The Pavements You Should Stop Chasing

The Pavements You Should Stop Chasing

That was where you fell hard, on your face. A fall that was painless, regardless if anyone were waiting below to catch you or not. A fall where you trusted words to hold you and keep you from crashing head first.

That was where you broke your heart, fragile and trusting. It is easily convinced, easily fooled, easily won even with half-baked apologies and fake declarations of love. But it is strong and unrelenting, constant and true. Above all, it is true, even when it’s broken and hurt and persecuted to the ends of the Earth. It is strong.

That was where he gave you up, and where you gave up, too. You can only hold a confused heart for so long, until your hands get bloodied and your grasp loosens. You’ll come to terms with the fact that words can’t hold as much meaning as you want them to. Words aren’t vessels, they can’t contain anything. You have to open them and release all the truth they hold—that’s the only way they’ll be true.

That was where you broke—not just your heart, not just your soul, but yourself entirely. Where you were scared, believing that without pain, every memory you have will fade. To you, pain is the last thread holding both of you together. You have convinced yourself that that is how life’s going to be now: painful and cold and lonely. Pretty much like death, like you’re walking dead.

This is where you start all over again. Because you choose to and you need to, even if you feel like falling to pieces yet again, even if you feel like you’re chasing pavements, or that your heart has been waiting far too long, trusting all the wrong people, bruised and trampled on, neglected. You will start believing again, because that’s how you’re wired.

That’s how strong you are. This is where it starts, where letting go won’t feel right at first. But you know it will, just you wait. Where optimism feels foreign because it’s new, but give it time it’ll feel familiar too.  Where things aren’t easy, but they’re not hard either, just the right mix to make you gather all the fragments of your broken soul and make sense of them all. Maybe that’s not today or tomorrow or the day after that, but you know in your heart it’s somewhere there in the future.

(Photo credit: HBO)