Last letter to the first.

Hello Sugarpie,

I hope you are well.

When I say that, I mean I hope I am doing better than you, that I am much more loved, much happier, much better than you. I hope you were not run over by a car but splashed by one, that your food arrived at your table exactly the way you want it to be but lukewarm. I hope you only remembered that you need to buy toilet paper after you finish it. When I say I hope you are well, I hope you are slightly inconvenienced but unharmed.

I am writing this letter to tell you that I am well. I have just bought a speaker that could drowned out the sound of you leaving. I am writing to tell you that I can see the small traces of you slowly washing away from me. Soon, I hope my memories of you will quietly stay put away in a photo album hidden in the back of my closet.

I have died for a very long time after you left. I thought I'd stay dead for a very long time but I met someone. I have met someone that allowed me to give myself permission to put you away. I saw a flower sprouting in this dessert that I call my heart. It's a miracle, really. I don't know if it will work out or not but I am grateful.

I like smiling and laughing and feeling okay. I just want to tell you that I am happy that it's no longer because of you. I think I finally am able to close this chapter that took up close to three years of my life,  two was just to get used to the idea that you no longer love me.I am grateful for you, grateful that I was given a chance to love you. I mean, I always will love you but I am okay with the fact that you don't know that now.

You had my heart. It was entirely yours. You can add that to your collection that you took pride in. I don't need it anymore. I have a new one now.

All the best in life, Cassandra. This time round, I really mean it because you really need it and because I genuinely want you to be okay.

With all my love for the last time,
Tryphena

I have never been the one to run from what I feel,
or swallow what I feel.
It's been more than a month since I've written.
I am feeling exactly what one will feel after a month of being "too busy" to deal with feelings
I feel emotionally constipated,
in short, I feel numb.
I have made myself busy, tired, angry.
I ignored the sad, the depressed, the want to die.
Here I am with emotions overload and I am trying to find peace in places that I know has none.

I have felt angry
because how dare life!
How dare life make me work for the next 30 to 40 years just so I can have a life!
It's not even to enjoy life, it's just to have the slight option of having a life.
How dare life demands so much positivity from me when so much has left me so empty!
How dare I want love!
How dare I want to come home to someone who loves me!
How dare I want something that has been seen everywhere!
How dare I want someone to hold and to hold me!
How dare I want to have a place to call home!
How dare I just want peace.

I realize this year that kindness is linked to love and being loved.
I find myself consciously being aware of times when I am being nice.
Buying an extra soda for my mum when she broke her glasses,
telling my best friend I love her when things are bad.
I never knew how much I didn't care anymore until I cared.
It felt like an awakening, or rather a revelation from myself to myself.
It explained my lack of writing,
my lack of interest in anything that tries to stir up any emotions,
my complete disregard for the presence of any empathy and compassion that I sometimes feel.

To be honest, I don't care.
I don't care if the world is burning or if I am burning
I mean, in the grand spectrum of things,
everything is bullshit.
I am so angry that everything is bullshit.
I try so hard to find meaning or put meaning to things.
If everything is bullshit and everything means nothing,
I am that idiot that tries to ignore the big picture
because so what if she still remembers my birthday and I feel happy that she remembers.
So what if I traveled the world?
So what if I have not felt peace or sanity in a long time, what if that's the last time I felt like someone could love me?
or I have not had a hug, a long proper hug in a while?
So what if I wanted that?
What if I just want life to be good to be for a bit?
What if I just stop trying?
What if I died?

If everything is nothing,
I have wasted my time and I am tired.

A farewell perhaps?

I spent the last 7 months getting myself ready to let go

of every message you have ever sent me.

I feel like I am finally there. 

I don't look at your messages anymore,

no longer fall asleep to the sound of your "good night, I love you".

When it's close to midnight, 

I take off my glasses, make sure my phone is charged,

switched off the lights and just go to sleep.

When I am depressed and can't get out of bed, 

I just stay in bed but it's no longer because of you.

Somehow I am here, already able to see the end of the tunnel,

still reluctant to walk away from the comfort of the dark, which was to miss and love you.

