The End Drawing Nearer

FRIDAY

I used to think love was this big walking contradiction. I thought it was conflicting, and that it was exaggerated in every world of fiction that we can think of. In the flawless and honey tasting ways, it might be, but I did learn something when I met you that pretty much did sweep me off my feet.

Love feels exactly like people says it does.

It didn't come to me as instant as it does for the made-up characters, but I did feel what they speak about in those storylines.

You were the one that I've dreamed about all this time. At one point, I didn't know that it was your face that I was dreaming about, but I knew that one day this is what would make me feel full. I had a feeling. Truly, I just knew.

And I was proven right. I don't know if it was in the air that day, if the stars aligned for us or if the sunlight was pouring down on us for a reason at that specific time, but on one random afternoon, our eyes grazed by each other and something felt different. You know it did, and it took the both of us to the clouds.

We lost total control, and we just soared. We soared anywhere we want from then on.

But I guess it was really one long and darling dream, and the thing about dreams? Every single one of them eventually come to an end.

At least I got to feel it. If I'm going to force pessimism on myself, I can say that much. I got to feel what it was like to love and be loved, and more than that, to be certain that it was real in every pump of blood from my heart.

Without a doubt.

The thing is, every "at least" saying isn't a happy saying. That means there's one thought that bends the strands to make yourself feel a bit better, but every single other thought is a fire-y furnace of madness to the skin, to the bones, to the organs.

Bidding farewell to the love I was certain of --that we were certain of-- and all I can do is sit and reminisce.

Back to the period I was still courting you, trying to be chivalrous, and I'd call you up only to stutter so badly I couldn't be understood. The butterflies and the shyness would creep up on me. As strong as you made me feel, I felt weak in the knees before you, and you didn't even have to try.

I want to get up, and pull off something that even doctors can't get, something that will blow their minds. I want to get up, and walk these these halls like nothing ever happened, counting the trembles and the missing as a nightmare, but nothing more.

Why yes, before I met you, I wondered how people can be so sure that they've fallen and that they can trust the person who caught them, but then I was sure. None of what we were ever a silly mistake. It was really love. It is really love.

It's written into the scars of our hearts. It's the medicine that heals them up. That lets them fade.

Then I started to wonder why people said falling in love is so bittersweet.

I think I've found my answer to that too.

I didn't want an answer yet.

I never wanted this.

I want you.

SATURDAY

The person I came to love was separated by a body of water, an island in the distance. We met only a few times face to face, but we made the most of the time we had together and we were sure that was it. This was the way it was meant to be.

You. You. The miracle of you. The miracle of us.

That meant that I spent a lot of time at home, alone, but I didn't mind it. It was worth the loneliness, just being able to think that soon enough we'd be married, snapping photos by all the people we loved the most and officially dropping the last chapter and taking the next one on.

I kept myself company by letting my spirit be off with you. I'd sit on the shore in the night, beneath the moon, and I'd look out into the distant skyline. From where I was, I could see the stretch of land that you called home, and I'd sing to you --it's funny to admit-- as if you were around to hear it, rather than miles away.

It was the first time I'd ever seen a shooting star. I thought those were fake. I didn't expect I'd ever see one in my lifetime, but then I thought the universe was giving me a sign. It was telling me that I found where I belonged.

Apparently it wasn't, because otherwise I wouldn't be here, fragile here like glass, but in the moment, it felt good to feel the longing and the nudging of the divine.

I looked up at the stars every night from then on, in fact, and I'd tell myself that you were looking up at the very same ones. The ocean was this wide yet fancy dinner table for us, and on the other end, I'd imagine you dipping your little toes into the light tide, looking at me from across the way.

We were together even when we weren't. The lights were brighter, glowing as it guided us together to help each other bandage up the bleeding in our hearts. To help us find home when we've spent our whole lives feeling homeless and stray.

Your inner music was the most mesmerizing to listen to. If I laid down and found peace for long enough, I swear to the living God I could feel you cheering me on and reassuring me when I needed it the most.

I'd remember every time we were hand in hand and how I looked at you and just fell in love. How we strolled together through the city sharing a headset with Shania Twain's You're Still The One confirmed to be our theme song. Originally, on your request, but eventually on my full agreement.

Did you know that every time I heard that song, every time I sang it, every time I'd strum it on my guitar, your face painted itself in my mind? You glistened, like you knew you had me wrapped around your precious little finger.

