When You Become Someone Else’s Lesson

I left the room with all the bags of guilt strangled in my heart. It’s hard knowing someone is in pain, having sleepless nights thinking about why they weren’t enough, losing their appetite because of all the things going through their head, losing focus on whatever they’re working on, and losing faith that someday it might just get better.

And it was all because of me.

So this is how it feels. Thinking of it now, i never paid much attention on the other side of the coin—the one where you hurt someone. And it gets a lot harder the more you think about it. This is where you truly realize that a simple sorry won’t fix anything. It breaks my soul knowing that until I have been forgiven, I will bear a cross from the moment I wake up until I go to bed and sleep. And it’s getting heavier every single day.

It haunts me everywhere I go. Every song I listen to suddenly tells a story about you; every place, even if we haven’t been there together, makes me think about your eyes and your peculiar but beautiful golden beard, and every corner of my room reminds me of your rambunctious laugh. I’m carrying every shard of my broken memories, keeping them while my soul rips till it bleeds from the words that were left unsaid that day—words that perhaps will no longer make up for what I have done.

I want to make it up to you, but it’s close to impossible. There’s no way I could explain myself or offer to make things right. But I just tired myself; you wouldn’t listen. I don’t want to give it up, but maybe this is the part where I have to accept the fact that this is a dead end for both of us. That I messed up and there’s no way I could fix it.

For the longest time, I was afraid to fall in love because I feared getting hurt again. This I didn’t see this coming. It made me realize how self-centered I could be. I spent four years thinking about myself but never thought of me hurting someone. This is more painful than all the heartaches I had in the past combined. What I could’ve done differently is totally out of the picture. What happened was all in the past, a bitter history that’s carved in our memories.

I have to suffer a great damage knowing that I’m not okay with someone, that I’m not sure if it will even get better between us. This is a whole different level of pain inside me. But I have to accept that I am also capable of hurting someone the same way people are capable of hurting me.

Right now, the best thing I could hope for is forgiveness from the person I still love so deeply. So deeply that I was able to weave all the words in my head into a blanket of pure melancholy I use in my sleep.

I was a lesson. Anyone can be.