the sad little bookworm

part 1. (previous heartbreak)

reading has always been an escape for me.

ivory pages and the smell of books,

from a young age

i was hooked.

every time i opened a book,

a portal opened as well;

each one it's own rectangular world.

and i've always been a bookworm,

but it just got to a point where

i read into things too much.

so i tend to

dig in between the lines trying

to mesh letters from different words,

to form my own,

trying to revive something already dying

lying to myself.

i immersed myself,

reading into any signs

that you could have been the one,

even though i knew

i was done with you and you were done with me,

i still just wanted it to be.

i wanted there to be a 'we'.

but now i see that

it wasn't meant to work,

i still pushed for it while you pulled away.

i formed a story i would happily read,

a narrative i was okay with telling myself,

planting seeds of ignorance

into my worldview.

i thought that

every love interest bored me

until it came to you,

which now i see isn't true.

but alas,

one single night turned into one-sidedness

your face was seared into my brain

as i had tears roll down my face,

you were the bane of my existence yet i still wished

that i could have all of you.

i held you in such high regard

to simply lose relevance in your life.

i hated thinking that

i was just a stranger to you

while you were still on my mind.

because when i think i've found someone who fits

my ideals, i keep them sealed in my brain,

which, as you can imagine,

makes me feel insane.

and perhaps i was already over you before i knew,

but all i did was mourn the death

of what could have been.

we exchanged "it's too bads",

and i used to think "but what if it was good?"

but how could i have mourned the death of something that was never alive?

i think i thought

that the idea of us

was enough for me.

but it was another case of the

wrong person, right time trope

and it hurt.

so now i look back,

wondering why did i have so much hope?

you sent me mixed signals,

but i only received the good ones.

perhaps the red flags ended up in my spam folder.

and i've known that i've always been a hopeless romantic,

i just never knew to what extent i'd fall for such antics.

to what point my perspective would be skewed.

and i remember thinking

"fuck you were just my type too".

but i was just a fool who rushed in.

so i ended up drowning in my own hope,

trying to cope,

desperately trying to

somehow fucking rope you back in.

but

i don't let your eyes even meet mine anymore,

you don't get to see my smile.

so while i did dream,

that's all it will ever be.

and i've woken up since then.

you were just one more love interest to write down in the book,

you weren't the one, though i guess it was fun,

but now i'm done with you,

and i don't feel so blue.

it had been awhile since

i thawed out my heart,

but i went back into the deep freeze

to keep my poor mind at ease.

and so

the sad little bookworm closed

another chapter, with another broken heart,

wondering when she would get to the good part.

part 2. (the story of what happened after, a shift, new love)

A few months later, it was summer.

So while the sad little bookworm's heart was still in the deep freeze,

she thought it was time to get some sun and thaw that heart out.

And yeah, she got sunburnt a few times but has since learnt how sunscreen works.

Sure she has a few tan lines on her heart, but who doesn't?

She learned how to avoid spots that were too harsh and bright, or vice versa, too dark and dim.

She figured out what she liked and didn't.

She hasn't read as much as she used to,

but that's okay, she knew her books would always

be there for her to come back to whenever she liked.

For now, it was time to get outside of her soiled house.

Touch some grass you know?

She was eighteen! You know what that means!

Downloading dating apps immediately because childhood trauma makes her seek male validation!

So many different insects on there...

And there were a few 'cute' caterpillars here and there, but it never really bloomed into anything else, she didn't feel any butterflies.

Then after one bedbug, two centipedes, and a few cockroaches (I googled grossest bugs for context)... she meets a little golden firefly who uses the cheesiest pick-up line ever, but it was a Buglor Swift (Taylor Swift) one which is her favourite artist of all time, so she ate it up. He tells her that he wants to take her out for sushi. Or um... whatever both bookworms and fireflies can eat... the little golden firefly wants to take her out for... BUG FOOD. She likes bug food.

Despite her initial reluctance, something in her little bookworm gut told her to say yes. So she gets all dressed up and takes BC (bugs city) transit to the bug food (sushi) restaurant her sister recommended. And you know the saying "the early worm gets the bird" (shut up I know what it is really, just please go with it for the sake of this story), and she was ALWAYS an early worm. She... wiggles (how do worms move?) to the restaurant getting there maybe twenty minutes early, sits on a bench until it's ten minutes early, and sits in the restaurant until it's time to meet this little golden firefly. She locked eyes with him and just knew by the way he already could make a smile crawl up her face like that... that he was the one and the only one she'd ever want.

I'm gonna skip over a lot, but since the summer, she's had the best (almost six!) five months of her life. This firefly lit up her life, and the happy little bookworm finally got to the good part of her book.

i love you henry munns.