The Truth About Penance

I wish I could perfectly say things are okay now, but in the end, distractions are just distractions, and one day I'll have to stop running.

In truth, it's just a waiting game. I may or may not be waiting for the right time and right reason to leave.

I will never be okay with it, but maybe if I left behind the people/person who caused the pain, then maybe I will be. I don't know.

It's not pride nor is it stupidity. I should be over it by now, right? It's been months. I should no longer let it serve its purpose of existing. I wish it could be that easy to let go. Am I gripped by pride? Or love?

No. It's fear. Absolute fear that it will happen again and the constant proof that it could and maybe it will. I have convinced myself of these. I don't know how to stop—to place my trust again in people who have constantly found every reason to make the cut even deeper.

It's easy to make yourself seem a certain way to other people, like an unsinkable ship floating steadily on sea.

But even armors crack.

Reader, allow me to confess to you something that I will most likely erase. Then again, not everyone will be able to read this so let me release this from my heart. Let me do this for myself.

I am not as strong as I make myself to be. The unsinkable ship, the outspoken advocate, the one whose belief in love never faltered even with all the tribulations—I am all of those and yet I am not.

I lack the implied strength that comes with those 3 people. I cannot swim, should the ship sink. I would not die for the cause I'm fighting for. I would not put my heart on the line again after everything it has been through.

I am what's left of my armor—the one I call the unsinkable ship, the identity I treasure most. I created it, not for others to see me as such, but for myself, to remind myself I have to be strong in compensation for the truly weak and helpless girl inside.

What I am is scared. Afraid. Incomparably terrified of being hurt again. It is human enough, isn't it? I initially wanted to be positive about the past year of pain that I went through. I wanted to think that there was a reason to all this. Maybe I was just too blind to see that this was made to teach me a lesson and pave the way for the beginning of my penance—for all my present and past sins.

I realize now that the penance—the consequence, the sacrifice—is the inevitable lack of faith in even the most infallible people.

It is an insult to those who have done me no harm and a justice to those who have. I will not blame them for thinking that way.

But I must pay.