I was standing there in front of the gate. Thinking whether to enter or not. It’s been quite a while since the last time I came here. I don’t know what to expect now after all this while. I was thinking all this while coming here, what I might feel after seeing you after so long. But now that I am so close, I am unsure about my feelings.

Now standing here all I can remember the moment from a few days back. The memory is not very clear though, it’s more like a blurry scene. Maybe there were more people around us but all I can recollect from that scene just you and me sitting around a table. You were laughing, the kind that always brightens up the room. I don’t remember what we were discussing. I just remembered I said something. You looked at me with surprise. Your eyes were shining with tears that were about to fall and face with some unexplainable emotions. Somewhat between love and agony. I have never seen you like that before I felt confused. Then you said, “Don’t say such things just like that.” I was more confused, “What wrong did I say?” You just said, “Don’t say it like that “Who do I have without you?”.” All I could do was just looking at you. You wiped your eyes. It was still watery and you just stared at me, I just stared at you. Suddenly I realized it’s you I am looking at just in a casual meeting. I became more aware of the situation. Some thought hit my head. I made the biggest mistake of my life. I opened my eyes. Your face, it vanished instantly. I was dreaming about you! I groaned I wanted to see more of that face. When was the last time I dreamt about you and saw your face that close, that clearly? Probably some months before. All I can remember from that dream is your face. You were crying that time too. Why do you always cry in my dream, when all I remember your smile all along. That smile that smells home, affection, and love. I never wanted to see you cry but maybe I am the only one, who saw you crying being vulnerable the most at those times I didn’t expect you to.

It was my dream to make you always smile. To take you to places, to show you the world, to shower you with everything you deserved, to give you the happiness that you always missed in your life. But life is pretty ironic, isn’t it? Never thought we would end up like. You being so far away from me, I am living my life just as usual, maybe way worse than I should have been for your sake at least. But I don’t really care, do I, and have I ever?

Funny thing is I stopped crying. It’s been quite a while since I cried last in the past two months. It’s been quite a while since I woke up in a morning and started crying to the reality that I can’t change. It’s been quite a while since I went to bed in the night and kept changing sides, scrolling through stories in my phone, in which any random moment makes my brain to wander somewhere else in alleys of memories making me in all in tears. I just remembered I haven’t done those things for quite some time now. Have I really been okay with everything? Have I adjusted well with the pace of normality in my life that had been struggling its way inside for last one year? I realized I haven’t been irritated with random things and the everyday world for a long time now. Has my heart adjusted with the adjustments that I made with life and people who have randomly moved on in their life and the pace of normality of events that have been thrown on my face just like that reminding me I should get over with everything soon? Maybe your tears in my dream are to answer to the things my subconscious mind was trying to ask me. Things like have I moved on, have I forgot everything that happened, was it actually that easy for me too. Like one click and you just go on. Like some people really did. Am I a hypocrite like him too? Whereas, all this while I told myself this has been the hardest for me. Nobody would know how lost I felt in that very instant when I knew I lost you. How I felt all my ties to this world has been broken. How I felt knowing I will have no one closest to me who would understand me the most. How I felt I know I will have no one to comfort me anymore when I am lost like this. I kept feeling I belong to nothing in this world anymore. Who would understand this, who would listen to this, who can feel what I feel – No One. That’s all I could answer myself. Who do I have without you?

You were the only happiness for me. All that is left without you people who don’t care and people who only reminds me of responsibilities and hurt and the burden they are living with. Finally, people who will never understand. I wanted to go to sea, I wanted to go to the mountains. You loved traveling and I wanted to see colors with you. You could smile and bring a smile even in your hardest times. It’s tragic I would never meet anyone like you. I wish I have had any qualities in me like you. If I did, I could believe that I have a part of you saved in me. Sad that no one can be like you, neither by physical features nor characteristically.

Now here I am standing outside the gate. I entered, I started walking through the walkway. I kept looking everywhere. I find you there. There you are lying down. What used to be a beautiful face is now a grass surface and fence and a covered up hole under three feet from the ground. I see grandma crying, she is a person who hardly ever cries. I can understand what she feels. I don’t know what others are feeling. All I know I am not really feeling anything. I am confused why I am not even feeling sad. This is where I should feel my home is. Why am I not feeling you here? This is nothing that I expected. Not by how it looks and neither by emotionally. All I can see an old fence, which was supposed to be taken care of by now and the long grasses resembling the time that has passed by.  

1 year, it’s not that long by the calendar of a student but long enough for a family who might be waiting for their lost family member counting every day. All I can do is looking at the grass and realize what I have done. This is how I promised of keeping you happy. But what did I ever do for you? I kept saying that I want you to be happy but when have I ever tried that. Maybe I was the only one to pray like that on those times when you were spending days in ICU with all those hardships just to breath once more, “Dear God! Please release her from all the pain even if it means the only way for this is by taking her life.”, that’s all I prayed. Even if you once told me, “If I can see you all doing okay with your lives, you getting married to a nice guy, just by lying in this bed, I want to live as long as I can.” I was always in my sloppy self while doing everything when you were suffering in that hospital bed. Even on that day when you started having seizures while calling out my names to wake up soon. And then it was me who acted like the world was unfair to me by taking you away from me throughout this one year. Never doing any of the things you told me to do all this while. Ultimately, I am one of them too. Though I call it "keep going" more than "moving on". I remember what you said to me in my dreams. With teary eyes, “Don’t say such things just like that “Who do I have without you”?”