crush my soul

I have been sick with fever and chills for the past few days then I get a message from you that breaks my heart. You never really say much but when you do, you choose just the right phrase to crush my soul. My words are spilling like blood all over the place and if I admit that it affects me, it affects me, so I stay silent. 

You know you really love someone when you're relieved just knowing they are alive somewhere however far away they may be. And it doesn't even matter if they talk to you or not, if they ignore you, reject you, don't value you or push you away. When you're okay that they're happy even if their happiness does not include you - that's the measure of true love. 

Thank you Pa for instilling this value in me when I was younger. Once again I'm realizing that the heartaches I've experienced early on were just preparations for bigger disappointments in life. You've left so many times that I'm used to disappearing acts. You made promises you never kept, so I'm familiar with broken vows. You told stories that were not true, so I'm accustomed to lies. And you cursed a lot, but God, I'll never get used to that - and all the violence that comes with each profanity, the broken bones, the bloody face of my brother as you beat him up and you make me watch and you tell us not to cry because crying is for the weak. 

There are some things a child can never un-see or un-know, but there are some things a child should never experience at all. I wish time can distill the memories and make them pure but every time people disappoint me or hurt me, all the bad dreams come back on repeat and I have to hide myself under the blankets until they leave.

I blame this sickness that has temporarily made my heart soft and my brain muddy with dark thoughts. But why did you have to make it worse by saying that? My only happiness these days comes from sharing with you all these little things I find in this journey, and yet you told me to stop sending any. It's like asking me to stop breathing. Why don't you just kill me now?

I had high hopes about you. I guess I was wrong.