E l i d e

merry christmas, i guess?

i wish i can tell you.

as if i didn't know what it means to love you.
as if i didn't know what it'd cost to let you go.

is it the ber season that's making the nights seem longer?

Let the games begin.

it feels like it's been forever. hiiii, helloooo!! 🥹💖

let's start with the sad girl posting again.

this is the last time i will ever write to you, and the last time i will post here...at least for now.

i love you all so much!! and thank you—for loving elide enough to love edel, too

i have this deep fear sitting inside me—

that no matter how hard time tries to heal me, i could only remain broken. that no matter how much effort i put into not caring, i would always be one hello away from completely combusting myself—one phone call close to crawling back in.

what if when i say i don’t love you anymore, after decades of trying to move on, i still couldn’t prove it enough to make myself believe?

i've been meaning to ask you
all this time,
just a little,
did you love me back?
but the question never left my lips,
even as you were leaving.

one more thing...

the wound you said i’d never have
was the one you carved on me.

proof of life...and sufferings???

𝘐 𝘨𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘵.

I could no longer delay things from crashing into shambles.

For twenty two long months, I kept trying to. For you, I kept making up reasons; kept creating excuses. Bargaining with fate for an extra time. Trading secrets with the devil. Selling parts of me I know I could never redeem in exchange for something temporary.

𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘻𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘻𝘪𝘦𝘳, 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘥𝘰 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦.

But I could no longer move forward from here. I drained myself to the bones trying to hold the line and now, I am already out of strength.

You exhaust me, darling. Really.

You leave and come back. Leave and come back. Leave and come back. And sometimes, we’d talk until you fall asleep only for you to torture me with silence later. Sometimes, we’d laugh like nothing could go wrong, and then the next thing I know, you’re talking to someone else.

To one, two, three more reasons why I would throw up at the sight of my own face.

To four, five, six additional names up in my list to worry about for days.

But you come back, 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴. And isn’t it when we are desperate for something to hope for, we take any sign that counts?

It’s just that I have never loved anyone else this much, you know? That just thinking about living in a world without you bends my soul in weird angles.

But I am so, so tired now, my love. So excruciatingly tired.

And since I couldn't convince my soul to stop clinging to you, I guess I'll just walk away without it in my body.

And with my heart breaking infinitely, I come in full surrender.

𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙞𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙝 𝙤𝙛 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙢𝙚.
𝙈𝙖𝙮 𝙞𝙩 𝙝𝙖𝙪𝙣𝙩 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧.

love isn't the things you did to me.

where do i go from here?

forward, they say.
one foot in front of the other.
crawl if you must,
and move
forward,
forward,
forward.
and at first, it's easy—
when you feel nothing
but rage, and pain that screams
for justice,
you become impenetrable.
but just like any other thing
that speeds up from the kick-start,
i slowed down.

they failed to tell me
that time wakes up
the strongest memories.
not the painful,
agonizing ones, no,
but the most beautiful
of them.
those that feel
like sunrise,
and soft ocean waves
splashing against your feet.
the ones that make you
giggle like a teenager
falling in love
for the first time,
thinking it's gonna last
forever.
and they will burn—
tantalizingly bright and bewitching
until you forget
why you're trying to move on.
until you're blinking against
the darkness of 2am,
dumbfounded,
stomach all twisted
from the famine
of their presence.
until you can't remember
why you left,
and why you ran away
in the first place.

there are bruise marks
all over my skin,
and all i can think of
is how he held me
when i was falling apart.
there are voices in my head
he put in there—
curse words, chaos, misery,
insecurities worming in,
and all i can recall
is how sweetly he used to talk
to my two-year old niece.
there are poetries,
proses that i wrote
about the manipulation
and gaslighting i've suffered,
but here i am,
so confused,
if he was a villain
or just a good man
at fault.

why am i questioning my reality?

—𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀, 𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗲

older people say that
when no one remembers
to grieve for the dead,
its soul will not find peace.

well, i was just thinking,
perhaps that is why i couldn't catch
even a slight glimpse of tranquility
since the day
you and i parted ways.

you never mourned me over.
never shed a tear.
never fell onto your knees,
and prayed to god
to bring me back.

and as if my existence
didn't count at all, you jumped—
from one relationship
to another
and another
and another.

really?
have i not loved you enough
to not be sorrowed by my absence?
have i not cared enough
for you to not care about it
even for one fake second?

you replaced me
as though i was just a thing
you knew you'd break one day.

you were everything to me.

e v e r y t h i n g...

ask the pillowcases,
the bathroom floor,
the quiet hallways,
every stranger who had seen me
breakdown on grocery aisles,
and art museums.

how could you not give me
the small consolation
of showing you were,
at least, anguished, too?

older people say that
when no one remembers
to grieve for the dead,
its soul will not find peace.

and since you banished me
into the dark oblivion,
along with everything
you secretly destroyed,

i turned into a restless spirit,
who couldn't move forward
into the light.

—𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙜𝙝𝙤𝙨𝙩𝙨 𝙞 𝙡𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙚𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚 | 𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙙𝙚

since when did i start looking at you as if you're not going to be here the next day?

i feel so far from home when i'm with you.

you know the feeling when you're a guest in someone's house; some person you aren't close with. and you sit there on their couch awkwardly trying to look very interested in the pictures at the living room.

your back is too straight. your smile, too stiff. like you are trying your best to not be yourself because you feel like a fu***ng cast out.

and you glance at your watch every now and then, wondering how the hell it's been like only two minutes, and you're already running out of things to say.

you don't know how to keep a conversation going because it seems to you as if there is nothing to talk about. but you would still force yourself to ask dumb questions like "where did you buy that ornament t̶h̶a̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶l̶i̶t̶e̶r̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶y̶ ̶d̶e̶p̶a̶r̶t̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶e̶?" or "how did you sleep last night?"

o̶r̶ ̶"̶d̶o̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶s̶t̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶w̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶m̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶e̶?̶"̶.̶

and then you gaze outside their windows thinking you should've never left the comfort of your bedroom for this.

that you should've never traded the solitude of being alone for the loneliness of being with company.

yes, being with you feels exactly like that.

i used to think i was mad at you, but that was only until i saw you for the first time, out of nowhere, one serendipitous afternoon at a bus terminal.

and that's when the epiphany dawned on me: i wasn't truly mad at you. it was just longing—
so intense, i've confused it with anger.

you're the only story i tell anyone
who asks me about love.

yeah, albeit ours was an obvious tragedy,
a colossal mess,
a catastrophic failure—
it's still your name that ends up
spilling from my lips.
it's still the thought of you
that tugs my mind
even it aches a little
or a little much more than that.

i don't know,
maybe i sound delusional
for talking s**t about you,
and then announcing it to the world
how much i yearn for your presence.
for retelling how terrible we both were
for each other;
to each other,
and then crying almost every night—
hoping someone up there takes pity on me
and answer my only prayer.

because even though i claim to loathe you
at hells-deep level,
i could never mean it enough
to bring myself to stop making you
the only story i tell anyone
who asks me about love—
even when i know i'm the last thing
you'd ever speak of
when someone asks you
about the very same.

i am very forgiving.
for the people i love?
no rule is nonmalleable—
there is nothing that i can't
and won't adjust,
no matter how terribly
i get mocked and berated
for it by the world.

but sometimes,
when the mistake
goes too deep,
or maybe
too unexpected,
too obnoxious
even for a martyr to take,
i get stuck.

last january,
i got stuck again—
in my quicksand fury.
that the way he annihilated me
felt like a challenge
on who can lose who.

so i banished him
and cursed him
and made him swear
to never ever come back
..and he never did.

tell me,
was there ever a time in your life
when you actually thought
anger was enough power to move on?

well, it's a dangerous risk
to gamble out of spite
when you have so much to lose.
but i was just a mad fool
who didn't anticipate
that the love in her heart
was still a colossal loss,
even with all that malice.

and i am very forgiving.
but i don't think
i love myself enough
to ever forgive her
for not forgiving him.

most of the times,
i get too lost in my own thoughts
until every decision i made in my life
becomes a huge mistake.
like the weird sense we get
when we stare at a word
for a good amount of time
that the way it looks starts to feel...wrong.

this is why i never stopped moving
since THAT day.
why i couldn't allow myself to sit still
or stay in one place for too long.
time has turned into some luxury
that i couldn't afford to give myself—
not with a heart that heals so slow,
and a mind that plays memories
in speed of light.

last night, i've lost control again
and so the questions started catching up
as though all this time,
they were just waiting for me to falter.
like waves in a stormy weather they came:
what if i just opted to remain quiet?
if instead of exploding on him like that,
i just forced my patience to hold the line
for a little while longer,
and my heart to endure it a little more?
what if i never said anything?
if i never messaged her?
if i didn't ask him questions?
if i turned a blind eye from my suspicions
and chose to keep us over my own pride?

and with these violent curiosities
comes in this sick invalidation—

my anger has achieved nothing,
but regrets.

i never chased after you
hells, why would i?
you walked away like it was easy,
so i held my ground like it didn't ache.
they were right,
it wasn't the end of the world
when i lost you.
actually, my world went on.
it moved.
forward.
time trickled,
unfazed by my grief.
but then that was it.
just motions and listless moments
which half of them i don't even recall.
because although i never chased after you?
darling, i waited.
both in anger and longing
i waited.
while detesting you,
i waited.
after hanging up,
i waited.
when you blocked me,
and my friends,
one by one—
as if every trace of my existence
was a dirt you were trying
to scrub off the surface,
i waited.

it's pride against hope
every single day.
the battle, so intense
that a blackhole is born
at each clash.
i guess that's why i feel emptier
and emptier as time passes—
it's already swallowing me
from the inside.

but if i'm being more honest,
i think the real reason
why i never chased after you
is because i didn't want to disappoint.
to reconcile would mean
to embarrass everyone who hated you
for what you did to me.
and i didn't want to cut a joke
out of their concerns.

