it’s not your fault

By YACHI

ART BY ANGELIKA ODANGO

It’s scary. How someone I knew so well and learned to love over the years became someone unrecognizable and unbearable. I didn’t know how, when, and why it happened but it did. I spent years trying to love you, understanding every part of you, but the day came when I realized I somehow unloved you. I’m trying to love you again but it’s hard.

My chest is empty but heavy when I look at you. It doesn’t even make sense how something so shallow can feel like it holds all the weight of the universe by a thread, gritting on the edges of your heart as it drags down, almost making you one with the ground. It gets overbearing when I look at you sit down and lay your head on the table as you ride out the feeling in its whole intensity. It’s vicious.

I can’t do this anymore. I want to end whatever this is. I want to leave you on your own and never look back. But that’s what I’ve been doing the entire time.

I can’t leave you. I don’t like looking at you when you wake up and wait for the day to end when it’s the only thing you’ve been doing now.

I want to leave so bad and I want this to end but I can’t. I have to help you. I have to try. I’m trying but it’s hard - love, it’s so hard. I want to say it’s not your fault, no, but I want to blame someone. I want to say this situation we are in is all your fault but you and I both know that it isn’t anyone’s fault. You did this.

I’m fine. I’ve been trying to get to you. Maybe I can learn from someone else how I can make myself fall in love with you because all I’ve done was unlove. If I learned how to love you before, then I can do it again.

It’s not your fault. I will learn how to love you again, I promise. Not as soon as I’d like it to be but I’ll get there.

Until then, I’ll watch over you as you bury your head in your arms like how you would cradle something fragile because that’s what you are. I’ll watch over you as you come home from feeling full but will leak out

because your heart can’t hold it in and you become empty again. I’ll watch over you because it’s time I do.

I won’t look away anymore; unlearn what I’ve been used to. But for now, I want to thank you for holding up. For allowing me time to realize this, for buying me time to get you back up.

I can’t do it now, but I will appreciate you wholeheartedly. Unraveling my feelings and writing this down as I look in the mirror at you, in the reflection, looking back at me is one step closer. One day, I’ll be able to do it for you.

I’ll do it for me.