NUMB

one hundred fifteen

The past couple of weeks where I avoided writing to you got me thinking a lot of things.

I decided that I wanted to write something positive about you. That, I think, is the only way to let this bitterness go. To see you in a broader perspective, rather than hyper focusing on all the times you refused to listen. All the times you chose fo lash out and deflect the pain you've been trying and failing to keep at bay.

I want to focus on memories that help me breathe, the parts of you that will remind me that before you were a bully, you were kind.

I want to remember you as my friend. Nothing else.

And as I keep rereading all of these notes, I slowly remember.

These words sometimes remind me of how you've always had a way with words — reminds me of how inclined you are when it comes to literature, how you're smarter than half of the people I know.

I learned a lot from you.

You're very smart, but you also use it to your advantage to get to people — maybe that's the reason why they learned to love you so much. Why everybody loves you so much. Why even the unsympathetic can empathize and help you stomp down someone who ruined your life completely.

You were kind, even when you're angry. Even if you felt betrayed. You chose to help me instead of your father. You broke the only family you had to help a friend you believed to have betrayed you intentionally. You coaxed the crowd to lower their arrows. You saved me twice. Apologized more than I have, even though what I did to you was much worse than cold water being dumped by your juvenile friends over the toilet — much worse than empty words that mean nothing, much worse than getting shoved away because you still can't bring yourself to accept the truth.

A friend that got everything in his life broken, starts to break everything around him too.

The only flaw was that you didn't listen. If you just did, you wouldn't have broken both of us along with the life you envisioned that got destroyed that day.

But there's no point in me dwelling on the what ifs.

You don't owe me your forgiveness for the way you lost everything.

And I don't owe you the composure to keep on holding onto something that was broken a long time ago.

I don't owe you my dignity, because like you, I was also a victim.

We're both victims that are broken — that are somehow, still breaking.

I am broken.

But I will be fixed. I can fix myself.

Because, slowly, I am slowly healing by looking back like this. By addressing these scars. By acknowledging that I never meant for any of this to happen, that I was just as powerless as you, that I never intended to hurt you because you were precious to me.

I'm sorry.

Thank you for the lessons you've taught me throughout these years.

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A BIG BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE BECAUSE NUMB IS #1 IN SHORT STORY!