You’re 27, you think your life is a mess.

            You have a job, a well-paying one, but it leaves you drained and lifeless at the end of every day. You live in a spaceous apartment at the high end of the city, but all you can think of is how empty it welcomes you every time you enter through its steel doors. You have a bank account, one that blows up a digit higher with every day that you work, and you realize that the money that you have cannot buy you happiness whatsoever.

            You live your life, careless and (as you would like to think) spontaneous, which you surround with the luxury that comes with it. Every week you hop through different bars, grinding with lithe bodies that really make you gag, flirting with girls that are too generic for your taste. You sleep with them, shout their names, touch them in ways of pleasure as you fulfill notions of filling up voids with pieces that don’t really fit. You leave them in the morning, alone and bewildered, because all you could think about while you were with all these women were bright smiles and cropped hair.

            You meet up with your friends once in a while, you smile and laugh and share stories with them, but all you will see are unfamiliar faces that you don’t really recognize. They will joke about you, compliment you, comment on how lucky you are to have such a lifestyle and you will do nothing but smile and skid through their words, because they will never know about the emptiness that greets you every night when you try to sleep.

            You will try to laugh, to be happy, but nothing you do and have will ever be enough.

            Or maybe she is, but you will realize that a few beats too late.

            You read this; you remember the first time you fell in love, although unknowingly.

            You were 8 and your family just moved in from China. Everything was unfamiliar; the language, the streets, the excessive amount of coffee shops. Every corner and every turn is a myriad of  reminders of how sorely you don’t fit in. The kids in school made fun of you because of your accent, and your abnormal habits don’t really help.

            She was there, like the shining knight immortalized in the fairytale books that your sister liked to read. She entered your life, all saccharine smiles and scents of ambrosia, and it will never be the same again. Because now you weren’t alone and lonely anymore, you have this little Chinese girl who made your escapade into a foreign land better.

            You did everthing together. Going through middle school, high school, and eventually university life. Swapping lunch boxes during breaks, playing video games on each other’s beds, making believe with the superhero characters that you both adored. Remembering each other’s houses, knowing how many steps it will take to arrive at their front gate from yours, memorizing each other’s weird habits, likes and dislikes. Sharing stories of adolescence under glow in the dark stars, succumbing to the first signs of puberty, knowing about your first love (and first heartbreak), getting through the hard university life as the two of you live in cup noodles and instant coffee. Finally finishing school, finding jobs that fit your tastes, leaving in apartments that justify the independence that you have, being friends  and being generally happy.

            She was always there (you are always there). She was there through every crappy relationship you had, through every cheap and meaningless partner, never disgusted by the way you treat women like candies. In return, you were there when her first boyfriend dumped her (the day she opted for a boyish style), when her second boyfriend left her for Japan, when every chance meetings and failed dates made her sad, and when ultimately, you lost her.

            It was that wedding, the night your father married his third wife. She was there to support you, or more like tame your anger towards your father. You danced while surrounded by artificial floral vines and sweet music, holding her in your arms as she made fun of the bride. You smiled at her, laughed with her, contributed to the mockery she was making and you suddenly realized, the reason why none of those girls worked for you was because of this.

            Between clinking glasses and muffled conversations, you realize how much you love her.

            She slipped from your grip though, two choruses to the end.

            You look in the mirror, what do you see?

            Do you see a 27 year old man, with a successful career and a carefree lifestyle? Or do you see a boy, with far too many lost chances at hand?

            You ask yourself, frustrated and angry, why weren’t you a few years, months, days, minutes early? Why didn’t you realize it before? Why?

            Why wasn’t it you?

            You rack your brain; until it hurts, until you feel something close to being numb, but you never get an answer. You never got resolution, conclusion, or anything remotely close to a closure because every day you wake up and she’s there, existing. Not yours—but happy.

            It’s just too sad, you think, that you’re not the only one who puts that saccharine smile on her face. You’re not the only one who can greet her in the morning, send her texts of Have you eaten? What time will you come home? What do you want for dinner? I miss you,  I love you. That you’re not the only one whose shoulder she could cry on when she watches a sappy romantic comedy that she secretly likes, not the only one to dance with her when her favorite ballad plays on the radio. You’re not the only one who knows how much she loves a pizza’s crust and playing basketball, that she is a closet painter, or that she has a habit of humming kpop tunes while she cooks. You’re not the only one who will be there, with her and holding her hand when the night strikes in and her fears take a toll on her, not the only one who will eat cup noodles with her when she’s on her period, not the only one who will read through her self-written (although somewhat horribly) sci-fi stories.

