How Do I Fight for You?

Seldom do I miss people. Ever since I realized that the "easy come, easy go" habit of people, I stopped trying to force myself in the lives of others, preferring instead to just leave everything to the fates.

Yet you, who have been with me until that tragic day last month, you whose hands nurtured me, whose arms rocked me to sleep back in those days when I was but an innocent babe, thoughts of you make it hard for me to focus on things I am working on. Not that I am complaining; those memories of you are very much welcome because you will forever live in my whole being.

Only it hurts so much when memories come crashing. Like what happened today when I suddenly found myself unable to control my tears. The constricting pain in my chest reminded me of my own fragility as I reflected on my interactions with you on your last few days with us.

I am a coward after all. I hate it when people describe me as courageous. They just see a false facade of me when in fact, deep inside, I am too afraid of losing a loved one, so much so that I would distance myself before I lose myself. Everything has a limit and I have always been careful to mark boundaries and make sure that this is as far as I can go.

Lately I have been thinking if you were also thinking of me. It's been two weeks and I still haven't found the courage to face you. Sooner though I will. I MUST. They say you didn't want to eat. I wouldn't know how to convince you. I know your pain and often I would hear you pray to God to take you in His loving arms. I know I would have prayed for the same thing if something becomes unbearable, like my teenage years full of angst and frustrations and hurts and all the rejection, the betrayals, those feelings of emptiness, of meaninglessness, those struggles both interior and exterior that never seem to end... But you stood with me through it all as I went through that painful phase in my life.

Now that my life has relatively stablized, it's my turn to return the favor. Except the circumstances are different. You are locked inside a weak shell of deteriorating physicality whereas my battles raged from the inside, psychological wars that your love conquered. Tell me now, how do I heal when all I could do was tell you to eat. It makes me so hopeless and so useless, when from way back I decided I would give you a comfortable life in your old age. Except all that was mere talk because I found myself wanting in courage against the powers that be.

And this guilt is eating me from the inside. Every single day I have to live with the thought that I couldn't do a single thing for the person who so lived me and in the end, I regress back to my former crybaby self. It's so easy to help a person who is also helping himself, but to help a person who refuses, it's difficult.

I am sorry I am not as strong as you would have wanted me to be.

When you find the light of your life, do you simply let go? I'd like to fight for you, just as you have fought for me. Except that I have been accumulating useless knowledge and skills, and failed to learn how to do this. 

This is perhaps the harshest lesson on life I will ever have.