caring is the catalyst for all things unrestful

"I am the catalyst for all things unrestful."
This is something he said earlier today,
with wind in our hair and mud in our boots and I was
looking over a city I never knew and never liked
but loved right then and there
feeling free and happy and a bit awed
laughing at the puddles we couldn't cross
and I thought, I am so lucky to be here with them
and everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.

I hurt myself so often in my carelessness
myself and others around me.
I decided, I will wrap myself in a blanket
of not caring and not feeling and not experiencing
any human emotions
because they scare me and I don't know what to do.

It was always the wrong thing to do.
It always was and never won't be.
I said, I will pretend this doesn't matter
but I always cared and that is because I am human
and because I care I hurt and sometimes
it's not down to me, at all.

I am the catalyst for all things unrestful,
he joked and I laughed because it seemed ridiculous
because he was there to help me feel better
like I mattered and I could be good
but now I can't sleep and there's a dark pit in my gut
my ears are ringing with how loud the music is
and my laughter has lost all the freedom of climbing
jumping and dancing on the hills like a child.

Somehow, and I would never blame him for it
because being there for everything is what friends are for,
he was the catalyst for my slumbering despair
now clawing its way up my throat
and it's not what he said but what I fear
and the way you ache for someone you love
when they are burning inside with a secret
would you ever push them away

I didn't. And this is the surprising story of how my
carefully constructed wall of no fucks given crumbled down
and I discovered that caring
is the catalyst for all things unrestful
and it's not something you can choose to leave behind.