the art of letting go

twentythree - giving up

the art of giving up

- - -

Nico really did leave.

He doesn't pop by Dexter's anymore. He isn't anywhere near my class buildings during my breaks. He doesn't wait for me at the bench outside of my apartment block anymore.

It was like I was missing a limb, the way my body wouldn't stop aching. Almost like I'd forgotten how to be Kezziah, the Kezziah who didn't have a Nico stood smiling beside me as I took on the world. This felt so much worse than it did when I left all those years ago, like there's a hole in my life shaped entirely like Nico. It's there constantly, haunting me wherever I choose to go. Like a scar on my skin, it's constantly linked to me no matter how hard I try to hide it.

Our story was always going to end this way. Our story was built on broken bones, desperate promises, blood stained pages. Words hissed during battle, leaving us both scarred beyond belief. We were too different, too damaged, for any of this to have ever worked out.

Perhaps it would've been different. If we met in another life, if we met at another time. Maybe then we wouldn't have been left broken and bruised; Maybe I wouldn't have been left grieving for a person who was very much still alive.

Perhaps in another lifetime, we could've just been Nicolas and Kezziah with no bittersweet past to hold us hostage. Without these insecurities, without misadventure entwined in our veins.

It was a battle that we never could win. From the very start. Tragedy was engraved into my bones; so when the storm ripped through us, leaving my body stained with blood, I knew deep down that this is how it was always going to end.

Our story was written from the very start. Pages mapped out with misery, scrawled words cursed with chaos.

And now I had to deal with what remained.

The calm after the calamity.

Calamity was nothing new to me. It was an environment that I was adapted to, one I'd learnt to thrive in. I've always been callous like that, I guess.

I think some people just are sometimes.

Sometimes, people are shown the worst side of life at such a young age.

And they have to adapt. They have to grow. So they can survive, so they can keep going. If you don't learn to survive, you burn out. You have two choices: Fight or die.

I've always been a fighter.

My Mom told me once that the world shook when I was born. It was one of the only things I could remember her ever telling me, on one rare occasion where she was sober. A hurricane ripped through the east coast, tearing families apart at the very seams. The storm's left in its wake rained down on our city, despite the distance, and showed no mercy.

The world screamed and shook as I was born, and it has screamed and shook everyday since.

I never had a choice about what happened to me.

But I had a choice on how I dealt with it.

So I grew.

I became callous. Angry. Hateful. Emotionless.

Because it was easier that way, easier than being taunted constantly for being too soft to survive.

I did what I needed to do.

And then Nico came into my life and changed it all.

I'd never wanted that softness back until I met him. Suddenly, my dark gray world was lit up in a kaleidoscope of colors. Hues of red and orange replaced what was cold and blue. Nico made me want more for myself than that eternal emptiness. He made me want that dizzying sensation that ignited my skin whenever he was close. He made me want those internal butterflies whenever I saw him with Coden.