Judgment: Suffocation

[dedicated to parents]

It always feels hurtful whenever someone tells me I am a disappointment, a tarnish of shame, a source of unhappiness. For me, it's always the feeling that makes me forget to breathe -- literally, takes my breath away. It's also that ache that rattles in my chest that keeps all aches.

Time melts away the memories of words. What is left behind is usually the faces of disgust, of disdain, the way their heads turn away to avoid the hurt in my eyes, the way they look down to replay in their minds the disenchanting moments of embarrassment that substituted those glorious moments of praise, which they have always imagined and hoped for.

Perhaps they were just being honest and truthful.

But I'm still left with the reverberation of their impact and no choice but to lock it all up in my chest and move on.

Get up ...
Move on ...
Keep going ...
No other way ...
Start, continue -- my fighting chant.

[Sense and reality are trying to escape from my grasp tonight.]