Memories

“What is love?”

If you asked me that in the past, I wouldn’t know how to answer.

I still don’t.

I never fully knew what love looked, felt, sounded, or even smelled like.

Mainly because love didn’t exist in my memories.

Growing up, I didn’t have the best memories.

I grew up with memories

that became mental injuries

which were caused by my history.

My memories

depict the imagery

of all the hatred I would see,

of how the hatred abused my mentality,

But most importantly,

my childhood memories

depict the imagery

of how love never lived with me.

The first memory I have of my childhood

is watching my father slap my mother in the face when I was five.

Ever since then, I saw love as no-good.

I thought love was a lie and never alive.

I remember staring at both of them after it happened.

I looked at them with confusion and pain in my eyes while the pain also kept me silent.

I looked at the hand my father slapped her with.

Ever since then, I thought love was just a myth.

Ever since I was five, my memories

would depict the imagery

of how love grew further away from me.

If it wasn’t home, I would receive hate at school.

If it wasn’t at school, I would receive hate every where else.

There’s a reason why I cry myself to sleep.

It’s because I didn’t believe love was something you could forever keep.

However, deep down I knew it existed. I just didn’t know how.

I was always confused about it while growing up.

I excelled in school, but love was always a subject I misunderstood.

I never understood how love was supposed to be real,

when my own heart was breaking into pieces that were hard to heal.

I tried to weld my heart back together as a whole, but I just kept on breaking and breaking and breaking and breaking and breaking!

I’ve been broken so many times that

I learned how to smile while bleeding.

I learned how to die while still breathing.

I learned how to put up a fake smile while crying.

I learned how to stop crying on command so that no one will really see how much I’m dying.

You see, I grew up with memories

that became mental injuries

which were caused by my history.

My memories

depict the imagery

of all the hatred I would see,

of how the hatred abused my mentality,

but most importantly,

my childhood memories

depict the imagery

of how love......never lived with me.