From Here to Houston

My friends get mad at me for not telling them things. They think I’m being selfish and closed off because I won’t tell them what’s bothering me. For some reason, I think I can break the cycle, but I’m left crushed beneath my own thoughts. I’m being vague… let’s see if I can convey my point…

Sometimes it seems like for every moment of happiness there must be a thousand moments of pain. Somehow, someway, my happiness is causing an incredible amount of pain to one of my best friends. She resents me for it. She hates me for it.

And I can’t just leave the situation alone and walk away. People sometimes, whether you like it or not, become part of your heart. Their pain becomes your pain. Their tears become yours to cry. Of course the proverbial advice would be that we can only be responsible for ourselves and can’t spend our time worrying, caring for someone else. Those words are lost somewhere in the 180 miles from here to Houston as I hear her crying and my own eyes begin to fill.

Someone else’s pleasure becomes someone else’s pain. That’s just life I suppose. It hurts so damn much and there’s nothing I can do about it. She tells me things and perhaps feels better; I hear those words and certainly feel worse.

When the cycle of pleasure and pain can’t be broken, our hearts do the breaking. Her brokenness breaks me. The heart breaks and breaks. The heart lives by breaking.

They say if you love somebody than you have got to set them free,
but I would rather be locked to you than live in this pain and misery.
They say time will make all this go away,
but it's time that has taken my tomorrows and turned them into yesterdays.
-Ben Harper