Let Me Write About Us While I Still Can

It’s crazy that you keep everything to yourself. It’s crazy that I have no idea what you’re thinking and how you’re feeling. I don’t know if you miss me, if you hate me, if you ever thought of me, if it was ever about me or if I was just a mistake you now want to erase from your past.

The solution for you seems straightforward. You can just pretend like nothing happened and continue with your daily life, the stable life that you’ve built so hard to keep you full and safe, and no one would ever know the volcano that was us and our moments of truth existed. No one would ever be able to link us together. No one would suspect a thing or want to suspect a thing.

Life goes on and we’ll move on. We’ll remain a little story kept secret, a little memory swept away in the current of time, a few paper receipts and junk food wraps and hotel towels to be discarded, and that’s it.

I know you hate me doing this. You call this moaning and nagging and being a child. And you seem to be very displeased with my overflowing emotions. But guess what. This is my right. This is the only thing I could do. I don’t want to bother you or cause you trouble. I don’t want to hurt you or shake you up. Not anymore. I will disappear from your life and one day I will stop writing about you and us anyway.

So, let me do it while I still can. Let me be the writer girl who fascinated you in the first place. Let me show you what it’s really like to cross paths with a Cancer girl whose heart goes through constant earthquakes — totally against her will. Let me make good use of all what I have left of us, of our tiny universe only detectable in lost times and foreign countries, of a few little things involving you I could ever claim mine: feelings and memories and tears and vulnerability and fantasies and being real and connectedness.

I hope this doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable, especially when you’re keen to remove and repress everything me and us. You might have changed your mindset completely. You might have plucked out the soft spot you had for me, might have switched off your inner child who was so happy to play with mine. I know you have.

But it’s okay. I understand. What you have is precious and you should totally hold on to it. Nevertheless, I truly have no regret despite the pain you caused me and I caused myself as a result of this unfortunate circumstance. While outsiders might trash us, I know us during those earnest hours better than anyone else does, and so I’ll always have more love and compassion than sadness and anger towards your actions.

I forgive you, for everything, and I forgive myself, especially for ever tempting to disrupt the familiar order of your daily life, which would be at many people’s expenses, out of my selfish desires.

By now, I could tell our energy flow has been restricted. I could barely feel you anymore except that I know, so surely, that you would get these words, you would see the essence of my writing and appreciate the artist in me, brought out by our personal big bang. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to be calmer, quieter, more rational. I’m sorry I said hurtful things that were inconsiderate of your feelings and position. I’m sorry I didn’t let you go silently but leave the traces of you all over this space.

But that’s all I could do. That’s how I cope after you left me alone. That’s how I could preserve our joined existence that would otherwise just be gone. But maybe, maybe, I’m being overly dramatic. Maybe I don’t have to worry about that at all. Because those moments we shared were already complete. They happened. They filled up the containing space and time for however long they lasted. They can’t be lost. We have given them all that we could, and without realising it, we have absorbed all the good energy generated by our togetherness.

So, do you know why I’m writing this? It might not even be relevant to you anymore. I might be very silly and delusional and inappropriate and overstepping my boundaries. Yet, I still do it. Because ultimately it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything. The outcome would still be the same. I would still lose you. We would still continue the two lives that have nothing to do with each other, most likely in our own silence. We would still never get to find out how life could be if there was ever a reality for us to freely explore our union.

See, I have to do this for myself, for my peace of mind. This is the story I’ve chosen to tell myself after all. This is the you I’ve decided to keep safe in my heart. And this is the journey, for now, I’ll have to embark on alone. From this moment on, I’ll only get stronger and smarter and happier. I’ll be a great woman, I promise.

I hope you’re happy. That’s all from me.