Chapter 4.8: (The nightmarish past)
The next day the neighbors offered me a temporary stay in their empty house in the city, but...
The room was so quiet, it felt like I was all alone in the world. I closed my eyes, wishing for tears to come and wash away my sadness. But they wouldn't come, making me feel even more trapped in my own emotions. Every second that went by made me feel heavier and more lost. It was like there was a big storm inside me, but it just wouldn't let go.
I curled up on the cold floor, my body trembling then finally my tears streamed down my face. The room was quite, and the only sound was my shaky breathing, broken by quiet sobs. My chest felt heavy, like something was crushing me from the inside.
I clutched my knees tightly, burying my face against them.
"Tell me... is there really a god in this world?" My voice cracked, barely more than a whisper, but filled with pain. "Why am I experiencing this? What did I do wrong?"
I lifted my tear-streaked face, staring at the ceiling as if searching for an answer. My throat feels like it was burning, and my heart pounded painfully against my ribs.
"Is it my fault?" I asked, my voice breaking. "Or did God already abandon me? Or I deserve it? Or is this just my fate? Or... God really don't exist..."
My shoulders shook as more tears fell, dripping onto the floor like raindrops. I hugged myself tighter, as if trying to hold my broken pieces together. The silence around me felt endless, and the weight of my unanswered questions crushed me even more.
Days passed, and soon a week went by, but I still didn't go outside.
I'm exhausted. The weight of the suffocating emotions I feels right now is crushing down on me, and I just can't bring myself to muster the energy to face another day. All I want to do is curl up and hide from the world, to escape into the comforting embrace of my bed and let the darkness of sleep wash over me.
But even that small comfort seems out of reach. The mere thought of dragging myself up and into my bed feels like an insurmountable task. I'm so tired, so utterly drained, and the idea of even mustering the strength to lift myself into my bed feels like an impossible feat.
Please, I beg of you, would you mind letting me rest, just for a little while longer? Even just one moment of peace, one moment of respite from the suffocating and overwhelming weight of my emotions, would mean everything to me right now. Just a few more precious moments to let my weary body and mind find some small measure of peace. Please.
After 1 week and 3 days i Finally went outside and started working to earn money, to buy my own food and to pay my bills.
Since that incident, I hardly feel like I'm truly alive. No matter how hard I work or how little I sleep, I just go through the day without really feeling alive. It's like I'm just existing, not really living.
Those special places hold lots of good memories that I'll never experience again. I want to go back, but I'm scared those good memories will turn bad all over again.
I made up my mind not to go back or even think about those places anymore. I've already felt too much pain. I know those places are filled with important, happy memories, but please, I'm really asking you, help me forget. My heart just can't handle it anymore.
Physical pain and exhaustion can be endured.
But emotional pain—you don't even know where it hurts. It just does. It hurts everywhere. And you can't heal it as fast as physical pain.
A month has already passed since the fire incident happened. Henry one of my friends called to ask about it and I shared what happened and the reason why I'm absent for a whole month. Talking to him made me feel less alone and I decided to attend class once again.
Henry has been a friend since the first semester, who usually helps me with school stuff and I help him out too. And I trust him to keep my SECRETS. Because telling your problem to somone may lift some of your sadness. Also i don't want any other people to know it and start gossips that will make me remember their death.
Because if that happened the one that I can only blame is myself.
But later, I heard Henry sharing my secrets and laughing about it with other students. It made me feel betrayed and made me question our friendship.
I thought Henry could be trusted to keep my secrets, but he ended up telling everyone about not only the fire incident but also all my other secrets. And he even made up things that never happened.
After that, Henry and my classmates started making fun of me. They said it was my fault that people around me died. I'm parentless, that I lock the door intentionally because the kids are annoying.
The insults and teasing just finally got to me, and I snapped. I grabbed Henry's shirt and started hitting him in the face. It felt like I couldn't stop, with each punch landing harder than the last. Henry crumpled to the floor without saying a word, knocked out cold.
Everyone else in the room, even the professor, looked frozen in fear. The only sounds were the heavy breathing and Henry's body getting hit in the ground. The classroom went from normal to chaotic in an instant, with me standing there feeling a mix of relief and shock at what I had just done.