This feels like a goodbye, a farewell,

one that I need to stop myself from running back to.

You are the greatest love story of my life. 

You made me believe in love, fate and all the stories that I have ever heard.

You were the one, my sun, my moon.

You will continue to be the first that I love,

I don't think I will ever stop loving you.

I no longer live for you

but saying that, I mean I no longer want to live at all.

It will be close to two years now,

I think I should at least try.

I believe I have experienced one of the greatest things in life 

which is loving and being loved by you.

I don't know if that is ever going to be enough for me.

If I am ever going to end my life,

then my greatest sin would be loving you. 

Things that I know to be true:

1. I cannot play games from the first person's point of view for long periods of time because it gives me vertigo and makes me puke.
2. I write better when I am in pain.
3. I don't like being in pain.
4. I am good at putting abstract ideas and thoughts into visual metaphors.
5. I am a better version of myself when I am with someone.
6. My level of compassion is entirely proportional to my level of feeling loved.
7. It's been 10 years.
8. I am good with words when my emotions are not in the way.
9. The idea that my future has no boundaries and I can literally be anywhere now is terrifyingly overwhelming.
10. I am utterly obsessed with the possibility that I will end up in North America.
11. I have a love for cooking. It is one of the three things that gives me peace.
12. Do not run back to the ones who broke you. Don't even check up on them. Stop.
13. I embrace change now. I am that person that supports it and will go for it while whining how inconvenient it is.
14. I might be overcompensating for the belief that I will die alone with my career ambitions. If I'm gonna die alone, might as well be something for myself first.
15. I am terrified that I will really be alone for the rest of my life.
16. When the future terrifies me, the only solution that my brain can conjure up is to kill myself because by doing that, I avoided facing the future.

Now leave your voicemail after the beep.

"Hello,
I'm sorry I didn't come to the phone.
My chest feels like a thousand storms,
they are raging with hurricanes that go on for stories,
they had sunk every bit of peace and rest that voyaged from a good day.
A whirlpool in the middle had sucked in the overboarded sailors, normal sleeping hours, good appetite and the remaining fairy dust that I had saved for a rainy day.
And I,
I feel like the illustrated cow that is always drawn in the middle of a cartoon hurricane.
The higher and smaller the cow is,
the higher it is on the hurricane classification category.
In short, I am the dot in this weather.

I am constantly falling but also, suspended in mid air
Also, I'm being flung in circles and circles of loneliness with depression acting as a centripetal force of this never ending hurricane of sadness.
The speed of circling for 200 km/hr feels like slow motion after days.
Then, it's like I am in water
Except that,
I am submerged in the constant dread of not living my life to the fullest.
Then, I discover that I can breathe underwater
but I can't swim.
So, in that moment,
I am stuck in the mindset of wanting to to live my life and knowing that I have all the power to do exactly that,
but what is the point?

Sometimes when I am lucky,
I end up in the eye of the storm, like now.
It allows me to get enough of my shit together to construct a poem using metaphors and fancy sailing words like "voyaged".
I have sat here for a few days now.
All I hear are waves crashing against each other and the wind howling my name.
These storms feel too angry for them to be over any time soon.
I don't have a plan yet because getting out seems to be impossible at the moment.
I can't hear myself think over the destruction.
I'll send a message in a bottle when the storms calm down."

I mean,

"Hello,
I'm sorry, my phone died."

Dawn, friend or foe.

Hello, old friend.

I've been tired, took two cups of tea

and that kept me up a couple of good hours.

I forgot how dawn feels like.

Quiet as a library and chilly as midnight.

God, it must be ages since I've properly taken a deep breath of air that reminds me to live.

My eyes are weary from the lack of rest while caffeine surges through my veins.

I am reminded of how I used to cry while trying not to miss her.

My lungs used to rattle against my rib cage like prisoners dragging cups across prison bars.

By then, it was hard to remember if I wanted to sleep or to die. 

I forgot how silence is thick with uneasiness at the sign of first light.

Everything seems to slowly wake up and somehow began with a sense of urgency.

