I feel you.

I Don’t Forgive You

By Shakira Andrea Sison

I don’t forgive you. And so I will stoke this grudge like a fire. I will huff on its embers and feed it kindling from leaves and twigs that have broken off branches and have been sucked of life by the sun, air and time. I will guard it and keep it red and glowing by fanning it with a hand you don’t know the sensation of holding. I will feel the heat of the flame on my face, one whose simplest forms you have yet to learn.

I will plant it like a tree and tend to it like a fragile little sprout. I will build a shelter around it and check the moisture in the dirt with the finger I’ve always wanted to press against your lips when you were saying words so mindlessly I doubt you’ll ever remember to regret.

I will sing to it my songs and water it with my tears, the ones you never saw or recognized. Maybe they were so commonplace they became ordinary, and therefore not worth your time. I will keep them in a jar whose lid I will unscrew on occasion, if only to hear the echo of my sob into its mouth.

It will grow like a child I’ve fed from my breast, who will take more and more space on my bed. I will whisper into its ear my sorrows until she learns to say it all back to me, hands tied. We will have conversations of disgust disguised as distance, and with these we will build a house that holds fires and vines and falling branches, and little monsters who share my likeness and my pain. Their lives will revolve around despising you and what you’ve done and everything I cannot forgive, all in a list that is everyday’s agenda of rage. I’ve numbered them, as they are many, complex and unruly. Their disorder is designed to hide the one that stands tallest out of all: my hatred for myself, for still allowing you to breathe and breed in me this way.

Happy Birthday.

Because there's no other way to do this.

No other way I can say everything with nothing without defying the status quo.

No way I can earn your forgiveness with just a sad smile and random hello.

After all this time, I still hope that it won't boil down to no way... but someday.

Today, more than ever, I remember.

You. Us. Everything that could have been and all that are now but fragments of a broken past.

Because there's really no other way to do this, I watch from a distance.

Though you don't know, I wish that you're safe, happy and better off without me.

Desensitization

Often, I wonder if there's ever a limit to missing someone.

I wonder if it's ever possible to wake up one day and simply say that I just don't care anymore.

Sometimes, I marvel at my capacity to endure endless cycles of waiting, hoping and crying and wonder how long a person can survive such an existence.

The whole idea is just unsettling...

Which is probably why far too frequently, I also wonder if love truly knows no boundaries and if at the end of it all, it can really see me through.

Such are the ambiguities I spend way too much time wondering about, but I find that I must.

I must because there's no point in wishing that I just stop caring. No point in wishing for blissful numbness and absolutely no point in wishing for a re-run of that picture perfect past.

There's just no use in wishing for the impossible.

Guess I have to do with desensitization instead.

I've Simply Lost Track

...of what I was keeping track of and which direction I intended to take.

What now?

Just alternating between waiting and weighing my options.

And?

It's frustrating to be fumbling around blindly just waiting for the next time i'll stumble again because I don't want to... I'm scared i won't have the will to get up again.

Day 6

"Each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise."

Unbearable as it may seem majority of the time, i'm starting to believe that there is more to it... and there is more to me. I have to believe that the pain can bring about changes for the better because no one else can make that possible but me.

I know it won't be easy and to be honest, the mere idea of what that truly entails scares the hell out of me. It's scary to stray from what i've always known and it's scary to make one's self completely vulnerable to another person. I've held back for so long but I know now that there's nothing scarier than to be haunted by what if's and I should haves.

There is no sorrier kind of existence than having to live with a self full of regrets but right now, there's nothing left to do but hope... and wait. Yes, even if each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a thousand bruises because i have to believe that it'll be worth it in the end. I believe he's worth fighting for and it's right about time i start to believe that i'm worth fighting for too.

I have to. Despite all my imperfections, despite all the mistakes i have to make up for for as long as i live and despite all the things i did which i could've done much much better. I have to believe that there's hope for me... that there's more to me.

I have to believe that there's something to love... because if i don't, then no one else will.

Day 5

My mind has grown so weary from keeping my restless heart in check. The pain, the love and the endless stream of words that come with it keep slipping away and once again, my empty hands disappoint me. Living in fear isn't living at all so let go... and just love.

Day 4

Finding out that you are my reason.

That i'm ready to step it up and all i need is your hand.

That you're all i have.

And that i'm going to fight. Hard.