There are so many things I want to say to you.
But I can't.
Whether it's the language barrier and my lack of knowledge that still halts my abilities to say or be all that I want to. Or it's the cultural differences that create two completely different worlds where empathy is nearly impossible because we just can't understand why we accept some things and not others. Or it's the tears that choke back my voice and my fear of crying in front of you because I know all you'll do is laugh.
But it's these very things that keep me up at night. That sometimes haunt the back of my eye lids when I close them to rest. It's these things that I want to say that run my emotions up, down, around, and sometimes off the tracks. They build, collapse, harden, and hurt my chest.
I have moments where I give up. Believe that there's nothing I can do for you. Check you off on my hopeless list. And turn my face away from yours to save my heart from looking into those deep brown eyes that are unknowingly begging me not to give up.
But those moments are fleeting. And few. I've learned that my body just as much as my mental state needs a break at times. So when I go into my house and close my door, when I lay in my bed and am too lazy to lower my mosquito net, and when I answer emotionless to your calls through my wooden walls, please know that it's not because I don't love you. I just reach a point of loving you so incredibly strongly and with everything that I am that I shut down and have no energy left to show it.
But it's still there. It always is. I see how you live. I see the dirt on your knees and under your fingernails and the empty water tanks that cough out in dryness. I hold you through an anesthetic needle and four stitches in your foot and carry you home against your mother's demand that you suck it up and walk. I watch the stick broken off from the tree and her voice rambling off 100mph as you run from the whip. I see him raise his belt, listing off all of the things you do wrong daily and then lower it onto your bare back over and over and hear you saying on repeat in my head what you told me last night, "He treats the dogs better than he treats me." I see you put the rice on the fogón at 10pm knowing that the last time you ate was at 9am. I listen to the teachers tell you directly that you're going to fail and that your hopeless. I watch you fight your best friend and break you away as you struggle against my embrace; fully believing that it's the only way you'll win in this world.
I watch you and hurt with you. I feel the needle as it enters your foot. My breath quickens with yours as you run. The whip arcs my back and tears the skin. My stomach aches of hunger. I feel shame and useless as the teachers talk. My fists shake with determination and struggle. And while I grow tired, I will never stop loving you and feeling with you. While I sleep sometimes, I promise to hug you extra when I awake. Because I know that underneath your tough exterior and emotionless facade, when I hug you and you don't pull back, when I tuck you into my chest on the couch jokingly and you don't rise back up on your own, when you turn away and smile or fight back the tears when I talk real about your behavior or lack of motivation in school, I know it's all just what you need. And that you know it too.
You put up a damn good fight. But I promise to be stronger. I want to change the world. But in just a few short months I've loved you more than I ever realized I knew how.
So if I'm going to change the world... I'm going to start with you.
Wow. Truly .
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