I don’t know whether that oath I made to you when I was seventeen has become a privilege or a curse.

Finally still having that age inside now is devastating me. Too much emotion for a mature heart, too much roller coaster and too much blocked breath. But if I went back would I be willing to the attenuated living, the tepid fire in my chest, the serene acceptance of everything? That is if I could, which I can’t, without the help of stuff that turns you off, and I can’t. I never wanted this, I don’t want this. This heart burning furiously though is consuming me physically and I don’t know how much longer I will last.

It is full of priests of acceptance of what is, but here, inside me I know that wisdom can include that choice. You have to be willing to trade a little time, a few years that would otherwise be useless lived floating in nothingness, in pure survival. Dare, dare, dare. To risk your skin for it, but to have in return screams, rage, wild life, boiling blood pulsing a thousand times not still, whispering water. But can it be allowed? Is all this allowed? Is it blasphemy? It certainly makes one invisible to most. Few friends, and often stymied.

But I want to explain. Because I never explain and that keeps me in a constant state of alertness. To be serene, time must be lived linear, the past must recede gradually fading away, enveloping itself in a protective fog that makes the pain bearable but also dampens the strength of what was beautiful. The fog is not selective.

If, on the other hand, you take all the moments in which you had your heart in a vice, good and bad, the unexpected deaths, the poignant unrequited love, the exaggerated empathy for the suffering of others, the man’s breath-stopping hand brushing against you for the first time, the plunge from the rocks when you decide to do it even if it means dying, the importance of the single moment as if it were the only one you will experience.

And you put them all together on top of each other like sheets of tissue paper canceling the timeline. The intensity of what could have been almost surpasses what is because it has all the potential in it without the weight of the everyday that only attempts to slow your mad rush toward abandoning the physical adventure you have embarked on.

It all overlaps with what is, not that it debases it but it makes it too vivid like an unbearable light, smells that penetrate every corner of your life. Does the storm only make sense if it doesn’t last all the time? Emotions or balance? Losing control or taking control? And at what price. I will not pay it.