Perfect, Beautiful, Popular, Romeo, Pretty Boy and Clumsy

Mister Perfect,

You're officially gone as of today. I've seen all the evidence I need to believe that, and yet I still can't manage to accept it. Funny, isn't it? That sometimes the brain's desire and wishes try to make an illusion out of the truth.

"You were here yesterday", I'd say to myself. "Even just a second ago, you were still here".

Then how could you possibly be gone the next moment that time slips from our fingertips? That can't actually be true, can it? That can't actually be reality?

It can, apparently. I thought I knew that. Really. I thought I did, but not like this, I didn't.

Not when it comes to you.

You were special to me. You still are, and I'm certain that nothing is going to change that for as long as the earth holds down my ankles. For as long as I don't sink, nor float.

I'm worried that I didn't show that to you. I didn't prove to you that I cared about you in the few times I got to breathe your air and feel your presence. I took our moments together for granted, as scarce as those times were, believing too much in a next time.

A next time where I magically wasn't shy anymore, and could show you me in my entirety. As well as we know each other already, I wanted a next time where our bond was full of bright colors, daisies, burning fire and happy hearts.

But I must not have wanted it enough. I didn't overcome my biggest fears. I didn't climb mountains or swim oceans to get that from you. I just let the way things were be.

Why did I think so hard about next time? Why didn't I live in the moment? Why did I conceal my lively beating beneath my chest?

I'm sorry. That's the most I can say now, if I can say anything at all, but whatever I say or whatever I think, you're much too far away to hear it. You're asleep now, peacefully, and that means that I have to be patient.

I will be. I promise. I'll wait until the Paradise that God will give to us, when the world sits back in his power where it belongs, and when it won't have it's wicked ways it has now. I'll see you again then. I know that for sure.

But in the mean time, as I grieve, mourn, and suffer drowning in memories that can only remain memories for a very very long time, I'm somehow going to hold you closer than I ever have. I'll never keep my distance again.

That was my mistake. A big one that I'll regret, and that's why I'm going to manage remembering what we had, even if it hurts.

It's worth it. More than anything.

So let's start from the very beginning.

Let's remember why we ended up the way that we were. Every last detail.

Allow me to cherish it all.

Allow me to ponder.

- C.L.

-

Mister Beautiful,

I wonder about what it would be like if I could sit across from you right now. I wonder what we would talk about. I wonder what you would say to me if I asked if you remember when we first met.

Do you remember when we first met? Have you ever thought about it? Looked back on it, maybe?

Well, I have. Most certainly, and several times at that, now more than ever. More than every blade of grass growing across this globe, every drop in the sea, every strand of hair on my head and every twinkling star.

I've thought about you so many times, it simply cannot be counted. I don't think you know that.

But I can prove it.

We met on a sunny day surrounded by the very nature of green. I blended in with everyone else even in a place foreign to what I was used to, because I was hidden away in dark clothes that everybody wore. I didn't stand out. I never could if I tried. I'm as average as a person can get.

You on the other hand, could never blend in. You were too flawless for that. Absolutely every person in sight had to look at you at least once, and people in their right minds looked at you two, three or four times, that is, unless they didn't have any shame in just staring on and on and on.

Who could blame them? You're a Greek God.

Yet I wasn't that type. I'm shy. Too shy, but it'd be a lie to say I didn't look, and to make matters worse, I wasn't supposed to. I had someone to be infatuated with and to be in awe over. We were official. As official as official gets, and she was there. Right next to me. I know, that makes me a bad person.

I didn't love her though, and she didn't love me either. I know she didn't. She used my generosity to her advantage, then cheated on me again and again, and still, I wanted to do everything I could to make her a good person. I thought I could help, and I prioritized being a person she could look up to, that I put our potential at risk. Worst of all, in the end she didn't change. She's still the same. As reckless as she's always been.

I did it for nothing, and boy, did I lose everything. Or it felt like everything, but as of the present, it seems there's much further than rock bottom. Was I so wrong to jeopardize us even with the circumstances?

