|| Chapter Twenty Eight ||

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December 1, 2013

One thing about love is that you want it to hurt a lot. Not a lot of people might agree with me on this (And they’re right because that’s just plain masochism) but most of the time, even with people don’t realize it, they want love to hurt. When you are hurt, you realize how beautiful the feeling of healing is. When you are hurt, you realize how deeply your wounds dug through your hurt. When you are hurt, you realize just how much a person was engraved into your soul.

Of course, people want to have the kind of love that is smooth and without rough waters. A kind of love that rides on a cruise ship as it sips its fancy cocktails on the deck. That kind of love exists too but most of the time it is rare and bless the people who have found it and maintained it for a long time because Cupid is shining down on them.

My type of love for Woohyun was a rocky small boat with holes all over the wooden planks.

But when you’re in love you don’t notice those holes, I certainly didn’t. I glossed them over and thought they were nothing more than just very convincing stickers placed all over the boat. Oh there’s a big hole on the side of the boat? Don’t worry about it I’ll sit on it until the hole stops filling up the boat with water.

That was always my solution, I wanted to take every single bit of pain from Woohyun and transfer them on to me. Because after all, we were both sitting on the boat and I wanted to save him first because I thought it would save me too.

It all started when Woohyun came up to me one day, as I sat in the chair practicing my vocals, and told me point blank. “Let’s go out.” I would have been a total idiot not to accept the love confession of my first love. So naturally I said, “Sure!” and that was when the first hole made it onto the boat.

Being with Woohyun wasn’t all bad. Some days I could tell he really did love me and I fed off of those beautifully rare days. Keeping them in my tiny little bottle as I treasured them and kept them hidden in the confines of my heart. When the hole got too big, I’d take that bottle out and hug it close to me and suddenly the hole was no more than just a dot. It was destructive. I know that now. Heck maybe I think I knew that too back then, but who cares right? I wasn’t going to ruin the first ever relationship I had (with my first love too) just because I couldn’t plug up some few damn holes. So I kept plugging it, and plugging it, stretching my body over the damn boat just so I could make sure we won’t sink. So that we could still breathe in this Godforsaken small boat as we sailed through the rough waters, trying and trying to gasp for air to take in.

What I didn’t realize was that there was no boat. There never was a boat. I had a white sail in my arms, maybe a few planks of woods to keep me afloat but that was it. Woohyun jumped shipped ages ago, while I was left drowning.

A darker part of my life creeped out to me with what I call as the “Let it be.” Woohyun subtly flirting with Sunggyu in front of me? Let it be. Rumors of both of them hooking up in one party? Let it be. Sunggyu trying to avoid me and even so much as to create an elaborate lie of how I ed him over? Let it be. Hoya and Dongwoo suddenly not talking to me anymore? Let it ing be.

Everything…just let it be.

It hurts. But my heart aches a little less every day and eventually it’ll pass. Not that I’m talking about days or even months. I could take years or maybe I’ll never stop hurting until the day I die. It doesn’t matter, every day is step towards hurting a little less. Like chipping away the paint on a wall. You can’t expect not to leave a few damage here and there.

Remember the cruise ship? How it’ll sail smoothly in the ocean as if no wave could hit no matter what. A lot of people would love that and maybe some people do get a taste of that someday, which is nice too.

But I don’t want that.

I don’t want to ride a cruise ship that has never seen the rough waters because how will you know that when the water is big enough, it won’t swallow the cruise ship whole? It has never tasted the wrath of the sea so how can it ever expect to know how to protect itself.

I want to ride a boat that has seen the rough waters, I want to ride a boat that has been pushed by the waves left and right. But this time, as I’ll hold on to the boat and stop the water from pouring in, at least I’ll know that someone is there with me by my side equally trying to keep the boat afloat.

Because in this boat. I won’t be drowning.

D.O

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|| Waves of the Sea ||