Death is Where I Don't Belong

SUNDAY

You used to ask me what moment it was that it hit me that you were the one, and I'd throw out different answers every single time.

There'd be the memories we bonded by the riverside scrubbing our clothes clean as the water flowed by us and dirt snuck in between our toes. The time we devoured coconut water from a bamboo hut like we never had anything to drink in our lives, and even that time you got fed up with playing Mad Libs and set up your karaoke machine in a jiffy, it seemed you were trying to make a statement out of your boredom.

All of those moments and many, many more slipped by my mind when you brought up that question, but I never really knew the answer. I didn't know why I fell in love with you. In honestly feels like I've always been. Like you've always been a part of me.

But laying around these days, reflecting one of the only things that I could do, I'm starting to think that there was a snippet of time that sticks out among the rest. When my heart veered off the course of the unknown and I forgot how to breathe?

Yeah, I can recall.

Your eyes were specifically shimmery this night, and it's as if you knew, because it seemed you used them to hit at the parts of me I myself didn't know were weak. You made effort for face to face contact, not allowing me to look down at the floor when you spoke. If I did, you'd set in a reminder, your fingers below my chin. It tickled slightly, but that's all I knew.

Besides that, I couldn't guess what else I was in for, but I didn't have to. Not when you sat up a little higher on your knees and you dominated your perspective higher over me. "Tell me a secret," is what you said, and you didn't hold back the smirk. That expression opened up the grand doors to my insides, and there was no closing them again. They were entirely off the screws.

But me being the stubborn me that I am, I wasn't going to slip into it so quickly. I didn't totally understand you quite yet anyway, but you had a touch of mystery that made me want to cling to you. I just held off on it for a few.

"What sort of secret do you wanna hear?" I had answered, like your body language didn't already give it away.

You shrugged like you were engulfed in innocence and like you didn't know what I was up to, avoiding the question. "Any sort. Whatever is on your mind. Whatever you haven't gotten off your chest yet."

I shook my head at you, as an illusion It was more as a tease than to express loss or confusion. "I don't know. I can't think of anything." When I said it, I got exactly what I wanted.

"Lies. You're a professional at lying now, huh? Your eyebrows furrowed and you gave me a slap to my arm. I winced jokingly, but you didn't seem amused. "There's not one person on this earth that doesn't have secrets. Every single person in the population probably already has a secret they plan to take with them to their grave, but that's not going to happen with you. You're going to tell me now."

And that's when I got it. Why you really wanted me to look you straight on. You weren't blind when it came to love. People say that when you love someone, you can't tell when they like you, but you, even though you knew, didn't let yourself jump until you heard it come out of my own mouth. You were pretty much asking me for permission to fall for me and you already realized your entire being was my weakness.

You were playing a game, so I had to play it too.

I wanted to see how deep you were in on your mission to get that permission. I wanted to draw it out for as long as I could, all while keeping it real. Somehow playing dumb was what I thought would work. "A secret, huh? Well, I say 'I'm terrified' a lot. A friend of mine way back when said I had to stop that because it was messing with my mindset, but I couldn't get out of it and maybe it's true. Maybe it ruined me."

It seemed you dropped everything to listen to me, which I didn't expect. "Hm. What are you so afraid of?"

I stopped and actually thought about it. I'm afraid of a lot of things. I still am to this day, and I always thought that was something to be humiliated about. People like to feel protected and safe with the one they love. If a person is like me, I thought that didn't do them well when it came to that, at least.

I'm scared of what could be in the dark. I'm scared of the things I didn't know about and I was at one point, scared of you, more than I was scared of death, which was stupid now that I'm here, but all because I saw you as someone who could ruin me.

After all, from what I've seen, a person can only ruin you if they manage to squeeze through to the inside and make the heart swell. You already did that.

I just didn't admit it. "I'm afraid of ghosts."

You rolled your eyes. "You don't even believe in them. Stop kidding around."

"No, I mean, the Devil is mighty. He can easily make us see ghosts, thus making them exist, and I'm afraid of them."

"Fine," you had huffed. "I'll take it. What else? Tell me something else."

"I'm in love with you," I whisper.

"Huh? What did you say?"

I laugh when you don't hear it. I didn't have the guts to say it just yet and I wanted it to be memorable, but part of me hoped you did, so it was over with.

It wasn't over with yet. "Erm, I said that's pretty much it. That's all I have to tell you," and we left it there, chilling the rest the night with already-knowing but too shy of hearts.

I think about what we had all the time now. The hard, the easy, the good, the bad, I think about it all, because it's all I knew. It's what was dearest to my heart, so even when life goes on and I pass, I'm glad that I can die knowing that no one can ever replace you. No one can give me the feeling you gave and no one can understand me like you did.

I wish I can make your day for the rest of your life. I wish I can kiss you goodbye before I went to work and I wish I could look forward to coming home to you.

