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“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
Keith's revisiting his old blog made me return to this space where I abandoned in a haste and frenzy.
I ditched this space so quickly in my attempt to escape that now when I return, I find a mess here and I realised it's been really unlike me to just dump everything down and leave like this. The last few posts before I ran away from here definitely spelt nothing but despotism, anger and confusion which I'm pretty ashamed of looking at now. But I'm leaving them all here, to remind me of how stupid I could be and also because I know that at that moment, it was really pretty much how I felt.
I think the fresh air and space in Canada has done me a little good. 2 weeks ago, when I left, I couldn't sleep or eat properly. Now my atrocious appetite's back and I sleep pretty easily since I've accumulated a huge sleep debt. But this is not what I want to talk about.
What I wanted to talk about was this thing that came back to haunt me one night. I had a nightmare and I realised what it is that I'm afraid of.
I'm afraid of forgetting. I'm afraid he'll forget.
That's really what I think I've been fearing more than anything else. My attempts to hold on to something that I'm losing despite knowing that it's wrong stems pretty much from the fact that I know that one day we will forget. I don't want a part of history to be erased. It shouldn't be. It can't be. But people try to erase the unhappiness from their lives. I do the opposite. For some ridiculous reason, I force myself to face it everyday to remind myself why I'm unhappy in the midst of all my happiness.
I know it may seem like a ridiculous thing to do but it actually does make you appreciate what you have at the moment a little more. Like when I was together with him, once in awhile I'd think of all the unhappy times we had before we got together which made me appreciate our relationship a little more. In the same way now, I remind myself how I had been so unhappy before I got to canada and I'm grateful for the fresh air that I have. But the thing is, I tend to forget the happier moments like these and I really shouldn't.
When they say "time heals all wounds" it doesn't always mean people forgive or get over something. They merely forget. They replace the past with their present joy and forget how the pain feels.
But we shouldn't forget because it's always part of our history. Would you ever erase the holocaust from history?