heregoesderik:

It’s the Zygomatic bone.

It’s that part that defines my former lover’s smile. I used to pinch it, most of the time when she smiles. I even bit them I think, aside from her cute nose of course. When we lie on the bed, or even just taking a glance of her in distance, I take each smile in my heart’s pocket. I never thought that they will be the most elegant memory I would have.

It’s the zygomatic bone part that pushes the muscles to contract, and defines the most beautiful smile in the world. The most extravagant I have ever seen.

My friend opened my phone yesterday. When we took the back cover off, there it is again. A photo of her, once again that smile. And I felt like I’ve run thousands and thousands of memories again in a split second, and then there I am again, finally figuring out why I loved her in the first place. That feeling of loving her despite her imperfections. That feeling of accepting the fires of hell. And I never thought I have forgotten that feeling, not until that moment. The moment my tears met the ground, I knew my heart is still the one that loves her the most in the sea of people who claims to feel the same. The moments the tears crushed against the ground, I knew I just heard the loudest thunder to travel to the end of the universe, against the light waves and black holes. 

And I know I’ll just have to go on. I don’t know whether she despises me or not, but at the moment I only cared about what I feel for her. But I had to keep walking, watching people rain laughter beneath the brightest sky. I had to keep moving, because the world will leave me behind if I won’t. Even if I want to go back, I knew I had to wait for the moment I meet that path again. Though sad, because I can already count the days she’ll be in my memories’ favorite display. Let her strike pain again, please, just so I would feel again how much I love her. But truth be told, that’s not how it’s supposed to be. 

I guess I will always keep that smile in a locket. I guess I’ll just have to treasure the moments I badly accepted and loved her. Just so, they won’t run to waste. Closing time, let the curtains roll.

I wanted to write the ending, but I guess I’ll leave it to you, kids =) I’m sorry if it’s too ambiguous, but that’s exactly how I wanted it to be.  It’s always fun to figure things out, yes?

Rock:

He stands as if the world is his stepping stone. The words that come out from him: fearless. He never really cared. About anything. Absolutely nothing, but his own ambitions.

In history, nothing is really permanent, only sometimes the will powered ambitions.

Like I said, at least to everyone, he never really cared about anyone. Yet, he manages to halfway finish his goals.

“Almost there” he always says.

The world is his stepping stone, the people around him is his world. For some, there are reasons why he only half finishes everything. Partly, these people would find comfort in the argument that he is corrupted by his own devious wants.

In an educated sense, the right will should always outweigh the ill will.

The ill will. The perfect drive to insanity, deviancy.

Love. Love is deviant and insane.

But what does he really want? Love? Or only the half substance of it that we call..

Lust?

Paper:

Anything can be written on him. Basically everything that the mind and heart desires to draw. Anything that lingers in the imagination. A simple piece of thing, yet a universal need to all.

Perfectly, a slate clean. Ambitiously, anything can be.

This is him.

She found her sanity in him. The sanctuary she long wanted to find. After the tiring chase, she layed and wanted forever to proceed.

“I love you” she confessed.

Paper as he is, he let things come to shape.

And in the shape, he found himself defined.

“Not at all to be everything again” he said.

Defined, and shaped. Like a liquid incapable of reshaping. For who he is now, will be him forever.

He loved her. With all that he can. She found it assuring.

Or perhaps, she found this too assuring. Too trustworthy to…

Scissors:

She wanted to see everything. She wanted the impossible. But sometimes there is really no knowing if something possesses the infamous impossibility for prize.

The chase to the impossible gives no end but weariness itself. It is the horizon’s pride: an endless road.

She dances like a goddess of the stars. Her eyes and smile are constellations. Her love.. is a supernova.

She is the last triumvirate.

With her, the story is complete.

It’s in your embrace that I find love.

And when you look at me, gravity finds its place, as the universe starts to center on only you and I.

We never had to hide, because when you hold my hand, the world seems like ours to take.

I am yours to take.

But I like you more under the cotton sheets beneath the heaven’s aurora, when your kisses are at their sweetest.

And your soft lips whisper the words I long to hear, words that could never be said by someone else.

By no one else.

No one else, as incomparable as you.

I would’ve believed in your sweet words, if only they were really yours.

I would’ve loved you more, if only you did the same to me.

Now you want me to look back at you again.

I would’ve.