But everything is saying that's soon to be the past.

I'll only be part of the past, no matter how worth it we were.

MONDAY

My everything, I'm getting there. I can feel it. I know I've been thinking that for a while now, and even though I haven't passed yet, I still feel like I'm right. I'm at the end.

The end of keeping promises, the end of tears, my final steps and my final breaths. They're all coming up, but I don't want to go yet. I will, I know that I dont have a choice. I just want you to tell me it's okay for me to go first for my inner innocence. Then, I'll pass peacefully. At least I'm not in pain.

That's what you'd be worrying about right?

I'm okay, for what it is. I'm happy that in our limited forever I put myself entirely into your hands and that I was able to give you my soul. I'm happy that I let you in instead of quaking onward in fear and that I lived for something besides myself. So, when the time comes you hold another soul, if that's what you choose to do, I hope I'm still there even a little bit, in the back of your mind, at the bottom of your heart.

Thank you for the blessings. Thank you for the gift that you are. You've given me the life I know, and something to live for. You gave me the motivation to strive, to push for more, to reach for the stars.

But it's over. I have to say farewell and I have to mean it if I want to give into it finally. One day, maybe you'll forgive me for the mistakes I've made. Maybe they'll only be joyousness in your heart when you have throwbacks of the time, and if that's the case, I'll be happy too. I hope that you'll let me be happy with that.

For what it's worth, you've taught me lessons that people live to seventy, eighty years to understand and to advise the younger generations. You've made me too wise for my own good, so I don't think I'm missing out on much of anything besides my time with you. All the place I've been, I've taken those learnings with me.

Don't be too hard on yourself, my love. We weren't granted the best of situations and it's put us up to making horrendous decisions that no human being should have to make, but we're going to have to make what we can out of it.

You can still be your very best without me. You can still give your all while I'm away. Don't hold back on your dreams because I'm not there. You'd be robbing yourself of your true potential. We can't stop what's happening.

I've been giving it all I can, but I don't know how much longer that gives me. At this point, I think I'm just going to have to suck it up and understand this is how it is. That there's no way around it.

I guess forever didn't actually mean forever, no matter how badly we wanted it to.

TUESDAY

Why can't we have more time though? Have you asked yourself that question yet? Has the thought of an ending actually digested? Have you already processed the odds? Why things can't be the way they were?

How have you been holding up lately, by the way? Have you been able to get out of bed? Brush through your hair, have your morning cup of tea? Be disgusted at the seafood the other people eat that you don't like? Slurp up spaghetti like a mad man? Do all the things you've always done?

If I could just watch your cute expressions, even if it were from my grave, as creepy as it sounds, I'd love to. I don't really know how I'll be able to do without it quite yet. In my condition now, I might as well be considered left for dead, but I can still think. While I'm able to, I'm trying to hold onto it.

How we held onto each other in the streets, and how you'd mention every single time how it must be 8:30 in the evening because the automatic lights lit up the sidewalks from high up above. How the worn down basketball court outside of your high school became a dance floor to the two of us. How you appreciated every bit of nature that you ever saw, and how your eyes lit up when you did.

It'll never be enough. That's the truth, as much as I'm telling myself that it's been, and that I don't need to be selfish. I'm trying to lie to myself and I can't even do that much.

It's too obvious that what we are is meant to be. We fit together perfectly, more than anyone has ever, and I'm in it deep. I'm so into you, baby. Every thought I have and every second that passes says so.

I just can't show it. Not anymore.

I'd shout it from the rooftops if I could. I'd scream from the top of my lungs, until I knew that everyone was listening to me. I'd yell so that the whole world could hear, but I can't even lift a finger.

I can't even tell you, one on one.

Of course, I dream to go back to the night we met, so we can start over. I want that thrill again, when I first found that trail you stood at the end of. I was never the outdoorsy kind, and I didn't like to step foot out of my own perimeters, but the day I finally ran into you, there's no letting go of that.

And that refers to everything. The nights of nightmares and late night comfort texts, tears in your eyes, I wasn't going to be with you only when it was easy. When it got hard too, I was there for you, and you were there for you.

It hurts knowing we had all and then none of each other. It hurts that the most you'll get if you do, is haunted by my ghost.

I'm not a traveler, but I'd travel back in time for you.

You were the title of my life, and I'm sorry that I'll only be able to be a chapter.

WEDNESDAY

I'll take it slow. I'm not in a hurry to go. I won't be feeling anything, so in regards to that, it probably doesn't make very much of a difference on my end, but on yours it will and that's why I'll stick around and fight for a little longer. Maybe until you're not as afraid as you might be to go back to being lonely.

I wish someone could've given me a heads up when it came to this moment. I wish someone would've warned me how hard it would be to give life up when you've finally found something to live for. Years ago, I don't think this would've fazed me the way it is now.

