Manhattan

Based off the song Manhattan by Sara Bareilles, Experience based off my own.

“Stay…Stay away from me.” Such a cold voice, one I had never heard before, right out of left field. Yet I knew that very same voice, was mine. Silence hung in the air like heavy curtains, shutting out the light and hope. I knew what I had said was cold, but after so much, it was necessary. His words and touch, what I knew and came to love so much, simply hurt. Everything, even me, was driving us apart, and we were already as far as the east was from the west. This fake mask, the one we had built together, among knowing smiles and pain filled laughs, this porcelain mask had to shatter.

It couldn’t have been more than four months ago when I came to this city. My heart filled with the autumn light and spurred on by the exhilarating chill of a breezy morning. Maybe it was the way we happened upon each other at the park we’d grow to love most, or how the streets and avenues were our muse, but from the moment our lives crossed paths, I knew I’d be the one to leave. At the end of all this, I wished I could’ve just tiptoed away. I wanted to let you have this city, because now, it’s tainted in my eyes. I can’t walk the underground and not feel as though it was swallowing me whole, drowning me. The people and their sidewalks are no longer welcoming, despite the ever changing and faceless crowd staying constant.

I think what I hated most about you, no, what my self-dysphoria hated most about you was that you always wanted to change that. You seemed to need me to love myself, and maybe that’s why I’m staying away. I can’t love myself, so how can I be expected to love another?