It's not that I don't love you

"It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s the sound I heard when I was 9 and my father slammed the front door so hard behind him I swear to god it shook the whole house. For the next 3 years I watched my mother break her teeth on vodka bottles. I think she stopped breathing when he left. I think part of her died. I think he took her heart with him when he walked out. Her chest is empty, just a shattered mess or cracked ribs and depression pills.

It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s all the blood in the sink. It’s the night that I spent 12 hours in the emergency room waiting to see if my sister was going to be okay, after the boy she loved, told her he didn’t love her anymore. It’s the crying, and the fluorescent lights, and white sneakers and pale faces and shaky breaths and blood. So much blood.

It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s the time that I had to stay up for two days straight with my best friend while she cried and shrieked and threw up on my bedroom floor because her boyfriend fucked his ex. I swear to god she still has tear streaks stained onto her cheeks. I think when you love someone, it never really goes away.

It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s the six weeks we had a substitute in English because our teacher was getting divorced and couldn’t handle getting out of bed. When she came back she was smiling. But her hands shook so hard when she held her coffee, you could see that something was broken inside. And sometimes when things break, you can’t fix them. Nothing ever goes back to how it was. I got an A in English that year. I think her head was always spinning too hard to read any essays.

It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s that I do."

I sometimes take an online stroll and read pieces on berlin-artparasites, when all the technical knowledge of my daily life seem to take control of me-- and when I need to feel more human and less of a machine.

I stumbled upon this beautiful piece and felt the need to post it. It's unbelievable what the aftermath of a failed relationship can do to people. The anguish, the fear, the anger, all etched deep into your skin, making you afraid of loving too much again. Maybe all of us need to go through that phase before we find the happiness we truly deserve. There were times my subconscious would order me to stop when I'm starting to give too much, as if to ominously warn me of what might recur if I start believing again. But I hope faith will be able to keep others going no matter how dark the past they're running away from.

I hope everyone who's gone through the same thing find the same faith I found and hold onto it.