salve.

"You've made your choice, and there's nothing I can do,"

"I don't think you want me in your life anymore,

and I have to find a way to live with that.

You said you would still be there for me,

but I don't want to be a mere courtesy - a salve for your guilt.

You won't hear from me again after today, and I don't want you to worry.

I'll be okay. Because I have to be."

-Salve, Lang Leav

---

I shall write this once, and never speak of it again.

By now, I hope all ounces of interest or curiosity you perhaps once had is now emptied, and this space no longer has purpose for you to check out. Unlike the other occasion, I hope you never see this- if you do, please turn away now, you'll find disdain in what I really think and how I feel. I could've left these thoughts written on another arena but I'm become rather exhausted to continue things I've left off, much less venture anew another platform.

I will probably miss you from time to time, greatly when the moment arrives. Those days I'll think about the great times we had - the halcyon days where conversations rolled off freely, and texts with globules of excitement and joy; but too the painful moments where you hurled some of the meanest things ever said to me. Those days I won't feel like leaving the bed. Limbs heavy, I'll toss and turn in my single disheveled space, blanket messy snaked around me, patches of my skin exposed to the putrid air, my room stained with memories of you - how the great times you had with me, you're having it with someone else.

45 days, I'll wonder when I think of you, how day turned into unrecognisable nights in such a short span, from comforting kisses to physical touches that would feel awfully misplaced, and a barrage of ups and downs with words that were written to strike, and every strike with intention to kill. It is in my nature to dissect and contemplate where things took its turn, but the day I began thinking was probably the same time you stopped caring. Maybe your intentions were as I thought, but on the same beat it could be what it is.

I think we've become too much for each other to bear at some point, emotionally incongruent in vast magnitudes we're on separate tangents altogether, and this led to something that was too destructive for either of us to deal; we became a more toxic than we ever intended for us to be.

Perhaps now you're simply honoring your words on staying around; to not vanish like a summer mirage. But if truly what's left is mere courtesy- a salve to your guilt and keeping of a promise, it is alright, I can do without it. What you have given thus far is suffice and you haven't gone back on your words. You have done no wrong and words elude me the gratitude I have for that tiny bracket of paradise you've allowed me to sample. But I don't see this hurting less if we continue circling the drain, rolling with the punches without a clear direction and you taking flight when the time and person comes, it'll take even more to see you off and be totally alright. This friend thing that you made so clear is as far as we'll go, I don't know if I can do it, or if it's something that's good for me; it shall be this one time I can't play to the rules you set.

With you gone, I don't want you to worry-you probably won't- and I'll come into terms the facts as they are au courant. Perhaps this is the 'growing a pair' you've spoken about. You'll be happy with those you're with right now, and probably already have a predilection for one of them-whether or not you'd admit it- and I think it's the most amazing thing in the world to have someone you genuinely have a good time with. But this rat race is something I've become tired of, and on days I do think I was signed up for a race I wasn't remotely aware of, and I've been made to chew off something way more than I can bite, something I didn't want to open my mouth for.

You said once by a riverbank how we had many things in common, and in some ways we are the same, despite coming from different realms, having walked very different paths with different shoes, terrains and trying times in our own ways. But as of late, it feels like we're galloping forward with horse blinders, only apparent in our vision the other things that spells out how too different we are.

I don't know why despite everything I stay firmly attracted to you-and I don't know how long I can keep this nonchalance-, even when I push you away I still wish you'd say you want to stay, to insist yourself upon me despite the hollow words that fall out of me. But in the lack thereof I get reminded of reality; the security blanket that I so desperately need, the assurance you simply can't give in the name of unrequited sentiments. I'm sure your own set of lost love, almost relationship and current infatuations have taught you to do what you have done today, I would to for self-protection and honesty, but this time I'm not you.

This isn't a piece on blaming, for I am sure in a way or another I've made you a casualty too, but right now I'm alone in a dark room, with no comforters to distract the pain away. At some point I have to let you go, and like a lit matchstick, it is perhaps better to be a spark that burns out than to be a wave that fades away.

I don't know how much of what I've written its sentences threaded to hold its weight, or perhaps much of this is no more than depressing 3am thoughts; The pain may sting for long long time. But don't worry, neither should you have any inklings of guilt. I'll be okay someday, maybe not because I'm absolutely over it, but because I have to be.