I woke up this morning with a bruise on my left knee. I don’t recall how I got it or why it is there. It’s just sitting here like it is a memento of a trauma that is yet to be healed.
I don’t have to close my eyes to spectate flashes of our last talk and how much we hurt each other. I remember watching your eyes through the tears barricading them and asking myself “How did we get here?”… “Why must it be like this?”.
Need I not say that dreams were dismantled both for us? My heart descended to a profound abysm just like yours did as we watched every single thing we pictured for our future falling through the gaps of our fingers like sand. I lost as much as you did and you should know it by now.
You once said you had more to lose. What could that even mean? How can you weigh things you are not aware of? It is unjust for you to think your sacrifices are the only ones that count. There are always two sides to a story. What about mine?
Your recent words pierced my flesh like never before. And I regret listening to them as I still don’t agree with how things were portrayed.
I truly hope you never feel the slightest remorse for what you said to me. You complained that I barely apologised for how I handled things, for how I made you feel… Now I ask you: Have you ever apologised for what you did to me? Do you really think you were the only one living a nightmare? Not recognising your faults on this won’t make things better for us. It will only cover the mistakes, not fix them. Fingers crossed that someday you will understand this. Not for me, but for yourself.
So… I throw you one last smile and say farewell to you. I don’t wave goodbye as I turn my back to you and walk away. I don’t look back nor regret any of the steps forward I am taking right now.
I still wish you nothing but the best, though I won’t say it. And as we get more distant, like celestial bodies being pulled away by forces from opposite directions, I long for your happiness. I really do. But now, from afar.
Eventually, in due course, you will become a vague memory to me as I, too, will to you. Once this happens, we will know, even if unconsciously, that our story is finally sealed.
And then, I am sure, there will be no more hurting.
Not a single cloud is in the sky to smear these infinite shades of blue.
The sun shines bright and beams its light at 60 degrees from the horizon or so.
As the environment becomes more lush and evocative, I feel I can finally breathe. The winter seems nothing but a vague memory of monochromatic days now.
A refreshing breeze caresses my cheeks gently, leaving a cooling trace behind. That is so mundane, but enough to make me content.
An indie song plays along while dry brown leaves swirl on the floor creating mini vortices all around.
The song playing reaches its climax with an intense and enticing fingerstyle guitar solo, which fills all the blank spaces and turns this instant into a movie scene. Well, at least in my head.
I look north and smile.
At the end of Granville Street, if you gaze downhill, you will catch a glimpse of the North Shore Mountains. You know, a small gift from Downtown Vancouver.
This picture transports me to my first day in this city. A younger me wandering around with no clear destination until I noticed the waterfront and realised I could see the mountains from there.
“What a beautiful city” – I thought, astonished by the landscape before my eyes.
I can recall trying to capture as much as I could from that moment… As if I knew I would need to hold on to that memory in darker times.
Glad I did.
***
I was so lost in the moment that I missed my bus stop.
In different circumstances, I probably would be frustrated.
Today, however, I just brushed it off.
The one-and-a-half-block walk would be another opportunity to enjoy the sun while it was still out.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back facing towards the sun for just a bit, enough to feel it a little longer before getting home.
Without analysing it too much and just focusing on feelings and sensations, it is curious to think about how the light feels warm against our skin.
I guess this is the best part of being alive: experiencing things without trying to decipher all the hidden mechanics that make life what it is.
It may have been just a sunny day with no clouds in the sky – Rudimentary like the flying of a ladybug – But deep enough to turn you inside out…
We said our goodbyes after barely greeting each other. Or at least that is how it felt like.
I am unsure if it was your eyes that said it all, or mine that could capture all the small details that led me to this realisation.
I won’t lie, after we locked eyes and turned them in opposite directions, I looked over my shoulders in a successful attempt to see your silhouette against the sun one last time. I still can remember a shiny fine golden line contouring your shape as you walked away.
There was no soundtrack for this scene. I could only hear your steps becoming more and more distant. If there were one, I wouldn’t be able to tell what genre would suit this best. I guess I will never know.
It is quite “funny” to think about all the moments that we will never share. “Funny” because I truly believed they could become true. Even funnier to think that I imagined them so vividly that they could easily be confused with memories. If only I knew.
Look, this is not your fault. Perhaps not even mine. I can’t blame you for this. No, I don’t blame you for this. Though there was a tangible connection between us, it just didn’t work out and that is OK. Maybe our link wasn’t as strong as I thought it was. I could’ve been blindsided… Who knows? I guess it doesn’t matter, does it?
