new relationships seem to be a perpetual mix of guilt and anxiety. guilt, especially if you feel like the other person is more stoked on you than you are one them, and anxiety if you feel like you like them more than they like you. but usually a certain degree of both.

lovers are like drugs. they can overpower your thoughts, make you skip out on important comitments, keep you up at night, make you anxious, make you guilty. make you do incredibly foolish things. make them seem like a good idea.

then, eventually, things start to get comfortable. which either leads to boredom or commitment. both are terrible things. commit, and you are guaranteeing yourself incredible pain down the road. because nothing can make you feel as amazing and special and validated as love, but nothing can rip you to shreds and hurt you and emotionally destroy you the way that love has the potential to. love leads to wars, to murder, to abuse in ways that nothing else does. emotions that powerful should not be accessible to creatures as irrational as humans. fucking terrifying.

i try to look at relationships on a scale. how much and i getting out of it and how much am i putting into it. not in terms of taking from a lover, of course. but how much is this relationship fueling me, inspiring me, making me stoked for each new day. or is it draining me, sucking away my energy, leaving me confused and overwhelmed and unmotivated. guilty and anxious. that's usually a good time to cut your losses and run.