The Hardest Farewell

SUNDAY

Seriously though, I genuinely think I would feel a lot better about bidding farewells if you came to realize just how incredible and spectacular you are. Of course, as the person who was lucky to call you mine, it was my job to make you feel beautiful both inside and out, but it was more than just a job or a duty to me. I didn't do that for relationship points or to get kudos from the people we walked by on the streets. That never mattered. Other people were never important when it came down to the two of us.

I did everything I could to make sure you saw your worth because you deserved it, and that's how you were meant to live your life. Confident and with your head up every step you took. There were improvements definitely. I noticed them. I saw how you became more comfortable in your own skin and I was part of your journey to love yourself, but I could tell even so that you never saw yourself in the way that I look at you. The way that many people looked at you, actually when we went out in public on cutesy, maybe even cringe-y dates.

I couldn't hate them either. I mean, how could someone not do a double take when it came to you? Have you actually truly one hundred and one percent, seen you? Saying you're a goddess or an angel isn't enough. There is no word in language that will ever be enough, and I'm not the kind to say that lightly. I'm an honest person especially when it comes to serious things like this, and you, my love, are much too good for this world. How could you walk upon it not knowing it yourself? You've made people go crazy and you can blink at it like it didn't happen?

See yourself once and everlastingly from my view. You were the one beautiful regardless, yet a person who looked especially stunning in red, and I don't know if that color somehow learned how to talk or if the way you walked when you wore it made you seem to be gracefully floating, but it made those meant to be the regular passerby develop hungry, hungry and likely bitter, sour and jealous hearts. They fell into the abyss of your bold and wicked glares, and the ring of Saturn atop your head. Both innocent and evil, but mostly captivating, an irresistible concoction.

Your beauty -- it drove people crazy and it wasn't even your fault because you didn't have to try, and to escalate the matter, that's not the end of it either.

You had the brains too, possibly too smart for your own good. A person content with the little things --reciting poetry or song lyrics from the 50's, cheering over happy endings to fairy tales you heard a thousand times, admiring gardens as you walked the sidewalks?

Oh darling, you were the full package. You always will be, in fact.

So what got you down? What made you think that that wasn't true? Is it because the world was rude and demeaning to you? How many times have I told you that it has a bad habit of hurting the most precious of things? How many times have I said that it likes to make fun of the things that they are jealous of? How many times have you let the toxin of shallow hatred engulf you when it should've never been in your hands to begin with? How many times has it tried to get rid of you, and burn you up into ash? How many times did it try to make the worst of you, fueling your eyes with lasers of terror? How many times did it intend to humiliate you? How many times were you forgotten instead of hugged and held close?

Are there several that I don't know about? Are there some that I missed?

Love, how many times more would I have had to reassure you of your worth so it'd be enough that you'd believe me? Once? Twice? More than that?

I don't have the time to fulfill the mission I was most eager to fulfill, but If I was close or if I was far, I hope that you realize it one day.

Cherish yourself like I've cherished you. Fill in the gap where my love will soon vanish with my last breath, with your own.

MONDAY

I'll miss you.

In a place where I can feel nothing at all, where I'll be conscience of a big fat zero, I'll still miss you, and I can't stress that enough. Somehow, in this world of mystery and unknowns, it'll happen. That's the way it's gonna be. Trust me on this one.

Come on. If you knew how much you've been showing up in my dreams these days, how many times I've written your name into the sand, how often I've carved memories of you into wet cement, how a detailed you is majestically created in the clouds, how that face stands out in the biggest of crowds -- why yes, just how permanent you are in my temporary being, it would make perfect sense. It's all the proof we need.

You're my lovely lingering shadow, but not the kind from the creepy movies that sneaks behind clear glass and leaves not a stone unturned. You're your own unique kind coated in a truthful sugar that I tend to crave regardless of my weakening condition and I think I'm allowed to say that says a lot. You're the one exception in this walls-closing-in-place that's not tearing me apart, or ruining me in uncountable smithereens.

If the sun stopped burning it'll be you still, so feeling nothing at all like I do now? That's nothing. You should know even so that I love you, despite heading straight into permanent slumber. I'll love the things you've had habit of being selfish about, the things that drove you into madness, and the things that managed for a quick second to make you forget where you came from. I'll love your downfalls and your flaws. Every furrowed eyebrow, every time you had to force yourself to bite your tongue, every terrifying stare.

