When I’m Brave Enough To Feel Things Again, I Hope You’ll Still Love Me

For what seemed like a lifetime ago, I used to turn to liquor up to the last drop to numb any kind of feeling related to feeling. Now, I turn to cheap bottles of beer for me to feel any kind of feeling aside from this hollowness that’s swallowed me whole. I tried pinching my cheek but I barely felt the sting—an indication that I was still sober enough to feel that I do not know how to feel anymore. I tap myself in the back and gave the consolation that I wanted this; that I chose this because I refuse to chase the state of feeling if it’s not meant for me. No more.

But for what seemed like just a moment ago, I got to know my heart—and the reality that I didn’t know what it truly wants. My mind settled for safe, sound but empty, against the chaos, the overwhelming state of feeling and being: in love.

I chose this because it was the only thing out in the open who offered to keep me company—when everybody seemed to have found somebody and I had nobody. I kept myself blind against the what ifs, the budding romance because them leading to love is a luxury I refuse to afford. I yearn for love, I just wish I don’t need to beg for it to have it. I ignored any chance of inviting this intoxicating, maddening, consuming ardor even if it tasted like every kind of bliss and what’s past it. I ran away from feeling and for a long time, I felt stable, in control. Then my mind got tired masking my acts, it was this emptiness that reacquainted me to my heart.

As I laid down and dipped my body in the still night, pitch black, I saw nothing but I felt everything. I was nestled in between my mind and my heart, lost in translation: Love. For someone who drifted apart with such feeling, I think about all kinds of love more than I’d like myself to know. Solitude used to be my escape, but now I’m haunted by my thoughts: Yours, mine, ours. What could be yours, could be mine, could be ours. “I miss you.” I bit my tongue for what seemed like forever, thinking if I could keep myself from uttering these words, I could still hold my promise not to feel. That I could still keep the last part of me you forgot to take. That as long as I’m sober enough to stop myself and keep my guard up, I won’t get to give away the last of me—the last piece you’ll eventually end up breaking.

Sometimes, I think how sad the fact that another person loved me enough to love the both of us, but not enough for me to want to love him back.

When I’m brave enough to feel again, even though my love might not be enough yet to love both of us, but I hope it could be enough for you to look at me and say, “I think I can love her. I will definitely love her.”