I Keep Falling in Love and I Keep Writing: But I’m Not That Good at Either

I’ve spent a long time thinking I’m not enough.

Not good enough to be a writer, not enough to fall in love with.

But I kept writing, and I kept falling in love. Which, honestly, doesn't say much. It doesn't speak to my writing abilities, nor to my capacity to be loved; it only really speaks to my tenacity.

I know I’ll keep writing, even if I should probably stop.

I’m not really a poet, but I write a lot of poems. I’ll write about a dream I had, where I danced with a faceless body, and they're comforting, but they're comforting like the grass is, as it catches your ankles. You keep moving on, because grass can't stop you - I keep moving on, because even in my dreams, I can’t be loved in a way I can truly see or hold onto.

It would probably make a good song if I had any musical talent (but I don’t).

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And yet, I keep writing.

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I can’t help but compare loving to writing, maybe because they're both things I do as a compulsion. I’ll develop a crush on someone I barely know—just a fleeting encounter in a café, but I’ll spend days crafting the perfect words to describe the way they smiled, as though that smile could fill all the empty spaces inside me. I’ll write a poem about the ant I accidentally stood on or about how the tree swayed differently than the others.

How I think I’ll be the one to break the pattern of normalcy.

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Even now, I sit here and imagine someone reading this and falling in love with my mind.

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I’m easily disheartened, though. I’ll have one piece of feedback that critiques my writing, and that’s it - I throw out all my pens forever. Or, I have one relationship end, and that's it- I’ll never be loved again.

Writing about love feels impossible. It’s all been said before, hasn’t it? Falling in love seems even more impossible. Everything has already been said before, hasn’t it?

Despite it all, I always come back to it - (the page, a crush).

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