I find myself on my desk, pen in hand, staring at the blank paper in front of me. I will the words to come to me. Words I can never find the courage to tell you. Words that you’ll never understand. I beg my hand to write, to make sense of the jumbled mess of feelings and assumptions that plague every thought of this restless mind and every beat of this hopeful heart.
Lust
I am a sinner. I pine for you, I am drawn to you like a moth to an inferno. Every second spent with you is a moment spent flirting with danger. Being with you is playing with fire when I’m already drenched in gasoline. One touch and I’m gone. A glorious pyre of want and need, unreciprocated. I burn for you yet my flames are no match to your arctic wasteland. There’s no rhyme or reason to the way I need you. You are the anti-thesis to the ideal man of my girlish fantasies, a stark contrast to what I thought I wanted for myself. On paper, we were everything that is wrong when a guy meets a girl. We were damned to end before we could even begin. A disaster just waiting to decimate and destroy. I just didn’t expect how very little of me would be left in the aftermath.
Avarice
I am a sinner. Selfish in the way I need you, selfish to want you for myself even as you give yourself freely to her. And her. And her. And her, too. You’re every bad habit logic tells me to kick but my body craves you and your elusiveness. I can’t have you because somebody already does and even though it makes me feel sick to my stomach to want for myself something I can never have, I don’t know how to stop. You are hers but you aren’t. You are mine but you aren’t. You are far too detached to ever belong to anyone ever again but I’d take any piece of you I can get and hold on to it like the last skein of water in the desert.
Gluttony
I am a sinner, a glutton for the pain and heartache only you can dole out. You scare me. You can destroy me without knowing it, without meaning to. And I’d submit myself to you knowing full well you can never feel for me even a margin of the way I feel for you. I’d take the pain over and over if you are the one delivering it. I will mend my heart only for you to break it again for I can never have my fill of you.
Envy
I am a sinner. I envy you and your ability to turn off your emotions. I do not understand how you can compartmentalize our encounters to neat little boxes that you can put the lid on and shove to the back of your mind when you’re through with me. And I envy her who has a hold on you, who has every right to kiss you and hold your hand and not feel the shame that comes with being the interloper. And I envy all the couples I see, wishing that it were you and me, wishing I can love you openly and without holding back, without judgment, without the fear of expecting the other shoe to drop.
Anger
I am a sinner. Furious with myself, for allowing my heart to become attached knowing that there is nothing to hold on to but flimsy promises and faulty excuses. I did not ask to feel things for you. I didn’t ask to be broken by you but here we are. As you pull out of my driveway after yet another night of sneaking off, I berate myself for succumbing to your sweet words (and yet you barely even try). And for a moment, I am furious with you for knowingly stringing me along. Why did you have to choose me, why did you have to play with MY heart? It’s maddening how fate led us to this point. But the hate I feel for the situation we are in is shadowed by the inexplicable joy I feel when I’m with you.
Sloth
I am a sinner. Stuck in this never ending vicious cycle we have set in motion. And I am helpless. Helpless in my unwillingness to get up from my need of you to put a stop to this. I know I should pick up the phone and tell you I can do this no longer. I need to but I won’t. I am wrongfully content to lie to myself and do nothing about the pain you continue to inflict upon my wounded ego. I should get up, pick up my pieces, and start putting them back together. But I lie in wait for you, hoping you’d reach for my hand and pull me up. I have come to rely on you as I always have knowing full well you’ll never come. The vicious cycle going over and over. And I lie here still, lying staring at the ceiling, doing nothing but wonder how this tenuous toxic relationship we had become so out of hand.
Pride
And I am a sinner for I can not admit how wrong I have been all this time. Every smile you direct my way erases every painful wound you inflict on my already damaged heart. Now, I turn my eye against the glaring truth of how wrong we have become, no, how wrong we have always been for each other from the very beginning. You have taught this selfish little heart to deny human decency and take for myself what is not mine for the taking. Pride. This tiny little voice inside my head which says I have to keep holding on to you, holding on to the vague semblance of “us”… for one of these days you’ll finally choose me over her. So I waited. And I waited. And I waited. And now I’m still waiting with nothing but my sinful self to keep me company.
