Delicate and Dramatic

Lunar New Year has once again come to pass, and I found myself delusionally expecting the Year of the Snake’s end to feel like a curse lifting. The weight of all that self-development, a newfound independence that forced my shoulders forward into a lumbering hunch. The Sun turned its back on the Moon, and time lurched forward regardless of whether or not I was ready to face it, ready to forgive or forget.

I’ve never been good at letting things go.

Not too long ago, my friends and I rallied to go lie out on the beach, and by 2 pm, we’d eaten our weight in potato chips and fruit. One of the girls rolled onto her stomach and squinted as she read from her phone, “What’s your biggest red flag?” I said that mine was that I talk too much, and she replied, “Try again.” I thought about it for a minute before it clicked: “Is it that I’m too sensitive?” They nodded in agreement and turned to lie on their backs once more.

I pondered my own reactivity. The way a passing comment could shift my mood entirely, stuck looking out the window, feigning sudden interest in the street lamps passing by. My face always betrayed me, illustrating every shred of emotion and leaving nothing to interpretation. How I’d been trying so hard to care less.

At the end of last year, I cut off a guy my friends used to call Mr.B2B, short for Mister Back To Back, because he would always ask me, “So what are you doing tomorrow?” My friends used to say he was good for me: calm, patient, and unburdened by the opinions of others. I liked that he was predictable, the kind of stability that leaves you without questions or grappling with insecurity. Nearly every day was the same: the same liquid breakfast, the same commute, and retracing his steps at the supermarket over again and over again.

One day, he told me he felt like he was walking on eggshells, always afraid to say the wrong thing and burn it all down; two people who knew how to turn friction into fire.