I blink my eyes three times in quick repetition. The action offers a minuscule amount of help to battle the sleepiness that still clings to my body like a clam. It is a little ironic considering that I also feel like I just awoke from the best rest I have had in decades. Shaking my head, I center my mind to pay attention to the task at hand. The funny-looking quill tangled within my fingers even has a frilly feather attached to it. There is a stack of papers at my disposal kept neatly on the side of the wooden table I am seated at. Although the table looks like it has seen better days and gives off the energy of fitting an old fable, the chair I am perched on is surprisingly comfortable.
It’s an unfamiliar space that I am in this morning. However, there is no sense of panic coursing through my veins to figure out what is happening or where I am. An overwhelming sense of peace has settled on my tired bones and my usually overthinking brain is as quiet as a still lake. There is nothing else surrounding me in this endless white space except for the table, chair and stationery. I seem to have an endless amount of time and a quill with paper, so it is only instinctual that I earnestly begin to write.
I have never thought of myself as a good writer or even a writer per se. I am someone who writes but I would never qualify myself as a writer. When words flow across paper from my fingertips, it is always about the same old feelings and same old people. There is no difference now as I think of people I have loved and lost, met and forgotten, held in my arms and let go of.
It’s habitual when I think of him. A routine trip my brain likes to venture on unconsciously when the silence is too demanding and the air that I breathe feels too heavy.
I first met him when I was fifteen. A naive girl who didn’t have a speck of perspective about the complex world she would face when she became an adult. It was like a scene out of a typical romance movie. The sunlight hitting his jet-black hair almost made it seem brown. He walked into the class with confident steps, introduced himself, and sat at the set of tables right beside me.
My heart fluttered silly every time I took a quick glance to drink in his features and commit them to memory. It is still a face that I can never forget.
It was easy to delude myself that I had finally encountered the grand feeling of love that every film boasted of and every song gave life to. How could I not? Every little conversation, every polite smile lit a fire in me that couldn’t be put out easily.
I wonder now, if we could have been anything more than passing ships in the night, always aware but never crossing paths, if I had had a little bit more courage to confess. I entrusted my youth to him, all my teenage fantasies, and the subject of my nonsensical daydreams. A first love that never became anything more than a nostalgic memory to reminisce upon.
I will never know if I was anything more to him than a mere classmate from high school, but it is too late now for the what-ifs. At least now if we ever have the privilege of running into each other, I would probably stutter my way through that conversation, I’m sure.
I can only thank you in the secret coves of my heart for brightening up my days and introducing me to the heady feeling of teenage romance. It was beautiful, now that I look upon it in retrospect. You were a shooting star that couldn’t grant my childish wishes, but you filled me with hope, and that is also your own way of repaying my innocent love, is it not?
As my quill makes a full stop, I realize I have reached the end of the first page. It is fitting that I can physically denote that end while I metaphorically close this door of my heart.
There is no indication of the passage of time as I sit here writing. It could be hours or days but I still feel no sense of urgency to give meaning to my current predicament. Instead, I grab a fresh piece of parchment to jot down my flowing thoughts.
I enjoy the quiet that envelops me currently, but it isn’t hard to wonder how different the space around me would be if I had my dearest friends to accompany me.
If he was a shooting star, my friends would be the flowers of my life. Ever since I was a kid, there have been many flowers that have accompanied me. Some lasted a lifetime, some wilted along the way, and some were seasonal.
The words ‘best friend’ or even ‘friend’ used to scare me so much. All I had experienced was a constant line of people leaving me so much that I questioned my self-worth every time I became a year older because people calling themselves my friends who wished me on my birthday one year would not even be there to celebrate me in the next year.
Was that love? A quick entry and exit, staying as you please and leaving once all the benefits, rewards, and amenities ran out?
The petals of all the flowers that wilted in my hand still carve the path to any new person I meet. A harsh reminder of how much hurt I hold within myself for giving away pieces of myself that I will never get back. But the fragrance of the sweetest flowers still clasped in my hands with the utmost protection is also the reason why I have not yet given up on the love born from friendship.
Countless memories that run through my mind like fine sand light up my face in the purest form of joy. We did inside jokes that nobody else is privy to. The ghost of tastes of delicious food that linger on the back of my tongue. Getting stared at in public for being weird, calling each other at two in the morning to break down with no judgement. Being a pillar of support through all the lives we lost and the doubling of joy in even the smallest sense of success. Living five minutes away from each other, possessing the ability to reunite with no love unchanged even if we are meeting after months.
