i love you!.txt
In a day, you might utter a thousand words in passing and remember not a single one. It isn’t uncommon either that you may spend an entire waking cycle alone and say barely anything at all, not out of avoidance, rather, circumstance. Either way, it’s likely to be innocuous more often than not.
It’s a fundamental function. You go to execute the action of speaking, and off you go. Much like when you go to walk, and you just begin to move. You don’t necessarily need to sit there and articulate the balance and weight you apply to each leg. You imagine moving forward, and you just do. You don’t think about which leg went first or which one went last. Innocuous details.
Sometimes though, you encounter one of those stair cases with one step that’s a little taller than the rest. Seldom will it knock you onto the floor, but the unexpected snag in your gait will shatter your blindness to the innocuous, breaking through to a sudden visceral self awareness. Moments like these may be the most awake we can get in an otherwise mundane day.
Certain words you say, different ones for everyone, are harder to say than others - Words that ask for help, words that decline it instead, words that say goodbye, words that introduce us for the first time. Words that reveal us.
For example, maybe it’s hard to tell your friends that you love them, even when you do sincerely love them. Your throat goes dry and your head wants to spin, the abundance of cognizance maims your will, and your broken will distorts your want. You might tell yourself, not only are you afraid to go up those stairs, you actually don’t even want to anymore. You stumbled on that uneven step before and it left you shaken. You’ll find another way around, and if not, you’ll just stay down here.
It’s just, a life stuck on the first floor of every building you enter isn’t worth choosing, if a choice is something you have.
These sort of words are hard to say for any number of reasons, for any number of people, but despite the varying degrees of crooked that our stairs may be, there are still many that we all so deeply yearn to climb.
Every day, someone stumbles a bit on the stairs, then innocuously continues on to where they’re going - I hope that you and I both may always find the will to do the same.