Stay

Travel, in essence, is going: to a new environment, a different adventure, a better life. It isn’t leaving: from an old neighborhood, a sad memory, a bad place. Running away won’t take us where we wish to run to. But this time, I am taking the next flight to wherever, to anywhere but here. I don’t remember why, six months ago, gravity pulled me back home.

All my life, I’ve been running. I ran from place to place, people to people, problem to problem, life to life. And hell, I ran fast. I was, if anything, incapable of staying, not so much as a fear of commitment, but more so the inability to fight my battles. I was afraid that things got too wrong or too out of hand that I wouldn’t be able to survive the wreckage.

People like to tell me I’m courageous and strong and I wasn’t a force people should reckon with. I wonder if anyone, in my 22 years, had really come to know who I am, deep down to the darkest corners of my soul. I think some people have and some people have met the person behind my flesh. It is only a sad feeling that none of them stayed. After all, it is human to be afraid of the dark; divine to shed it light. Up to this day, I continue to envy the people whose friends have stuck with them since their toddler years and eventually grown to embrace their darkness.

It is the most beautiful thing to have someone embrace you, to hold all of your shreds and shattered pieces together until they no longer fall away. And tell you, not that they feel sorry for you or pity your brokenness, but tell you it’s all right to be afraid because we all are, and that they will stay until it’s okay to let go.