Gia Raquel

In a darkly lit restaurant on West 4th street lies a restaurant with disappointing tortilla, but heaven-sent chorizo. It was filled with booming college kids downing Sambuca, some fearful of the flames emitting from the glass. But my focus remained on the boy sat in front of me, sipping a virgin Piña colada with tears running down his rugged cheeks.

Every so often we all reach a point in our lives where we must break. I see it as an inevitable cause, for this world is far from perfect. Humanity is riddled with pain and anguish, only waiting for us to abandon our causes. But this boy was not crying for the sake of being broken. He shed tears for breaking another.

He does not believe every person must break, nor be the reason for it. He lives a life that has long passed, but continues to mold it into his own for the sake of multiple injustices and a deep love he couldn’t understand years ago. This boy cannot bear the idea of breaking another, especially knowing what it entails.

To break is to fall within our own ashes and momentarily receive death as a friend. It is to relish in the past and every type of misery there is, until we are nothing but the skin suits we wear. We take a final look at all of those burning bridges we doused in gasoline, breathing in the thick, black smoke of nostalgia. We let it burn our throats and lungs, making our eyes water, through sadness or the flames, no one knows. So many hope the smoke strangles the air, so maybe they won’t have a chance to escape. Because turning away from those bridges means you no longer have a place to return. You no longer have a land of familiarity, a friendly face, and heart that automatically syncs with your own.

Then, you wake up.

It’s a moment where you believe you’ve been revived at the hospital. The walls are white, the air is new, unknown. But you survive. You look at your hands, trying to decipher the life you once lived. You poke and prod throughout your mind until the pain begins to unravel by your nerves. You know then you must stop. You must move on. You must be whole again.

It is a curse to hurt the ones we love. It’s a tragedy to reach out in sorrow or cower back in defiance, knowing what you’ve done. But what has happened is an inevitability. No one ever looks back at the destroyer, asking for their cause. We wallow in our pieces, attempting to fit them back together. That is, until we realize we must begin again.

Those who break others are not destined for an eternity of a guilty conscious. There are those who are plagued with regret and anguish for what they have done. Suffering is not unknown in a world like this.

To the people that have created so much pain for others, I don’t know you, I don’t know what you’ve done. I don’t justify the bad you have committed. But I understand. Sometimes breaking is necessary. I see the pain you encounter too. From the beginning of time, pain has dictated so many lives. Children will ask, why does the bad man hurt people? I don’t know. All I know is that sometimes they’re not always bad. Maybe they’re hurt too. They just needed something more than you.