I don't know. I'll never know, but I'm not here to give excuses. I'd understand if the entire world was against me. After all, I made a choice and I have to suffer it's consequences. That's what broke us if there was chance to begin with. It's entirely my fault and there's no one else to blame, but I can't change it. I can't turn back time.

Trust me, if I could, you'd be back with us already. You'd be awake and walking.

Would you forgive me? Would you forgive me if you could?

In the first trance that I fell in your eyes, I like to tell myself that you would. There was one second that you looked at me. It was brief, and subsided much too rapidly, and I don't think that you thought anything of it, but it was miraculous. Totally out of this world.

And in that snippet of time I could only think of one thing.

What will it take for you to notice me?

Like really notice me?

Truly notice me.

- C.L

-

Mister Popular,

There's a thought that's never sat well with me, and it's that a person can cry so hard their entire body shakes, their muscles ache, and they start pulling out their own hair only for the next day to move on completely fine like nothing ever happened.

They're back to going hiking up in the tippity tops of the hills, baking cakes, having parties, or whatever the heck else there is, but if such an idea has ever sat well with me at even 1% before, I want to puke it all up now. I cannot deal with it. Not at all. It makes me dizzy.

It's hypocritical, if you ask me.

That's what happened at your funeral. Is that how every funeral is? Why haven't I noticed it before? I've attended more funerals than weddings in my lifetime, sad to say, but I've never felt this offended that other people move on when others hurt everlastingly.

If anyone's like me, I've offended so many people in my lifetime without realizing.

We've always lived so far away from each other and I couldn't make it in person, so I watched it via video conferencing. Every page there would be another 25 people crying for you after you passed. They were in mighty distress, it wasn't a question. Would you have thought you'd have over 800 people crying for your vanishing?

And as strange as it is, I didn't. I didn't shed a single tear. Not when people could see me at least, but when it was done and over with, I drowned myself to sleep, with a desire toward God to bring back the dead. That's what I was doing when the others were updating their Facebook accounts, and when they were looking for new events or beauties for their blog posts, I couldn't get myself out of bed the next morning, not even to brush my teeth.

Tell me, who would you say is more affected by your loss? I mean, maybe it's none of us. Maybe we're all devastated. Isn't that what they say? We all grieve in our own ways?

I still like to say it's me.

I guess I bottled everything up inside for too long. I bottled it so tightly that eventually I couldn't tell the difference between empty or heavy in the base of my heart. All my life I thought those words meant almost opposite things.

If something is empty it can't be heavy, can it? But somehow, that's the feeling I carry, right in the center of my chest, and I can tell by instinct that it's not going to go away. These type of wounds leave marks.

And my instincts are always right.

My instinct also told me that the tears of your new girlfriend were genuine. Your relationship was pure, gorgeous and real, I don't think anyone could top it. It was so unlike mine, that it was this big slap in the face for me of what I was late for; what I missed out on. How I should have fought harder for you whole I had the freedom to. When you were still single, and of course, as bluntly as this will come out, alive.

I knew once it began that I'd be jealous of it, -- everyone was to be honest -- because of how movie-screen the two of you became. You would've hated to see her crying like that. A sweet man like you wouldn't be able to handle seeing it.

Honestly though, I'm so glad you two were happy for the year you were together. I'd rather be jealous of your flawless relationship than watch her mourn your death or have to mourn it myself.

Please come back.

Please come back now.

-C.L.

-

Mister Romeo,

We should talk about something happy and lighthearted this time. It's overdue.

Did you know that the second time I met you, I purposely prepared to look as good as I possibly could beforehand? Not to woo you. I'm not that kind of person. Just to catch your attention for an additional two seconds.

Literally. That's all I wanted.

I read you as the type of person who likes someone simple. Someone who didn't try super hard to find another by the way they acted, or by the power of make-up. I don't know what told me that. I just assumed, and somehow I was right. I guessed it simply by the way you walked, talked, and presented yourself. Then, I used that lucky guess to my advantage.

