I Choose You (Tayvin Oneshots)

Life Goes On in New York

Being alone gives you the benefit of the doubt, being alone allows you to reflect on anything your memory can reach, being alone gives you the luxury to look back and reminisce about a certain period from your past, and being alone gives you the rarest kind of peace from the chaos that lives within your heart.

Time and time again, you'll find yourself getting lost and drowning in a deep ocean of thoughts, and time and time again, you'll try to find a way to swim with the current, only to float back up to breathe once again.

So as Taylor was seated across the window of her bedroom, sleepless, in the middle of the night, looking at the skyline of New York, that's what she did to clear her mind. With a tattered pen and her journal in her lap, that's all it took for her to move forward and leave her bad memories behind.

Taylor's P.O.V.

07-26-17 / Tribeca, New York, USA.

Life goes on in New York. That was all and everything that I knew when I decided to move here. Now, four years later, and I still keep on going back on that night, only having to learn the hard way that it will turn out to be a decision that I would regret.

To find love is all I've ever wanted, and almost just a few months after I moved in the city is when I thought I've found that one great love that everyone can't seem to stop talking about. It felt so surreal, whatever Adam and I had, it was so real that we both had our minds consumed by each other. It was the kind of adrenaline that I have been looking for, it was the feeling, the warmth, it was everything.

For the first time, I had someone to come home to when the spotlights were gone. For the first time, I actually had somebody actually waiting up for me until I come home and never did I ever felt that my life meant that much to anyone until he came around and swept me off my feet and it only took him 10 days to successfully bury himself inside my head. Then things escalated too fast and too good to be true, and of course, just like in the movies, I didn't know that, so we continued to spend most of our times here in New York, made memories here, through the laughter and all the tears, we learned about each other's strengths and weaknesses here, fought and made up here, stayed here, enough to consider it as our home. It was our shrine, it was our sanctuary. The life we had here is nothing compared to the chaos going on surrounding us once we open the doors to the outside world. In this house, we had a fairytale out of a war zone. He had imprinted on every corner of this home with his 6 foot 5 statuesque height that could easily tower over everything and with his thick Scottish accent that could easily echo through the halls as it was always just the two of us here. 

Adam, I've loved everything about him and the world can testify to that. He made me a better person by giving my life a new meaning on every morning of every waking day. I have invested myself to him, and entitled him to everything that I am and everything that I have yet to become. I have sworn myself to him in the thought of him being the one that I would spend the rest of my life with, because at that moment, it seemed like it, and everything was just perfect.

But that was until he left and took all I had away with him, and all that's left with me are the traces of him wherever I go, hunting me in places and even in my sleep.

But no, after all those things that happened, I don't consider him as a bad man for leaving because there's only so much a man can take, and sadly, he had ran out of reasons to stay and I can't blame him for getting fed up with the consequence of the kind of life that I have. I didn't want to drag him into it, so I let him go, because there's just no point of holding him back when he already made up his mind. And the truth is, you can never have everything and that's what happened. The story pretty much wrote itself and soon followed the ending to a bittersweet chapter that is beautiful and worthwhile despite all of its flaws, and no once will  it ever be forgotten.

Now, everytime I come back home to this place, it only reminds me of him. He is just not the kind of person you would easily forget because he was always there for me when I needed him and I've never loved anyone twice as much as I've loved him . I've loved him through his dark days and he stood by me through mine and I thought that would be enough for a love to last but it turns out that I was wrong. What seemed to be so easy at the end turned out to be the hardest battle that I have faced. To give up and walk away from the future that we have built together seemed to be the only best thing at that time. Maybe it was what they call "Right love at the wrong time". It wasn't easy, but I know to myself that it was worth fighting for. 

I guess I will always be hoping that someday, he'll knock on my door again, and come back home to me, through that door, the passage way of what used to be his home too. Here's to my blind optimism, hoping that was not how and where our story would end, here's to hoping that someday, we will meet again when the time is right and the stakes are not that high anymore. Maybe that is the silver lining that I have to hold on to.

I'm happy because I don't hold a grudge anymore because I learned to appreciate the good in what we had and how it shaped me to be the person that I am today. But some days, I still do regret moving here in the city, having to trade the very little amount of solace left for me for the bright lights and the skyscraper buildings, and a guarantee to my ambition. In the wake of my regret, I constantly wonder what we could have been if we hadn't thrust our relationship out in the open, and I guess that will forever remain as a mystery to me, but maybe someday, if I will be able to find an answer, I will write again, but with another story to tell.

But for now, I am writing about a chapter in my life that ended so soon, in New York City, with all the bright city lights and the oblivion in the streets just a flight of stairs right below where I am, and having a heavy heart as I reminisce and put my raw emotions into a piece of paper once again as it is the only thing that I know to cure or if not, at least to be a temporary remedy in the emptiness that I feel within. 

 So until then, I will continue to hope that I will be able to find a reason that could get me up and going because after everything that I've been through, life does go on in New York City.