Retrospection, Introspection

“I diffuse everything with “Haha”. Haha”.

So do I. Haha. I recently talked to one of my close friends regarding matters of the heart. We chatted over lost loves, what-have-beens, and old pains. I related the story of some of the darkest times I’ve gone through in the realm of love. Then I realized I’ve punctuated all of the most painful lines with “haha”, as if I wanted to balance it out by saying it in jest. I guess it’s my reflex for outwardly proving I have moved on from it all, without making it seem even slightly nostalgic—a reflex I’ve acquire from years of making things seem all right and eventually having things become all right. After all, I have mastered the art of living the lie until the lie becomes my life. And then I also realized I haven’t talked about that point in time, which is perhaps one of the most pivotal things to have happened to me yet. This was, after all, the biggest and most painful heartbreak I have ever experienced.

Actually, the real biggest and most painful heartbreak I have ever experienced was shifting out of IE, but that makes for a different story. For the purpose of this entry, I speak of the biggest and most painful heartbreak in the context of love.  The biggest and most painful heartbreak I have ever experienced was with one person who built me up, and let me down just as when I already said “Okay, I’m ready” by him ironically saying “I’m not ready”. The biggest and most painful heartbreak I have ever experienced was with the shortest real relationship I have ever been through. The biggest and more painful heartbreak I have ever experienced was with someone I wasn’t even in a relationship with. The biggest and most painful heartbreak I have experienced was something I got over through distance and forgetting. I put myself out there, and it was my choice. Yes, I’m a masochist like that, and that hasn’t turned out well for me so far. But I’m changing though, you see, and I have gone a long way, in retrospect. Without going into more details, I can say that was truly some “nasty painful effed-up shit”.

I have fully moved on, as I have been for quite some time already. I can even just casually talk to friends about it, but usually I opt not to out of fear of seeming nostalgic or fond of those memories. It took every ounce of me to get over that, and boy was it hard. My triumph was no small feat, and it is something to be proud of, but it isn’t really something I want to broadcast to the world. To be honest, I think I’ve only spoken of this now. True, this blog has seen some not-so-cryptic references to that point in my life. But admitting how I’ve been ever since that time? This is the first.

But then again, sometimes I still feel the repercussions of that ill-fated encounter. I know for a fact it has ruined me and my views on love. I know it has added to my brokenness and cynicism. I know that whatever insecurities I have with myself and with my relationships have rooted from the sudden end of something I had hoped would have been a wonderful journey. That journey abruptly went to a halt as we were about to jump off the proverbial cliff together—he pushed me off to a slow agonizing death leap. I have long picked myself up and pieced my soul together and patched up my heart. The scars have disappeared, the stitch marks have blended into the background. The “me” I see in the mirror every day? It looks brand new.

But deep inside I know that’s not what it used to be. I know where it has been dented, I know where it has been chipped. I know where my heart has been ripped out of my flesh, and I know where I have put the bandages.

This is why it pains me to see someone relapse or seem to relapse, this is why it pains me to see someone wince from phantom pain or lick wounds on instinct even if the scars have long healed. It feels…unfair. It feels like I want to go back and regress to that shadow of my former self I have put behind long ago. There is no phantom pain, nor are there marks or outlines of wear and tear. But I still know what used to be the figure of the broken girl I was long ago. I still remember what it looked like, and, come to think of it, it’s fairly easy to slip back into such a form.

No I don’t want to go back. Please, don’t make me go back.