I adorned myself in no kind of jewelry or any sort of hairstyle, and the clothing wasn't tight to my shape, but modest and basic. The one thing I did do? I wore bright orange. Instead of blending in with everyone else, I wanted to stand out. If you weren't going to notice me because of the normal, far-from-outstanding face I happen to have, then I was going to use color.

It's science. I don't know if it worked or not, but that doesn't change that it's science.

We ended up out on different roads, with different things to take care of, and inside, I was sulking because I was feeling hopeless. You know that feeling when you wear an outfit for someone and then you don't see them? It was that. It was the meme that floats around Twitter. That was my emotion.

But we met back at our checkpoint at the end of the day, and I saw you again. You were laughing with some other dudes who I've already introduced myself to through past conversation, and you had this habit of looking to the side when you did that.

When you'd double over laughing, you'd lean over to the side, to face another direction than whoever made you laugh. I never knew why. It could be because you didn't want them making you laugh harder. It'd hurt your stomach.

Anyway, I happened to be standing there, and you looked at me. You really looked at me. Not my clothing, but me, and I watched as that wide smile faded into it's resting phase, and you continued to look at me, like you didn't dislike what you saw.

I was surprised. Enough that it showed up on my expression, but what shocked me more than anything else wasn't how the innocence radiating off of your eyes made the sun look dull, or how the beauty you trapped behind your lips teased me to see your cute teeth one more time.

I was shocked because you blushed, and when someone like you blushes when looking at someone like me, I can't help but to do the same thing, and just like that there we were, standing there like idiots, without a word to say, but speaking by the redness in our cheeks.

I knew right then I needed you.

I needed to break free from the chains that binded me.

I needed to be with you because you weren't only meant to be my person.

You were my breath.

And now that you're gone I don't think I can breathe.

-C.L

-

Mister Pretty Boy,

Has it ever gotten to you how different everyone's lives are? How we come to appreciate dates within the year that everyone else despises, and vice versa?

It hasn't occurred to me this much until I heard the bad news about you. On the day that you died, I had three distant friends and relatives that got married.

Married, for heavens sake!

And I'm not saying I don't wish them the best. I just know that each of them are going to have long, happy, successful relationships. Every year when that day passes, they're going to look back at where their new chapter came along and they flipped through the pages of their dreams. They're going to celebrate it too. That could be for fifty, sixty years, or maybe more, couldn't it? But me? I'm going to look back on that day and I'm going to hate everything all over again.

I'm going to reach for a page that is no longer there; a chapter done and away with, soiled in mud and smeared of it's ink. I'm going to be looking at a story that we wanted to make, but that we never had the chance to. I'm going to despise what my life has become because I didn't get to finish at least one chapter with you in it.

All I have are "what ifs" and "if onlys".

Like I say to myself again and again, "if only I had one more day with you" but I know deep inside that that one day isn't going to satisfy me. If I had one more day with you, and yet this had to happen, I'd still ask for another.

And another. And another.

There's no explanation for that besides this is unfair. You shouldn't have went yet. You didn't deserve that. You were made for great things and you were putting so many of them to action already, but I know that that wasn't the end of it.

Not yet.

You're far more capable of what you've been able to show. All you needed was time. I know that. I've always believed in you, and yet the Devil had to arrive and he decided that time isn't something you get to have, as proud as God was of you and how much he used you in his service. He's still proud of you, listed in his Book of Life for the future holds.

Yet how messed up can the current world get? I already thought it was bad as it was. I knew it was. That's prophecy. We expect for this to end up this terrible before it gets better.

But you? Why you? Am I supposed to understand that? Even if I let go and accept that all you can be from now on are memories, am I supposed to really understand?

Maybe I'm not. Maybe it doesn't matter.

But I don't know.

