It’s scary how much we can love someone.
Never getting attached to anyone, always keeping a distance between ourselves and everyone around us in case they leave, in case they decide to disappear.
Then comes someone and sneakily breaks all the walls; we love their presence, their laugh, their talk, their silence. We remember them whenever we’re anxious, or whenever we’re sad because their memory is safe, it makes us happy.
It’s scary much loving them makes us feel alive, as if that’s it, that’s all we need from this horrid life, that’s all that is important amid hunger and injustice and destruction, loving them is all that is needed to stay alive.
It’s scary how much they can affect our days, our mood, and the rest of our week. An inane message, a word of kindness, or a smile – that one smile, that’s all we need to go back home at the end of the day and say ” ’twas a good day.”
Their talk, for once you don’t mind not talking, for once you want to hear their story without having to say yours. For once, you want them to talk for hours about everything and nothing in particular, and you listen so tentatively because even the smallest details matter. Because knowing what their favorite tree leaf matters to you, as long as it’s a thing that they said. It’s them talking to you; what can be more important than that?
And that smell, their holy smell. You close your eyes once you smell them nearby, their scented aroma precedes them, and you close your eyes because it’s too warm and it’s too sweet, and it’s too them.
But then what?
But then they leave, and it’s not a shock because the world is mortal and the prettiest flowers die, and everything must end. But it doesn’t make their loss easier. It doesn’t make the void feeling less piercing in a bleak abyss that makes its way through our chest and blackens the place where bliss once rested, because of them, the bliss and the blazes.
And then the feeling of the happy moments gets forgotten, and the aching nostalgia replaces those happy moments, and then comes the era of longing for a time where we were whole, where we were floating, where we were alive.
And we soon go back to closing our eyes every time their names are mentioned, every time we try to remember, every time we see a photo of them or affiliated to them, every time we smell a scent close to theirs. This time, we close our eyes not to preserve the moment, this time, we close our eyes to make it, the memory, go away, we close our eyes as if the loss we feel is before us, and if we close our eyes and don’t see it anymore, it might fade away.
And then one night, it’s 3:00 am, our bed is warm, our pillow is fluffy, and we still can’t sleep. And as we hold ourselves so tight in fear we might break, we wonder what would’ve happened if we never met them at all, because nothing-nothing-really seems worth the loss.