If only you ever did.

I watched the leaves fall from the tree, the sky turn from blue to gray. I watched the moving seconds of the clock. I watched my tears fall to the ground. I watched everything fall apart.

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I have you at the tip of my memories. On the edge, ready to fall. And I wonder if you meant it when you told me you love me. And I needed you to tell me more how you’d stay in my life, through thick and thin. I wanted to show you how much I’m ready take a bullet for you, if only you weren’t miles away. And I needed you to speak, the night you sat silent as the lamp light filled us with emotions. I needed you to tell me, I needed you to speak to me, at that very time I cannot to you. And I needed to know how much you would go the distance for me, when I turn into the shadows of getting lost.

Jane, she’s as beautiful as the heavens after the rain. And in her eyes I’m completely lost.

“Your coffee’s ready, sir” my assistant says as she hands the coffee tray on my table.

I drop out of the blue. Back to where I should be again. My reality.

I travelled back in my memory to see her smiling back at me again. I close my eyes and listened to the sound of her voice that plays in my consciousness.

And I wish she could see my life here. Oh how much I wish she was here. To see me living my dream, the way the both of us wanted it to be.

The consultants I deal with every day, they walk out of my office with brand new hope. The kind of hope I am holding on to.

Insanity. We all fall for it. Whether we lose our minds in procrastination, or simply just dealing with people. We get crazy for simple things. Like how we get our socks knocked off just because our favorite football team loses in the playoffs. And yes, I deal with different people with different causes of insanity. Career, marriage, individuality, ah, tell me about it.

I look at the window, sprinkled in water drops from the rain. The wind blowing against trees. The cloud as grey as the grains of gravel. I hate the rain. I never hoped for this today when I woke up, but here it is now. And I have to deal with it. You’ll never know when life will give you lemons.

I drop a sigh. “Stacy, tell Mr. Herlingson to come in now” I say.

The door opens and a man in grey cardigan over a white long sleeved shirt walks in. Gray, I think I know what I’ll be dealing with today.

The conversation went on for a little. I asked him some information about him, his age, his likes and dislikes, and other of those kind of stuff.

“So, what can I do for you today?” I ask.

“My wife and I are married for almost 30 years now. We have two kids, one 27 and the other 23. We lived happily, we reached our dreams, our house, and we have supported our kids well. We have done almost everything we dreamt of when were just dating, and now there seem to be this feeling of-“

A deafening pause comes down. His eyes showing hints of hesitance. 

“blankness everytime I wake up every morning. As if there’s nothing left to do anymore. I have become part of a routine rather than life. I wake up, I go to work, I go home. And I look at my wife, and I ask myself who that person is. I ask myself why I spent the rest of my life with her; I ask myself how I even got to this point.“ Mr Herlingson says.

And for some reasons I can’t explain, I got reminded of Jane’s face everytime we wake up every morning. I got reminded of how she opens her eyes as she realizes she’s in my arms again. And I got reminded of her face whenever I see her again for the first time after a long day at work. And I got reminded of how I ask myself the same questions, the same whys. But unlike Mr. Herlingson, I can find myself an answer, and that is because I know I love her, I love Jane. And perhaps I cannot blame Mr. Herlingson for the dullness he feels. Time is a very complicated thing. Perhaps, he woke up one morning, like how you wake up from a sleep on a train and you wonder where you are already, all confused, all lost.

“Can you still remember the first time the both of you met, Mr. Herlingson?” I ask.

“Of course, it was summer of 1960. We met in college” Mr. Herlingson immediately answers.

“And can you still remember the way you felt everytime you see her at that time?”

“Absolutely. I remember getting nervous everytime I wait in front of her building just to see her. My friends never knew what I was up to, I just convinced them that the air is much breezy in front of that building, Jane’s college. I remember the rush of hiding whenever she walks out of the building. Then one day my friend, Levigne, noticed what I was really up to and set me up. It didn’t take long before one day she walked to another direction unlike her usual, and walked towards us instead. She sat next to the bench we’re at, and my friends started leaving. They told me they were just gonna go to the restroom, but they never came back. Then I looked at her, and caught her looking at me too, and I had no choice but to say hi. And then we talked. Until every afternoon we sit on the same bench in front of her college, until I started asking her out for dinner, until we started going out for movies every Friday night, until the night we first told each other “I love you”.” Mr. Herlingson ends.

