Continuation of "The Power Amongst The Blessings"

Alec Minkah did not consider loving despite the hatred and the anger and the fear a blessing.

He envies those who can love freely. Who can love with reckless abandon? Who can send their parents' wedding invitations and not receive a rejection in return?

Loving despite being the host of the parasite that calls itself trauma is not a blessing. It was survival.

He twirls the golden band around his finger and stares at himself in the bathroom mirror. The picture of Avory's horrified expression had ingrained itself in his psyche. Horrified at the thing that dwelled within him.

"It's still there."

Yea, Avory. Yea it was still there. Was she so naive to believe the old cliche? Love doesn't heal anything. Love only distracted from the hurt.

He had learned from an early age that love was a privilege he was not privy to. He would love as they approved or he would not love at all. And yet, he loved Kalib. He loved him with every fiber of his being. No man nor God could take that away from him.

Alec Minkah stares at his reflection as one stares at a moldy sink. Childhood had become a rotting, stinking thing. It had decayed into a burning pit of anger that attached itself to Alec's core and refused to be removed.

He had grown so accustomed to carrying the weight that he had forgotten how hideous such a thing was. Avory's reaction to experiencing the thing's reality was a rude awaking. Yet an awaking nonetheless.

The man grits his teeth and leans on the bathroom vanity. He was tired. He was so tired. The weight of a childhood corrupted by the hatred and fear they injected into him was becoming suffocating.

He deserved to love freely. He deserved to love with a reckless abandon. He deserved to love without fear and without guilt.

There were ways of removing the rotting thing. They weren't pretty ways. Yet ways nonetheless.

YOU'RE AN IDIOT FOR THINKING YOU CAN GET RID OF ME. I AM APART OF YOU, ALEC. I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN APART OF YOU.

"No. " He finds himself whispering, "You were planted in me. You can be removed."

YOU ONLY KNOW LIFE WITH ME BY YOUR SIDE. I'M PRESENT AT EVERY MOMENT OF YOUR EXISTENCE. HOW WILL YOU COPE WITH THE LOSS?

"Something tells me I'll manage. You've made my life hell. It can only get better from here."

IN ORDER TO GET RID OF ME YOU HAVE TO KNOW ME! YOU'VE ONLY SCRATCHED THE SURFACE OF WHAT I AM. YOU AREN'T WILLING TO PAY THAT PRICE.

"We'll see about that." Alec takes a deep breath. "Kalib doesn't deserve having you around."

His eyes flutter closed as he visualizes the men. The bad men. The men who twisted the written words and taught him eternal love was conditional. The men who shoved divinity down his throat and choked him with the weight of damnation.

The ones who planted the rotting thing in the first place.

IT HURTS, DOESN'T IT?! KNOWING ME IS AGONY! I CAN FEEL IT! THE HATRED BURNING IN YOUR LUNGS! THE GRIEF WELLING IN YOUR EYES!

He grips the edges of the vanity. He furrows his brow in determination.

"I... I forgive them."

YOU WHAT!?

"You heard me." He opens his eyes, "I forgive them. All of them. I'm done being mad. It's over."

The rotting thing doesn't go away.

"I forgive them."

But the rotting thing is slightly less rotten. The rotting thing shows signs of shedding its rot.

Love didn't heal anything; this he knew to be true. But he found something that could.