Do you really think I can remember you for good? I think I can’t and I hope you won’t. Remembering is venom. It doesn’t make thing more precious, it doesn’t make it more valuable. On the contrary, it makes everything simple. At the end of the day, everything will be reduced to a mere memory, void and hollow. So, I ever asked you are you going to forgo your hatred and cherish your happiness that was right in front of your eyes. And your answer didn’t disappoint me.
Needless to say, the day you said yes to me, was the second happiest day I have ever had in my life. What’s the first? Forgive me for keeping this little secret to myself for a while. Born to a middle-class family, you were once a very blessed child. Being the eldest, everyone, more or less, had a crave for something that you might give in the future. Doubtless, your future was very promising and you indeed was a very smart girl, a prodigy, everyone might say. That’s what everyone commented after seeing you skillfully rebuked every mischievous trivial question asked by the adults.
I don’t think you were not very prepared for the sudden departure of your father the day you turned 10 years old. On a fateful and yet blissful day, you lost your father to leukemia after wrestling time with God for more than 15 months. Did you cry? I still waited for the answer of this question. But judge from your gaze which is illuminated by fire of perseverance, I guess you never shed any additional tear except the first few mourning tears.
Although I always tell you it’s unhealthy to keep too much secret, you still choose to remain silent sometime. I remember (bad habit) there’s one time I try to convince you that secret can corrode a person’s mind with an article I read from American Scientists. As always, you smiled politely but I knew skepticism was gnawing under your resplendent smile.
From your smile, I learned two things. Firstly, you don’t believe in me. Secondly, you don’t believe in love. My thumb-printed Oxford defines love as affection, fondness, a warm and tender feeling. Before I met you, my staunch belief in this definition had not been wobbled and challenged. You are the one who forces me to forsake this understated and undervalued definition. There’s no greater definition than my metamorphosis. We often hear people exclaiming how they manipulate love and boasting how love changes everything. How innocent they are! Love doesn’t just change everything. As a matter of fact, it changes itself.
A simple definition, can be altered anytime under different circumstances. While I was undergoing my rapid evolution and metamorphosis, you chose not to believe in shifting tectonics of love. For you, the love died 9 years ago with your father, buried, forgotten and left to decay. Realizing this saddens me even more than getting know the reason of your skepticism in me. Maybe I was not good enough, maybe I was not observant enough, maybe I was a jerk, maybe I was ordinary, maybe I was immature…
I was adamant in my refusal to concede. My definition of love morphed again. It’s nothing but obsession. If there’s anything I loath more than memory, it’s most probably obsession. Fortunately, you were patient enough to turn off my obsession one by one. In my little green notebook, under the possession of dominating obsession, I wrote down my little ’99 ways to touch you’. Rummaging through old magazines, jotting ferociously keywords in Google, reading avariciously Nicholas Spark, during that time, I thought I was going to wrestle you away from your father triumphantly.
If you ever ask me how it feels like living in ignorance and compulsive obsession, I will say it sucks. Now, I see everything with renewed clarity. Obsession no longer reigns my mind, compulsion no longer prevails, I guess I feel better now and my heartfelt gratitude will always go to your obstinacy. It’s your obduracy that extinguished my obsession. You let me know love doesn’t work this way and Nicholas Spark is only fiction.
I’ve long given up my route to self-destruction before you chose to tell me your secret one fine day. Did I feel indifferent? I surmised that my seeds of obsession were germinating again the moment you decided to tell me your secret. What kind of secret? Little bits of anticipation with little fragments of illusion, hope welled up in me.
We met at the same place we usually went. What differentiated routine and speciality was the optimism and euphoric I newly found. What happened next was not very well remembered. I guess this is what we call evasion.
I can’t bring myself to repeat what you said to me. Every word, every gesture, every stirring of coffee and every light tingling, they haunted me even until today. That’s the moment I wished I could say ‘To hell with you, memory’, which would most probably pull a scornful stare from you. Maybe what I needed to say was ‘don’t leave me!’ or ‘you can’t leave me like that’. But, what came across my mind was ludicrous cursing.
I conclude I was not in my right mind at that time. Why I reacted so bizarrely? Perhaps not because you were leaving, not because I felt betrayed… How many ways had I tried to impress and ‘touch’ you? 98? Where’s the 99th? No, I told myself, not again. There must be a reason behind my peculiarity.
Chagrinned and mortified by my dysfunction, I barked at you, I cupped your palms desperately, like a drowning sailor. Then, I was stunned. Your smile! Same melancholic one! My last definition of love surfaced, quite fuzzy and hazy at the beginning. Slowly, a picture formed, a story drafted, a song written, a plan materialized.
From that moment, I knew this letter was going to be written, by all means. I foresaw the lucid language I would use in the future. I prophesized everything. Right now, I take out my handphone, dealing three numbers. It’s sufficient. I utter few words into the phone and all I can hear now is static.
Out of old habit, I check how Oxford defines sacrifice. Give up, offering. How pathetic is the explanation! It not only fails to expound love, not it screws up sacrifice too.
Let me tell you now, what sacrifice is and what’s love. Constant surprises, teddy bears, chicken soup and prayers, they are not love. They are offering, they are as banal as Oxford, as hollow as empty promises.
Feeling oddly contented now, I must thank you for everything you gave me, so far. Thank you for teaching me love is not equal to small gifts. Thank you for telling me that obsession hurts both parties. Thank you for enlightening me that how love works. Thank you for everything. Please don’t cry, I’m becoming insomniac because of you. Every time you weep, you suck the air out of my head, you bring the blood down to my feet, forcing me to tear myself apart.
At the end of the day, remember what I said? My Oxford’s definition of love was first disposed by your smile. It’s your smile. Live with joy and you shall be awarded with happiness although I won’t be there when you are able to smile again. Promise me, don’t look back for me, don’t stay because of me. I always stay with you, with my heart in you.
Believe in me. Oui mon amour.
p/s: Today is my happiest day in my life. Too bad, can’t enjoy for full 24 hours.
