Hello,
I have reached a place in my life where I can see things that I could never see before. And now that I can see, I wish I could go back to being blind. I have come a long way. I have worked hard to be where I am and yet I cannot deny the love, support, and care from many around me that has helped me reach here. Some of that makes me want to run away. Away from the guilt I feel for not returning all that love. Not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t. I don’t have any place left in my heart for many of these lovers and caregivers who have given me so much. We are just so different. We are far apart. I am sincerely grateful to all of them and yet I don’t like them. I cannot love them like they have loved me. I wish I could give it all back. But I can’t.
While I grew and changed, so did many around me. I grew closer to some and drifted far apart from others. There were those I held close to my heart. And even with all my efforts to keep them there, there is no space for them anymore.
I used to believe in things that I don’t believe in now. I have found new faith. I have found a lot of new faith while I shed even more every day. If I am a good person, I was a bad person in the past. Because I cannot recognize that person in my past. I need to keep striving to keep this good. I need to strive to keep this good in my future so I can also reflect back on this present day and not recognize the person I am today. But there are those around me who don’t want to change. There are those who deny the change. There are those who fight the change. There are those who hate the change they see in me. We were once close and now we are not. We stood together and now we don’t. I cannot deny the love they gave me but I cannot return the favor anymore. What do I do?
This note is a reflection of a battle I have experienced in myself and many around me. In my effort to own myself, I tried to put my sentiments to words. I believe in owning myself, the good and the bad. The beautiful and the ugly. I see people around me trying to run away from the difficult and the bad in them but I don’t think we can run that far before it all catches up. I have absolute faith in expressing, owning, and wearing the gratitude we feel for others. These others can be the ones we cherish, we once cherished, or the ones we don’t. Even if we are different, that should not come in the way of us feeling our gratitude. There are people who loved us but we can’t love them anymore. We might be standing at two opposing extremes but we can still own the gratitude we feel for everything they did for us in our past. The world is not black and white, why try to make it so?
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