Ramblings #5 - A Tortured Soul?

Maybe you can’t say it, so I will. 

You don’t love me. In fact, maybe you tolerate me. And somehow that hurts me more – knowing that it pains you to even indulge me just to keep up a mask of friendship and camaraderie. Cause that is the mandate of society. To be friends in public and traitors in the dark.

But know this. I never took you for granted. Every word, every laugh, every smile – those were moments that have defined my happiness. They say you should never let such a thing be the privilege of another’s actions. But when did the mind become our master? The heart is a selective listener sometimes.

You came to me in times of distress. In times of need. I knew you never meant to make me a partner in your happiness, and somehow, I can’t blame you. Maybe you needed me when you needed me, and you needed someone else for the better times. It’s not a betrayal – maybe. I do not have any illusions of being the better man or human being, for I allowed myself to be used when I knew the truth.

Love is probably the harshest mistress I shall ever have. And a broken heart my fait accompli. But then I never meant to make this about me, it was always about you.

It will always be about you. 

Cause as clichéd as it may be, you are my world. Even if I don’t exist in yours. Such a sad and tragic statement to make, almost to the point of embarrassment.

But I will never be embarrassed for loving you. I knew the stakes, I knew the pain I would have to encounter. Friends and family will call me foolish, and my own heart will keep me awake at night looking up at the ceiling in an empty room. Surrounded by things and my own dark thoughts, and maybe some tears that fall upon a floor graced only by my feet.

But I loved you. That was true. Probably the most truthful thing I’ve done in my life. And I can only hope something good came out of it.

Not only for you, but maybe for me as well. Cause pain shapes us all in different ways. And lying here in the dark, broken and tired, gathering memories of all kinds – I realize that it all meant something. Maybe not the meaning I wanted to find, but the meaning I had to. To be kind, to be gentle, to be patient.

If I never love again, or love to only hurt again; I will remember this lesson. Pain can change you if you let it, but always try to become stronger. You cannot choose the actions of others, but you can choose yours.

And the caterpillar shall shed its cocoon and become a beautiful butterfly.