The guise of happiness, of a quiet and calm sense of resolution, is not something that I can slip on with ease. Anger is easy, I have done anger for the past eleven years of my life and it is with this anger that I have carved out my identity in the word. I write because the words speak easy when there is too much pain for frangible body parts to take on, I dance because it is in moving that I forget. But when you are forced to forgive, when you clutch bed armor to your quivering body cry holy agony at two in the morning sweat retch sweat and scream the devil out of your insides, when you collapse, facedown, heavy-breathing and utterly exhausted, when you make the choice to stop hating because you have been sick for far too long. This is when you let go, this is when you become a different person.
In reconciling with past crimes, I feel no sense of levity in the way I breathe. In forgiving, I have lost the very crux and core of what I deem to be my craft. Happiness is not always the choice you make if you have baptized resentment as your second skin, and ironically, in the absence of darkness, you fall further and further away from the light.