I'll love you when I despise you. I'll pull it off. I have before in a way that I can't understand myself, and it's part of me now. It'll beat when my heart won't. In the water or on land, that's simply the way it is, and it doesn't get any bigger than that. Maybe some things aren't meant to be understood, but as long as I've spent my span letting you know the reality behind my rib cage, even if I won't be able to hold you and touch you like I did before, it's okay.

I'm happy with what we had, past tense, if that's the way it has to be. Besides, I can't spend what I have left in the hourglass wishing for what won't happen. What I can do is be content that I did as good as I could and feel good about myself, even a little bit. I don't want to leave on the lowest of spirits No matter how badly I long for what used to be and how badly I long for what we were, I can't do that anymore, and we're going to have to make the best of that.

So allow me to do this. I'm going to make one final request that I pray the mystery on this earth can carry to you while I'm not able to deliver it to you myself. If you get a hold of it, take it with open arms. "It's what they would've wanted". Say that to yourself when it comes to you.

Just because the unimaginable is happening doesn't mean we can't try to be prepared. We shouldn't put if off, should we? We should take it on fiercely and do this the right way, so listen to me carefully if that's possible. If I can be granted at least one last wish among the many 'lasts' I've been forsaken.

Darling, if I die tomorrow dress me up in the most dazzling article of clothing that I have -- you know the one -- so that even if I must be gone for the rest of eternity, we can at least pretend that I'm getting warmed up for a performance of a lifetime, a song and dance that will take Broadway by surprise. Color my cheeks with a bright blush and my lips with a bold red and let yourself be immersed in the false thought that we chest is still rising up and down, just to cheer yourself up while you need to. Do that until your heart doesn't feel as broken as it will at first.

Let me, in some way, live a little bit longer. I'd like that and I'd like you to get your 'one last time' that I didn't get to have. Some sort of closure would do you good, I would guess.

Then, you're well equipped. Catch up with time before it gets too far out ahead of you in the race. Don't live stuck at the second the clock struck twelve. Follow after every moment forward, and remember that you can still live fully and freely like your little soul was made to do. Remember that time isn't going to wait for you.

Remember that one day we'll see each other again. A better time in a perfect world.

It'll be fine in the end. Let's at minimum, tell ourselves that.

Let's not make it harder than it needs to be. Let's be our own hero and save ourselves from the pain that we can avoid.

TUESDAY

Don't be so tense in the days to come, baby, alright? If I could tell you to look me in the eye and promise me that you'll follow through with that, would you manage?

Please say yes. Say that'd be easy-peasy. That it's a piece of cake, not only because it's what I want, but what you want too.

There's agony and there always will be agony, but retain what you need to and what actually counts: happiness is easier to fear than we think it is. Many people are afraid of succeeding in smiles just because they feel hypocritical or undeserving of it, but we need it to survive.

We need it to survive and should not under any circumstance be starved of it.

Save yourself this way, and I'll consider myself saved too. Do it out of love, considering that it is love that we do best. Embrace that while it's the last thing we have left and grip onto it the way you should've a long time ago!

You know I make sense. You know exactly what I'd be rambling on about if I had the energy, and you know that I'm right. Probably more correct than I'll ever be. Whole heartedly, over every word that has previously escaped my lips, I stand by this the very most.

Haven't you ever sat and thought about how wonderful life would be if we weren't trying to be so marvelous all the time? Don't you think it would be nicer if we didn't care what other people thought? If we lived simply and only for us?

If you lived simply and only for you?

Life would be far better if we didn't think about every individual word we must use to tell our story. We would avoid so many misunderstandings and tiresome drama if we just laid ourselves down, raw before the world. I think, honestly, we'd be happier if we expressed our thoughts and feelings from the start.

That needs to be normalized. Think about it, my love. Think about how much good has been in the world, even before you met me -- maybe the things that you didn't notice before, but that you've learned to appreciate now, and fall in love with them all over again, the way you fell in love with me.

Look up at the sun when it's rising and when it's setting, or possibly when it shines above you overhead on a long scenic drive with that sweet but hype playlist you tend to go back to. What do you see? A pretty picture moment? Or an elegant beauty that we're given to appreciate every single day?

Of course, it's the captivating beauty. The same type of beauty you should see when you look in the mirror and study your reflection.

And dance, babe. Dance with the melody in the wind along with the trees, and don't look aside. Don't fear the eyes that glance upon you. Dance to feel the music you can find in anything, anywhere and at anytime and let it take you. Let it help you dig for what can fill the gaping emptiness.

Be good to others. Treat them kindly. Not because someone told you to or because it makes you look sweet online and not because you fear someone is watching your every move and expecting perfection out of you. Be good because that's who you are. Don't forget how kindness has always been apart of you and how stunning it is when you wear it.

