Here I am, again.

Here I am, again, on the brink of falling in love.

How peculiar—this normative state of mind that I now have, this acute self-awareness, this ability to at any moment detach, however momentarily, from the chains of my present circumstances. But it seems I am still consigned to the same helpless predisposition—an irreversible, frenetic spiraling of my emotions into utter chaos, impelled by quixotic tendencies and an undeniable, ravenous desperation for love.

Compared to my past self, while I think vastly differently, it’s not as if I feel any differently. It’s only now that I feel in my rational mind as if I’m an innocent bystander to this chaos, witnessing the storm brewing in the distance. Do I view it with disdain or with awe? With contempt or with appreciation? With fear or with hope?

But no matter what I think, no matter how much I try to reason with this insolent and tumultuous heart, I will never prevent the unpreventable. Despite how much I think that I’ve changed, how much that my mind has garnered a sense of resilience, I will nevertheless become helplessly stranded amid this raging ocean, swallowed by this sea, and the feeble comfort of this rationality—viciously wrested from my consciousness by the inexorable pull of this whirlpool of emotion.