I wish love and romance would inspire me as much as angst, empathy, hopelessness, existence, struggle, and simple joy drive me to pour countless words into sentences—forming lines that structure poems and prose. If I could, I would have crafted dozens of tributes for you, odes to my first love, and elegies for those who came and went. If I could, I would have wept after reading beautifully-written verses about passion or heartbreaks, but all I did was admire the word choices or how they lyrically wove into rhymes.

No I am not aromantic. Quite the opposite—the flames just die down too quickly.

And that is why, once a spark ignites, persistence has always been the key to unlock my door and invite you into my personal space. But staying inside requires resilience, too, given how bewilderingly complex I am compared to the exterior I display. My tongue is made of swords, and my anger is explosive. I could be clingy, but most of the time I am busy with the paracosm I’ve built inside my head. “Do you truly care about me?” seems to be a favorite question for anyone who gets involved with me on a deeper level.

And maybe that is why I keep telling you that I am fine with being alone. I am so convoluted that I might slowly devour you and drag you into darkness.

Am I seeing myself too highly? Maybe, but while love seems to never make it onto my list of priorities, have you ever considered inferiority and insecurity? It’s possible that someone can be so scared of commitment because they are secretly a fragile glass that will easily shatter into pieces with a little nudge.

It’s not you; it’s me. A person can never truly love someone when they are not capable of loving themselves.

Those two sentences are full of clichés, but clichés exist because they have formed a pattern. Maybe you are dealing with a person who is fixated on self-loathing and no longer has space to cater to others’ needs.

Ramble, ramble. Mumble, mumble.

Well, maybe I’ll finish it up here so I can drown myself in existential musing and write them into confessional pieces, as always. Who knows, when I am done, I can finally write a love confession, both for you and for me.