Thank you (pandi kuti)

There were several times of late that I felt I was especially abused and taken for granted.
Often after each of these, I wondered what went wrong and why my sincerity and good intentions always backfired and misunderstood. I took many slaps to my smiling face.
More than once I contemplated vengence and payback, because I thought I didn't deserve what hit me.
Yet through all these years, I am glad to say that I have never ever touched retribution.
I have argued, I have cast fierce stares, I have kept silent.
But I have never done to people the hurt they did to me.

Of late, I began to question...why not?

Pain is an abyss.
Retribution is a knife.
To return pain with pain is to fall into an abyss lined with knives,
you would be sliced to shreds even before you reach the bottom.
You might look scary then,
but you wouldn't even recognize yourself no more.
When that happens,
you have lost. You are lost.

I have just begun to accept that things have ran their course.
I have begun to accept that I can't make sunshine
out of shadows such deep.
Then I looked through pictures taken over the years.
Hundreds of pictures, all of joy,
of excitement and hopeful anticipation,
of mischievous glances, of lazy yawns,
of sitting without talking, of talking without thinking.
Each picture of her, even if it is just her shoe, made my blood rushed.
Was it just yesterday?
How did the months pass by so fast?

The pictures brought back so much sugar that
for a brief moment I took it all in,
and believed in the possibility again.

Then I remembered the line from "500 Days of Summer"
--think back and all you remember are the good, think again.
Yes, where were the pictures of her tears? There would have been hundreds too.
Where were the pictures of my speechless frustration,
of my guilt-ridden face?
Where were the pictures of that abandoned apartment. all the furniture left cold?

I realised that I had not a single picture to show for the pain and misery
engraved between us over the past years.
Not a single picture really, not even one in my memory.
If I can string out a sad memory, it lasts but an instance only to blur out.
Perhaps I just cannot pinpoint the bad or the sad,
perhaps this is how I innately survive the world.
If so, I am grateful for this unconscious gift.
I'd rather greet a slap with a smile than to slap another smile.

About those pictures.
Our joy was true, our hopes were true.
I see in each of those pictures,
a guy who felt as if he had everything he ever wanted,
and I know very well,
he indeed had everything he ever wanted.
It ran its course, and he's lost it.
But he never forgets that he once had it,
and for many many days in the past few years,
he felt happier than he ever was.

Thank you, pandi kuti.
Thank you, very much.