Last Words Spoken

FRIDAY

If you can read my mind somehow, don't take this the wrong way. I'm going to fight. I'm taking up this battle and I'm not leaving until I'm granted permission to go, but in case it has to be that way, please listen to me carefully.

Asking of this is like how people write their wills. Just so everything goes as smoothly as it can when someone has to leave, they go through with that, but it's not a suicide note. It's not saying they're leaving by their own hand. It's saying that they care about how we go forward, even if they have to stay behind.

That's what I need to do for you, so let me say this at minimum.

You're so freaking perfect, darling. I don't think you've truly accepted that yet. It's been my mission to get that across to you, but over our years together, as much as there's been progress, I don't think that it's entirely sunk in. Not as deep and as thorough as I was intending it to, and I can't bear you thinking that way forever.

I know it's easier said than done. I've been there myself and honestly, there's days that I still am there. I wouldn't have made any improvements if you weren't around to help me anchor myself to the earth, but you did and for a while I got to thrive. I feel like you can thrive too, more than you already have.

Sometimes you let things get to your head. You might not have your nose in a magazine for more than ten seconds and you might not be peering at the Instagram models in your spare time, but it sticks to you longer than that, in your memory and you worry about things that you shouldn't be worrying about.

You look fantastic in jeans and your hair has the volume people would pay crazy money for. I mean it, and you can't say 'you're only saying that because you're my other half' because I say it because it's true and you know that.

You're mean to yourself. You belittle yourself too much, and worse every bit that you say inside that head of yours absorbing everything, is wrong. There's such a great big amount of hatred between your ears, and I think you deserve to live a life where the voices in your head like you as much as I do.

Love you, in fact. Cherish you fully.

Fine, you've made your occasional mistake here and there. You've has to crawl yourself out of tight spaces to feel free again and to feel like yourself. Bad decisions have led you to a destination you regretted boarding a train to, but it's okay. The past is the past, and we've all been there. We're all taking it one day at a time.

Seventh grade lunch period wasn't fun for me either. Neither was sixth, fifth fourth, eighth, ninth, tenth and so on. It was an excruciating 49 minutes of being an outsider. Being misunderstood and mistreated, and we both, in completely different places had to carry that treatment throughout life. In our neighborhood, in random public places, at work.

But look what we were able to do. We got over the obstacles and they didn't slow us down one bit for such a while. We were both still in the race and we had our moment of laughter right back at the ones who laughed at once. The ones who said we'd never make it, and they know darn well that we aren't to be underestimated. That we pulled through.

They saw it with their own eyes.

So you don't have to try too hard. Don't overdo yourself and waste your time. Don't push yourself to do things because other people expect you to do them. Do the things you want to do. The things you've always dreamed of doing because that people pleaser in you won't be able to give yourself a smile.

People will criticize you wherever you go, but remember that you seriously are perfect.

You have been before I met you and you will be if I must go away.

I might not be able to assure you of a lot, but I can assure you of that.

Don't you trust me? I'd never tell you a lie.

If your pathway still glows, it's best you continue walking on it, head held high.

SATURDAY

There's no in between with love.

For some, it's entirely magical and gorgeous. It's the epitome of golden stars, trickling waterfalls, a reflection of the sunset in an open lake. It's beauty at its finest. For others, it's the wreck of every plan, a heart squeezed too tight in the hands of a stranger with memories.

People like to tell those ones 'I told you so' after it all falls apart and a lot of times the victim has to pick up the pieces of a story that didn't come true. They're ridiculed into lowering their expectations or they're called stupid for having high hopes in imperfection like it's not possible for things to turn out right.

They have to stand up again and tell themselves they're fine until they're not lying anymore. They have to shake off an icky pain, dealing with shrugging it off for a straight week until a random 3 am that they're crying on the bathroom floor like it happened yesterday. They have to fight to regain themselves, and figure out how to chase dreams alone again. They have to remind themselves that their broken heart is still beating even when it doesn't feel like it.

Yes, there's no in between with love, but I think it's the worst for us. Even if we come out of this alright, or --when we come out of this-- we experienced both sides of it. We experienced the goodness and then we experienced the heartbreak of potential loss to the highest degree possible.

But so far, I'm still here, existing, being and breathing. I never thought ever before that I would be happy with that much, but for what this has become, I'd take any good sign that I could get a hold of.

For now, I'm trying to tell myself that things might be looking up sometime soon. That we'll be traveling back up toward the sky after this dip in the rollercoaster and we'll pick up the fun we had as if we were never interrupted. We'll find home in each other all over again, proof that we don't need anyone or anything else and proof that a love that's progressing can still feel new, as it did in the beginning.

I keep imagining that you're here with me. That we're laying side by side like we loved to do, forgetting the rest of the world. Sometimes 'I love you' gets said so much the value is brushed off, but our silence would say more than a thousand words. We didn't know exactly how to describe it anyway. It's too much for language to explain.

