Everyone’s going to hurt you,
You just have to find someone worth hurting for

It feels like trying to tame a lightning. Something so brazen yet delicate, hostile yet intricate, a book you’d spend years studying for and yet you have not once truly understood it without skimming through the pages every time you’re tested with a question; and that question often leaps out of yourself, in the middle of the night, wondering if everything is worth it.

Sometimes the person you’ve chosen is a lightning, and your heart is no stronger than a brittle glass bottle. You’d spend eternity chasing after the thunder fully knowing your heart could never contain it, it would break and disintegrate, and yet here you are—waiting for the static charges in dry air, conjuring lightning to come and pray to God it won’t strike you to bits. Your fingers quiver as they drape over the glass bottle; you’re small, so your legs also shake because deep down you’re afraid.

Deep down you’d shrink at the sight of thunder. You’re deathly afraid of it. But does trying to tame it mean you’re overcoming your fear of it? Or is it just denial, you deny the fact that a scaredy cat and a lightning never truly belong? Are you wasting your time and sanity by waltzing with your ultimate fear knowing you will never be safe from your fears?

A lightning can never be tamed.

No matter what you do, no matter how soft and understanding you are, no matter how you try to communicate with the weather and clouds, you will always get electrocuted if you get too close. This momentary bliss you feel by chasing what can never be caught up may feel legendary at times, but it is momentary. You will never belong.

But you want to. You want to tame it still. You want to go hand in hand, walking side by side, and be loved by it. Is it delusional? Is it delusional to want to feel loved by the one thing meant to hurt you? Is it cowardice to be scared yet paradoxical since you also fervently want to stay?

You are small. You are frail. You are delicate. You are far too weak to rekindle the old flames you two once had. Every inch you get closer you either get burned or electrified. But who is going to tell you the truth but your own thoughts and experiences? Do you cry often? Does he make you cry often without him knowing? If yes, do the tears seep back into your skin and you pretend nothing happened? Because it still hurt even though the other party never acknowledged it. It still hurt as long as you felt it.

But everyone is going to hurt you, you just have to find someone worth hurting for.

Is he worth it? Is he complicated because he’s the only person you never seem to understand, or is he complicated because he’s not meant to be understood by you? Is he painful because you’re too sensitive, or is he painful because he has invisible thorns all over his skin yet you’re still trying to hold him because he deserves to be held like any other person?

Will he ever change? And would that change come from within him because it was his time to be better, or would that change come from his forced guilt because he saw that you needed comfort and peace in his violence? Then would that guilt transfer to you, because you’d feel embarrassed that he needed to try when you wanted his comfort to be effortless?

Will you ever change? And would that change come from within you because it was your time to understand that it didn’t always have to be him, or would that change come from your forced epiphany that coerced you into leaving because you felt naive for expecting comfort and peace in a thunderstorm? Then would that epiphany become a bittersweet lie you made up because you knew you were too much of a coward to try for a little bit longer?

If you changed, you’d leave. If he changed, you’d stay.

But would he change for you? And would he be happy with himself after he did?

If him changing depleted him from happiness because he’d be a pretender for you—every image you wanted of him was just a mask he wore to make you happy—would you be able to live by yourself knowing you made him go through all of that immense pain and suffering for you?

Or would you seek for someone who never needed to pretend?

Would you be able to live with yourself knowing it wasn’t him?