I wake up and for a few seconds I don’t know where I am.

 

I catch a whiff of disinfectant in the air.

 

 

Oh right.

I’m at the hospital.

 

 

I just woke up but I already feel tired, like I haven’t slept at all.

 

I can tell by the orange streaks of lights in the sky that the day is almost coming to an end.

 

I’m glad my room has a window.

 

 

 

There are no clocks in here, but I am aware of the minutes, aware of the hours.

Even the candles conspire, getting shorter as time grows shorter.

Reminding me and

reminding me and

reminding me.

 

 

 

I miss being outside.

I miss my friends.

I miss living my life.

My old life.

 

 

 

I have been in hospitals more than I have been in my own home for the past years.

I feel like a prisoner.

 

I want to get out of here.

 

 

The only upside to my condition is that sometimes I lose my memories.

 

 

There are days when I wake up and I cannot remember who I am at all and I like it because even for a short time I forget what my life has become for the past 9 years.

 

 

 

For a short time I forget that I am on a borrowed time here.

 

 

 

It is an awful thing to be betrayed by your body. And it’s lonely, because you feel you can’t talk about it. You feel it’s something between you and the body. You feel it’s a battle you will never win…and yet you fight it day after day, and it wears you down. Even if you try to ignore it, the energy it takes to ignore it will exhaust you.

 

 

 

And I am exhausted.

 

I am alive but I am not living.

 

I am breathing but I am dying. Inside.

 

 

 

I am just lying in this bed the whole day. And maybe for the rest of my life.

 

 

 

I am tired.

 

I want to sleep.

 

 

I really do but I don’t want to see my mother sad.

So I hold on a little longer.

 

 

 

I can hold on. I know I can. But I am afraid the body wont.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As days pass I find it unbearable to fight with my own body.

It’s betraying me in every way it could.

 

I am slowly losing my hearing.

 

 

I can only hear fragments of things but nothing whole.

 

 

And it has been long since I lost my strength to speak.

 

 

I am a breathing slump of decaying flesh in this white room and white bed.

 

 

 

 

It’s hard not being able to say what you want.

 

 

 

 

They all think I am fighting.

 

That I want to live.

 

It’s such a shame I can’t speak my thoughts because I would be begging for them to end this suffering right now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As lifeless the rest of my body is, my mind is with me.

I am alive in here.

This is all I have.

It is all I can ever go to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ever since I got stuck in this bed I spent my days thinking about the things that I did.

 

 

More of the things that I did not do when I had the chance.

 

 

 

I can’t really go anywhere, can I? Not with my condition.

 

All I have is my thoughts in me.

 

All I can ever go to is inside my head.

 

I can’t create new memories now, not that I can remember anyway.

 

That is why I come back.

 

 

My past.

 

 

I keep on coming back.

 

 

I want to go back.

 

 

I badly want to go back and change things and do it differently.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I want to go back to her.

I want to go back.

Please.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“C-Chae, what’s wrong? Where does it hurt? I-I’ll call the nurse please hang in there, buddy.”

 

 

 

The only obvious way that I can communicate my feelings is by crying.

When I cry people panic and assume I am in pain so they will call in the nurse hoping they can ease my pain.

 

 

Tzuyu, my best friend, is out to get the nurse for the 3^rd time today.

 

 

 

They must pity me.

I can’t blame them.

 

 

 

I pity myself, too.

 

 

 

For years, I keep on thinking what if I have done things differently?

 

 

 

What if I had talked to her?

Would we have ended together?

Would she have liked me back?

Would she have stayed with a sick girl like me?

 

 

 

This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world.

 

 

 

I want a world where I am not sick.

 

I want a world where Mina and I are together.

 

 

 

I want that world the most.

 

 

 

 

 

I regret not being selfish enough to get her despite knowing that I would eventually have to leave her because of my condition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two years after I started writing on her coffee I was diagnosed with an illness that is known our family to have.

 

genetics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I knew I was going to be sick.

 

 

I just didn’t know it will be that early.

 

 

 

I was too young.

I wanted to live.

 

 

More.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I tried to be okay.

 

Because if I’m not okay my family will force me to fly back home.

 

And I know that if I come home I can’t go back anymore.

 

I can’t go back to Mina.

 

Once I leave there is no going back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have seen how this illness have taken my loved ones.

 

My grandmother, my uncle, my father, and now me.

 

Once the treatment starts, it doesn’t stop.

 

Once you entered the hospital, you only keep on coming back.

 

 

 

 

 

I tried to be healthy.

 

I was hoping I could delay the detrimental symptoms because I wanted to be with her.

 

But there is only so much that I could do.

 

 

 

 

I wanted to talk to her.

 

 

 

 

But I am afraid to start something when I know I will eventually be living.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Months passed and my condition was starting to affect my work and my life.

 

People were starting to get worried.

 

I am starting to get worried, too.

 

I can’t stay any longer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After holding up for a whole year, my body finally reached its peak.

 

 

 

 

I can’t stay.

I want to.

But I can't.

 

 

 

 

I can  remember that day.

The day I bid her my goodbye before I flew back home.

 

 

The goodbye she didn't notice.

Just like the rest of my writings for the past years.

 

 

 

It was raining so hard that day and she looked cold.

 

When I got back from the washroom she was already gone.

 

Tzuyu said that she left right after she got her order.

 

She seemed to be in a hurry.

 

 

 

 

I can’t remember the rest of it. My memory is getting foggy again.

 

 

 

 

 

I want to remember.

 

 

 

 

I have to remember.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I want to reach for my diary to recall the events of that day but I don’t have the strength to even lift a finger nor tell Tzuyu to read it to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When my memory started failing me I started writing a diary to keep track of my thoughts and the rest of the happenings in my life.

 

 

I only write the good ones because that is what I needed to remember most on the bad days.

 

It helped me going.

 

Somehow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Hey Chae.”

 

 

Tzuyu, she is on the verge of crying now.

 

 

 

Do I look that bad right now?

 

 

 

Poor Chewy. I must be freaking her out with all this crying.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m sorry, Chewy.

 

Don’t cry.

 

It doesn’t hurt anymore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can feel the medicine kicking in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I feel sleepy again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am so weak to fight it back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am tired of fighting back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am slowly fading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I let myself drift into the darkness,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

but this time I know I will not be coming back.