Tilted

You know that feeling, when you try doing too many things at once, and everything seems to slot slightly out of place? Like that painting on the wall you try to straighten- and you push it further out of place with your effort, until you leave it dangling more slanted than before. It's a nuisance in terms of aesthetics, but then if you don't let it bother you, nothing consequential comes out of it either.

It's so hard being the protagonist- even in your own life. You keep on trying to be the hero you see, but it becomes so unrealistic after a while. It's absolute bullshit how all these main characters only have one fatal flaw, and how they overcome it with "the power of friendship" or whatever. People are flawed in so many different ways, but flaws are only contextual anyway. One's flaw is another's virtue in a different environment, and sometimes I just feel like my talents make me maladaptive to this timeline I travel.

They say when you love someone, you love them for their flaws. It's not that you don't see flaws, but you love them for it, and accept it for part of who they are. That concept frightens me to no end- if you recognize it as a flaw to begin with, that just means some part of your system have rejected it from the beginning. You can love someone despite this, but when that love runs out, their flaws will surface, and become magnified. It is so much harder to love then. One argument gone extremely wrong will be like a bucket of cold water over your head. "How could I have been so blind? How in the world did I think I could live with that? It's so fucked up."

That's not even the worst though. The worst is when your passion inevitably diminishes, and you must learn to be content with a more domestic, familial relationship. Your partner has to be your friend, your family, and you must interact with them daily. And you watch, every day, as you count up the different aspects of this person that bother you- until one day it crumbles and you can't even begin to explain how you ended up this way.

"I love the way he pouts and grumbles when I win an argument"
---I hate the fact that he never apologizes afterwards

"I love the sparkles in his eyes when he talks about his passions"
---I hate it when he doesn't know when to shut up, because I'm clearly not interested

"I love the fact that he's knowledgeable and mature"
---I hate his jaded personality and how he undermines my optimism

Even then, things are not at their worst. Love and hate, I believe, go hand in hand. They both require emotional investment, they require thought and feeling and even your body will make some response- your heart will ache and your eyes will water. The worst part is when you don't hear from someone for days, but you don't think about it. You don't have these crazy thoughts of "what if they got ran over by a car", you don't worry about whether they're cold, whether they're eating well or wonder if they miss you. You continue with your life and you can't tell the difference if they are there or not.

And it turns out the one line that can collapse your whole world is, "ah, I forgot about you."