To Feel

Why must I be sorry for being sad?

Why must I be sorry for being happy?

Why can’t I I feel all these emotions without being considerate how others feel?

Why can’t I be selfish in my own little sphere?

Society. Was that another word for emotional prison?

Was it another way of saying, “Shut up and just get along with the rest of the world?”

What if the rest of the world didn’t want to get along with me?

What if I wanted to dance in the middle of a lightning storm, barefoot, singing at the top of my lungs about love and hate and how life sucks but I’m still grateful about it? Why must everyone stare out at me through their glass windows and cheap, pretentious curtains and judge me with those eyes? Do they know that girl splashing around in the puddles with the rain clouds over her head? Maybe they think she’s stupid, but did they know how she has braved countless storms before? Yes, maybe it was dangerous, but she knows it better than anyone. Upon her feet are countless scars, gotten from the many times she has been electrified by reality and yet, she still dances. Lightly, wholeheartedly. It appears to be a scattered frenzy of steps, but there was a routine only she could see. And she reveled on every second of it. Who gives a damn about the onlookers when there are raindrops to feel on your face and taste on your lips, when you have puddles to splash on and mud to play on like you would on snow?

I wanted to be that girl. The girl who wouldn’t care and just be herself. I want to feel without reserve and know, that these emotions are important. That these emotions, however wild or crazy or far-fetched or weird or whatever they might be, I wouldn’t need to care otherwise. That I just need to feel how I wanted to feel.

It was enough. To be like this forever. These feelings, they might fade into the background but they won’t fade away. They will be in photographs, songs with lyrics that mean a million things, the pages of your diary, that pressed flower between the pages of your dictionary. They will be in the stories that you could tell, the conversations you would have, the sceneries you have seen and sceneries you are yet to see. They will be with your friends, your enemies, the love of your life, your parents, family, your children, and your children’s children. These emotions were your stamp, to prove that you existed. That you had these feelings. That you existed.

It was enough. That these words may be etched out at some point in time, that these words tried to tell how I really wanted to feel. That these words, however hard I try, I knew would never be enough. Because who would have the right words for the best and worst moments of time? Who would believe that everything written in the history books was all that ever happened? Did they tell about the fathers and brothers and sweethearts that never came back from the war? Of the mothers that died protecting their children, of their children crying for their mothers and slowly, just slowly fading away? For they were the real heroes of war, who never lived to tell their tale. And yet, they were there. They were certainly alive, and they don’t need their names on history books, or for people to weep over their unmarked gravestones. For they have truly lived, and that was more than enough.

It was enough.