Long Time, No See

IIIIIIIIII:I "Test Trialling"

Denver

Fate has a funny way of playing with your life at the most random moments.

Like a cunning trickster, she leads you down a lone path hand in hand, with your eyes closed. You have no choice but to trust fate. Trust that she won't turn you around or lead you down a dangerous path and leave you to fend for yourself.

I know this because that's what happened to me on two separate occasions.

When my parents were killed and when I was reunited with Denise.

With my parents, things were more straightforward.

Fate. God? Whatever you like to call it; led me down a path of heartbreak, and I blindly trusted it. I let it lead me hand in hand into tragedy until I finally opened up my eyes and realised that I'd been left alone to deal with my parents' deaths and being uprooted from everything I'd ever known internally.

I grew bitter, angry and- Scared.

While I was happy to have been taken in by such wonderful people. There was always a part of me that just wanted to go back to that day to beg my parents not to go out...

Tell them they had to reschedule, to go somewhere else...

...To take me with them.

I had many thoughts like that in the beginning. When the days were short and, nights were unbelievably long. Because I could do nothing but escape to a world where I could still tightly hug my mother and feel the warmth of my father's strong hand as he messed with my hair playfully.

The hardest parts of those days were the moments right after waking up from the comfort of my childhood home and loving parents to remember I was, from now until forever, an adopted orphan.

That label hung over my head like a dark and immovable cloud and no amount of love or support from Cathy or Michael could ever rid me of the relentless shadow it made. I deemed myself unworthy of anything good. I couldn't be loved. I wouldn't be loved. Not true love, not anymore.

That had been taken from me.

Or at least that's what I thought before today.

Who would have thought that fourteen years after one of the worst tragedies imaginable, I'd be lying here next to the woman of my dreams, wrapped around my side as I stared out of her bedroom window?

Denise Greene. The girl who gave me purpose all those years ago has given me a new purpose all over again.

I realise that our coming together was nothing short of... Absolutely dramatic. But this girl will never know how much she saved me.

Throughout all those years of depression and self-deprecation, when I wasn't thinking about my parents, I was thinking about the small, annoying yet cute girl I'd left behind back home.

I thought about writing to her or calling her several times, but each time, I chickened out in fear that she'd never forgive me for leaving her in the first place or, worse -- have entirely forgotten about me altogether.

But there was no forgetting her even after years passed.

On the week leading up to her birthdays or the random moments, she would come to mind; I would remember her, and it would have me thinking about her all over again. I wondered how she was doing without me, and whether life had been as callous to her as it had been to me. I worried for her incessantly those days and felt so helpless when I realised that there was nothing I could do to help her anymore.

I guess that's when my obsession with this woman really started. I may have been shit at staying in contact with her, but she was always there, in the back of my mind.