When I finally calmed down, I looked around and saw everyone looking at me with fear in their eyes. I glanced down at Henry and saw his face covered in blood and swollen from my punches. I was shaking and feeling horrified as I looked at my hands, stained with his blood, and saw Henry lying there, unmoving.
- Murderer!
- this guy is a savage!
- yeah he supposed to die in that fire
- so it's true he pummeled the grandma head and throw him to the flame to destroy any evidence
- maybe his the reason his mom died too
Then, something strange happened in our classroom. The room shook and all the chairs and tables started floating in the air. My classmates were freaking out, but I stayed surprisingly calm.
- what is happening!?
- I'm scared!
A bright light suddenly filled the room, I closed my eyes to shield myself from the brightness.
When I opened my eyes, I saw the walls and the roof of the room had disappeared. All that was left was us, the students, standing on the floor. The ground beneath our feet was solid, but above us, fragments of the building seemed to be suspended in midair. then I saw a strange planet. It looked like nothing I had ever seen before. It was different from Earth and the other planets I knew about. The planet was so beautiful with multiple sun's and moons, and it made my heart beat fast with excitement.
As I gazed at this amazing sight.
All of a sudden, I felt a strange, round things like a balls growing inside me. My classmates felt it too, and we all started to feel uncomfortably painful.
- Ouch!
- It hurts!
- Help us!
- Mom, where are you?!
- What is happening to us?!
I accidently tripped and fell. After that, everything turned dark and foggy. I couldn't remember what happened next.
I didn't wake up one day and suddenly hate my fate, my life, everyone, or the gods. It begins after the loss — in the questions that never get answers, and in the way the world keeps moving while you feel completely stuck.
At first, I didn't feel angry. I just felt lost and cold inside, like something was missing. But after a while, the anger started to grow. Not because I thought it would fix anything, but because it was all I had left to feel.
If I let go of it, there would be nothing left—just the emptiness that follows after pain. It's quiet, heavy, and it never leaves. You wake up with it. You fall asleep with it.
So I held on to my anger. I shouted and cursed at the sky, at the stars, at everything around me. Because without it, I would have fallen apart completely.
And then— today somone looked at me. Not like most people do. Not with pity. Not with annoyance or fear. He just saw me, and said.
"How long do you plan to shoulder your beloved corpses behind your back?" He said it with no softness. No advice. Just the truth.
And it hit me harder than any act of insult and violence ever could.
Because he was right.
I had been carrying them— the memories, the weight, the grief— like precious treasures I couldn't set down. Because setting them down felt like betrayal. Like letting go meant forgetting. Like moving on meant erasing them.
But all it really did was keep me stuck in a version of life that wasn't living.
And yet— I wasn't looking for someone to take the pain from me. I wasn't waiting for anyone to save me. God knows I stopped believing in that long ago.
Because I just wanted someone to acknowledge it. To see it.
To see *me*.
Not the man who always smiled. Not the one who kept it together, held everyone else up, made the pain look manageable.
But the child beneath all that. The one who never learned how to cry out loud. The one who was never given the space to grieve.
Because a man who refuses to cry and hides behind the word 'maturity'... is still just a child inside. A child who once fell to the ground, scraped his knees, and held back his tears—not because it didn't hurt, but because he was afraid others would laugh. He learned early that showing pain meant looking weak. And so, as he grew older, he stopped showing.
When a man cries, people don't see strength. They see failure. They see someone who's weak. So he learns to smile through the pain, to stay quiet when he wants to scream, and to wear his silence like a mask. Not because he's strong... but because he's afraid of what the world will say if he finally breaks.
Because in the end, all we want is to be seen again. Not admired for being mature or strong. Not pitied. Just... *seen*.
Not as the man who's "so strong," but as someone who once needed to scream and never did. As someone who wanted to cry but didn't know how.
Because leaning on someone, even for a second, feels like admitting I can't go on without them. And I'm terrified of that.
Letting go feels like losing them all over again. Like they'll fade if I stop hurting.
But being seen, really seen, feels like maybe I don't have to keep choosing between remembering them and moving forward.
And maybe, just maybe, I can start healing... without letting go of the memory. Without burying the grief. And most of all... without hating myself for carrying it. Because pretending to be strong... is the most fragile thing to do. Like building walls out of one way mirror, hoping no one sees me shatter behind them.