I am a sinner. I pine for you, I am drawn to you like a moth to an inferno. Every second spent with you is a moment spent flirting with danger. Being with you is playing with fire when I’m already drenched in gasoline. One touch and I’m gone. A glorious pyre of want and need, unreciprocated. I burn for you yet my flames are no match to your arctic wasteland. There’s no rhyme or reason to the way I need you. You are the anti-thesis to the ideal man of my girlish fantasies, a stark contrast to what I thought I wanted for myself. On paper, we were everything that is wrong when a guy meets a girl. We were damned to end before we could even begin. A disaster just waiting to decimate and destroy. I just didn’t expect how very little of me would be left in the aftermath.
Avarice
I am a sinner. Selfish in the way I need you, selfish to want you for myself even as you give yourself freely to her. And her. And her. And her, too. You’re every bad habit logic tells me to kick but my body craves you and your elusiveness. I can’t have you because somebody already does and even though it makes me feel sick to my stomach to want for myself something I can never have, I don’t know how to stop. You are hers but you aren’t. You are mine but you aren’t. You are far too detached to ever belong to anyone ever again but I’d take any piece of you I can get and hold on to it like the last skein of water in the desert.
Gluttony
I am a sinner, a glutton for the pain and heartache only you can dole out. You scare me. You can destroy me without knowing it, without meaning to. And I’d submit myself to you knowing full well you can never feel for me even a margin of the way I feel for you. I’d take the pain over and over if you are the one delivering it. I will mend my heart only for you to break it again for I can never have my fill of you.
Envy
I am a sinner. I envy you and your ability to turn off your emotions. I do not understand how you can compartmentalize our encounters to neat little boxes that you can put the lid on and shove to the back of your mind when you’re through with me. And I envy her who has a hold on you, who has every right to kiss you and hold your hand and not feel the shame that comes with being the interloper. And I envy all the couples I see, wishing that it were you and me, wishing I can love you openly and without holding back, without judgment, without the fear of expecting the other shoe to drop.
Anger
I am a sinner. Furious with myself, for allowing my heart to become attached knowing that there is nothing to hold on to but flimsy promises and faulty excuses. I did not ask to feel things for you. I didn’t ask to be broken by you but here we are. As you pull out of my driveway after yet another night of sneaking off, I berate myself for succumbing to your sweet words (and yet you barely even try). And for a moment, I am furious with you for knowingly stringing me along. Why did you have to choose me, why did you have to play with MY heart? It’s maddening how fate led us to this point. But the hate I feel for the situation we are in is shadowed by the inexplicable joy I feel when I’m with you.
Sloth
I am a sinner. Stuck in this never ending vicious cycle we have set in motion. And I am helpless. Helpless in my unwillingness to get up from my need of you to put a stop to this. I know I should pick up the phone and tell you I can do this no longer. I need to but I won’t. I am wrongfully content to lie to myself and do nothing about the pain you continue to inflict upon my wounded ego. I should get up, pick up my pieces, and start putting them back together. But I lie in wait for you, hoping you’d reach for my hand and pull me up. I have come to rely on you as I always have knowing full well you’ll never come. The vicious cycle going over and over. And I lie here still, lying staring at the ceiling, doing nothing but wonder how this tenuous toxic relationship we had become so out of hand.
Pride
And I am a sinner for I can not admit how wrong I have been all this time. Every smile you direct my way erases every painful wound you inflict on my already damaged heart. Now, I turn my eye against the glaring truth of how wrong we have become, no, how wrong we have always been for each other from the very beginning. You have taught this selfish little heart to deny human decency and take for myself what is not mine for the taking. Pride. This tiny little voice inside my head which says I have to keep holding on to you, holding on to the vague semblance of “us”… for one of these days you’ll finally choose me over her. So I waited. And I waited. And I waited. And now I’m still waiting with nothing but my sinful self to keep me company.
Originally submitted and published on Thought Catalog under the pseudonym Azylla De Leon