Japan was feeling ice in my lungs, cold and alive and pulsing, breathless and twinkling and living and living and alive. I had three years, so I loved it. I loved the trees and the houses and mountains and streets, I loved people and feelings and memories to keep. Three years— I felt the time rushing and swirling around me, chilly as it hurried by, I felt my fingers scraping the precipice, struggling to hold on as time whirled and crashed down, down like a waterfall, down into the abyss of oblivion. An oblivion only permeated by my memory.
I remember that summer night. The humidity, which in the daytime was stifling, draped around me like a comfortable blanket. The stars trembled timidly above, ever-twinkling, all-knowing. The darkness covered me like a heavy cloak. God was there, and those I loved were there, I missed only a few, the shrieking in my veins calmed to a hum. And I was broken on the outside, gasping from tears, but inside I was mending, my soul emerging from ashes. Breathing in and breathing out, reveling in my humanity, enchanted by whatever was and still is in me, a living plant, hope, always pushing for the sun.
That year I claimed was my year. I wanted to savor every moment and tuck it away, a series of old mental photographs. Those I still rifle through some days. But pain is caused by keeping memories, grabbing onto them like an unyielding toddler, possessing an insistence to remember. And memories are lethal when combined with love.
They also cause ghosts.
The ghosts of my friends whispering "I love you" as they shared hushed secrets behind my turned head. The ghosts of his body and mine, tangled, that beautiful Easter Sunday morning under the dancing cherry blossom petals, everything bright and dark and old and new around us, whispering "I love you" as he kissed down my collarbone. The ghosts of my parents, who, screaming knives and brandishing words and slamming doors, whispered "I love you." They all forced love, that great and terrible word, to become something I couldn't believe in long afterwards.
But I do now. I realize— sadness isn't lovely, no, it burns and consumes. And now it is a pleasure to feel small, for that is my place on this earth; but it is also a pleasure to feel big, because I am loved greatly. So I'll dig through the gray sludge that has currently manifested in me for the sake of being alive again. I can finally find gratification in remembering, for old wounds are just scars, and the present begs to be lived in.
