Remembering

I live in the past, you somewhere in the future, and in between....

Dear,

I never called you dear and probably wouldn't ever sound nice...As a joke, it would. Anyway, this is probably a product of keeping it all bottled up for quite a while, though my journal's witness to this long frustration. I give credit to one of my best friends, Tj, for bringing this same sentiment up. I've been meaning to talk to you face to face...Not to ask you back, or poke at a chance...rather, to get a feel of things better, when all that teenage dream has faded into just that.

We woke up from it, I know we both did even while we were together. Now, I believe you're all perfectly fine, and I am too. What we had envisioned for each other has come to fruition and it's beyond beautiful. You, a good student, soon a lover to a new lucky soul (a well-deserved soul I must say) and I, a passionate, freelance writer, plucked by the forces that be...This is exactly what I believe we had in mind: success, promise and that waking up everyday for a damn good reason.

I'm writing this, publicly, cause you know you'll never be revealed. You trust me, and I know that. I also write this here, cause it's the only way I could reach you. Physically, the distance feels like two, three long steps from each other, but in reality, the distance feels like worlds and times apart. I live in the past, you somewhere in the future, and in between...

Life has been great to me after that day...Friends and family and people and life itself took on that big space you once filled and I tell God, every single day that I am thankful for it. But what I do pray for too, even up to this very day, is that you feel the questions I've been throwing to the world since. I have moved on, partially...a lot, but never fully. There is no recovery from love lost, especially when it's like the one we once had. But I smile, I breathe and I live great, even without the thought of you crossing my mind. In times like these though, I do remember and I remember well cause I choose to lay time for feeling this. All I ever ask, actually, to the universe, to time, to God and to you, is not to tell me you regret the day you let it slip, or that you want me back, or the truth about losing it...I want to know if you still remember? If I have ever impressed deep enough to be remembered, at least in a short, fleeting second of your long, joyous life... When you see things that you know has meaning to me, to us once, do you remember how it was? When you check the calender and pass by dates special, do you remember us? When you look at someone who might've resembled me, do you remember what I actually look like? It's been pretty long since the day we've seen each other, and there was once (only once after that long relationship) that I saw you, passed you by and in that noisy crowd, I couldn't say hello. I had lost the courage to reach out and tap your shoulder cause I was really afraid how you'd react. I was within arm's length and you never noticed. You were busy talking to a special friend that I know is the lucky soul you've chosen to set your life to. And maybe, if I did reach out to you, you might've forgotten my voice, my face and my name. You don't have amnesia, I am sure, but it sometimes feels like it...

Like all people, it's the remembering that matters...I don't want to be taken back like a long gone dog. I don't want to be continuously bothered by messages from you....But what I do want, is to know if who I was and am really mattered to you. 

To me, you have once been that silver shooting star, darting wild and burning across my grey skies...It was fast, momentous and forever life changing. You have taught me to catch and wait and be vigilant for things rare and special and worth experiencing bliss and sadness for, no matter how long or short it is. And I wonder, if I had been able to leave just the same impact to you as you did to me. Don't worry, I am not sad. I am just nostalgic and grateful for everything...While it haunts me, while it matters, while language grants me its power, it is worth writing. 

When I have finally penned the masterpiece I have promised the world to read, your name will be there...somewhere in the lines and curves and periods of my novel. You, among a lot of others I've met and had left an impression, will be staring through the eyes of fictional characters, right through my readers' temporary ones, and they'll have an experience of you, millions of them, who will feel weightless and alive like I once did. And when you pick it up, when we're older and wiser, I hope it'll spark a tiny flame in your heart, that once, we had it, and that once we were. 

It is the only thing, I believe, that matters to us humans. Love dances and dies too, but the memory breathes, just as long as the mind gives it enough space. Leave me a small one at least, just so that when this all ends, I know all my time and love was well worth it. I have saved you one that's big enough to keep me hopeful, humble, learned, appreciative and loving.

Now, and probably for a long time, I have myself craned to the sky for that rare, bright shooting star that'll burn my black skies yet again, and probably just like you, it'll be worth all of long life's questioning, learning and loving...

Here's for remembering you, not like your dead, but because you will be alive, forever...

Love,

-Gerard