Work Text:
I know there were nights when I thought it would’ve been better to end it. Cleaner, sharper, quieter. But I didn’t. Not because I was brave, or hopeful, or even afraid of the usual reasons people whisper about in bathrooms when they talk about those who couldn’t hold on. No—my reason was smaller, pettier. I didn’t end it because I didn’t want to carry the burden of missing you then.
See, even when I hated you, I missed you. Even when I despised the shape of your shadow against my walls, I still longed for it. I knew if I cut myself out of this living, breathing, rotting play, I’d still miss you worse. Because the grave is quieter than the bed, yes—but it doesn’t ache the same. A bed aches, it mocks you, it whispers. A grave is silent. A bed is cruel.
So here I lie. Still. Breathing, unmoving. My body pressed down into the mattress as if it were soil. And maybe it is. Maybe this is my grave, and the alarm clock is my epitaph, and every day I wake up is nothing but a re-exhumation. Do you get it? Do you understand the exhaustion of clawing out of your coffin every morning just to sit in the same chair and pretend you’re not still buried?
The repetition eats. Not loudly—no, it eats softly, with the same teeth of the clock. The tick. The tock. The sameness of brushing your teeth only to let them rot anyway. The sameness of staring at faces you once thought you’d never survive without, only to realize you’re surviving worse with them.
And all the while, I shuffle the same hand of cards: grief, longing, and the stale perfume of the people who hurt me. People I miss in the way a wound misses the knife. And I hate that part of me—the part that still longs for them, longs for the sting of their cruelty, if only to feel alive for a split moment. To be seen. Not as what I am, not as what I was, but as something to be used, adored, discarded. A muse carved into their malice. A mirror they liked breaking because they could see themselves clearly in the shards.
And then, as always, the thought returns—
“If I miss the abuse so badly, why was I so afraid of it?”
The answer never comes. Or maybe it does, and I refuse to hear it. Maybe it’s because the pain was predictable, and predictability is safer than silence. Maybe because love in its absence feels worse than hate in its presence.
See, regret and remorse—they sound different, don’t they? People try to split hairs about them, lecture you on nuance. But I know better. Regret, remorse—they’re the same flavor of bile when they come back up. The same sting at the back of the throat. They’re as indistinguishable as facade and performance. A mask and a stage—two names for the same suffocating thing.
But I keep circling. I keep writing, as though something profound might reveal itself in the spiral. That’s not why I started, but here I am, staring at the words spilling like dirty water, waiting for some thesis, some grand revelation that redeems the noise.
And there isn’t one.
There never is. That’s the point. You can’t find a thesis in this kind of life, in this kind of living. Every day resets into the same rhythm, an undying pattern: wake, ache, breathe, rot. Pretend. Hold the same stuffed bear until your knuckles are white, as though its cheap fabric could anchor you. Let it weigh you down and hold you up in the same moment.
And so I write this. Not as an answer, not as clarity. But as another repetition, another circling thought, another coffin I dig myself out of just to climb back in.
And tomorrow, I’ll do it again.
Because you don’t find meaning here.
You don’t.
-
I know there were nights when I thought it would’ve been best to end it. And yet—how glad I am that I didn’t. Because if I had, I would have missed this: the slow spill of light through the curtains, the sound of laughter—even my own, small and fragile though it is. I would have missed you. And God, I don’t want to miss you. Not again.
You see, even when it hurt, I loved you. Even when my chest was heavy with the weight of all I couldn’t say, I still wanted to try. And had I left, I would never have known that missing someone can soften with time, can turn into something else: something tender, something survivable.
So here I stay. Still. Breathing. Unmoving sometimes, yes, but not buried. Not quite. The bed is not a coffin today; it’s a raft. And I float on it. The ceiling is not a stone lid—it’s sky. And sometimes the sky opens, and I feel lighter than I did yesterday.
The repetition is not always cruel. Some days it’s a melody, not a metronome. The brush of teeth, the tying of shoes, the warmth of tea cooling on the counter—these little cycles are not teeth, not always. Sometimes they are petals, unfurling over and over, reminding me that even sameness can be gentle.
And yes, I remember those who hurt me. But not to ache anymore. I remember them the way one remembers a storm that’s passed: the windows still rattle, but the sky is clear now. And in that clearing, I see something else—something I had forgotten I was allowed to feel. I see that I am not just a muse for cruelty, not just a mirror for someone else’s breaking. I am my own. And isn’t that strange? Isn’t that beautiful?
And sometimes I laugh at the thought that used to haunt me:
“If I miss the abuse so badly, why was I so afraid of it?”
Because now I know. I was afraid because I deserved better. Afraid because the body remembers what love should feel like, and cruelty is only ever its shadow. Afraid because deep down, I wanted to live long enough to learn the difference.
And I am learning.
Regret and remorse—they were twins once, indistinguishable in my mouth. But not anymore. Regret tastes like salt. Remorse tastes like sweetness wasted. And now, at last, I can tell them apart. Just like I can tell facade from performance, mask from stage. And behind them all—me.
And so I write this, not because I’m searching for a thesis, but because the writing itself feels like one. The words do not spiral down now—they twirl, they play, they hum. And that is enough. That is more than enough.
So tomorrow I will wake. I will ache. I will breathe. And it will not feel like rotting—it will feel like growing. I will hold the bear, yes, but not to anchor myself, not to keep from slipping. I will hold it the way a child does—because it’s soft, because it’s familiar. After all, it still makes me smile.
And maybe there’s no grand meaning here either. No thesis. Just this. Just me, still here. Just me, still gentle.
And tomorrow, I’ll do it again.
Because sometimes you do find meaning here.
You do.