[EcM] July - Forgiveness
"There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness." - Josh Billings
There are only so many moments of forgiveness left in a man that's seen almost too much- to believe in not much else but revenge. He knows how it changes a man, how it sinks into the bone and seeps through the marrow. He can feel the hard edge it gives him, the coarseness to his words, and the harsh tones to anything he would actually want to mean something. It doesn't matter is the automatic response to anything that doesn't go his way, and most times... it ends up being the one thing that matters the most. Nothing ever truly runs off his back, it all just settles at the base of his spine, eating away at everything that makes him want to stand up straight. Instead he crouches, low and in the shadows waiting for those moments when he can finally feel some sort of resolution to it all.
It never comes though, there is no happily ever after.
Instead everything that weighs him down, everything that stacks up around him forming walls that he constantly thinks could just crumble away at any moment just makes it that much harder to breathe free again. Boxing himself in, with each fragment of doubt, every small notion that he'll survive... he'll make it through to the end, all of it piles up like bricks of guilt around him. It's a never ending process, and he's getting tired of it all.
Even standing there outside The Black Rock, feeling the tightness in his palms from the chains he wishes he felt better. He wishes that all the walls he built were to keep him safe, to protect him from being that man, but he knows... now more than ever... he's never climbing out of there.
Thumbs rub against torn callouses, and he feels the sting of sweat in the open flesh. It's a constant thought, that he actually feels something other than nothing.
Words that would never have slipped from his lips toward the man that he blamed for everything... are now something he's aching to hear. He wants to hear it, craves that affirmation that everything he's done... every action and person he's betrayed... that it was all worth it. That the people he's pushed away, and those he's loved... that they understand just why he had to do it.
He wants them to forgive him... because he knows he can never forgive himself.
There are only so many moments of forgiveness left in a man that's seen almost too much- to believe in not much else but revenge. He knows how it changes a man, how it sinks into the bone and seeps through the marrow. He can feel the hard edge it gives him, the coarseness to his words, and the harsh tones to anything he would actually want to mean something. It doesn't matter is the automatic response to anything that doesn't go his way, and most times... it ends up being the one thing that matters the most. Nothing ever truly runs off his back, it all just settles at the base of his spine, eating away at everything that makes him want to stand up straight. Instead he crouches, low and in the shadows waiting for those moments when he can finally feel some sort of resolution to it all.
It never comes though, there is no happily ever after.
Instead everything that weighs him down, everything that stacks up around him forming walls that he constantly thinks could just crumble away at any moment just makes it that much harder to breathe free again. Boxing himself in, with each fragment of doubt, every small notion that he'll survive... he'll make it through to the end, all of it piles up like bricks of guilt around him. It's a never ending process, and he's getting tired of it all.
Even standing there outside The Black Rock, feeling the tightness in his palms from the chains he wishes he felt better. He wishes that all the walls he built were to keep him safe, to protect him from being that man, but he knows... now more than ever... he's never climbing out of there.
Thumbs rub against torn callouses, and he feels the sting of sweat in the open flesh. It's a constant thought, that he actually feels something other than nothing.
Words that would never have slipped from his lips toward the man that he blamed for everything... are now something he's aching to hear. He wants to hear it, craves that affirmation that everything he's done... every action and person he's betrayed... that it was all worth it. That the people he's pushed away, and those he's loved... that they understand just why he had to do it.
He wants them to forgive him... because he knows he can never forgive himself.