Someday, sooner rather than later, let happiness come back around for you again. Let it be as part of you as much as your bones that carry you and the veins that pass life across your body.

Let it be part of your soul forever.

That's where I'll find home and that's where I'll stay from here on.

Always with you, even if in disguise.

WEDNESDAY

I wanna marry you. I've always known I would marry you someday, and spare me an extra month or so, we would've had the date that we'd be celebrating every single year marked on our calendars. It's not like we would need it written down, since we'll have it up in our minds just fine, but even hypothetically, it looks good written up there, huh? We'd be on our way to growing old together. No questions asked.

I should've been able to come to you at the street corner we met at for the first time, careless about the hustling and bustling going on around us because I'd have your mesmerizing-as-ever starlight eyes, and I'd tell you everything I want to tell you, from the heart.

No, I wouldn't write it down. I can't exactly tell you what I would say at this instant because I don't really know either, but it would come to me when it needed to. You'd draw it out of me.

Maybe I'd break down crying before you did and I don't think I'd be ashamed about it. There's no reason to be. After all, if someone was able to win somebody like you, isn't it expected that they get at least a little bit emotional? Shouldn't a few tears be shed?

Sometimes vulnerability is the proof that you care. You're the one who told me that, and you've never been more right. With the proper time, it would've been that vulnerability that would've brought us to wedding bells with beautiful white fabrics, flowers and a cake that takes our breath away. I wouldn't dare to deny that as the truth.

And you like to say I don't listen. That I get in weird dazed-out moods too often, but I know you better than anybody else, don't I? I'll always have an ear out for you. Where do you think I would've ended up now if I didn't? I don't think it'd be a very pretty picture. I probably wouldn't have been able to make it as far as I have. I've needed your 'I told you so's to keep me on track.

Honestly, do you think I could've lived without them? You saw how much of a mess I used to be. You saw what I was able to become and how I learned to wish and to dream -- all the things I wouldn't have been able to do without to you.

But it looks like I'm not going to make it that far. We're going to have to settle on a back-up plan that won't feel like a back-up plan in the least, and we're going to have to make the most of it. More truthfully, you're going to have to make the most of it on your own. That is, if I'm not going to be able to be around.

I'll tell you what. I can't imagine what you're going to have to go through and what exactly upcoming events you're going to face, but I hope it's not wrong of me to assume that it's not going to get any easier in the nearer future. A part of you, as evil as it might feel, is going to have to resent me at least a little bit, right? And I think you should allow yourself to do that. Don't hate yourself for doing that. I had it coming.

You'd reject the idea once you heard about it, but if you look at it the way I am, you wouldn't. Instead of a wedding and our marriage, you're going to visit my home to support my parents and my sister, and you're going to see the mess that was my life, yet without me in it.

You'd see the books I bought online in the middle of the night, even when I knew darn well I didn't have the shelf space for stacked up on my window sill. You'd see pieces of paper that I printed out for the heck of it or that I used to jot down things I thought up right smack in the middle of my sleep that wasn't readable when I woke up the next morning. The pens and the stamps that I started to collect when I needed and then didn't need them for my work, and the CDs that started to stack up because I couldn't hold back on buying them when you told me you liked certain songs.

You'd see what you would initially think was between either a robbery or a person living a trashy lifestyle, but when you take a closer look was me trying scrap-booking to hold the life we had together as a gift to you before we took on our next chapter. Our faces are on Polaroids cluttered across the floor, the desks, and the chairs -- the sight of a beginner that thought it was a lot easier than it actually was.

You'd see the yellow crossover bag that I bought you and that I was waiting for the right time to give you with a stupid, stupid but pretty hilarious note left inside. It'd be just left to the broken cassette player my father left for me, that I've never let anyone lay a finger on besides you, since he was always at work, and the nearly string-less guitar that I couldn't get myself to get rid of because it's the same one I played when I idiotically did harana at your porch.

And it'll hit you all at once. Every piece will somehow speak to you in it's own way, and in every direction you look that was originally a big pile of mess and garbage at first glance, it will become randomly orderly and understandable. So, you'll sit there and take it in. You'll realize just how much of a mess I was and that somehow you managed to love me.

You'll realize that the chaos wasn't something you put up with. It was part of me that you loved as much as you loved the rest of me.

But still, you'd have to say goodbye and the sight of that terrifies me more than anything else ever has.

How do I begin to apologize? I've mentioned it before, but I'm yet to understand how.