I Break A Little More Each Day Under The Pressures Of Your Secrets

I am the bookkeeper of the chronicles of your world. I do my best to keep them safe, I tend to them, I find ways to preserve them for longer. But I’m worried I’m failing you.

The weight on my shoulders increases every time you confide in me. I feel myself sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand, barely able to pull myself back up. Then, when I do, another load is dropped on my shoulders by somebody new. Or maybe it’s you again, with another chronicle of your heartbreaking issues.

By now, I’m carrying a world on my back. Your world. The one you entrusted to me.

And I listen. And I absorb. And I promise you I will be there to talk at any given hour of day. I give you advice, kind words and do all I can to support you. The worst part? I do all of this out of choice, yet it is breaking me. I feel my heart beat harder every time I fear for your life and I want to be sick, yet I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Just imagine if something were to happen to you, that I feel I could have prevented in any way. The artificial feeling of failure, of despair, sweeps through me like a tsunami when I imagine hearing bad news attached to your graceful name.

I’m scared every time our talks come flooding back to me. No, it’s not that I didn’t encourage you to unload your troubles onto someone – anyone. That someone just happened to be me. ‘Fine’, I thought. ‘This is good. I’m happy to be a listener, an adviser’. But I underestimated the deep, dark, twisted corners of your mind. I’m afraid you will hurt yourself. I’m afraid you will hurt somebody else. But more than anything, I, and my ashamedly selfish self, am afraid you will hurt me.

I can’t lose you.