That's why I'm just sitting here like some sort of blank canvas. I was fully painted with every color of the rainbow at one point, and I thought that you were just one color of contribution to the painting that became me. Yet now that you disappear, it's as if you were every shade of color that the paintbrush beautified me into.

I don't think I know who I am anymore and I don't think I will for a very long time.

You ended up meaning more to me than I thought. I never knew I could think up that sentence, with "that sucks" coming immediately after, but I did. I still do. I'm sorry that I say that, but I don't know how to cope. Our paths only crossed briefly. Am I insane to care this much?

I mean, they do say that in a book every character has a purpose. I cherish every moment that I had with you too.

But what exactly was I meant to learn from you?

Because the only thing I can imagine is how much I long for Paradise.

-C.L.

-

Mister Clumsy,

One thing that I always admired about you is how close you were with not just your circle of friends, but anyone that you met that needed that extra 'feel-included'. You're more on the shy side than the outgoing, and I could tell it took a lot out of you to make that kind of effort, but you prioritized others comfort over your own.

I was the outcast when we first crossed paths. At least, that's how I felt. Before we had the chance to properly introduce ourselves, I was showered with attention, actually, but no matter how much people talked to me or welcomed me, I didn't truly feel to belong. They treated me that way because I wasn't usually there. I was this unknown variable people were trying to figure out, but everyone else was close, tightly bonded it's as if they've been sown together. The opposite of me.

New. Awkward. Quiet. Unapproachable. That's the way I've always been. I guess it comes with the package of an online student through middle and beginning of high school. It was a natural asset of mine, and nearly no one had the power to crack me.

And you didn't necessarily either. Not at first, at least.

You weren't like your friends. They were more 'out there' than you were, and that's not a bad thing. I liked that, to be honest. I felt more comfortable with you than the others because I thought you'd do better at understanding me. I thought if anyone was going to make me feel part of you guys, it was going to be you.

I probably made this up, but I think you tried too. When there were so many of us circled up at the beach playing silly games that reminded me of elementary school, I caught a few glances of yours. I read them as the type that you had to gather up courage before we could talk. I do the same thing to people I don't know very well, so I didn't pressure you, and yet that night ended and nothing.

I didn't hear one peep out of you. Not one that was directed at me.

We gathered at the same place the next afternoon if I remember right. It was loud, not of music, but of laughter. You and your friends always had something to laugh about, and I guess in your laughter, you get a little careless. Or maybe stupid, in a good way.

I wouldn't judge a boy like you, you know, but that doesn't change that something caused you to be a little ditzy.

You cut your foot walking in the sand. I still don't know what on, if it were a stick, a piece of glass, some crab decided to bite you, you got stung by a jellyfish -- I have no idea what the heck happened, but whatever it was, it happened.

I still don't know if you did this on purpose just to stir up some chaos, or if you genuinely didn't pay attention to where you were walking, but what I do know is you bled quite a lot, and you were clobbered with attention to bandage your wound. The problem was that there was nothing to use to stop it.

Everyone murmured, panicked, searched the area, through their belongings, through the very existence of mother nature for crying out loud, and eventually eyes stumbled upon me.

As someone body conscious, I was wearing two shirts. One just happened to be the slightest bit see-through and I wouldn't stand for that, even if I was at the beach, but at once, I had to. It got yanked off of me. It pissed off my girlfriend too, that it happened like it did because according to her, I should never show myself that way.

Did you know I was basically stripped of my clothes for my undershirt to stop your foot from bleeding out? Would you even remember that if I brought it up?

Maybe not, because if I remember right, you refused it, out of seeing me act weirdly to cover myself up, and that's preferably forgotten, no? It's not like there was anything to see.

As embarrassing as it was to this day (I look back at it and still cringe) there's something that good that came out of it.

You introduced yourself, and I returned it with my own.

From then on I could never forget your name.

You hated it.

I'll always think it's perfect.

The perfect name for a perfect person.

A perfect person that acknowledged me.

The mega-start to a perfect story.

A perfect story gone wrong.

-C.L