This is what gets me by. It's what gotten me this far. It's never been about what unbelieving, hypocritical people said to us. It's never been about the people who thought we couldn't last. It's been about the two of us, the only world where I found liveliness even when we spent our time sitting around doing nothing.

I've needed you so badly recently. I've found a calm in the calmness you've shown me and the way that you carried yourself everyday. Who I am and who I've ever been, I remember how it reflected in your eyes, and how I finally came to terms, to acceptance when I would realize "this is me and this is who I'll always be".

I don't want things to change for us. I want to keep that. I want to treasure it and for time times I've fallen short, I want to make it up to you. I want to make up for the pain you're going through right now and for every way you've has to cope with it.

For the times that, maybe, you looked out your window and overlooked the city, when in your heart you weren't looking at the city at all, but toward me over the sea on the neighboring island as if you could actually see me. Or for the times that you worry about how things will end up. If I'd forget you of if I'd hate you out of the blue, only able to remember the last time we fought. For the times that you wonder if you were able to come to see me if I'd be in and out so often your "hello" would end up being an unexpected goodbye.

And for the times that I accidentally think up a gruesome thought, the one that tells me that after all this mess it might be better if I left you for something only in my dreams, where we started over good as new. That I tell myself it'd be better by this point if I took the plunge.

But I mentally slap myself because I want to see you. I want to call you again. I want to run to you. If I could I would, most definitely.

It's sad that both of us have to put up quite the fight just so that things stay the same.

SUNDAY

Some people liked to say that I was too young to fall in love, like they lived to not believe in me and to put me down. They told me that if my brain wasn't fully developed yet and if I was still growing up, that I wasn't at the capacity to love someone yet. They made it sound like I wasn't good enough for it until I turned a certain age, as if every single person on this earth matures exactly the same.

And for a short bit, I listened to them. I bet they felt on top of the world playing around like that, but I resented them five times as much than the period I fell victim to their schemes. Who are they to take their miserable life out on somebody else? To say what's going on inside me?

I couldn't put up with that for too long. Sure, maybe sometimes they mean well. They're trying to warn me, but if I never acted on my feelings then I'm going to feel regret for what I never knew, and now that I know what it's like, I'm glad that I didn't let them tell me how to feel.

What I've been feeling is real. I learned with certainty that after all the years my life has been incomplete, that I was missing you.

I can be happy that I tried to make something of us, and I can be happy that I have hope for what's coming. I can be happy that our past was made up of such solid building blocks.

Do you remember those mini chit chats we used to have? I always loved to ask you what you did when I was away. It was a casual, not deep type of question whatsoever, since we spent a lot of our relationship long distance, and were able to talk about it for hours into the night.

Sometimes you said that you'd lay back in your bed when you had the time and zone out into your own corner so much that everything around you became background noise. You'd have made up scenarios about what we would be doing if we were together, laughing and teasing possibly, and you'd look back at the pictures we've already taken together.

Once you mentioned that you swear every time you do it it starts raining and you feel like you're in a music video.

And on a more typical note, but that we turned into something that felt special for us, sometimes you'd pull out the jacket I gave you and put it on. You've said that it makes you feel closer to me. Like we're not on different islands at all. Like you can smell me on you.

I always laughed when I heard that. I found it cute that you'd do something like that, but I found it funny too. That jacket was the same one that I had to yank the strings out of after it wouldn't work with me. It'd the one with a zipper that gets stuck going halfway up, and the one someone spilt wine on my pockets when I was at a party, but it's the one that you chose.

I don't think I'll ever understand why. You talked about this "logic" that you did that because if it's the most worn down one, it means it was my favorite and that maybe, just maybe, even if the chances are slim, I'll get up and cross the ocean to ask for it back, and you'd get to see me.

I don't think you even know yourself. You know darn well that if I had the chance to see you it would be solely for you. Not for some silly jacket that you look better in than I do.

And as I lay here thinking about all of that, I start to wonder if you're doing those things right now, and I grow fearful. Fearful because it's not for certain that I can keep your love and your kisses. Fearful because I can sacrifice everything for you and do the most good that I can, and still end up here like this.

I've asked this before, but I'll ask if again. Is it alright, darling, if I'm afraid?

MONDAY

"I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired". My dad used to say that a lot, when he was at home, at least. You've probably been around to hear it once or twice too. As ironic as it sounds, I'm starting to get what he meant, maybe more than he does when he says it himself, and I don't know what to do with that information.

I want to wake up. I want to see the end of this darkness, but I'm not seeing it. I can't see the end or the beginning. Everything, big or little is blurring into one big chaotic mess of uncooperative confusion and it increases as time continues to pass on without permission.

I feel beaten down and overworked over nothing and I can't cope. I just miss you, miss you again and miss you some more and it's not that that's a bad thing. It's exactly what I would be doing if I were awake, but for the fire in this that's keeping us separated, I don't know what to think.

How good it would feel to feel you on my lips again. It's how I always felt when you were away. I'd long and crave for you after my morning tea and after sleepless nights. I'd think about you at lunch and at dinner.

