Almost Goodbye

HAPPY READING!

   My memories are now only bittersweet reminders of you. I still remember how you got to me. How you saved me. Our first meeting was nothing like a romantic love at first sight cliché. You were anything other than the bad boy and I was just me. I first saw you at the park where I sat on a bench watching you stare at the dry concrete wall while I wallowed in my own self-pity. The routine repeated day after day until I got there too late and my bench was occupied. At first I sat there retreating into the corner of my mind only to be abruptly pulled out by the blabber mouth that sat next me. He talked to me as if he was my friend. It was as if he knew me. He even asked me out. Instead of responding, I stood up only to head to the dry wall setting myself next to you. I now wonder if I should have taken the man's offer. Maybe if I did, I wouldn't be here now heartbroken and beating myself up for it. I had no idea of what came over me that day. Staring at the bare wall cracked me for some odd reason. Moments after, I started crying like a hysterical woman. I had thought that you would comfort me, I had hoped that you would tell me that it was okay. Instead, you got up and left me weeping like a madwoman in front of the wall.

   The next day, I saw you at school. I didn't know that you went to the same school that I did. You even had the same classes as me. But I had never noticed you before. You seemed to blend into the shadows. One moment you were there, the next you weren't. You became an obsession. I made it my mission to uncover your secrets. I studied you. I was like a groupie clinging onto everything that you did. Yet no matter how far I went to be noticed, you never seemed to see me. My whole life was consumed by you. It was if you had suddenly become my main purpose in life. I woke up to you on my mind and went to bed only to be hounded by your face in my dreams. Things changed.

   That winter, my dad died. It had been a rude awakening. Like a bucket of water, it doused the infatuation I had towards you. I started avoiding anyone who would even want to come near me but most importantly, I avoided you. Avoiding you was easy. You had the same routine every single week. I knew it was pointless, avoiding a person who didn't even acknowledge you existed in the first place but I had to do something. It felt right. Equivalent to the Pangolin, I had curled myself up using my sharp scales to fend off the predators ready to unroll me. It was my own form of a defence mechanism. I was unfeeling and obdurate. My life had only consisted of the necessities. I went home from school only to grab a bite and retreat into my lair till the next day.

   Worried for my sanity, my mother had thrown me out of the house with an order not to return before sundown and the threat of taking away my father's lucky shirt that I had hung up on the panel beside my bed. With no sense of direction, I let my feet guide me unknowingly to the wall. You were there, as always. It felt like déjà vu. I sat next to you only to break down moments later. This time, I knew what for. Barriers had been built around me only to be torn down by a wall. This was what I had been avoiding. The sense of hopelessness that crept following the memories. These feelings that I had desired to evade were seeping slowly through the cracks suffocating me. Then, an arm was wrapped around my shoulder as you pulled me closer. Right then and there, the dam broke, my emotions once a trickling ooze turned into a drowning wave. But I had somehow managed to avoid getting trampled by the stampede of emotions that had come over me. Noticing the sunset, I shrugged your arm off disregarding your comforting gesture as I guided myself home.

   I awoke to a new day with full intentions of ignoring you like I had done so seamlessly before, but it seemed as if the universe was not on my side. As fate, would have it, our English teacher had decided that it was better for us to experience Shakespeare instead of reading the plays he wrote. You became my partner. What was even more disturbing was that we had been assigned Romeo and Juliet. I had found out years later, that you had coerced Mr Clark into pairing us together. I never thought that you cared but apparently, you had been watching from afar acting as if you were my guardian angel deterring other boys from asking me out because you had apparently decided I was yours. The project had brought us together. As hard as I tried to stay away, you were like a leech latching onto me. Being with you somehow healed the scars that were lacerated into my heart.

   It was senior year and somehow we had become the best of friends. Sure, our friendship looked weird from another person's perspective but it was perfect to us. At this point, I was starting to think that you had only loved me like a sister. Not once did you make a move contradicting that point. We had always ended our conversations with I love you. For me it was strictly a platonic love but I never knew you wanted more. Fridays were officially our nights. One unsuspecting night, you had taken me out for a moonlit picnic in the park. Desperate for a chance from our usual movie madness, I had agreed. We laid on the blanket gazing at the constellations when you shocked me with a question that had come out your mouth. I used to dream of those words but gave up on the naïve belief that you would ever say them let alone to me. That night you took the first step.

