Sit with someone and ask them about all of the horrible things they have done in their life, and listen to the way their voice cracks. Sit with someone and let them tell you about what it felt like to lose their dad, what it felt like to break the heart of someone they once loved. Sit with someone and look them in the eyes, hold their hand, listen to the way they talk about the things they are passionate about, how their smile curves towards their ears. Sit with someone and let them touch you. Not physically, but mentally. Sit with someone and let them have you, not tangibly, but on a soul level. Only then will you understand why lust is so vacant in comparison, why it is so dull.

And I know. I know it can be hard to believe in genuine connection when the world sometimes feels like a hard and haunted place, when people dig into the soul of you just to warm themselves by the fire of your hope. But I promise, it exists. It truly exist. It may not seem like it exists but if you feel the genuine connection between yourself and the world, believe me it's true. 

Because I know what it is like to hold a human being at their most tender. I know what it is like to feel a person's heart, beating so in unison with your own that it feels like it is a living, breathing part of your own body. I know what it is like to have someone's energy flowing through you like rain, I know what it is like to walk away with pieces of their memory tattooed to your skin. To have fragments of another soul tangled in your hair, pressed into the backs of your knees, strung like Christmas lights along your spine, bookmarked and dog-eared to the deepest corners of your mind. I know what it is like to be seen. To be truly seen, in all that shines for the world and all that is grotesque and dark and hidden from the masses. I know what it is like to open, to flay all of the vulnerability from one's bones, to bloom towards being known.