Baby Don’t Hurt Me

I’ve been super overwhelmed. So much has happened in the past month. So much. I’ve never had to hold myself and beg her to be patient this way. I’ve been calm, accepting every curve ball. I’ve been practicing stoicism. It’s a nice concept that I often dabble with. But this time it’s been a lot harder. Because life really is testing me.

But anyway, like I said, I stood tall, and let it all hit me. I just know in my heart this is a necessary period that will soon be over. So I let it be.

Until a wind from a past storm blew itself into my family WhatsApp group. Out of nowhere. My aunts innocently, unknowingly, brought on a piece of my own past and began dissecting it, discussing it, back and forth, IN MY SCREEN.

I sat down, my phone a few cm away from me, close enough for me to read the notifications and far enough for my dignity to stay leveled. I didn’t open the chat, I just kept reading the messages from outside. And with every question, every observation, every note they made, I spiraled a little bit further.

They were talking about things that I know deeply in my heart. About people I had a close up front row seat learning about for years. My aunt would ask a question that I know the exact answer to, but don’t want to engage in. And then my other aunt would answer, with an extra letter to a name that changes it, and my fingers eat at me, I want to fix the answer, I want to say “you’re wrong, I know exactly where you’re wrong, here’s the right name…” but I stop myself. Because it is in my past, right? I should not care.

It’s funny how things you think are out of your life forever find ways to reappear in the most random of ways. How you go on with your life forgetting a specific feeling associated with it until it barges in right off of left field.

My heart sank to my stomach, my stomach felt sick, I felt like I was in a panic room with no oxygen. I felt restrained. I wanted to say so much, I wanted to do so much, but I had to sit in my chair tied down by invisible tight ropes of shoulds and should nots. What once was central to me should now be irrelevant. It’s not mine to correct, so I leave it.

And the worst thing about all this? Is that I was in public, surrounded by people who had no idea whatsoever of what was going on inside me. I had to fake smiles and attention when my heart was breaking into a million pieces/second.

Until I finally got home, in bed, and broke down in a way only THIS piece of my past causes.

And I began to wonder why? Why this? Why now? Why me? Why him? Why them? Why my family? Why his? I drowned in questions I had no answers to until I got to one that shattered me; what is love?

How can someone be so enmeshed into your fabric of being just to be slowly pulled out of your own skin, leaving you to bleed on your bathroom floor on a random Saturday night, years after they left?

What is this?
And how long does it stay?
When does it stop hurting, bludgeoning your heart like a fucking sport?

I can’t shake the feeling that a piece of me walks a path I am oblivious to. I can’t shake the feeling that something I built, block by block, is being of benefit to someone else.

I am hurt. Heartbroken. Angry.

But the ropes pull me down. And I stay still, taking the hits like a “sick, masochistic lion” who mistakes endurance for strength.

I still have so much to say. So many questions to ask.

But maybe love is not meant to be interrogated.
Maybe it is meant to be survived.

And maybe the real test is not whether it stays,
but whether you do.

Whatever, readers,

Xoxo
Ffb

Hey, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry for your loss.