   "Will you be my girlfriend?" those were the exact words that had me shocked to the core. Without skipping a beat, the word yes slipped out without a second thought. Our relationship was moving smoothly along until the topic of universities came up. I had wanted to leave this town to expand my horizons yet you wanted to stay. I had gotten into Harvard and so did you but you told me you choose not to go. I was mad and despondent at your behaviour. For a week, I ignored you. I was acting like a brat but I didn't care. At the start of the second week, you had showered me in a frenzy of flowers with an apology and decision that you were joining me Massachusetts. I was ecstatic that you had done that for me but when I reflected back, I knew that I couldn't let you sacrifice your own happiness for mine. I had mailed your letter back to the local college stating your enrolment and straight after graduation, I had left you without saying goodbye.

   After leaving the town, my life had become a success. I had gained my masters in English literature and had become a well know novelist. Yet there was always something missing. In my heart, there was a hole that only you could have filled. No matter how hard I tried to leave you behind, you always seemed to catch up to me in the end. Hours were spent constantly distracting myself with my new publishing house yet no matter how deep I buried you, your face seemed to resurface in my mind constantly nagging me.

   Deciding enough was enough, I packed my bag putting my life on hold to retrieve the one person that could truly complete it. Not knowing where to start, I went back to our school in hopes of anyone knowing of your whereabouts. Instead, saw you as I peeked into a classroom. There you were educating the younger generation just as you said you would during those long talks we would have as we sat together discussing our ambitions. What I never told you during those talks was I had an aspiration to be by your side forever. Too far into my own mind, I had failed to notice that your class had let out and you stood before me with a guarded expression. I had begged for your forgiveness that day and somehow, we ended up back together again.

   With our relationship slowly healing, I had decided to move back into our hometown leaving my company in the capable hands of my right-hand man with occasional check-ups where I would fly there to ensure things were running smoothly. Being back made me eager to write again. Just being in your presence left me with words waiting to be written. You were my muse. You made my life complete again. You seemed to lift me out of the funk that I had been in transforming me into butterfly. I was filled with life again.

   Only a couple of months after our reunion, you popped the question. You recreated or first date and took me out on a moonlit picnic in the park. This time, instead of asking me to be your girlfriend, you had asked me to be your wife. We had eloped without telling a single soul and had come back more than ready to face the world as husband and wife. You were the romantic type. Each week without fail, you would come home with a bouquet of flowers which were " a reminder of the beauty that my wife had was nothing compared to the flowers" you would say to me and I believed you.

   Our honeymoon phase lasted for only so long. About 3 months after our marriage, things began to spiral downwards. As the days progressed, you came home later and later up till the point where you never even came home. One night I had called you in hopes of the chance to convince my husband to come back home. Your phone had been disconnected so I called you secretary to find out if you were truly at the office. It turns out, you weren't. Not wanting to jump to conclusions, I had waited until you came to me with what was going on. I was patient until I saw a lipstick stain on the collar of your shirt. That night when you came home, I had confronted you and you never seemed to deny anything that I accused you of. I had left in the middle of the fight storming out of the house to a hotel for the night.

   I woke up the next morning hungry and ready to face the day head on. Heading for breakfast, I had seemed to only get one bite before bile rose up my throat. Making a mad dash to the bathroom, the contents of my stomach spilled into the toilet bowl. This had been happening way too often to be a stomach flu. I had rushed to the pharmacy in town to buy a pregnancy test. The wait was nerve-wracking. The results were what I had thought. There on the stick, there was a blue plus. It took me a couple of minutes to process but as soon as I did, I headed home. I had to make this work. Our child was not going to be born into a dysfunctional family. I would stand by your side even if you wouldn't stand by mine.

   In the present, I lay here next to you as I imagine your hands rubbing my pregnant belly, cooing at our unborn baby and doting on me. I imagine you playing with our unborn daughter and laugh as you scare her first boyfriend away with your interrogation. In a perfect world, my dreams would become a reality. In a perfect world, this would not be a fantasy. But this isn't a perfect world. In this world, you were ripped from me. In this world, you had made me think you cheated on me so I wouldn't have been upset that you had died of the cancer consuming you. In this world, I found you dead on the bathroom floor when I went to deliver the news of our baby. In this world, I am lying beside your grave wishing that you would come back to me. In this world, the last memory I have of you is your face when I stormed out the door and you shouted I love you to my back. In this world, I never even got a chance to say goodbye.