            It really is unfortunate, too sad, you think, to know that you’re not the only one who can love her the way you do.

            The day she got married, do you remember?

            You were in China, some business trip, you told her. But the truth was you were too afraid, too much of a coward to show up. You were scared that when you see her, clad in the beautiful gown that you helped her pick, saying her vows and looking the happiest she has ever been, you will break into a million pieces that are too damaged to be fixed. You were afraid to get too close, to get too hurt, to get too broken. So you opted for a phone call, a string of words amounting to I’m really happy for you and Go live the fairytale that you deserved. And when she cried, muffled subs upon the reciever, rouge tears betrayed you and you end up crying with her.

                Maybe even for her, for you, for lost chances and regrets.

            I ask you again; you look in the mirror, what do you see?

            Do you see a 27 year old man, with a successful career and a carefree lifestyle? Or do you see a boy, with far too many lost chances at hand?

            If you ask me what I see when I look in the mirror, I’ll answer: you.

            I have a job, one that makes just enough, one that I left a few months ago because my circumstances don’t really allow work. I live in a spaceous house at the borders of the city, one that has home written all over its pastel walls, one that I would really love to get back to soon. I have a bank account, one that diminishes by one digit every night that I spend in this white washed walls that robs away my happiness with every drip of the IV fluid.

            I live my life, planned and precise, because every minute and second is a precious gift that I have no right to waste. Every day I sleep on the same bed, the smell of detergent filling in my senses as I think of tomorrow, if there was any. I trudge through every day, each with a new sense of fear that maybe one week, a day or a few hours from now, everything will just disappear.

            I meet up with my friends once in a while, at least the ones who still visit. I smile and laugh and share sotries with them but all I could see were faces filled with pity that don’t really understand my situation. They will smile at me, compliment me, tell me encouraging words like keep strong and fight and I do nothing but smile and say my thanks because they will never know the feeling of uncertainty that I have every night when I try not to sleep.

            I will try to laugh, I will try to be happy, but nothing I do will ever be enough.

            But she is, she will always be more—far more—than enough.

            I am writing this for you. I am writing this for us. I am writing this because I still remember the first time I fell in love, two choruses to the end.

            She was dancing with you, the bliss that she was probably feeling at that time written all over her face as I stared from across the hall. The saccharine smiles and smells of ambrosia that entered your life and changed it forever, it did the same to mine. When I stole her away before the song even ended, I never knew and imagined that I could be ruining what could probably be the greatest love story I’ll ever hear.

            But don’t you think this ending is better?

            Lost chances and regrets; overseas phone calls and tears; dying wishes and unsent letters. Maybe this was supposed to happen.

            I am writing this for her.

            I am writing this because I want you to be the one to put that saccharine smile on her face. The one to greet her in the morning, send her texts of Have you eaten? What time will you come home? What do you want for dinner? I miss you, I love you. The one whose shoulder she could cry on when she watches a sappy romantic comedy that she secretly likes, the one to dance with her when her favorite ballad plays on the radio. The only one to know how much she loves a pizza’s crust and playing basketball, that she is a closet painter, and that she has a habit of humming kpop tunes while she cooks. I want you to be the one who will be there, with her and holding her hand when the night strikes in and her fears take a toll on her, the one who will eat cup noodles with her when she’s on her period, the one who will read through her self-written (and in your eyes, the best) sci-fi stories.

            I am writing this because I want you to be the one, the only one, who would love her the way I do.

            Because I never had her, you never lost her, she was never mine.

            She may have loved me, in ways more than one, but not like the way she is in love with you. And all this time, I come home knowing there will always be a space in our life that allows you in her heart. There will always be a hole I could never fit in, no matter how happy she was on our wedding day. A void manifested in the way she cried with you through electromagnetic waves, a missing piece that I could never replace. I have lived, and I will die, knowing that in some ways, I could never be enough.

            You may think I’m lucky, you may think I’m happy, you may think I have what has always been your greatest regret. But everyday I look in the mirror, and I see nothing of the man you think I am.

            Because truthfully, between you and me, my words are the unrequited ones.

This, this may even be for me.

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