i dragged them all into this mess.

it's my fault why i couldn't do anything
so i do nothing
but wonder each terrible night:
what are the chances
of you coming back?
just tell me,
and i'll bet on them with my life.

i know that i went too far.

i was stubborn.

i forced what i wanted
even it didn't obviously fit
the storyline
because i was a brat
who couldn't always accept
the way things work—
endings and beginnings alike.
i wandered,
got lost,
fell in love
with swindlers
and rogues—
hoped
and hurt myself with it.

a part of my pain today
is well-deserved.
i didn't learn my lessons
at first take
so the universe taught them
over
and over
and over again
until i budged.
until i bent.
until i shattered into surrender.

it made me angry
and to be honest,
sometimes, it still does.

why couldn't it just give it up
and let me?
it was literally just one thing
over gazillions it could be
ungenerous about.

is fate doing this out of spite?
is it because of something that i did
in my past lives
that makes this one
a vengeance scheme?

well, i cannot always fault something
for my mess.
can i?
but perhaps it will all make sense to me
one day,
someday—
why it happened.
why it didn't happen.
why it should never happen.

and who knows?
maybe i'd give a sigh of relief
when that epiphany arrives.

it's a long way back home,
and it's scary to know peace again
once you had a taste of chaos.

that tiny piece of nether is addictive,
i'm telling you.

but if there is ever,
any salvageable parts
of who i used to be,
i'll keep them in a nice little frame
to remind me
that even i didn't get what i wanted,
i fought for them to hells.

i tried—
all cards in.

and maybe then,
that will be enough for me too.

hey,
i've been meaning to send this to you
as an email two weeks ago.
but i couldn't press send.
i couldn't press send
because i have no idea
how i'm going to explain to them
that i relapsed.
again.
and i'm missing you.
again.
and it's starting to hurt.
again.

have you ever heard
about sisyphus' curse?
well, it's about a man
who was condemned
by a god for all eternity
to push a huge boulder uphill
only for it to roll back down to the bottom
when it's about to reach the top.

do i bear that same fate?

did the heavens forsake me too?

because it seems to me
that my love for you
is a curse
no saints could ever cure.

why is it that when
i'm so close to healing,
my boulder always—
ALWAYS
rolls back down?

i really thought,
if i reached a certain level of anger,
my feelings will dissipate.
but they stayed with me,
long after you were gone—
lingering in dead silence.

i know a lot has changed since then—
countries, cities,
life as we know it.
you've moved on,
obviously.
my friends have moved on.
the entire universe has moved on.

but i'm still here.

i'm still here
pushing this stupid boulder,
missing you when i'm supposed to be mad—
so much more these days
than most.

god, i can't stand myself.

she has your gray sweater.
and your stupid, black jersey
you asked me what number
to put at the back.
"thirty" i said.
more like my birthday
than the number of your
favorite nba star.

she has pictures with you—
as in truly, physically with you.
your arms wrapped around her,
while her long, beautiful curls
fell effortlessly past her shoulders.

i got nothing.
no physical evidence that you were here, once.
that we shared a life together—
laughters, memories,
irrelevant little banters
about whose fault
it was that we were killed
in the game.
perhaps your friends didn't even know my name
or if they did,
i guess they just brushed it off
'cause you never talked about me
like i was special.

all i have is, well...
screenshots,
blurry video call photos,
and old conversations
that won't show up unless i search them
since i blocked you,
and you blocked me everywhere
i don't have you blocked—
everywhere i had intentionally
left open to give you a chance
to come back.

that's it.
if traumas would count,
then perhaps i can add them too.
but aside from those?
i got nothing.

what happens to history
when there are no artifacts
to prove its existence?

will the world forget
what has transpired
between us?

will you?

did you?

it was in the afternoon of january twelfth when you last called. six days before that, i was screaming at you on the phone because i found out you were dating the girl you told me not to worry about for six long months already.

six. long. fu***ng. months.

how was i supposed to know? you trusted me in everything and darling, i thought i could expect the same from you. because even though you were a jerk most of the times and you exasperated me as though you were the devil's spawn, you could not last a day without reaching out and i could never play nonchalant.

yesterday, i wasn't able to stop thinking about how it's been four months already and i still miss you. no matter how forceful i shove you down to the deepest, darkest, most forgotten place in my mind, you always resurface and i hate it.

i detest the way you come back—but only in my memory.

gods, had you just called one more time after i hung up? i would've forgiven you.

you came that close.

you were that close.

but i guess our pride had finally won over us this time, and fate is so sick of us to give us a rematch.

i cannot associate you with anything but grief. although i must admit, there are days where i long for you that i allow myself to sit with sadness, if only because it is the only emotion that lets me feel you once more.

you and my sorrow look exactly the same.

sometimes i cannot even tell if i am lonely because i am missing you or if i am missing you because i am lonely

sharing this one here too

i wrote this during one of the lowest points of my life haha that explains the explicit words

when i stopped looking for reasons why i deserved it, i started seeing you for who you are.