This Is How We Live Now

We stay because we come from the other side.  We come from a place that taught us never to trust again. In this place we poured our hearts out and gave everything we had. Here we built a refuge and planned to spend the rest of our lives. It is also here where we learned that we could never be so sure of what lies ahead.

We stay and try to wash away the pain by reenacting our old ways. We go to the same places we went to with our past lovers.  We order the same drinks, eat the same pastries, and generate the same conversations attempting to spark similar flames from the past.

During these moments, we use our emotions as wager hoping that we could reignite our burning desires. But then again we relearn that happiness cannot be fabricated by the lies we refuse to admit.

We become nomads in this world that can’t seem to see what we’ve been asking for. We are constantly moving, often times handed with boarding passes that place us next to people whom we are forced to like. The mannerisms of these folks are our ultimate pet peeves. The sound that they make while chewing their food kills us. Their interest in music and movies just baffles us. But we stay because we have no choice, stuck in this flight for hours that feel like years.

We stay hoping that we could mold ourselves to fit in the social circles that surround us. We chisel ourselves so that they would please the new people in our lives. We pretend to be the persons our peers accept. We attend their parties only to realize how alone we are during these events. We drink their alcohol and smoke their pot only to break our spirits further. We hope to become cool as we can now post all these as hash‐tags on Instagram and Facebook.

We stay yearning we could rebuild this place with the foundations from our shattered history. We erect walls to room our emotions. We install doors and windows just enough to avoid suffocating from our fears. We then create a fireplace only to find ourselves burning this place down with our fears of falling again. Amidst these solutions, we realize that hiding our true selves only torments us.

Homes become places of sadness and loneliness. Here we lose sleep for days, finish bottles and bottles of Jack, and realize that this game of hide‐and‐seek between our old and new editions is only a deed of hedging from the truth.

We stay because we are weaker than we think. We need other people’s blankets to survive. Even if it hurts, we embrace being the second boyfriend or girlfriend. We then wear masks to hide how we truly feel because of our fear of being alone. Ever broken, the past is no longer an option as there is nothing left on the other side but shattered pieces of our attempts.

Desperately hoping to get hardened by its judgments, we then place our new versions in the kiln of life. Weary of life’s journey, the only thing left to do is drop our shields and settle.