The Past

I was having a really great time last night playing Apples to Apples with a group of people, and then the subject Painful came up on the green card. I had just gotten the best card for it: my past. And for a moment, the memories came flooding back, and so did the pain. But then I put down my card, and I realized, I have to put down my past. I have to move on.

This is going to be a journey filled with pain, I've known that already. But I have to let it be a journey. I can't stay stuck here for the rest of my life. I realize, now, that I want to run from the past. What better way to do that than run headfirst into my future?

Slowly, I need to erase away what's left. What happened to me was awful; but that's just it: it was awful and it was terrible but I need to get out of it. I can't let that fact consume me. I need to acknowledge that, yes, it was excruciatingly painful. And then I have to take that knowledge, and understand it, and then walk on.

There will be stumbles and falls, I know that. Sometimes I will fall back; some nights I will cry until my eyes are swollen and I've exhausted myself and I fall asleep with tears on my cheeks. The pain will be monstrous; my heart will ache and I will feel like I'm really, actually dying. And I'm allowed to feel that pain! I have the right to feel that pain! And, at the end of the day, even though I forget it ALL THE TIME, I also have the right to heal.

I hate myself quite a lot, so it's hard to even say that. That I have the right to get better.

But I do. I do have that right, and I do deserve, 100% deserve, to heal.

The pain will not subside completely, ever. However, that isn't the point, and that's not a reason to let it RULE me forever. I CAN find happiness that will trump that pain wholeheartedly.

The ghost of first love never really leaves you. It makes sense; it's the first time you gave your whole self to someone, the first time you left yourself open, raw, your heart completely unguarded. It can change you, and damage you. With first love, comes first heartbreak. I do know, however, that I will come to accept it one day. One day the rage will fade. One day the tears will dry. One day the heart will heal; I sometimes have a MASSIVELY hard time believing that last one. I do know, though, that when the heart does heal, there will always be a scar.

I will always carry scars.

But although I give up hope so much that this is true, I pray, I PRAY, that there are other people like me, who will look at someone's scars, and then look at the owner of them, and call them beautiful.

So this has got to be goodbye.

I will always have love in my heart for certain people.

And with that heart, I am walking away.

Sometimes, the hardest thing and the right thing are the same.