It's the song I was intertwined in. The song that kept me alive for this long.

I don't understand why it can't be replayed at least one more time.

Why did it ever have to end?

I'm nothing but a broken jukebox.

SUNDAY

Some people might call me pitiful after every blow of the dandelion that I mentioned your name on, even back before we were official. Some would say I went desperate, relying on spirits and on crystals to be able to call you mine, like people talk about in the memes.

Some people would say I took it to far --trying to put that firework in between us, and if they really want to say so, I can't exactly decline that. Did I do those exact things? No. No I didn't, but I felt what it means to be that much in awe of someone.

Oh, I felt it for sure.

There was a time I begged everything that I existed. I did everything that I possibly could. Every individual drop in the ocean knows my name, and every time the rain clouds and the sunshine would trade places throughout the week, they both knew that they would be looking down on me, asking, asking, and asking some more.

"Please, can we end up together?"

And for a long time, it looked hopeless. It was like asking for a flood when I was in the middle of the desert. I didn't even mind then if you decided what you felt for me was pretend, as long as you felt. I didn't want to waste my weekends and my working days if it was a possibility -- a chance of 1% that I could have you. That I could prove that you were put on this earth for a purpose. For love.

But I learned. I learned that I wasn't putting my heart on the line all along. I learned that I wouldn't be broken if I was with you, and that my tears, when we were together would never be of the disappointed kind, or the furious kind. If they every came up, it was joy. Joy and the unbelievable 'how did I end up with such perfection'?

I got everything I wanted. You weren't pretending, I wasn't pretending, it was real, and we were cruising to a destination that only the two of us could get to. We were on a journey that only we got to understand within our bodies. We made it and we were going on that way, without anything in the way to stop us.

I had the right to think of you in my all-nighters, hardly every sleeping with these resurrected butterflies lifting me off of the ground.

I could think of how you would tell me on repeat that your wish was to see snow one day, and that you wanted me to be with you when that one day came, and I could remember how I would laugh about it, because the tropical place where we come from, the air conditioner in public malls was enough to make us freeze.

How, baby, would we keep warm?

You never liked when I'd tell you that. If I told you that right now, you'd respond the same way you always do. You'd say that I was 'spoiling it' and that 'we'd figure it out when the time came'.

I can think back and remember how you unchained me from my toxic friends and my old classmates who would always get into trouble and who were never a reflection of me, and as I stepped further and further away from the people who ruined me and listened to your pretty guidance, I fell for you like a middle school student falls for that one person who roams the halls during passing period.

My God. It was with my whole body, with every bit of blood rushing through my veins, like this little, little boy. It was almost embarrassing, but it couldn't be. Not when considering what we became.

I got to hold you so close. I found heaven in you because that's what you are. That's what you are to me. You were starlight on earth. What an imperfect man could barely manage to comprehend. What mere human turn into metaphors because it's over their heads.

But it seems that heaven --the actual heaven that's up above the sky that everyone around me seemed to believe in-- it's not so far away either, and I don't like the feeling of it like I like the feeling of you.

I want to stay here.

I don't really know where I'm going from here, but if I'm not going to be your other half, I don't want to be anywhere.

I'd rather sleep unconsciously until the day comes I can come back to you.

I'd rather the earth give us Paradise.

You, me, eternity.

It sounds delightful, doesn't it?

I'd have everything I need.

MONDAY

Well, for what it's worth, I'm grateful. I might be here, capable of not very much of anything, but I am glad that because of our memories and the opportunities you've granted me, I'm able to think about you. I didn't even think I'd get that far, if I were to remember where we came from.

It's special to look back. Tremendous how the mind works, I must say that much. Almost just as tremendous the odds are that out of the billions of people on this earth, we crossed paths, but that's the thing, too.

Until now, you still don't know how much you're worth, huh? I've been giving my everything to show you that you're more than the gold, the silver and the diamonds, but after long bickerings, when you'd put it to rest, throwing in the 'okay, okay, fine! I believe you,' you never once really got it, am I right?

You haven't seen it yet, how I see you, and I consider that a fail. A fail on my part, of course. It was something I had to make sure I played out before I passed on. I promised myself that and I didn't make it.

I missed the mark of perfection, but not just any kind of perfection. The perfection I put on myself; a goal that I was in contract of completing between me, myself and I.

