first things first, i decided to leave that place for many reasons. one of the biggest reasons was that my heart used to start racing everytime i saw her enter the room, especially after our minor disagreements. i won't deny it, i constantly worried that i might end up hurting her (and me) in some way or the other, intentionally or unintentionally.
and this was the reason why i couldn't be able to text her on our last meeting.
but as they say, sometimes the things we fear the most have a way of becoming reality.
i lost a friend.
No..that was too simple. friendships end all the time. what stayed with me wasnt only the absence, it was the version of me that was left behind in someone else's memory.
she told me i was pitying her
i remember how much that sentence unsettled me bcoz it wasnt what i had been trying to do. i never wanted her to feel small. i never wanted to stand above her pain. if anything, i wanted her to know... to know that... that she didnt have to carry it all alone. that somewhere, even if the whole room was neglecting, someone had heard her.
may be intention is a lonely thing. we know what lives inside us, but everyone else only gets to interpret what they see.
and sometimes they get it wrong
or may be they dont. may be they simply experience us differently than we experience ourselves.
i don't know anymore...
there was a time she disappeared for months. when she returned, she wasnt the same. she had gone through something i still struggle to put into words, the kind of ugliness that makes you question how casually ppl can wound another human being from behind a screen.
i become attached to that pain.
i don't really care if i sound foolish.
i am a fragile person.
some ppl pass by sufferings and acknowledge it. i absorb it. i carry it longer than i should. her pain found a place inside me, before i even realized.
may be that's where everything bcome complicated.
to her, perhaps it felt suffocating. may be it looked like pity, may be it looked like obssession
to me, it looked like refusing to let someone stand alone after the world had already been cruel enough.
those aren't same story.
may be both can exist at once.
the world followed me far longer than she prolly knows.
not bcoz i wanted to prove her wrong.
but bcoz i kept asking myself whether someone i cared about had reduced all my intentions into a single misunderstandings.
ppl think obsession means refusing to leave.
but when she said those words, i did leave.
i walked away from that place.
i never looked back.
not bcoz i was guilty
not bcoz i was trying to make a statement.
bcoz, if my presence truly made someone uncomfortable, especially someone i cared about, then leaving felt kinder than insisting on being understood.
I wasn't innocent
there were days i ignored her...(that doesn't mean i am wrong, i got issues too..ok?)
days i treated her with a coldness i normally reserve for ppl i dislike...may be i was disliking her for a while, but am sorry, i was so caught up in my mind, may be that's why that place, and especially me, never deserved a soul like her. i js hope she realizes that...this space isn't something she belongs to...
I took things for granted
may be i deserved to lose someone who matters to me...always...
sometimes life doesnt punish us out of cruelty, sometimes it teaches us the weight of care by letting us feel its absence.
idk...
ive stopped pretending certainty blongs to me
what surprises me most isnt that i cried for her.
its that i cried for her more than i had ever cried for myself.
i remember noticing it almost with disbelief.
how is that i can hold so much compassion for another person while offering myself almost none?
that realization changed something.
She taught me how i care
more importantly, she taught me how little of that care ever reached me.
for the first time, i began asking myself a question that had never occurred to me before:
- Why can't i speak to myself the way i speak to ppl i love and care?
- why cant i protect myself with the same urgency?
- why cant i believe i deserve the kindness i hand out so freely?
i still don't have perfect answers.
but i look myself now before i disappear into everyone else.
that lesson is hers
one of many
ppl often think the greatest gift someone gives us is their presence.
sometimes it isn't.
sometimes its the person we bcome after they leave.
my eyes still get wet when i think about the moments we shared when i had almost nothing to cherish about.
not coz i expect anything more.
idek..if we'll ever meet again, tho she taught and remind me again that "never" is a strong word.
never is too certain for a world that changes overnight.
may be we will cross paths again...with or without memories...may be we won't....
life doesn't owe either of us that ending.
and strangely, i am at peace with that.
what still lingers isn't hope...its gratitude tangled together with grief.
she changed me
she taught me that caring for others while abandoning yourself is not kindness...but betrayal to one's inner self.
she taught me that empathy without boundaries eventually consumes the one who carries it.
she taught me that misunderstandings can end beautiful things.
she taught me that ppl can bcome strangers in the span of a conversations
she taught me that taking ppl for granted has consequences
she taught me that absolutes rarely survives reality.
most of all, she unknowingly taught me that i deserved some of the compassion i spent giving away.
there is one thing, however, that i wish she knew.
not bcoz i need forgiveness
not bcoz i want to change the ending
only bcoz truth matters, even if it changes nothing.
i was never trying to pity you, neither i was obsessed...i fear sometimes the way i detach ppl from my life, but i was scared to make that move against you, until i was forced to make it.
if i seemed attached, it wasnt bcoz i wanted to own your pain.
it was bcoz your pain reached places inside me that i hadnt yet learned to protect.
if i cared too much, then perhaps i did.
if that looked like obsession, then may be that's the word you found.
idk what story you will tell yourself about me now, or you don't give a shit or two about it, and move on from this whole arc like it never happened in your life.
and that's okay too.
you don't owe me a better memory, but i owe myself an honest one.
you were never just someone i lost.
you were someone who unknowingly introduced me to myself.
~ to my most beautiful ghost
ʕっ•ᴥ•ʔっ