“Well wasn’t that sweet?” I say.

Mr. Herlingson stares at the rain outside the window. My coffee’s gone cold.

We talked about how they met, and how they fell in love. As the conversation goes on, I can’t help but ask myself how I fell in love. How Jane made me fall in love. How she held my hand like no other. Like how she held on to me as if there’s no other. The night we first went out for dinner. The way she stared at me, swimming straight through my soul. And I never felt so afloat, so in love. Lost in the moment. And from that night on, I know I am finally in love. And I never believed in love, until she came. Until she showed me how to feel it. I never wanted to be with anyone else. I never wanted to take care of someone else, because from that moment on, I knew there couldn’t be anything better that this. Nothing could go wrong.

“And then, one night we had this huge fight. We argued on a lot of things that I can’t even recall what started it. There were just screams rebounding on the walls. Broken things on the floor. The crying and the shouting, they never stopped. She had to leave the apartment, and I didn’t hear from her for a week. I never wanted to, but I gathered all emotional strength I have and showed up in front of her door. I knew that my pride won’t get my love back. I came with words prepared on my head, but the moment I saw her as she opened that door, I forgot myself. I forgot the world; I forgot everything that I felt, except for the pumping feeling that I want things to be okay again. We never said a word; we just stared at each other and knew that the fight is over. It was time to start anew.” Mr. Herlingson says.

“Oh the feeling when you know you can’t live without that person, huh?” I react.

“It was that. And the thoughts you know you’re better off with her than with any other” Mr. Herlingson replies.

I look at Mr. Herlingson as he tells me stories about his wife, and I wondered if I really looked that proud and alive when I talk to people about Jane. Or did she ever look that alive when she tells her friends about me? Do her friends know more about us, other than our fights that she clearly opens up so much to her friends? Do they really know more of me than the douchebag she makes me look like in our commotions?

Mr. Herlingson goes on.

“And at that moment on I knew fights had to come in relationships. It’s not a relationship when couples don’t fight. It’s not supposed to be butterflies and rainbows always. Euphoria has to die sometimes, to bring you back to the ground again. Sometimes when things are too good, you wouldn’t know if it’s true anymore. You wouldn’t know how strong the relationship is, you wouldn’t know if she’s just staying beside you for the good times. I learned that every after a fight, the relationships gets stronger, better than ever. It’s only in the dark times when you’ll feel love at its best, when you both try to keep it alive.” adds Mr. Herlingson.

And this man in front of me knows more about love than I do. He says exactly how I feel, and defines it with words I cannot process out. Yet I seem to wonder why he is lost.

A beep sounded from the computer. Jane e-mailing me from New York. And I wonder if Mr.Herlingson ever felt the sadness I feel whenever I can’t hear the voice of my love and left with just plain words on a device. And I wonder if he misses her wife more whenever he can only hear nothing from her, but words on a paper. Knowing that she’s countries away from him, I wonder how did he, or would he ever feel when that happens. Well, in my case, I would know. It’s hard as hell. And you always feel incomplete, whenever she’s not around.

“Until that night when she caught me with a woman-” Mr. Herlingson nonchalantly dropped.

“Again, what? Mr. Herlingson?”

“Those were the days when you start asking yourself if there’s something more outside your relationship or marriage rather. When you start to ask yourself if this is all you will ever get, and you wonder how it would feel with someone else. We fell in love too young, I thought.” says Mr. Herlingson.

“So, to compensate your curiousness, you had an affair?” I asked.

“I tried. But from that very moment on, I knew nothing could be much greater than what I have. But she didn’t believe me. She trusted more on what she saw rather than listening to me. ” Mr. Herlingson adds.

“So let me guess, it was another huge fight huh?”

“It was, it went on for a month until we finally patched things up”

“Did you, ever for once doubted your wife, Mr. Herlingson?”

“It would be a lie if I’d deny, I guess. I mean, I knew I had to keep my eye on her. I didn’t know what else to do. Everyone adored her back in college, and new more came after she graduated. It was easy for her to find someone new I thought. And everyday I had to prove myself worthy of her.”

“But from your stories, it seemed like you were an attention catcher as well for the ladies back then?”

“I know, but I never paid much attention to them before. I don’t know if she ever did the same. But as for me, I had no affair ever since our relationship. That lady in the car, she was my secretary. I can never love anyone else than my wife, and she proved to me that I really cannot, even more after that incident. She showed me more how much she loves me.”

