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Francis Rubio

It's time to move on

literature

Let’s be clear: the paths we have once walked on have long diverged. We have led different lives and have come to a point where our differences far outnumber our similarities. This is not to say that we have come into an opposition against one another; it’s just that we’ve been practically strangers oblivious to each other’s fate.

The roads we crawled on when we were toddlers have now become monuments of the persons we once were. The muddy swamps we swam in with held hands have now turned to luscious farms of wheat and grains. Our gardens of sunflowers and chrysanthemums have now become massive rain forests attesting to our shared history and culture.

We’ve fought wars together. Our good times were limited but definitely not few. We were comrades, fighting our beasts with sticks and stones, our armors only each other. But we were never a family of choice. Our connections were forcibly thrust upon us, ones we had no other choice but to accept in all practicality.

It’s been long enough that we have tried to walk in each other’s road when we should have went separate ways long ago. It’s been exhausting trying to follow each other to where the other’s going while trying to keep track of where we are supposed to be. We used to feel like kindred spirits because of the same battles we’ve fought and won. But the war is over, and the ones we used to war against have now surrendered to you and you have sided with them. My wounds, however, have not yet fully healed, and the narratives I’ve written in my head, true or not, have not yet reached their conclusions.

So let’s stay in our lanes, the ones that we are supposed to be in. And as we walk our paths, let us peer through the foliage between our paths for as long as we still see each other in between the trees that life keeps growing to keep us apart. And when that time coming comes that we no longer see the other in the forest that would divide us, let the sacrs remind you, not of the battles, but of the people you fought with. As will I. And who knows? When the loom that weaves all of fate gives out its next fabric, we might find ourselves crossing paths again. But for now, we are to face battles we have to fight on our own, and wrestle with our enemies along with new comrades.

It’s time to move on.

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