I used to look at the world and wonder how people managed to not forgive. How they could bear the burden of questioning and guilt and grudge and "maybe it wasn't them, it was me". How could they cling so desperately to that anger, it becomes part of them. It dominates most parts. It takes over.

I used to watch all the fights and yells and screams that were so spiteful they sounded like an "I hate you" but really, they were just a "please don't leave me". I used to observe how hands flew in the air, wanting to pull away but also needing to hold onto something. How lips turned into a kiss goodbye that looked like a "*******" from afar. How features twisted and turned and gave in to the rage or maybe it was the loss. I don't really know.

All I know is that I find myself fighting with bitterness that isn't my own, it's theirs. I find myself yelling out words that mean nothing to me, that break my own heart on their way out, that I could have sworn I once spoke to myself in the mirror. I find myself clawing out my eyes that had seen too much and throwing them at their feet because they don't feel like they're mine anymore.

I wasn't always this angry. I swear I had a heart once. And there's still something there in my chest where it should have been. But it's a bit harsher, a bit more taunted, colored in black and navy and dark red instead of rainbows and whites and light beiges. I think it might be my soul but that too, looks like the blanket we covered my father's body with. Torn. Filthy. Irrevocably stained. And yeah, maybe it wasn't my soul after all.

It's the thing that reminds me to feel that pain everyday like my own dosage of medicine because if I don't feel the pain then I feel nothing at all and that's not good. That's not normal. But I can't be normal anymore and they don't understand that maybe I had never been and maybe the thing that's cut me open had done a **** job at stitching me back together. And maybe all the wounds are contaminated and the disease is slowly spreading through me and there's no way to stop it. Maybe that's why I get it now.

I get how you don't forgive because you can't. Because you're still having trouble forgiving your own self let alone anyone else. How you yell and kick and push people away because leaving has become another loose thread of your soul that's breaking away. Breaking apart. How you judge because you've always been your worst critic and something is always wrong and if it isn't with someone else then it's with you and you just can't afford having another thing being wrong with you. So maybe that burden of grudge isn't as heavy as your heart. Maybe that tear of goodbye is better done by your own shaky hands than theirs. Maybe you were never meant to forgive, only fault. Maybe you should have stopped wondering about the world because now you can't even solve the mystery of your being. You can't make sense of your own self, how did you expect to make sense of the world?