Day 29: Shadows

I cannot lie that I see glimpses of people I hurt in the past when I listened to this song the very first time. I guess that is what people said about 'shadows from your past'.

Numb - Official Video - David Archuleta

For the beginning, I do not like heading down the time lane and look back.
But I admit that from time to time I do it unconsciously.
It is usually triggered by something so strong, and amplified by what I see or hear during the 'awakening'.

So let's say that everybody hurts each other, unconsciously or not.
I can clearly picture those people I hurt one by one, and I am quite aware that I did try my best not to let my events with them become obstacle for my steps to the future.
The reason I hurt them was various: love, friendship, pride, and all those humanly things that I could not escape myself from.

No matter how bitter, I took the liberty to take a step back at myself and clearly saw how badly bruised I was too.
They said that, if we hurt people, we got hurt in return, and the hurtful sensation remains until we understand the reason why it happen to us.

Those are called, 'regret'.

Most of those experiences do not really matter for me right now. I walked a long way from my past and arrived here, settled here long before today.

But it does not mean that the coast is forever clear.

To be honest, some parts of my past remain to be the 'shadows'.
Those are the remain of my own selfishness and immaturity from my early twenties.
There is a part of me that is honest enough to admit that the shadows still hunt me, literally preventing me from escape. It is not easy to admit that deep inside my mind, there is the same regret I felt from years ago.

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I never meant to hurt her.

That day, I concluded that I never agreed to accept her request but my surrounding literally forced me to do that out of homage to her, which honestly, not even being informed to me in advance.
I was simply put into that spot right at the very moment without knowing anything, and forced to make decision right there.
And me, who had a very clear view of my wish for my own future, who was never really fond of homage, who was never fond of coercion, especially those who was not my concern, refused to give in and locked myself away from everyone.
Literally.

At that time I simply wanted to tell the world that I wanted to choose my own path, with nobody deciding what I should do, and nobody should force me into doing what I did not want to do.
Because even at that time, I had a clear vision of what kind of future I wanted to have.
Somebody who had just come into my life just for several minutes could not force me to give into her wish for her own future.

I thought, and I still think, that it was my justice.

I predicted that my decision hurt her. But what I never predicted was that it hurt her so deeply.

I admit, there is still a part of me that keep saying that it was never my fault to begin with.
But I do have to admit that there is also a part of me that wanted to speak to her and apologize properly, like what I should have done, but remains as something that I never do up until now.

Why?
Because her time was up. I never get any more time to speak to her.

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So, no matter how refuse to admit it, her shadow blurs my view from time to time. It does not happen often, but it lingers there, reminding me that I had that kind of irreversible choice in my life.

Let's say that right now I am standing on the coast and waiting for a ship to take me to the island across from here.
But every time I think I find a ship strong enough to sail, her shadow destroys it and I cannot stop her.
Let's say that there is a hordes of strong trees in the place I am standing now.
But every time I finish building my ship, her shadow casts a spell to break it down to pieces.

Well, okay, I might be exaggerating.
My point is, there is my one wish that keeps unfulfilled since I hurt her.
Not that I blame her. Now that I am capable enough to assess the situation with as a wiser, older person, I can relate why hurting her results with me being 'accompanied' by her shadow all along the way.
I can list a bunch of 'I should have' sentences but it cannot be even the least useful for the present.

The streak of life is permanent.

So I kinda get the picture of me keep trying to build my ship no matter how many times her shadow destroys it.
Because regretting things is not going to bring me anywhere.

Dear God, I accept my fault for hurting her.
If being like this is how I should be to understand her pain in the past, then let it be, until You think it is enough to compare with what she'd been through.
And then after that, please... let me sail away and fulfill my wish