A constant thought. A thought that never left.

I stare at objects that would be useless to anyone else but that I love because it was proof you were around. How you'd move the notebook on my counter a few inches to the right and slip in sweet notes between books in my bookshelf; they were nights I should hardly remember.

Love really is in the little things and it's those mini moments that I got attached to. That I couldn't imagine giving up.

I get fed up over a lot of things. I get tired of people, of games, of old movies and of leftovers, but I'd never get fed up over you. Never.

I would be doing all those things right now if I could. Even though I don't have morning coffee and I don't pull all nighters and I'm not finding your cutesy but cringey notes in my bookshelf these days, my mindset hasn't changed. You hold a spotlight there. You're forever center stage and I'm there in the front-row, whatever comes along.

But I am sick and I am tired. There are differences now and there's no escaping that. It's the way it is and I can't help but to be concerned over what's going to become of it, what's going to become of me. There's too many things that jump up into my head and it takes advantage of me. Terribly.

Nothing makes sense about this.

I need you. I really do. In fact, I think if I get out of this I can easily say it was thanks to you, but I also know that it would hurt me so bad if you had to see me like this because I know that it will hurt you. I almost want to hate loving you and I almost want you to hate loving me, just so we could avoid that confrontation. Just so you'd get through it smoother. So the fall isn't as hard.

And so I tell myself that setting you free would be the best thing to do. That I should just burn the bridge between us and let distance come in like it's trying so hard to go on about and prevent you from missing someone who maybe doesn't have to be missed. Someone who isn't worth the pain.

But then I remember how I fought for you because I knew that there were so many people in this world who didn't deserve you and I didn't want you to end up in the wrong hands. I stepped up to be someone that you deserved and it would be agony to comprehend the possibility that you lose your confidence and allow someone in who doesn't measure up to your standards.

I have to decide my own thoughts. I have to decide by myself to stop looking back at memories and be more determined for a future. I have to let myself have feelings to that I can continue going forward.

If there's no feelings, there's no direction, and with no direction there's no purpose.

You've been all of those things to me.

Forgive me if I made the wrong decision.

Forgive me for hurting you.

Forgive me if I'm being selfish.

TUESDAY

I've had a nightmare like this once or twice, but you were in my spot, whispering to death, only a few stands of hair away from it. I woke up in a cold sweat and an insane tremble, and I reached out to you to make sure you were okay. It was 2 am, and you answered my message instantly.

The whole ordeal turned into a "what are you doing up?" against "I can ask you the same question" type of thing, to end up concluded to be both of us coming up with fake scenarios in our heads and struggling to figure out what to do with that fiction late into the night. Our bodies were tired, but our minds were wide awake, high on a caffeine boost our bones missed jumping onto.

What I must say though, is the make-believe isn't totally worthless. It might not be real, but as the books and the movies do, it does, or it at least should teach us a lesson. That dream within my mind wasn't an exception to the rule either. It told me a lot about me and about you. About the two of us.

I don't know exactly how you're doing right now. I can't be for sure because I've hardly been able to hear your voice and I haven't seen you in what feels like forever, but I have this sense that you're taking it a lot better than I would if I were in your shoes and I can't say that's a surprise.

It's not that you don't miss me or that you don't care about me. I know that you do, but between the two of us, you've always been the stronger one. You'd feel at intense levels, but you'd pick yourself up, and at least try to get through life. You gave your all in everything you did. You put passion in every act.

I'm not as graceful and dignified as you are. In my imagination, that kind of emptiness took me to a stinging rant with a bartender with requests of too many shots on the side. In reality, I don't think I'd take myself there, but feeling that at even the tiniest degree, I honestly don't know where I would've ended up if it happened to me.

Drunk and out of my mind, I had spent that made-up dream curled up in a ball mourning you, trying to drown it all out with music too loud to the neighbors. I told myself sugar coated lies, as if tomorrow would be better when I knew very well it couldn't be and I had failed attempt after failed attempt to make myself feel better.

Of course losing you wouldn't be simple. I'd feel that space the world loved you taking up go away. I'd feel instantly that it wasn't there, no longer in use and I don't think I'd ever get over that. I don't think anybody ever does.

Honestly, how could anyone? When you've got your heart set on someone and they reach the end of their life, there's nothing else in this wicked world that would hurt more than that. That sticks, and when it does it shows the cruel side that love has. Ending naturally or in a disloyal way, it always, always ends.

We wait and we wait for that person. For the one that is perfect for us, and then a day comes that they don't come home anymore. If for us that's coming up sooner or later, we know darn well that it'll happen.

And we try not to think about it. We tell ourselves we don't care about what comes in the future as long as we live for the now, but that's because we can still walk away from it. There comes a time eventually that we can't anymore. At least one of us has to move on without the other or hold onto something that'll never return to them.

It's better that it's me that might have to go. You have so much to live for, but I know that that pain might be worse than dying itself. I'm sorry you have to go through any of this.

Neither of us should've ended up like this.