Younger then, i remember not understanding why people would want to escape their bodies. I remember not understanding that souls could carry pain that weighed more than the foundations the towers of their anxiety and hopelessness had built. I didn’t understand holding the smoke in your lungs until it burned more than the memory of her leaving did. Younger then, i didn’t understand the desire to numb. I didn’t understand the desire to feel less because you feel too much too often. I didn’t understand that there could be so much relief in the redness of your own blood or in the gray of the cloud rolling out of your lungs. Younger then, i didn’t understand that giving your heart to someone didn’t always mean getting it back the same way you gave it. I didn’t understand that there were people who could hold something so beautiful in their hands and treat it so carelessly. Younger then, i didn’t know that my worst days would taste like cigarette ashes and the salt from my own tears. I didn’t know my knuckles would bleed the same way my heart did when she left. I didn’t know that there was a force in this world capable of rattling your very bones. Younger then, i didn’t know that love was nothing but inevitable pain.