I had no idea this is what it would be like. All I can think about is how this is going to pile up on you and I don't know how long it'll last since that's very much only in your control, and that worries me even more. How could I possibly let that happen to you? How did I get here in the first place? Why does it have to be me? For your sake, why does it have to be me?

That sounds selfish. I always thought it sounded selfish. After all, I wouldn't wish this upon anyone. They don't deserve to have to leave their loved ones early no matter who they are or what they've done, but now that I'm here like this, it'd be a lie to say it didn't cross my own mind.

What kind of lover am I? Would any good girlfriend or boyfriend let their other half break down into pieces and leave them all alone with their inner demons? Would they sit around to themselves knowing that they're in pain? Never in a million years, and that makes me feel like dirt. I haven't done a thing to aid you through this.

I can't, but I want to. Wanting to help but not being able to --I think that's the most empty way to feel. If I could only wake up, I could convince you that it's all going to be fine again, but I can't wake up and I doubt things are alright either. I can be realistic there.

I feel like static. Static that'll disappear into nothing.

I wish you could hold me close and that would be what it took. It would be enough for my body to realize that it shouldn't be leaving so soon, mostly because it's painful to me just to know I'm going to hurt you and that I'm already hurting you now.

If I could, I'd shower with a beauty of last words until I was promised that they didn't have to be my last, but speaking is more than a chore ever since I got here. It's impossible and either way, it's only temporary. It won't last for very much.

It's hard to comprehend how time flew so quickly. We had the time of our lives, there's no doubt about that, but in the increments that I let myself get hot headed or let myself argue like everyone does, I wish I could refill those with something better. Something more memorable, in a proper way.

That's not the way you're going to remember me, are you? Heck, what's been keeping me breathing for this long and staying around as I am, is the assumption that at least what we had was good.

I hope I made you laugh enough. I hope that even if you do remember the bad parts of me, you can laugh at that too. I hope that from here on out, you can smile when you remember me, even if it stings a little here and there.

We were a match in heaven, my love.

It's too bad we're on earth.

THURSDAY

My mom and my sister have been telling me about you from the little text messages you sent to the quick voice messages you left them. They don't even know that I can hear them or that I've gotten tiny snippets of you, but they're hopeful and in it, I've found something to be thankful for despite being here.

Thank God that I can at least hear. I can feel their hands interlocked in mine and I can tell they're rooting for me. They're telling me that if I fight for a little longer, maybe I'll be able to pull through.

I'm not as sure as they are, but it's a good reminder that I'm still on this earth and that it hasn't totally rejected me just yet. I'm still here and that means that there's something to work with. Something to put more effort into.

Especially since I've heard that you're back at home not doing so well, cuddled up with the sweater I gave you and keeping an ear out for the updates. They say you miss me a lot and that you haven't stopped loving me. That just as it's always been, you love me more and more everyday, even when you thought it wasn't possible to give more heart than you've already given.

I'm not doing so well either, but I love and miss you too. So much, I can't explain it. You would know yourself, that that's what it's like to missing your other half and having to go without them.

In a way, I think we're sorta on the same page. What we're going through is more than my medical condition. It's about what's going on on the inside, where the two of of are connected at. It gives a vision of the world that I can't see on my own.

It's the world within me. Within you.

Half the sky is a gloomy grey. It's cloudy and it looks like any moment it's about to storm heavily with lightening threatening and thunder rumbling in the sky. The other side is a bright and heavenly shade of blue. It's what you would call 'blue-r than blue' like that makes any sense.

You're funny sometimes, baby.

In this imaginary place, I walk around clueless.

I'm there, but not entirely and in some particular of my head I feel the humiliation of wandering naked in public, making a mess of myself. It's saying that my last seconds are a spiral of disaster, but this other clean, well-kept up, business man appearance on me is saying there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

I guess as pessimistic as I've been, I haven't given up completely quite yet. I haven't because I don't want to die half a heart, victim of a dart to my chest. I want to die having fulfilled everything on our bucket list.

I just needed a bit of reminding. I need to get that mindset knitted into my mind.

Why should I be worrying about how things went wrong in the past when we reconciled perfectly and went on stronger? What I should be worrying about is getting another lunch with you by the ocean side, searching for seashells and doing another one of those intense water wars? We can have late night talks, and gossip throughout the day for no other reason besides it's what we feel like doing.

I'll think more soundly about us. I'll think about finding the answers to every curiosity we've ever had, and feeling satisfied. I'll think about the happily ever after we should have and how we are definitely going to get there. How trusting in you have me more than faith in humanity but told me life is good, and that plans are supposed to turn out for the better.

I'll think about the solution and not the problem.

I'll think about what we're made for, the destination that we haven't reached.

We can still get there, can't we? It's not too late?