My Time Machine

I hope the grief stays with me. I hope the love that I can no longer store where it once did, remains in my bones. Yes, I hope that in some way or another, my memory holds on to the dearest treasures I’ve ever had, whether it be in the back or in the very forefront of my mind. I hope that the goodness that I have experienced in my life never leaves my spirit and my beautiful, uplifting energy.

I want to cherish my grief forever, and I don’t care how idiotic it may sound.

Once upon a time, I had a best friend. He was different from any other person I’ve ever known. I’ve never been able to explain exactly how, but it was the truest mystery that earth has seen, and I know that for a fact. I can feel it in the air, actually. Somehow, we clicked, and for a couple of human beings among billions, we just happened to meet by chance, cruising through our lives without the ‘stop and smell the roses’ attitude in either one of us.

Coincidentally, we were both in the same place at the same time, and our eyes met from across the way. Coincidentally, I was so close to believing in fate and in destiny. I was so near in believing that I could have my own fairy tale – that I could lose my glass slipper in this world and have it be returned by the person I left my heart with. Coincidentally, along the little journey of ours that discreetly mended my secret pain, brought me to fall in love with him, a reality that I never admitted to a single soul, and a reality that I am forced to take to my own grave.

Out of the blue, at the age of nineteen, he passed away.

We used to take car rides underneath the starlit skies, and have picnics at the beach. We’d have wars in the ocean tide, soaking each other’s hair before the waters could, and play idiotic games that have us laughing until the sun came up. The leaves used to crunch beneath our feet as we took afternoon strolls, white, white sand would tickle our bare feet and we’d sing karaoke underneath the trees. We managed to find joy in a world so imperfect, and so unpredictable because we knew that we had each other to rely on. We could get each other through anything.

And then suddenly here I was, struggling to get through his loss especially since he was the one whose comfort I so deeply longed for to keep going on with strength. It felt impossible.

Sometimes it still does.

But one day, on a random day I didn’t plan, I met a puppy with a shiny black coat and a spot of white beneath his chin. 14 pounds of a playful happy pill that I couldn’t take my eyes off, and that I had to bring home on the spot. He instantly owned a great portion of my heart – the weakest part of it that needed him the very most. The short ride back to my place already gave me something less agonizing to think about. Rather than the loss, I thought about the great gain I had put into my car without thinking twice, and what exactly I was going to name him.

This and that. Everything and nothing. The unique and the typical – I spilled everything that came to my mind that I figured would suit him well, but between the way it came out of my mouth and the glint in his innocent eyes, I could tell none of them were quite right.

Until everything was absolutely perfect. Until I split out the name of the man that I lost far, far too soon, and his head tilted slightly as he loved its sound as much as I did. From then on, it was the only name that he would react to with delight, and it was the thing that I needed the most to go on with smiles I didn’t need to fake.

Our first meeting was just as unpredictable as the man who bandaged me from the inside, and today we take car rides underneath the starlit skies, and have picnics at the beach. We have wars in the ocean tide, soaking each other before the waters could, and we play idiotic games that keep us both joyous until we got tired. The leaves crunch underneath our feet during afternoon strolls. White, white sand sticks to our feet or to our paws, and we sing (or howl) underneath the trees because we feel like it, no matter how passerbys looks at us. We found comfort in an imperfect world because we have each other to rely on, and to get us through anything.

I have him to remember the first person I ever truly loved.