Five Years Ago

Chapter 9 - The Last One

It was all quiet when the clock was finally moving forward again. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. She stopped the time and I was stuck in between. I have been keeping one eye on her for a long time, when the clock was finally ticking back to life, I gained my full sight again. Everything was crystal clear afterward. About what happened and what could have been. I was done being insane. I was done being stupid. Although the matter of forgetting was as important as it had ever been, it was equally as hard. I found the delete button, but the closest my hand had been was an inch away over it. Hovering over it, reminiscing on those moments of us. There was a space in my heart with her name on it. How could I erase that?

It is obvious that I have made foolish mistakes and decisions in the name of love. I let my heart made the plans and my brain to come up with all of the wrong reasons later, when it should've been the otherwise. But those mistakes was foolish mostly because of what wasn't there. For love would make pathetic actions perceived as romantic ones. Turned possessive into protective, intrusive into thoughtful, and so on. It was not the fault of the acts, but the actor. When it was the wrong one, it would easily turned a yes into a no. When love just wasn't there, there was nothing much that I could do about it. I couldn't force a heart to feel something that didn't exist. It wasn't just about me.

Ego was standing in the way between me and reality. It was such a blurry image, the differences between my hopes and what ego whispered in my ears. Starting a tug of war game with myself, one day I begged, the next day I left. I made it all about me, less and less about her. When she was the actually one who was drifting away from me, the feeling of being in love was the one I desperately held onto. My ego made me did all the stupid things in love's name. Drama, drama, drama. She already had enough of it and it was all I brought to her feet. I really wanted to say sorry for it, but I knew I wouldn't mean it. For it had made me felt alive, and God knows how much I needed it then. She was the victim and I sincerely admitted the blame. That was what I was sorry for. I was sorry that I had to love her with all of my dramas. All of the five seasons of it.

I was able to understand what the real problem was. I thought that love was the answer to everything. I forgot that love is a two way street. The elusive difference of falling in love and being in love. It doesn't really matter if I chose someone, when she ended up not choosing me back. I was chasing someone who didn't want to be chased. I was running in circles, hoping one day I would finally hit the jackpot. But the questions of when and how were the ones that I couldn't answer. I chose Emma since the very beginning, but if the table were turned, I wasn't really sure that she would be choosing me too.

Emma was my Robin. The one I said 'I love you' to after fifteen minutes I set my eyes on her. The one I would stole the blue French Horn for. The one I kept coming back to, no matter how foolish it was. The one I loved with my delusive heart. The one who kept invading my thoughts. The one who wanted a cool and awesome band, not a reliable DJ. The one who wasn't actually The One. The one I would absolutely run back to in a heartbeat if she asked me to. The one who doesn't only deserve a page or a poem, but the whole damn book. Every single words in it. The one I wrote this love story for.

If only I could fight my way to her heart with words, I would write thousands words of love story, with unexpected turns and mind blowing twists. I would end it with an happy ending, hand in hand while staring into the thousand stars above. If only this would matter, there would be no goodbyes were being spoken of. But it wouldn't. This is just a story and in the end, I made it for me. For all of the selfish reasons that I had in mind, in heart. This is where I laid rest my memories and hopes. Where I kept it locked so it wouldn't keep haunting me years from now. So here's another one of my firsts, the first story I've ever finished and it is about her.

This is a love story where only one heart was beating for somebody else's. This is not about winning somebody's heart, not even to sweep her off her feet. Maybe this is a little bit about that, when my heart haven't fully grasped the concept of letting go. But mainly, this story is about looking back at the past, only to being able to move forward. Looking back in order to fully understand what I have gained and what I have lost. This is about learning how to say, 'I love you', and being content with not hearing it back. This is about knowing that I cannot love somebody when I even cannot love myself. This is about trying to fall out of love little by little. This is about letting someone knows how much she meant for me. Wishing someone only the best, because that's the only thing that I've ever wanted for her. Showing someone what she's worth. But for the most part, it's about being in love, and how great and awful it was at the same time. And how to be okay again as the time passing by.