Falling in love is like a clandestine operation that I was never a part of. I’ve heard of it, I’ve read about it, but somehow, it remains a mystery, like a secret code that I could never decipher. I have wasted years and years trying to unravel it, to either succumb to its bliss or its anguish — without thinking that perhaps the universe isn’t generous enough to favor me with a chance.
I have long accepted that fate is cruel and love sadly doesn’t always knock at everyone’s door. Yet, on some extremely cold days that match my saturnine mood, my mind betrays me, and I can’t help but look out of the window with a little hope that someone is at the doorstep, waiting to be let in.
Because that’s the thing with acceptance — it is never truly achieved. It’s like having an anchor tied to my feet, weighing and pulling me in deeper and deeper into the abyss of the ocean. While awaited by my absolute demise, I still persistently struggle to resurface and breathe.
Though I often find solitude rather sweet, suddenly it occurs to me that I could scarcely squelch this insatiable desire to burn for someone immensely. To feel the radiance of their presence until it gnaws at me from the inside. To find a love that is almost similar to Robin’s, and how he chose death over a world where Ramy no longer exists. Such love, however, I realize is nearly nonexistent.
And yet.
On some dreadful nights, the longing for that someone torments me as if there were chains wrapped around my heart so tight that it almost bursts. Someone — whose existence isn’t even guaranteed, whose presence is neither near nor far; Who are you? How do I find you? Are you living and surviving somewhere out there in this vast, cruel land? Are we both casualties of life’s greatest tragedy called loneliness?
Where were you all my life? Did I, perhaps, occupy your mind, body, and soul like you did mine? Would the universe be so kind as to let me feel the warmth of your existence, or would it remain cold and indifferent towards me, dooming me to eternal agony?
But even so,
Even if us together could not happen in this lifetime, surely, we have always been destined to be everlasting in the next one— where we could run free from the shackles of expectations and rejections, where we could orbit around each other infinitely, circling around galaxies as we hold on to each other dearly, where — this time, not even divine intervention would want to tear us apart.
