Grey Area

I was cleaning up my PC when I saw this article I wrote few years ago. You know that weird feeling when you read something and you realize it was you who wrote it? Well, this one is way off the charts. I was just shocked after I read it. I don't remember sounding so idealistic, so hopeful and a little sad until I bumped into this! Now that I'm thinking about it, I actually don't know why I never posted it back then and why I'm posting it now. Well, maybe, just maybe, there's a thing or two that can be learned aside from being more realistic, less kind and forward-looking (kidding!). So just read on. For me, it was just serious yet entertaining... :)


I am in one very, very gray area. Some say I’ve been here too long. I wake up each day asking myself “Is this the day yet?”, hoping that I’ll finally know if I should run away or I should keep on fighting. It’s like waiting for a sign and as each day passes, I get more and more scared that it might not come. But then I see him trying to make up for time lost and for mistakes made. The fear diminishes a little as I see him fighting too. But then I see my other foot is still outside, ready to take the hopeful other foot away from the ground of ‘What if I stay?’.

Cool off. I don’t get it why people call something that’s definitely not a cool situation to be in. But there’s truth in it being off. It does really feel off. Some may call it taking time and giving space between the couple. But it’s just that gray area between together and separated, between holding on and giving up, between saying ‘I love you’ and crying ‘Goodbye’. There’s a thin line between loving someone and wasting your time. And this is the time to know which side you’re in. It’s a mixed bag of what ifs, past memories, emotions, opinions and blank moments. But there’s one painful truth in the cool off stage. You’re apart. And it’s just one sigh away in becoming final.

In moments like these, some things are never quite enough. You’d think he didn’t fight for me enough. His patience was not enough. He didn’t appreciate me enough. He didn’t understand me enough. He didn’t care enough. He didn’t love me enough. But when all is over and when you’ve finally decided to let it go, you’d still wonder. Did I try hard enough?

I am at that spot. Am I trying hard enough?

It’s ironic. Just when I thought I can let go, I chose to stay.

Once it was said, in a lifetime, you’d meet your core-changing person. Someone will shake you like a visitor shakes a snow glass when she sees it on display. It’s a visitor’s urge because she knows there’s more to it than what is inside the water-filled glass. I don’t know with core-changing people but with visitors, somehow, there’s beauty in seeing the snow fall.

I am inside that snow glass. And he just happens to be my core-changing person.

When do you say this is just too little, too late? When do you draw the line and say this is the part where we should quit? When do you say that I am wasting my time and I must go on? When is it right to give that second chance? When do you rise above the occasion and tell the world to hell with what they think cause you’re going to stay?

When is it braver to leave and let go?

When you both realize that there is a wide open door, when it hits you that it’s perfectly fine to leave, when you appreciate that it is possible that both of you can get out of this unscathed. When you know you both can be happy apart. The desperation is gone. There’s no one to blame. No bitterness to feel.

That’s when you know you’re free.