am hungry

i have been hungry

i was born hungry

what do i need?”

this lyric lives somewhere deep in the marrow of everything i have lived through. it is an inherited, non metabolic emptiness a frantic search for something to quiet a nervous system running completely raw, reaching for food simply because it is the quickest, most tangible anchor in the dark.

i’m still hungry

to live inside this loop is to realise that no amount of physical volume can reach a void that isn’t physical. i chew, swallow, and finish until it physically hurts, hoping that whatever i take in will finally touch the cavernous room inside me that feels so hollow. but the stomach fills while the quiet never comes. the kitchen goes dark, the refrigerator door swings shut, and the ache remains completely untouched.

and i stayed hungry

but he hated himself more, and there was no competing with that.

no matter how gently she held him, he was always reaching for the parts of himself that he wanted to destroy, and she mistook that war as something that she could win. she thought that if she loved him loud enough, if she kissed every scar like it was sacred, if she stood between him and his ghosts with bare hands and a hopeful heart, that eventually he would choose life. and in choosing life,

he would choose her.

but a person drowning in their own reflection cannot see the hands reaching from shore. so he loved her in the only way he knew how: in fragments, in apologies, in promises spoken with sincerity and brokenness all in the same mouth.

he would hold her like she was something precious, and then disappear inside himself. she spent so long trying to understand how someone could make her feel so adored and abandoned in the same breath. but love was never the the villain.

because i know that he loved her.

i know that in the quiet moments, when the world loosened its grip, he would look at her with this kind of tenderness that makes poets out of ordinary men.

but love cannot outvote self-destruction. and that is the grief that comes with being loved by someone who cannot stand the sound of their own name. because he will offer you flowers while setting fire to the garden. he will swear that he never meant to hurt you, and he will mean every word. and somehow sincerity will not stop the bleeding.

he did love her.

but he hated himself more, and there was no competition in that.

love is not a feeling that arrives, its a decision that wakes up before you do, because love is not about finding a flawless reality, but choosing the familiar roads you are willing to walk blindfolded, not because they are perfect, but because they lead to each other. it’s choosing the imperfect person a thousand times over, until the choosing itself becomes the perfect story.

i choose you when you’re sunlight, and when you’re shadow. i choose you when you’re the reason my heart feels too big for my chest, and when you’re the reason it aches. i choose the late night talks that fix nothing but everything,

because i choose you.

i choose the way your laugh cracks open the morning, and the silence between us when words feel heavy. i choose the version of you that forgets the milk, and the version that remembers exactly how i take my coffee.

these ordinary tuesdays where we do nothing but exist side by side are the moments that write our forever, not the grand, sweeping gestures, but the repeated yeses whispered in ordinary time. not because it’s easy,

but because it’s you.

forever is built by choosing the same person until the choosing becomes the way your heart remembers how to beat.

so if you ever doubt, remember this: the strongest loves aren’t those that never waver. they are the ones where someone wakes up, looks at the same face across the pillow, and still says, today, tomorrow, every day, "i choose you." and that choice? it’s the most romantic line ever written. not in ink, but in mornings, in forgiveness, in staying.

but not all at once, that would be too obvious. too easy to run from. he does it in a way that feels like your idea, like you're the one who becomes smaller, more understanding, more patient. he won't walk in with a sign that says i'm going to be the thing that breaks you. he'll walk in charming enough, just self aware enough to admit he's a little messed up. and you'll think you can handle it because you have been through things, too. but what he doesn't say is he doesn't just hate himself. he believes deeply, very, very deeply, that anyone who loves him must be stupid, or weak, or lying.

and that is when it starts. he doesn't trust you, not because of what you've done, but because he doesn't trust anything good. so he'll question you, test you, pull away, come back, then pull away again. he'll make you believe you need to start working, working to prove you're different, you're real, you're not going anywhere. so you start overexplaining, overgiving, overstaying, and he lets you, because it feeds something in him to watch you try that hard. and no matter how much you give, it will never be enough, because the problem isn't that he can't find love, it's that he rejects it the second it is real.

when someone hates themselves, they will not believe that your love is something safe, they will see it as a threat. and a man will never change if he can convince you that you are the problem. so he does. he teaches you to question everything, your body, your reactions, your worth, until you start apologizing for things you don't even understand. but he will never tell you to hate yourself. he will just create an environment where that's the only conclusion that's left. so you make yourself small, accept apologies without change, and bite your tongue so many times it will start to scar.

you will call it love, but love it is not. it's you learning to see yourself the way he already does. and that's how it ends. you don't just lose him, you lose the ability to look yourself in the mirror without picking yourself apart. that's what loving a man who hates himself does. it doesn't just break you, it teaches you how to do it on your own.

i think people like to revisit things they know are killing them. they think if they stare at the damage long enough, it’ll finally make sense. maybe we will eventually be able to understand why the things happened the way they did. maybe we can find a reason for our suffering. human beings are desperate creatures. we need explanations for everything. we need to believe there was a reason the knife entered where it did. a reason someone left. a reason our childhood happened the way it did. a reason our parents failed us, a reason the world failed us.

so we return to the wound. look for fingerprints we might have missed, believe we might find closure behind all the blood, and soft tissue.

but sometimes, there is no deeper meaning. sometimes bad things happen, and the only thing left to do is decide whether you wanna keep blooding over it. because wounds do not heal when you keep reopening them every night. they do not heal when you keep tracing the outline of every scar, trying to remember exactly how it split open.

at some point, you have to let the skin close. even if it heals ugly, even if it leaves behind a mark, even if part of you misses who you were when you were still bleeding. pain should not be the only thing that reminds you you were alive.

and there comes a point, you have to realise the wound was never the thing that was hurting you. you were the thing that was hurting you, by continuously choosing to rip it back open again.

there is a hunger behind my insecurities that feels insatiable. it feeds on comparison, on imagined scenarios, on the belief that if i can just understand why i’m not enough, i can fix it. i pick at my own flesh my appearance, my desirability, my personality until self-awareness turns into self consumption. beneath my appetite is the quiet conviction that if i fix the right thing, remove the right flaw, someone might finally love me in a way that never leaves.

and yet, some insecurities cannot be fixed. they are woven too deeply into the flesh of who i am, they are the veins that carry blood. so i overthink, as if understanding my anatomy might grant me control over my puppet body. i treat overthinking like a form of preparation, as if anticipating every possible way i could be rejected will soften the edge of the knife when it finally comes. it won't. should i meet the blade, whether softened or not, i will bleed all the same.

once i start peeling back the skin, i begin to see the rotten flesh. i become aware of what i believe i lack and fixate on what others once had. i study the past as though it contains evidence against me. i turn intimacy into comparison, presence into performance, desire into a measure of worth. i dissect every word, searching for confirmation that i am inadequate, that i am replaceable, that i must earn my place continually. at the same time, i gnaw at my flesh for proof that i am enough, that i am irreplaceable, that i can be loved for who i am.

i realise i am not trying to protect myself as much as i am trying to control the narrative of loss. if i can determine that i am lacking, then abandonment, even if it never arrives, becomes logical rather than heart shattering. there is a strange warmth in this. pain, when anticipated, feels manageable. love, when it is uncertain, feels dangerous.

the tragedy is that my hunger is never satisfied. the mind cannot feast endlessly without hollowing the body. the act of eating myself alive only deepens the emptiness it was meant to fill.