still breathing

Believe me when I say that this isn’t at all what I had planned. Promises are not a friend of mine, and I have a hard time keeping them. So to spare you the disappointment, I figured I would leave promises and vows regarding forever out of this. Maybe I assumed you knew what I meant when I said I wasn’t looking for anything. Maybe my words were messy and distorted. You must not be the reading between the lines type. I refused to let you get the best of me. That would just require too much energy. Call it selfish. Call it unfair. Call it leading you on, but to me it was nothing out of the ordinary. I’m a firm believer in guarding the heart, and you were no exception. I never knew holding my heart together would be the very thing that would break yours apart. If you knew this is how we would have ended up, would you have done it all over again? My warnings weren’t enough to keep you away. I’m no stranger to these feelings of guilt, but a total stranger to what you’ve done to me. I cannot possibly still be the object of your affection.  The time on the clock reaffirms that this has gone on for far too long.

The smell lingers on your breath. Where did your cynicism lead you to this time? If I promised you forever would you show me what you keep running back to? Please don’t play me for a fool, because I can see through your lies. I am not blind to your ways. Your eyes are the gateway to your soul, and they’re telling the stories that your lips cannot. Damn those voices in your head that have a hold on your thoughts. I would give anything to get inside your head and fight the battle for you.

Please don’t assume I don’t understand, because it’s quite the opposite. I know you far too well but I need you to just say it. I need to hear it from you. The smell lingers on your breath. What lies have you choked down this time? I’ve noticed you’ve had a hard time catching your breath lately. This is the part where you expect me to leave isn’t it? Bless your jaded heart. Can you look me in the eyes and see that my heart breaks for you? Every piece has your name on it.

I see you’ve worked hard for this. Tiring and exhausting, I’m sure. Is this independence worth it? Or did it steal your soul and fill the void with empty promises? We’ve been at this for years now. I thought you knew me better than this. If I didn’t want you I would have left a long time ago. Somehow love has a hold on me. Do you even know what that feels like anymore? My heart hurts for yours because I know what you’ve been without. But until you do too, this will never change. Your attempt to hide it leaves you more exposed than you know.  Can you look me in the eyes? I would love to remind you of how things could be.

Did this evil have a name? As hard as she tried to turn things around, it still remained. She spent nights lying awake trying to decipher through the feelings, but she just couldn’t put a face to it. Her chest tightened and the pressure began to build. She thought she had left this behind. She thought she was ready to let it go. But the fear seemed stronger than her voice. The words she wanted to yell crept up slowly from her heart, only to be violently shoved back into their place with the lies that she was trying so desperately to leave behind. She thought maybe this time she would get it right. After years of straddling the fence, it was time for her to choose a side. She promised herself that it would be different. She promised him that it would be different. Obviously she was in the business of breaking promises.  Did this evil have a name? She wished with everything that she had that she could put a finger on it. There was something that lingered, that she couldn’t get away from. Nothing can be erased, but she hoped all things could be forgotten. Maybe this wasn’t something she should hope for. Maybe forgetting wasn’t cutting it anymore. Maybe it never really did.

For somebody so level-headed, she was beginning to lose her balance and reached for anything that could provide clarity to this distortion. There were minutes where it made sense. It was in those minutes that she felt closest to him. She promised him her undivided attention and her fierce devotion. But the morning would come just as quickly as those minutes passed, and for the life of her she couldn’t recapture the feelings or the promises she had made the night before. There was something there. Something in the way. Something she couldn’t put a face to. She recognized it’s presence by the strange silence that her heart fell into, when in reality it was burning to be heard. She could tell when it entered the room because it pushed her head down in shame. Something that reminded her that she wasn’t there yet and she shouldn’t deceive herself into thinking it would come so easily or quickly. Did this evil have a name? She felt time was slipping away, but it would be time well spent to send it back to hell where it came from.

She was becoming strangely attentive of just how far she had drifted…from everything. In the process of trying to protect herself from the world, she had managed to become an island. Somewhere along the way she had grown accustomed to this way of surviving, only to arrive at the conclusion that this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Could humanity really be destined to live and die like this? She prayed there was a different way.

Oddly enough however, she found she wasn’t the only one. All of these years living in hiding had done exponential damage to her heart, but it had no bearing on its ability to still bleed. The pain that she had suppressed from her own life was now joined with the ache in her stomach she felt towards mankind. She could see it in their eyes. Their diverted glances would catch hers every once in a while, and for a second they would wait for her to take notice. She could sense it in the silence that they cling to when their insides were screaming to be heard. She was more than familiar with that same silence, and if she could tell them one thing it would be that it is dangerous. She knew it all too well. What she once thought as wise and practical, was the very thing to add salt to the open wound. And in fact, of all her long and restless nights she was aware that her heart in isolation was serving nobody but the devil himself.

Her body froze as her hearts once steady and habitual beat began to speed up rapidly. This feeling was more than she could take as she quietly tried to hold her breath to keep her cries silent. She could see the stained glass window out of the corner of her eye, and it served as reminder that the yearning was still there. She held on tightly, keeping her arms crossed across her body with her knees pulled to her chest. Never did she expect to find herself in this place, but desperate times called for her silent desperate pleas to finally be made audible. The life that she had grown accustomed to was the very thing that was slowly suffocating her, and her means of dealing with it in solitude only proved to speed up the process of a slow suicide of her soul. She sealed her eyes shut as she tried to hold back the inevitable, but it was no use. It was happening anyway. The very thing she feared.

