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Therapists have been known to say that: “the first thought that goes through your mind is what you have been conditioned to think; what you think next defines who you are.” In my case, the first thought is always a delusion, quickly grounded by the second. It’s that second thought that consumes me.

I open my eyes every morning and reach out for the comfort and safety of my first thought. The certainty that every feeling I have is reciprocated by the human being I care most deeply about. I wrap my fingers around conjured images of them lying next to me. I soak in the warmth, the feeling of safety, the joy that my heart is looked after by another.

Then the second thought creeps in. My whole body wishes I didn’t have another thought after that first one, but I’m not so fortunate. The fingers I reached out with to find him, suddenly feel like they’ve been pricked- like on the spinning wheel that swept Sleeping Beauty into a deep comatose state. The prickling turns into burning as I know I’m not the one to whom his heart belongs entirely. He only lets me hold so much.

I wonder if he reaches out the same way I do, only to feel the person lying next to him isn’t me. I wonder if with every passing day, the missing I’d like to believe we both experience, is dulled or made easier by the fact that he has physical affection right underneath his nose. Albeit from someone else.

I wonder if he thinks of me when he wakes up in the morning next to someone else? I wonder if he wishes it was me?

It’s the second thought that hurts. It shapes me. It does, define me. It highlights to me that there are still people, who unlike me, follow their head and not their heart. My heart is what has gotten me into numerous messes, all while ignoring my head screaming to stop. Maybe that’s where my mental affliction comes from? Maybe I’m going mad because I want to burn everything down and run in the direction my heart tells me to.

Maybe I should listen to my head for once?

Even writing that sounds silly to me. My head only knows so much – and even that it needs to be somewhat certain of before it’ll give me its opinion. My heart, however, knows it all. My heart is filled with passion, and either there’s passion or there’s nothing. Ultimately, the price my heart pays is rejection and defeat. Knowing that my head was always going to win out. But I still don’t think I’d have it any other way.

You see, the second thought defines who I am. It defines that I have passion like no one else, regardless of the consequences. He might reach out to someone else, but in those moments when he reaches for me- it makes the pain of passion feel entirely worth it – even if it’s only fleeting.

So sue me for wanting to have those little moments. Sue me for reaping the fleeting rewards of my passion, against all the objections of my head. Yes, there are mornings when I wish the spinning wheel would put me to sleep for all eternity, but then there are lazy mornings when I wake up and his body fits mine perfectly and we can both shut the world away. Those mornings when he follows his heart and not his head.

For now, my heart can’t take losing the first thought, although my head knows that one day I will. I wish it wasn’t that way, but sometimes I’m too human. I never meant to have the first thought… but there’s always the second one consuming me behind the scenes.