they picked the right one.

my head was resting on that brown couch we had for years that's starting to look old now. my brother and mum was bantering about the story my dad got into an accident with a van carrying raw fresh meat for a kenduri to my sister in law. i laughed because that story was pretty funny. then the conversations elaborated to all the times my dad had gotten into an accident. and it ended with the time where i was involved. 

i was 6. my dad and i went back to his kampung for a kenduri of his friend i think. the rest of the family didn't go because they had stuff i can't remember of. on our way home, almost arriving at our house, i was seated at the back alone while my dad was driving, then his phone rang and he dropped it in between the driver's seat and the door. he tried reaching it with his hand while the other was on the wheel. then, BAM. 

he hit the road divider and the car went up. i remember suddenly seeing the roof of the car because my entire body was thrown from the impact. my head hit the door handle, and i was lying down by then. my dad panicked checking in on me, making sure i was okay. i was okay. my head hurts a bit but i'm okay. then he started calling for help and he called my mum to pick me up since we were already so close to home. 

i remember his friends were there helping to get the car down, and there was a lot of people. and i was just standing there, watching it all. i remember that it was scary and i was terrified. but i was just standing there watching. no emotions shown. physically. then my mum arrived with my brother, to pick me up and had me home. the second we arrived home, my mum asked,

"adik are you okay?'

and i burst into tears. full on sobbing, crying. 

this story made my brother and sister in law laughed. it is apparently so wholesome for them, thinking of 6 year old aisha being scared and the fact that i cried after it all happened instead of crying during the accident. 

"but that's the thing about aisha, she would never cry infront of people."

my mum said to my brother.

"there was this one time where mama had to go to work, and need to send aisha dekat rumah cik rah (babysitter), dia taknak sangat mama pergi kerja. dia cakap dari mama dekat rumah lagi, mama jangan pergi. duduklah dengan aisha sambil nangis. tapi mama kena pergi, so mama hantar dia kat rumah cik rah juga. bila sampai je dia tak nangis. tapi she looked at me with a begging face, holding back her tears. she didn't want anyone else to see her cry. but she looked at me with so much sadness."

"how old was I?" i asked. as i don't recall this story.

"7 tahun."

"maybe that's why you cried so much now, you've been supressing your feelings since you were a kid." my brother added.

then, my eyes started to fill. thinking of how that moment, where i looked at mama with so much begging in my eyes, for her not to go. its heart breaking.

i didn't know that about me. not for 23 years. that i don't really tell people what i truly felt. i always thought that i am always telling people (my people) how i feel and what is going on with me, until that same night.

i lay on my bed while to be loved by adele was playing. and i think of all the hard times i went through, all the heartbreaks, all the dark days. did i tell people about them?

no.

it surprised me that when i really thought about it, i never tell anyone about what really happened in every heartbreaks. i just reached out, that i am sad, i am not okay because of (surface level of what happened), then they'll be there for me. and i'll try my best to heal with it. and that's it. i'll continue to carry those pieces of my heart until i'm ready to put it back together. 

my first ever heart break happened when i was 18. and it carried so much trauma. and nobody knew about it until 7 months after it happened. 7 god damn months, i carry those trauma alone, waking up in the middle of the night hyperventilating, crying, cancelling meet up with friends because i couldn't walk in the area we were supposed to go. then it happened again the next year, and again and again and again, all by people whom i once showed the flesh of my heart. i carried all of those alone because,

they picked the right one.

they always picked the right one. the one who won't tell a soul what they ACTUALLY did to me. the one who won't speak about it in any situation, the one who'd rather die than being honest about what happened, the one who'd never able to even plot a revenge, the one who'd speak so highly of you behind your back, the one who swallowed it whole because she thought she had no any other choice. the people who has seen my heart and still tore it into pieces must have been so lucky, because they hurt ME.

the right one. 

but one day, i won't be the right one anymore. i won't be the person that got hurt and carry the pain inside and let it eat me up. i won't be the person who tries to understand where'd they come from, why  they are hurting me. i won't be the person who analyzes their past pain and justify why they are the way that they are. i won't be the person who walked on this earth wearing my pain as if it's a badge of honor. i won't be the person who take 'you're so strong' as a zeal. i won't be the person they hurt anymore.

one day, i'll be that person. and i hope i know that i am still the same me, just, a little bit more love inside for myself. 

but as of today, i'm not there yet.

we'll be okay, i promise.

acceptance in progress,

aisha.