She couldn’t fight it anymore, and she didn’t want to. The fight had become more painful and exhausting than the battle itself. Her arms slowly unfolded as she moved to lay face down on the sanctuary floor. She clenched her eyelids tighter as her face hit the carpet, but it was no use. It was happening, and it was long overdue.  The breath that she was holding exited her body in the form on sobbing as the tears streamed down her face. Tears that had been suppressed by the shame and fear of it all had made their way to the surface from years of being buried. Tears that only God himself could hear as they hit the floor like a flood. She lay between the pews until she felt safe enough to bring herself to do what she knew was her last resort. The salt burned her eyes if she opened them, so she kept them locked as she lifted her head and whispered, “I need You.”

Sometimes the things she tried so hard to forget were the very things she needed to remember. There had to be a reason why it wasn’t going away. Her attempts to simply try and neglect the memories proved to be a failed tactic for forgetting but a successful one for making it worse. There had to be a reason why she couldn’t shake the images she fell asleep with at night. There were reminders that followed her everywhere she turned. However, it wasn’t a haunting like it had been in the past. The chains weren’t as tight as before, but they were certainly still there, just in a different form. It wasn’t the memory itself that was holding her captive. It wasn’t the injustice of it all that was tightening its grip. Somehow along the way of trying to find redemption on her own, she had stumbled across the even more painful truth. She was forming new shackles before the old ones had an opportunity to be released. The more she tried to cover the wound, the more damage she was inflicting on the healing process.

Never thought I’d need you like this

I pledged silence since the day we met

And I’m not one to compromise on my word

But my word isn’t something I miss

And if we’re going to break the silence

It’s safe to say that we can’t continue on like this

Never thought I’d want you so badly

I can recall avoiding you at all costs

But the cost of being without you

Has proven to be a greater loss

Don’t quote me on this

Because I’m prone to inconsistency

But at this point I’d go as far to say

That if the offer still stands

This time I’d like you to stay

Remind me how we got here

So far from our intentions

This isn’t what I had in mind

After all of those nights

Of trying to leave you behind

Funny how things change

Everything I wanted to lose

Is everything I need to find

This goes out to you

I’ve been absent for so long

That I’ve failed to notice

What I’ve missed since being gone

This goes out to you

Thank you for holding on

I never planned to need you like this

I never wanted this…

The harder she tried to forget, the easier it was to remember. For what it was worth, she wasn’t angry towards him. She had no reason to be. She was too young to understand, but the memories themselves are enough to make her ache. For whatever reason, she couldn’t muster up the energy to be upset with him. She had spent precious years living as a prisoner, but she couldn’t waste the hurt on him. There was no bitterness to throw his way…only questions. What could cause a man to commit such a crime towards humanity? And what possessed her to think that she was immune to such crimes?
Never would she be the same.

Hours were spent trying to rationalize how to handle life from that point on. There were nights when she thought the morning would never come, and other nights when she prayed that it wouldn’t. She hated it, but she refused to hate him. Deserving of it, he may be, but she was a firm believer in practical living and it made little sense to carry him around with her.  Turns out practicality wasn’t in the cards for her. Not a day went by without her mind wandering back in time. The hurt didn’t throb at the same intensity as before. It had evolved. She accredited it to the numbness. She had prayed not to feel it anymore, but God must have had other plans.

She didn’t blame him. Dirt was dirt, regardless of how it got there. Traces of it lingered within her. Her eyes could tell stories if you were willing to listen. But she chose silence; for fear that the filth of her past and sometimes her present, would scare off those that were clean.

Everything she touched brought back that familiar feeling. She couldn’t look at him without assuming the worse regarding his intentions. She could see right through his lustful glances and oddly enough did not find it repulsive. Nothing surprised her anymore. She wouldn’t allow it. She expected that of him, because she settled on the fact that that was the way of the world. And she was slowly being summoned into it. Applause from a crowd for her continued conformity, and rejection from the same crowd if she chose otherwise. She was trying to please the wrong audience.

Guilt began to replace her conscience. It dictated her thoughts and judgments. Everything felt dirty to her. Luckily, her actions weren’t consistently  matching up with her thoughts. If they did, it would be a dead give away, and she wasn’t ready to be exposed yet. She never claimed righteousness, but in the darkest place she prayed that there was such a thing. It may have been easier to be consumed by the bacteria of her filth, but it hurt like hell to always be infected by it. She had always attributed righteousness to being worthy. An attribute that she most certainly did not embody. At the end of the day, she began to yearn more for the thing she thought she could never be.

To be continued…

I want my body to ache when I’m apart from you. Let me not be able to function properly as a result of the distance. I want to weep for the tragedies that are present in the news and not embrace it as reality that cannot be changed. I do not want to set you aside for the sake of having a good time. Do not let my pleasure be found in the things that break your heart, but let me rejoice only in what makes you smile.

I want my heart to break over our self-destructive nature and what it’s done to our lives. Let me become furious over injustice and moved to do something about the pain inflicted to the innocent. I want other people’s burdens to become my burdens, that I may help them carry their load to you. I want to kneel at your feet and not be ashamed. I want to pursue you and not what will make me happy. My happiness on this earth is made up of nothing but fleeting feelings.

Let me never be content. Let me struggle that I may experience you the most in the darkest of days. I don’t want to have enough to where I’m comfortable. I’m prone to forget about you daily. Let me remember in the small things. Overwhelm me at the most inopportune times with your love that I can’t help but sob at how relentless you are. Do not ever let me be okay with having you as a part of my life.

If I lose sight of the meaning of my existence, do not hesitate to break me. I need that, more often than not. Relentlessly love me so I know how to do the same. When I don’t have the strength let me beg for one more ounce of it for the sake of loving the cynic with everything I am. Do not let me be a band-aid, but offer an antidote. I want to experience the pain of a heart break for your people. That through it all I would decrease and you would increase.