Don’t, for even a second, think that I hold a grudge for this. Not at all.
Goodbyes are just as magical as new beginnings and I appreciate them equally.
Know that although I won’t be waiting for you, you can still catch up to me should you feel like it. You know my pace as I know yours.
For now, it is a farewell.
But “now” is just as long as a fraction of a second. It becomes past even before you can process this word in your brain.
I hope you know what I mean.
***
At some point, you are anywhere to be seen. Vanished like a vestige of light in a void.
Soon enough, I can no longer recall your face.
It quite frustrates me because it was once so clear to me. So recognisable. I could describe every single feature of yours with my eyes closed. Not anymore.
I won’t forget our ending scene, though.
That shiny fine golden line of yours.
How it beautifully and graciously penetrated my pupils and engraved your silhouette in my brain.
When I think about beginnings, the first thing that comes to mind is a bright line: a vivid stroke of vibrant light that swings around and floats in the air, gliding and drawing shapes on a dark surface, always expanding itself and leaving a trace wherever it passes.
Perhaps my initial description is not a concrete representation of beginnings, but it is the only thing I can picture when I think of a start. After this depiction, everything gets blank. Opaque. Silent. A void. Though not for long: such abstraction soon transforms itself into real shapes and things.
I see a beginning as anything: a Big Bang; a glance; a smile; a “hey, do you know the answer for the question 3?”; a peck; Everything can be the start of something, even an ending. See, classifying things really depends on the prism through which you view them.
With time, the idea that beginnings were “anything” started to sound too generic. I wasn’t really satisfied with this concept, so I decided to do some field researching. My first stop was the dictionary: Commencement: “A beginning or start”; Start: “begin or be reckoned from a particular point in time or space”. I added these definitions to a notepad and asked some friends: “What is a beginning? Any idea?”. The majority of the replies were kind of naughty: “Well, a beginning is a beginning, it is self-explanatory, man! What a rhetorical question!”
Yup, I ended up just sticking with my first source – the dictionary – and moved on.
A word started to pop up here and there, bothering me just like the buzzing sound of annoying mosquitos flying over your head in a hot day.
“Origin”.
Do you remember when your life started? Wait up! Before you too get naughty and reply something along the lines “With my parents, duh”, which would make me cry in fetal position, I’d like to mention that I am not referring to the biological side of it, but rather your first memory. The furthest remembrance you can recall. The latter is what instigates and interests me, because it reflects on what your perception of origin is. Not the one on your birth certificate. Yuck. It is about the commencement of everything for you, your starting point.
To me, my origin is defined by an ordinary weekday, a cloudy, boring, and dull one. “Boring” because it was a school day. “Dull” because I always detested grey days.
I remember standing still in front of the kindergarten school’s gate waiting for it to open, while my mom was resting her hands on my shoulders. I still can feel the anxiety nestling against my chest whenever I remember that day: All I wanted was the gate to open up so that I could pass through it and run towards the classroom to play with my friends. I think I was five, but I am not sure.
This was my beginning… How I remember starting to exist.
What comes after is a huddle of memories and fragments of disconnected scenes, followed by a bunch of unrecognised muffled voices and blurry faces I can no longer recall.
For some time, I thought I had better just stick with the definition of beginning that I found in the dictionary and just occupy my mind with something else. However, I would be pestered by new questions that would arise about geneses. Now this was all about what could trigger new starts: epiphanies, crushes, Platonism…
What can set things off? Would things be “activated” by “destiny”? What IS destiny? How profoundly can a single choice impact our lives? What determines the unfolding of the whole chain of events that paves the way in our lives? What actually initiates our beginnings?
Whatever the answer is, we are surrounded by starting points. They are like particles that encircle us and get activated constantly, generating all sorts of chain of reactions that guarantee the instability in our lives. They transform us, functioning as gears that keep turning so that our lives keep moving. Whatever that means and for whatever reason.
The beginning. The starting point, but also the arrival one. The beginning. A digested ending?
I find myself in my last conclusion: Life is like an electric slot car racing toy set: you come and go in full speed trying to hold tight on whatever you can, hoping that the next curve won’t throw you off the rail. Time is racing with you, going as fast as it can. A single blink translating to a whole decade. Both of you don’t stop. You can’t stop. Maybe nobody ever can.
And with every new step, there is a new start. Something new comes up all the time.
And every brand-new is just another opportunity to build whatever you want to.