There was love seeping through every one of these interactions. These flowers that accepted me and colored my garden and helped me forget the pain of every thorn, weed, and seasonal temporary bloom were a blessing that I will be grateful for always.
A friend has to choose to love you out of their own volition. There is no word that could describe the happiness of being chosen to love as such. My dearest flowers, I will forever treasure you as you have treasured me.
If friends can choose to love you, those who have no choice but to be bound to you would be family. The universe thrusts you into a household with a group of people that can make or break you. They can be a jolly crew you would be happy to face the rough seas with. They can also be shipmates that you would have to drown at sea with.
Saying “I love you” to family members may be one of the biggest hurdles I have faced yet. Surrounded by a family who rarely utter those precarious words, it is a lifelong challenge. But to be known is to be loved. Words may fail, but actions will also persevere.
No one else would love you as unconditionally as family does, I have learnt. It may not always be expressed or declared publicly, but I understood that love that thrums in our heart when we think of family. Seeing me at my best, my worst, my average and accepting every idiosyncrasy of mine, isn’t it love in its most unconditional form?
There will be disagreements and clashes of opinion. There will be hurt and resentment. But there will also be fun and excitement, acceptance and love. You do not get to choose the family that you are given when you are born. But you will be loved no matter what you are going to be.
I put aside the papers that are filled with my scribbles and crease the edges of the last blank paper that sits in front of me. A page full of possibilities. A blank canvas that can be dictated by the strokes of my quill.
I write once again about that flimsy word ‘love’. Four simple letters, two vowels and two consonants are not nearly enough to encompass the pathetically desperate way that I have wanted to be loved in my relatively short life. It is a feeling so intense and so ingrained in me, I would be willing to lick it off a blade to feel a drop of love within me. To be loved, appreciated and accepted in this world seems to be the most difficult task of all.
It has been hard to love others when I did not even know how to love myself. To learn to be alone without feeling lonely and to make my mind a nice place to live in. It is hard because the word love seems to be used in abundance to describe a positive feeling connected to everything. People love songs, food, pets, the sky, the moon, and the sea. The word love is so fickle in its usage that you wonder how magnificent kingdoms fell and rose and wars were fought and lost simply because of love.
Have we managed to dull the wonderful feeling of love in the nonchalant way we throw it about, or is that the true beauty of having a heart that beats recklessly to give a shade of love to everything one touches?
Love is as all-consuming as it is careless, and it would always be the one thing that I constantly chased throughout my life, the center of my decisions and the gravity that held me down. A Russian roulette of the types of love I can choose to gather in my hands feels like I have been given more power than I know what I can do with. It is intense and fulfilling.
With every straw of love offered to me that I have blindly grasped at, my life and my perspective have continued to change. It is a never-ending loop of getting to know a new side to myself. I am a sum of all the people who have loved me, hurt me, left me, stayed with me, and appreciated me. I am a personification of love and all that it carries in its mighty package of four letters.
I strike the final word with a flourish, a sense of accomplishment filling my heart. I had been so absorbed in my grand quest that I did not even realize that I was no longer tired or sleepy. I wasn’t even feeling hungry or thirsty or even stopped to think of such ordinary human needs.
It was deceivingly simple to get lost in the space occupied by no one but myself. Finally straightening my back that has been hunched over the wooden table for an unknown amount of time, I stretch my fingers one by one to relieve the tension of the same writing position I was stuck on. I look around the empty area once again, my eyes sweeping all around me when a flash of red catches my eye.
There is a big rectangular box a few meters away from me. I push back the comfortable chair and get up from the table to have a closer inspection of the shiny red metal box. There is a small slit on the top of the box, not more than six inches long. I realize that it’s similar to a post box, though there is no other sign or indication that gives any more information.
Sudden understanding dawns on me; I am meant to put my papers, love letters really, in this post box. There is no hesitation as I step back to collect my letters, fold them with precision, and drop them into the post box that materialized out of nowhere. The letters fall in, with no sound, hinting that there may be more letters inside. Once I let go of all the letters, there is a sudden pain in my chest. The pain shoots up so overwhelmingly, I fall to my knees while clutching my heart.
The pain subsides as soon as it arrives, a white light blinding my eyes as I finally look up from the ground. There is a sudden sense of clarity rushing through me as I finally understand everything that has happened since I last opened my eyes. A set of stairs has materialized in front of me. I take unhurried steps towards them, knowing where I have to go now.
I take a quick look back to see the red post box, containing the letters that I have not sent and won’t be able to, disappear slowly from the liminal space that I spent my time between the afterlife and the stairway to heaven.
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