I used to think the cruelest thing about losing someone was having to live without them. I was wrong. The cruelest thing is living long enough to forget them.
Not all at once, of course. Time is far more patient than that. It takes a little piece of them every day. A smile here. A laugh there. The sound of their voice. The way their eyes caught the light. Until one day, all that’s left is the knowledge that they were once important.
And somehow, that hurts even more. If time doesn’t kill me, my love for you will. For now, at least, it still remains.
But one day, it will leave me too.
Not because I stopped waiting. God knows I’d wait forever if I could. Not because someone else took your place. And not even because you came back.
Just because time is patient enough to erode the things I once believed would last forever. The same way the ocean wears down stone. Not through strength, but through persistence.
One day, I’ll wake up and realize I can no longer remember the exact shade of your eyes. Your voice will become a stranger’s voice inside my head. The way you laughed, the way you smiled, the way you looked at me when the world was quiet enough to disappear. Little by little, I’ll forget the face I once knew by heart.
People call that healing. I suppose they’re right. But what a cruel thing healing is. To survive you, I must lose you twice. First when you left. Then again when memory follows.
And when the day finally comes that I can stop loving you, when I’m finally creative enough to find a poetic way to say goodbye, when your name no longer feels sacred and your face becomes just another fading photograph in the attic of my mind, I think I’ll find myself mourning all over again.
Perhaps someone else will love me the way I once loved you. Someone else will love me with the same devotion I once reserved for you. Perhaps I’ll even learn how to love them back. And I think that will terrify me more than the day you left.
Because you were once the love I loved the most. And when even that is gone, what remains of me?
So if time doesn’t kill me, my love for you will. And if my love dies first, then I’ll spend the rest of my life waiting for time to kill me.
Written above the clouds,
somewhere between Tokyo and Jakarta.