Yet, even if I know how it feels, I can’t know if it’s true. I have never loved anyone as much as I loved Jane, yet she didn’t seem to prove how much she loves me. I don’t know if it’s just me who interpreted her actions as showing of affection, or have I just blinded myself with infatuation? If it was me who got myself falling in love with her rather than Jane making me fall in love for her?  How would I know? If I seem to be just a puppet to her emotional needs?

“How would you know you’re in love, Mr. Herlingson?” I just knew I had to ask.

“It’s when she tells you she loves you, and you know deep inside it’s true. She’ll make you fall in love, you will like everything she do, and she will like everything you do, that she doesn’t even need to try. You don’t even have to tell her you love her, she’ll just know. And it had to be easy looking at her, knowing at the back of your mind that you love that person. She doesn’t even have to try, to make you feel how much she completes you. When sacrificing something for that person doesn’t matter, as long as you know she’s enough reason for you to do it, as much as the relationship is enough reason to do it. When the both of you will work out the damages, when you fight, you just won’t give up until everything is okay again. That is when you’re in love. That when you ask yourself if she’s the one you want for your life, you’ll just know.”

“Then what are you doing here now, Mr. Herlingson?” I asked. There is not much time left. 50 minutes have gone by since Mr. Herlingson stepped in my office, and I have to make the next ten minutes valuable.

“Pardon me?”

“Pretty much, the both of you have drowned yourselves in the sea of a normal life. Look, you’re in your 50s, and you’re in love, you just can’t feel that now. Like what you told me a while ago, it’s in the rough times that you’ll know the real strength of a relationship. You’re in love, I tell you. You pretty much love your wife. And I guess, the lesson in our session today is that you need to value the golden days of the past. The both of you basically have gone through a lot, and still manage to keep the love alive until now. The both of you have something the other couples are envy of. There are thousands of relationships that end in a day, and you’re lucky that you still have yours. So go home, tell your wife you love her. Take her out on a date, like the both of you used to do. Witness the sunset together, taste new things. Your relationship with her may be dry right now, but that doesn’t mean that the both of you love each other less. So go home, tell your wife you love her. And when you enter my door again this Tuesday, we’ll help you get through with that more”

Mr. Herlingson stood up with a smile on his face. The rain stopped. My computer beeps again.

The man I knew an hour ago is so much different from the man who stepped out of my office now. Enlightened, in love again. These are the kind of people that gives me happiness. These are the kind of things that holds me to the ground of life, and keep reminding me of my purpose.

There were 7 more patients after that hour, but I can’t seem to get the one I had with Mr. Herlinson.

I don’t know what love is supposed to be. I mean, it can go in different ways, depending on the couple. I don’t know what should be happening or shouldn’t be happening in a relationship. But I definitely know what I must be feeling.

I took a sip of my coffee and I get reminded of Jane the first time I saw her in the coffee shop. The first time I met her. She sat across my table. I stole glimpses, and she didn’t seem to notice, until I had the guts to ask her if I can sit next to her. I never regretted that I did. I never will, no matter what will happen in the future.

I woke up not knowing how deep I’ll get to realize things today.

I drove on the way home and I thought of how she’s miles away from me now. I wondered if we were ever that wonderful like what the Herlingsons had. I wonder if we ever felt the same for each other, or did she just entertained me because she needed someone like me. I never heard her talk about the letters I’ve written to her. And she always run away, to scared to face the fights between us.

And I wondered if she ever cared for me as much as I cared for her? Were all the things she told me just lies, to keep me hanging on to her? Just because she can’t afford to lose me?

And the words of Mr. Herlingson replays again, and again in my head. How much do I love, Jane? How much does she love me? And yes, maybe I want to know if she invested in this relationship as much as I invested almost everything in it?

And I get reminded of the nights she walked away from me, everytime she sees I’m mad. When she’d rather leave me than know how to make things okay. How much it’s always me everytime that has to do something about the problem between us. She’s a runaway; I’m the one who runs to her. And yes, I am jealous of what the Herlingsons have something I wish I had. That I cannot recall her willing to step up and make things okay, no matter how much impossible the road is. A runaway.

