Colour and Permanence. After much agonizing, those are the things I have realized I need. Relief from Scrambled Thoughts, Overwhelming Label-Less Emotions that have taken up residence for no good reason is desperately desired. The suitcases have been emptied, colour co-ordinated clothes and handbags hung in an unfamiliar closet, assorted sock pairs folded and neatly assembled in a new drawer. Cardboard boxes filled with books, trinkets, miscellaneous things we couldn’t part with have found new niches on foreign tables and recently dusted shelves. They show no fear, no reluctance, and we marvel at how easily these inanimate objects that mean the world to us move on so quickly, without looking back, without even a final glance. They settle with such comfort and ease, forget so fast the places they once called home, places that are still haunted by our decapitated hearts and souls. We, who have left behind everything worth taking, and only remembered to pack Lifeless Bodies for the future, are broken.
But I know a day will come when our souls will return and it will be a bittersweet reunion.
I never told you this, but I fought furtive battles in my room at night when the alarm clock had been set and the lights turned off. Only the indiscriminate car alarm and resident wind witnessed the struggle to keep going, the resolve to never look up, and the flurry of prayers that beseeched not for success, but for a mere passing. A plain, simple, that’ll do. I never wanted anything more, would be satisfied with less if it meant that I could still cross the bridge and make it to the Other Side.
I am not the destitute river
that never made it to the ocean;
I am the sturdy rock
underneath the ceaselessly gliding water
that simply
erodes with time.
I know that writing this down is futility; there is a lot that needs to be said, but truth dictates that I hold back and hide all the lies that I had gifted over the years, wrapped and topped with a bow. And after all this time, I’m still sorry that that the innocent baggage of The Past had affected me so, that the taunting and the unyielding silence meant so much, that the mark his Anger and Eventual Disappointment left stung for more than that endlessly long second, that the bruises still submerged, sit quietly and submissively underneath the thick, impenetrable skin. I’m sorry that I buried myself under the pretentious glare of acceptance, and that years later I found myself first cowering under the spotlight of solitude, then relentlessly seeking it.
Most of all, I’m sorry that all this means so much more than I’ll ever be able to understand why. I simply seek refuge in the luxury of reflection and marry my regrets to The Past even while those around me are still mired so absolutely in a sorrow far too real to comprehend. Yet I will resent this past even as I embrace it, and I will fear your future, even as I hope for it. And so long as there is Colour and Permanence, I will return.