Someone with whom I can speak candidly who will try to understand me, even if he doesn’t agree.
Someone who, when he says communication is so important in a relationship, actually does his part to keep the communication open.
Someone who hears what I say instead of injects his own presumptions.
Someone I can lean on when I feel bad, who will embrace me instead of push back at me.
Someone to make me feel special.
Someone who doesn’t walk away from me when I’m crumpled.
Someone who cares for me as genuinely as he laughs with me.
Someone who gives me the benefit of the doubt because he believes in me as a person.
Someone who wants me near not only for the ways I can enrich his life, but also for the ways he wants to enrich mine.
Someone I can reach out to who doesn’t look at my outstretched hands then slash my exposed wrists.

I’m tired of being sick. Each day of ailment drags on, exponentially longer than a day of happiness or even a day of blissful nothingness. Each tick of the sad man’s clock thunders and its echos continue to claw at and weigh on his chest and mind, cumulatively, draining him. Unable to eat, sleep, or enjoy the passing of time, he finally drops in exhaustion, overtaken by a fitful and restless sleep, in which demons personified of life’s turmoils continue to threaten his very sanity. Crying is sometimes a relief, but less because of its healing catharsis than because of its distraction. Having sat in this state for an extended period of time — extended not because of its chronological duration but for its toll — I fall too familiarly into this again and again. What does it take for the shell to reharden, for the callouses to form?

I’m gonna go stand in the shower for a bit.