What would she do if by this time, I stop chasing her? What if this time, it’s my turn to turn my back on this relationship? Will she look for me in the dark confusions that cloud between the both of us? Would she even try to save me, when it’s my time to fall already?

My room is lightened by the lights from my windows. I open the ceiling lights, and I see an empty house despite of its furnitures just like how it seemed to be with the lights turned off. Just like how empty I feel right now.

I’m reminded of us running on the shore of the beach. I see us in the movies. I see us falling asleep in each other’s arms. I see us holding hands while we walk. I see me wrapping her shoulders in my arms

I open my email to find Jane’s email messages all over my inbox. This is the first time again after 5 days she’s emailed me. And I couldn’t picture how busy a journalist is at New York to not be able to find time and say hello to her boyfriend.

And I’m reminded of the rainy days we sat far apart from each other. When the silence can only hear raindrops. When it’s not smiles that’s drawn in our cheeks, but rather tears falling from our eyes. When the deafening silence kills.

I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t know when a relationship is worth saving for.  

I started picking up the pen and writing down what I feel. I tell her how I have thoughts of her on the tip of my memories. How the scenes of us is playing again and again all over my head. I drive down to insanity with the thoughts of us apart. And I tell her honestly how much she needs to keep me strong right now, now that I’m on the edge of our relationship, ready to dive out. I tell her how much I need her to tell me how it’s worth saving this relationship. Perhaps this time, it’s not mine to save. And I wrote down how much I wanted to know if she ever sees the next ten years with me, the next twenty, the next thirty, and the following years.

And then I asked myself how much more distance am I willing to take for this relationship? How much more sacrifices? Am I better off out in this relationship?

I wrote a little more how much she meant so much to me. I wrote a little more how much I was willing to sacrifice if she would have showed me she was too. I wrote a little more, a little more.

I say that’s all I wrote. As she would say the same.

I put the parchment in an envelope. A letter that could fill me with regrets. A letter to remember.  I stared at it for moments, with my eyes on the letters in my handwriting on the envelope..

“Dear Jane”

“I want you to run away from me. As far as you can, until the sight of me disappears in the horizon. Right now, I want you to tell me that you don’t care about me, so that this will all have to be painless for me. I need you to tell me that, please do as I say”

That, says the sadist. That from her, months ago.

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What do you fall in love for?

Is it because of her dazzling eyes? Is it because of the sweet touch of her skin? Her lips that softly pillows yours?

Or is it because of the book that she reads? The things that she sees? The songs that she sings? The things she believe in?

What I know is, people fall in love in different ways, for different reasons. People fall in love in different ages, in different eras of life. What I know is, that love comes in different colors, in different timing, in each and every one that lives.

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I’m not the ideal person you would want to talk to about life.

In fact, I am just normal. I buy Krispy Kreme doughnuts every morning on my way to work. And even sometimes, I consume my hot cappuccinos in front of my desktop. I wake up every morning, with the need to freshen himself up, and proceed to his daily life. This is me. I am just the normal person who wears cardigans over his t-shirt in jeans, that you see walking around the street every morning. You wouldn’t want to listen to me of course.

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The girl in blue dress. The tall brunette chick. The blonde with bright red lipstick over the bar. The chick in over the knees skirt on the dance floor.

The beat and hype of the disc jockey’s records. The sound of shouts, laughter, and mimicries.

A round table, with chips scattered, and shot glasses passed around by hands who knew have been through. Cigarettes, in menthol, red label, and lights, showing off screens of smoke in the perimeter of what seem to be a group of different personalities united in one common passion, the encircling of euphoria in the spirit of booze, smoke, and heavy coition for the night.

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 “You and I had a deal!” she snapped.

This girl, who just walked past behind me, wearing her usual uniform, was also wearing a frown on her face, as I tune my ipod’s volume down preparing for the next words from her. Or maybe I’d rather not wait for that.

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He takes on his clothes again. A few more minutes I know I’ll be left alone once again in this empty room. Where debris from a night to remember lingers, and are scattered around the room. Crumpled bed sheets, glasses of wine, they are the usual scene every time he leaves. Always, early in the morning, before even truck drivers sip their first cup of coffee for the day, he leaves; along with him is my longing for another seconds and minutes with him. I try to close my eyes and pretend to be asleep as I hear his footsteps moving towards the door, ready to get into the real world again, where once again I am not the protagonist in his life. 

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