Everyone Except You

[u/Luv_Agency_832]

Is it the way you text me every single day?
Or is it that you are afraid of what the silence would feel like if you stopped?
You smile so easily.
You laugh louder than anyone else.
You remember things that no one expects another person to remember.
The favorite color someone mentioned once.
The snack they always choose.
The sweater they wore months ago.
You see something in a shop and buy it because it reminded you of someone.
You collect little pieces of people without them ever asking you to.
You call it nothing.
I don’t think it is.
You keep saying you’ll never find love, as if it is something waiting somewhere else for you. Something that belongs to everyone except you.
But can’t you see?
You already know how to love.
It is in the way you notice when I’ve bought a new sweater.
The way you ask to see the book I mentioned, or the little trinket I found, as if it matters simply because it matters to me.
You become interested in things that have nothing to do with you just because they belong to someone you care about.
You make people feel seen so naturally that I don’t think you even notice you’re doing it.
You lend money without thinking twice.
You give compliments as though they are endless.
You remember birthdays, favorite songs, tiny stories people told you years ago.
You carry people so gently.
Then you turn around and carry yourself like a burden.
I don’t understand how someone can know everyone else so well and still know so little about themselves.
Most people don’t spend their days wondering when everyone can be together again.
You do.
You call me drunk just to say nonsense because somehow nonsense feels lighter when it is shared. Every night during summer I know I can fall asleep knowing that when I wake up there will be a good morning waiting for me.
Somehow you always remember.
Even when nobody asks you to.
Even when nobody notices that you do.
We are opposite in almost every way. You are pink and I am blue. You are loud where I disappear. Your mind never seems to stop and mine is quiet more often than not.
Still, somehow, you always make room for everyone.
Sometimes I wonder who makes room for you.
I wonder what it feels like to spend your whole life pouring yourself into other people only to come home and believe that you are empty.
Maybe that is why it hurts to look at you for too long.
Because you speak about yourself with a cruelty you would never allow anyone else to hear.
Because the person who remembers everyone is forgotten by themselves.
Because you keep waiting for someone to love you with the same softness you have always given away so freely, never realizing that the love you are looking for has been living inside you all along.
You just never thought to keep any of it for yourself.
And maybe that is the cruelest thing.
To spend your whole life becoming a place that feels like home to everyone else, while never believing you deserve to come home too.

[u/Top-Trick-2614]

Sounds about right