I hate how everything feels staged and contrived right now. Planned. Fake. A lie.
All I want is to get this feeling off my chest and to silence the scream in my mind. The one that wants to be heard on these pages, the one that's begging to just be given life in the form of words. I am capable, I tell myself and yet the most I come up with every single time that I hold a pen or hover my fingers on these keys is a stark white page or screen - a glaring contrast to the volcano within me.
I am writing scared.
That feels like the rawest, truest thing i've written down in a long time. And now comes the raging river after you've unplugged the tiniest hole on the dam that holds it.
The Itch I Did Not Scratch
She has written pages and pages on why breaking up with him was a good thing. She has it on her bedside table ready to be pried open and to be committed to her consciousness once her resolve to stay away from him gets weak - like it did nine months ago, 3 months ago, 2 weeks ago, tonight. She can recite it in her sleep, she believes in it most of the time.
Because you need to get better shoes.
Because your stories are inconsistent.
Because you haven't dealt with your past.
Because I know I don't have to undress just to be loved.
Because I don't know if you'll still be there in the morning.
Because chances run out.
Because forgiveness entails changes.
Because broken trust is a shattered mirror that's hard to fix.
Because I don't like your friends.
Because you don't have dreams.
Because we don't share the same values.
Becaues you rely on people to make you happy.
Because I don't want to be just another option.
Because I don't like what i'm becoming when i'm with you
Because you make me dream and ache for things I know i'm better off not having at the moment.
Yet sometimes she feels like a hypocrite. There are days when she hates having all these professed values, standards, principles, and beliefs - things he has very little or none of. Things that keep her from being with him; things that make what they have not good enough for her. She sometimes wishes she can be like all the girls he has dated - easy, satisfied with good enough, living a life of compromise just to get the next high. Why can't she be like that? Why is there always that deep feeling of disgust in her gut? Why does she feel ashamed?
Things could've been so much easier. She could be happier. If only she could settle for good enough. Because at the end of the day, she realized that no matter how different the paths they take to get it, they want the same things - to love and be loved.
Loose Threads
It's almost a year now since they broke up and yet here they are again. Wide awake in the wee hours of the night, catching up on each other's lives that could well have been shared together instead of just being a story they strive to tell each other. They are ripped off pages in each other's books that they keep taping back on instead of just finally allowing gravity or the wind to take its natural course - preventing them from flipping over a blank page, from writing a new chapter.
Because I am lonely.
Because I like you enough
Because you are lonely too.
Because you like me enough.
And until they realize that "i like you enough to be with you" is never going to work out, They will keep living on the what-could-have-beens rather than taking the plunge on what is.
Pack Rat
She is a pack rat. A quick survey of her room will reveal bags of all shapes and sizes stashed in a corner although some of them have obviously outlived their use and any semblance of style. Clothes she hasn't worn in years are stacked haphazardly in a closet that she constantly complains is too small for her stuff. She hoards books that barely hold her interest and are just gathering dust on a bookcase that once again she complains is too small for all the new books that she has. She keeps envelopes full of random notes written on scraps of paper and notebooks with imprints of her life's joys and pains hidden in its yellowed pages. She has a cabinet full of trinkets from the past although when she looks at them time and again their meaning and any sort of feeling is lost on her. A box of art materials is placed near her bed along with a hundred page sketchbook just in case a flash of artistic inspiration consumes her, but whose only content so far is the word CRAZY scrawled in bright pink.
Because without the art materials i'll just be someone who is confined to the rigid technicalities of the sciences.
Because without the keepsakes, i'll just be someone who didn't care enough to put a little extra effort in maintaining my relationships.
Because without my thoughts on scraps of paper i'll just be someone who never took the chance to pursue what she loves.
She can't help it. She has always kept the hope that they will eventually find a better use and that when that time comes she'll be glad that she held on to them for so long.
..Because without you and our tired drama, i'm afraid i'll just be someone...
The Dream
She woke up one morning with a single thought in her mind. Damn did I miss the game? And she couldn't quite place it, but she knows something is different - better. Was it only days ago when she could barely get a wink of sleep and when she does she slips off to be with him frolicking in the land of dreams until the morning light bathes her with the reality that she's merely been with shadows?
Late at night she sits up in bed a fresh page laid out on her lap, pen in hand. With steady, sure strokes she impresses on the universe :
I am a writer. I know it in my heart. I lie awake at night with the pulsing need to create something - to learn, to share. We all have stories to tell and we have different ways of telling it. Some dance, others paint - all resulting into something that resonates within all of us because in our souls we recognize each other's stories as part of our own.
She is at that point where the past has already been exhausted off of its lessons, thus rendering it useless for anything more than the occasional dose of nostalgia - reminders of where she has been and of where she is now.
I had to meet you. For me to know that my life has drastically veered off course. To show me that the emptiness I feel cannot be filled with the euphoria of premature love that's founded on the need to possess, to own, to take, to hold firmly. To make me realize how blessed I am to be in a position to set a higher standard on the way I live my life including on how I deal with my relationships. That my belief in a God who demands a higher standard among His people so that He can give them the best isn't a hindrance for me to make the most out of living, but is in fact the very essence of living itself. Being with you has shown me the great capacity I have to give, to love, to forgive and that I deserve the same. from someone. You made me see the lowest of lows that I can go and have forever imprinted in me that I don't want to be there - I don't want to be the girl who turns back on her deeply held beliefs for cheap thrills; the girl who's so afraid to be alone she settles for what's convenient ; or the girl who feels so inadequate she stands on a steep hill of compromise. I am not that girl.
She has set her mind to face her questions no matter how terrifying the answers may be. She is now willing to step into the silence of his absence.
I want you to be happy.
I want you to grow up and become a man.
I want you to experience a deep and lasting love.
Not for me. In fact, forget me. Oublie moi.
Because this is the best way I can love you.
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