[ to enhance reading experience, please listen to Because of Me - Krystal Jung

Here I am.

Sitting on this stupid bench, drinking a bottle of beer as I stare out at the goddamn sunset on the horizon pitying my own life like this. Now is the time to wonder about regrets and actually face them, not that I will though. Crying is a pleasure that I can’t afford to allow myself because then I’ll miss him too much and just call him again to hear his breathing. I can’t do that. He’ll find me and I can’t let him find me. I’ve hurt him enough.

“Soojung. What are you doing?” Sehun walks into the bedroom, his eyebrows raised in question as he watches Soojung stuffing the last layer of clothes on top of her luggage. She doesn’t turn around, doesn’t say anything to him. “Soojung. What the hell are you doing?” His voice is higher this time, more upset than before. She zips up her suitcase, putting it on it’s wheels and pulling open the rolling handle. This time Soojung allows her to give Sehun a glance, but just a glance. She won’t break down in front of him.

Taking the luggage and wheeling it out of his bedroom, she goes into the living room and looks at their pictures on the wall. Soojung still doesn’t say a word and Sehun just watches as she lets out a deep sigh, turning away from the pictures towards the door. “Soojung. Soojung-ah.” Sehun catches her hand as she reaches out to turn the door knob.

“Let me go.”  The voice that used to sing him to sleep when he was a having a hard time had suddenly turned ice cold on him. His grip loosened just enough for her to pull her hand free and reach for the knob again, but he moves in front of the door, blocking her from exiting and finally taking a good look at her tear stained face, her bloodshot eyes.

“Soojung.” He reaches out to caress her face softly, and she thinks her resolve is going to break at his touch. But she manages to convince herself this is for the better as she turns her head away from his embrace. “Soojung, why? Why are you being like this?” Her walls are crumbling at the smooth sound of her name rolling off his tongue in that sincere deep voice of his and she doesn’t know how long she can endure it. Maybe she should just run back into his arms, his safety, her home. But she can’t. Not if she still has feelings for the dead boy that resembles the boy she claimed to love all this time.

“I said, let me go.” Soojung sighs and wipes the one stray tear that has managed to escape. Sehun feels his heart breaking at the sight of his girl, the one he has devoted his entire life to, crying.

“Jung…” he begins softly. And something in her just snaps at the all too familiar name.

“I’m in love with someone else okay?” His face blankens. He’s frozen in his spot, with just enough room between him and the door for Soojung to squeeze out of his life. So thats what she does, she takes her luggage and wheels it out around him as he’s stuck in his spot absorbing what she has just said.

“No. No Jung, no you aren’t.” He’s moving now, reaching out to her as he races down the hall just to see the elevator doors close on his face, his love on the other side. He takes the steps, two, three at a time, racing down six flights of stairs to meet her at the elevator but she’s already gone. Probably in a cab. On her way to the airport. And out of his life.

“Soojung.” Her name escapes his lips that one last time, carried away but the wind. And on the other side of the street, she watches him. He doesn’t see her, he just watches the taxis go by hoping she’s in one of them, turning around to explain to him. But she isn’t. She is watching from afar, the mascara-blackened tears finally streaming down her face watching him and she swears she can hear that one last time he says her name.

It takes more than one bottle to get me drunk. More than two, three, sometimes I even get past four. Its a good thing I bought a six pack then. Maybe I should let him infiltrate my thoughts once more. Allow me to miss him for a just a second. And now I’m crying, great.

Sometimes I question why I even left him in the first place. But I know why. I know that its because I’m too scared to love after Jongin.  I know that Sehun loved me too much for me to handle. I know that I used Jongin as an excuse to run away. I know that I won’t let myself love anyone else because I think I’ll lose them. You see, the way my sick brain thought about it as I left his house was like this: “Leave them before they can leave you.” And maybe Sehun wouldn’t have left me. Maybe he would’ve been my everything forever. But you can’t love someone else when you’re still in love, or at least when you think you’re still in love.

What I thought I felt for Jongin, that love, it wasn’t love. It was me, not allowing myself to miss him properly all those years ago. They also say that there are five stages of grief: anger, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I think after Jongin had died I went through anger, lashing out on my grades and just forgetting everyone and everything. Denial was felt so much longer, when I denied myself the chance to love Sehun with the excuse that I still loved Jongin. Bargaining happened a little later, it was pretty brief. I was on the plane at the time, debating whether or not to get off, who I loved more, if I ever really wanted Sehun, if I wanted to leave right now and just go back to him. But it was too late. Next thing I knew, the plane was taking off. Depression was felt in the month that I had settled into a cozy little loft on the outskirts of San Francisco. I cried for days, refused to leave my house, kept thinking about him and him. I couldn’t bear the thought of living without either anymore. I almost bought a plane ticket back to him. I even tried to kill myself with some anti depressants to be with him. That month was the hardest I had ever lived through, it made high school like a worthless piece of plankton. My sister caught me and made me go see a psychiatrist.

Its taken be 1 year, 8 month, 29 days, an attempt at suicide and psychiatric counseling to realize that although Jongin was my first love, and that I would always remember him, I was hopelessly in love with Oh Sehun. Just not at the right time. Time is a that way, she screws everyone over. I don’t regret everything that I’ve been through with both of my hims. Why would I? Even if I’m a little unstable now, I see the world a different light. Those faires, those mermaids that we tell our kids about, they aren’t real. And I used to believe that we should just give those kids a shot a happy childhood filled with light and laughter because darkness would inevitably consume them. But it isn’t like that. You see, life isn’t about the perfect, happy endings. Its about everything that you’ve been through, it’s about the story.