The coward tear finds its way to fall.
I set free all the tears cowing to fall many different times before. As I wipe them, may it give me strength thinking they didn’t well up in your eyes.
It came like a thief in the middle of a peaceful night – uninvited, devastating. I remember that one cold night in October, foolishly made colder by the buzzing air conditioning unit, when it hit me. Before that, everything looked good and felt good. Or so I thought. On that random night, I reached for your phone; passwords known to me for the last seven months or so, but never finding something in me to stealthily use them against you. That was the first time when it occurred to me to check what you have on your mobile phone. Until a few days before then, I never thought spying on you was necessary, to be honest. That day though, I thought I saw you flinched when I attempted to touch you while you held your phone. So that night, in sleeplessness, I probed. And everything went downhill since.
Fast forward, maybe four months or so, now I am faced with that singular question ‘how do we regain that part of us we lost’. Admittedly, the choice to stay together, that hope that you’d find a better version of yourself with me on the sideline or even beside you, and the thoughts to drown the pain that our truth has forced down my throat, and yours too, aching at random times, aiming to fully burst at the slightest provocation, in my self-reflection comes that agonizing fact that I brought us to a place where no true and long lasting happiness would be possible to exist in the near future. But I have trudged through that sad path each and everyday, few days more successful than the rest, and maybe I have forged a good bond with the idea of temporary happiness and hourly love. How long does one sustain a bitter reality when one cows to speak the first word to get out of it.
It started with a harmless chat, like many others before.That time, I swept it under the rug like I have been accustomed to in the last three years. I have quite improved on the skill to distance myself from anything that resembled to how my past failed relationships would start, so right away, I dismissed the idea that that exchange of messages, no deed just words, amounts to something special at that early morning of February. After all, I was still feeling the disdain for the V-fever that seemed to compromise a lot of my friends. But you came to me the next night, with that box of doughnuts. And then I gave in to finding myself seeking you, and/or allowing you to seek me, many days and nights thereafter.
It was an easy job to fall for you. Many times, you were candid and calm; many times, you cared and comforted me by just being there when things just don’t make sense. In return, I did all of these for you and maybe some more. We both gave access to each other our own distant places that we never afforded anyone to right to be there, or so I felt. It was blissful in so many ways, finding my youth again, finding some spark when everything had been grim, finding you in my arms the next morning, immersing myself to that magic that I have thought abandoned me in my jaded little space before.
Then came the promise we made that eventually made me fall apart. Of course, I blamed myself for seeing those little big words to life when I could have just done the same thing that you have done, when I could have treated them with the same level of significance that you have apparently assigned to them, that quick trip to the nights of stealth that leave your words to the void, like scattering seeds to barren land with no high hopes that they would grow. What grew, however, along these things, were suspicions, doubts and lies.
Doubt consumed me. That intensity in me finding myself shaking in my own bed, or your bed, in each waking moment, fully aware that I am damaged, again, and never to recover sooner. That accounted for the momentary silence each time we walk the road to you apartment, each time we pass by that area on our way to the mall, each time I unconsciously stare blankly at you holding your phone. The universe knows how I rue these episodes in times we were together, how I wish to lock these thoughts in a box and lose the key thereafter, so that they would be gone forever. But instead, these same doubts triggered more quests for self-worthiness, self-respect and darkness.
The first wave of this uneventful phase caught me confused and lost in the web of my own romanticism and self-inflicted pain; unwarranted, I chose to stay when the road is wider where I could simply walk away. But I lied being okay, I lied being so trusting again, I lied to myself that I will find my way back. Groping in the dark, all I could reach for are the half-truths that you knotted while I was too absorbed believing. Even in the brightness of the day, I struggled with believing – in you, in us. Everyday found me on the other side of happiness, no matter how I tried to escape the road. And then came the tears which I never thought I had before.
Through all these, there were still many tears waiting to shed. But here comes a time at last, when I set all the tears cowing to fall many different times before. As I wipe them, may it give me strength thinking they didn’t well up in your eyes. Then I would find my peace with myself again. And with you again. One last time.
One dawn of February found me bankrupt of tears, with new found courage, I finally set us free. We used to dance in the danger zone, I thought I can now see us finding our safer place elsewhere.. I guess we’ll just have to wait when.
stormborns
blakekathryn
ellievsbear
theartofmadeline
baratheonpilled