etheljanealcala

We were children engulfed in our innocence. We never measured risks, never thought about a future we were never fully ready to commit to. I loved you at a time where love was the only thing I knew how to harvest hope in. I placed too many dreams in your empty hands, too many expectations for the things I wished we’d become. We never did become. You went on with your life as best as you could and in my own ways I did too. Sometimes I still think of you. The war we fought with the world for something we both knew wouldn’t last. The battlefield we stood on opposite sides of and how much of our saving came from the disassembling of everything good that we were. I took your innocence. Somewhere you are still running with mine. We could never get back who we were then. No matter how hard we’ve both tried. I look at you and your walls are higher than the last time I ran hurdles over them. I don’t speak openly about love anymore. Sometimes I still think of you. I hope you know that there is still a thousand things that drag me next to you.

The world tried to tell me otherwise. 
I didn’t deserve it. 
I was good to you. 
I was built beautifully. 
Somewhere in the near future, I will be loved like I deserve.
And I don’t believe in any of that. 
Just because something ends doesn’t mean it amounts to nothing.
Whatever we had, whatever we were, was important. 
The world tried to tell me that it wasn’t. 
That in a couple of years I’d forget it.
That’s not the truth. 
It was important. 
And my healing has never rooted from forgetting. 
It’s rooted in forgiving. 
And so I forgive you for not staying.
Almost as much as I forgive myself for the begging. 
I forgive the both of us for all the times we were bad to each other. 
Yet amidst the crookedness of our love and the days where rain didn’t know anything other than how to flood our hearts with doubt and insecurity- we tried as best as we could. 
And for me, that says all there is to know about great wars like ours. 
We loved each other. 
It wasn’t always what we needed.
Sometimes that same love was what caused the wreckage. 
We never blamed ourselves for the aftermath and instead started keeping a mental note of who made the most mistakes.
We should have let it go.
You shouldn’t have lied and I shouldn’t have kissed your bestfriend in hopes of finding you. Countless times, the world has tried to rob me of the idea that in fucked up ways we made each other better people. 
But the lights are still on when we close our eyes aren’t they? 
you love her better. 
and I’ve stopped looking for love to save me. 
When the world tries to tell me that whatever we had, that whatever we were wasn’t important, I hold my palms up to the sky so they can see the proof of how much of you still resides in me- as it turns out, blood stains longer than anything else. A kind reminder that you were here, in strange ways will always be, and we tried for something.

In my best attempt to love you the way you deserved- I set aside my pride. I gave up my stubborn ways and learned to be joyful when it was sunlight instead of darkness that filled the room. I began to talk less and listened more. I handed over my selfishness and disowned my egocentric ways. Now I have you to think about. Although I hope you know that not everything I do is a reflection of you. Never forget that because I cannot promise that the sailing will always be this smooth. There will be days when the girl I was two years ago will begin to crawl up my throat and I’ll say shit I don’t mean. Start arguments I don’t have the energy to fight just to prove that I can still ruin something good for me. I feel most in balance when I can find ways to make it bad. This doesn’t mean I don’t love you because I do. I’m just shitty at showing it. It sounds fucked up, but it’s the truth. This is to say that loving me is going to be perhaps the biggest war you have yet to fight. I will yell for you to stop loving me and you won’t know how to.

i really like long-distance domesticity. like, when you get into the habit of saying good morning and goodnight to someone, telling someone your plans for the day not because they’re remarkable but so they’ll know what you’re up to, telling someone where you’re going, if you’ll be drinking, when you’ll be home, asking someone if they’ve eaten or showered or slept or taken their meds, that kind of thing. just the habitual knowledge of another person’s life over a space of hundreds or thousands of miles. that’s cool