You already know my sad stories, and I'm not going to bring them back up to the surface for no reason again, but it sucked. From the very moment I was born I already had to fight for a spot on this planet if I wanted to live, and for majority of my life, I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue putting up that fighting.

But I waited for something. I don't even know exactly what I was waiting for, but when I saw it, I'd look at it and think just like that, "where have you been all my life?" or "how could I have possibly lived this long without you?"

Everything was broken. It was falling apart. I stayed awake at night and woke up in the morning to get a call or a text from some friend who I hoped could unknowingly to themselves make everything better, but I never found what I was looking for. I never got the support I craved.

I walked further into a maze I couldn't find my way out of. I was lost, insecure, and my life had become a spiraled dizziness of those moments a person would lie out on their bathroom floor when they were puking out their gut, and just regret life. Regret existing, as if it were our fault.

Then you came. You saw me lying on that floor, my life in shambles, and you wasted no time. You were late, I needed you all along, long before the moment we ran into each other, but the point was that you were there, surrounding me with these hopes and dreams I never let myself get greedy for.

I saw pieces of myself I didn't know were ever part of me, and I became a mosaic. I became something good. Something pleasing. At least someone that I could live with.

And that was fantastic. It filled my heart, but at a time like now, it terrifies me. All people ever want is to spend their life with their special someone. The one that taught them who they are and who they aren't, and what they want to become, but the outcome is the same for everyone.

Life ends. Eventually everyone ends up by themselves. They lose even the one person who knew them like the back of their own hand, and there's no telling when that attacks. It's out of the blue, and as for us, when it seems like everything is going well.

Who knew that our uplifting strolls through the city strip and the late night calls under the twinkling stars, would bring me here to this hospital, where all I want to be able to do is sit up and write you a letter at least, if I couldn't find you nearby or tease you until your eyebrows would furrow and you slap me on the arm.

I can't even do that much. My body is my prison.

I can only think. Think about how lucky I am that you of all people found me and fixed me up before I was over.

I know what it's like to be happy. I learned to love myself while I loved you.

TUESDAY

The air is heavy. I'm trying to put it aside and tell myself a joke to make it a bit more lighthearted, but it feels hilarious. I've come all this way to tell jokes to myself in a hospital bed to make myself feel better?

Speaking of, on a semi-serious note, don't you find it messed up that we walk through life without pop-up blocks that could warn us that we're about to be stupid? People like to say that we live in a stimulation, but if we were, is this how we would end up? Wandering blindly without a warning of what we're getting into?

Life is sucky because it's real. Not because it's not. If this were all some Sim's world some evil person was trying to torture, then can't we just wake up tomorrow and start over? We could finally get your dream wedding up and rolling, and we could hear our children laughing in the kitchen as we cooked up breakfast together.

That's what our tomorrows would look like if I had a say, but quite obviously I don't. You know I didn't want to be here.

By now, this bed is uncomfortable and my ribcage is sorta achy. I can't help but to think how many times I've already been lost. How many times a code blue was called on my behalf. How much energy my body has left in it if it has anything to account for at all.

I never thought I'd have to realize that everything is falling through or that after I've finished every exam I'd ever have to take, I'd memorize by feeling alone, since I've lost track of time a long time ago when nurses or doctors will make their rounds without thinking I could hear any bit of the truth, and cluttering me in with the rest of their patients.

I have the urge to run away in the other direction, where the fog will clear out and I'll see everything as far out as the eye can see, but my motionlessness is not by choice. It's out of my ability, now that I can hardly lift a finger.

My brain fidgets, but it doesn't show. My anxiousness is concealed. I'm bottled up when I don't wanna be. It's the same VHS on rewind, and that's that. You're there figuratively, making sure I stay in your clutches so I can't slip away, and you don't even know you're doing so well.

It'll only be temporary. You can only do so much, but you're doing well.

You know I'm thinking of you. Are you thinking of me, right now? I didn't become a stranger to you so quickly, did I? I'm not someone who you let go of when things get hard, I know that. You've proven that to me so many times, in argument and in peace and I don't think anything has changed, regardless of the canyon that cuts between us.

Even death.

I'm afraid to become part of your past when I was supposed to be the building blocks to your future. I'm afraid to drift behind until I can't keep up, and can no longer last and I'm afraid of losing you without a pop to the ears or a brightness on the eyes.

Don't let me go. Hold my hand.

Please, hold my hand.