Then, I am reminded that I am running out of time which further pushes me to try to sleep even harder.

I can hear the soft rattling of the air conditioner outside my room. 

It seems to grow increasingly louder accompanied with visual dead air.

I swear it becomes deafening as I try to fight it and divert my attention to something else.

I imagined someone stroking the top of my head, 

they were humming audibly, my favourite song, yes.

My body began to relax, sinking into the affection that my daydream has shown me.

I invited waves of peace to wash over me. 

The dulling ache in my hands stopped along with the rattling of my ribcage.

The anxiety seems to be forgiving today, it didn't tell me that I would be alone for the rest of my life like it always did.

As sleep started to overcome me, it almost felt like I heard faint breathing next to me.

I was certain that I am alone in my room but for a moment there, I silently admitted to myself that I didn't want to be.

Till then.

Yours and always, 

Tryphena 

I miss being in love

The way hands slipped around waists,

Fingers intertwining,

Hands gently placed on thighs or lower backs,

Heads placed fittingly in shoulders, 

Absentminded stroking of the body with fingers,

Sure lips planted on foreheads, temples, necks, back of the hands,cheeks, lips,

Quiet but thumping heartbeats during naps,

The "I love you's", oh, the "I love you's".

I want it all,

I want it all back.

To be loved or not.

More often we forgot how it feels like to love ourselves alone without the constant reminder that we are loved from other people. I think we often choose to co-relate our worth to being loved by others. When we lose one part, we naturally lose the other. We are not nice enough to ourselves to believe that we are someone worth loving without someone loving us. I mean, what is an artist without his or her hands?

I think most of us are just trying to be loved in the end. Whether be it in terms of power or money or people or fame. I think most of us are trying to find that feeling that makes us whole and worthy of something. I believe it's just as simple as wanting to be loved.

How to be brave.

Whenever my mum kisses me goodbye before going off in the morning, I want to tell her to take her with me. I will leave behind my life here in city and go home.

I will go back to hot dinner with my family every day. Back to my childhood best friend calling me to hang out at a place that I have went to for the last 24 years of my life. I will go back to a place where I know that the traffic light at the crossroad will take about 30 seconds before it's my turn to turn left or right. I will go back to the sea side that I grew up watching plane landings and horse races at, back to excruciatingly slow drivers on the right lane and all the lanes and food that is the epitome of home.

But I don't.

Instead, I tell her goodbye, closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

Tea and no cakes.

I have not seen him in a year. He has gotten a new hairstyle, new clothes. He has a new habit of running his hand through his hair when he's deep in thought or vulnerable. He said he has been trying to eat healthier, cut potatoes and rice. "More protein and veggies", he said to me, "It's better than not having anything to focus on."

We talked and laughed and enjoyed silence breaks in between tea sipping. Conversations filled to the brim with "I feel the same way too!", "How about you?", "I am really trying to be better," and "I need to hang out with you more often now that I'm back." I learn that he is really good with abs exercises now, likes the color green now and knows what he might do in the next 5 years career-wise. I have missed him. The last time I saw him, he was crying on his bathroom floor, paralyzed with pain. I have never seen or heard a heart break before. There was nothing I could do. How do you save someone who just lost his entire world?

Flash forward, there he sat. His world was rebuild, or at least that was what he is trying to tell me. We talked about everything but that night. I still didn't know why he disappeared, why he wanted to be alone. My questions were at the tip of my tongue. Anxiety had built up at the bottom of my stomach and has transformed into butterflies that might blurt out any seco-

"Why did you disappear?"

His eyes immediately clouded with disconcert, guilt and apologies. He lowered his gaze and knitted his eyebrows together. He continued to open and close his mouth with nothing coming out. He ran his hand through his hair, still looking down while clasping his hands together, left thumb on top. Of all the years I have known him, I know that when he clasped his hands together, he is in pain. My eyes flicker from the frown on his face to the left thumb that has now started to rub on his right thumb. I immediately regretted my question.

"I was in pain. I didn't know what else I could do..." He swallowed with his eyes fixated on the left thumb that never stopped rubbing his other thumb. "I know I shouldn't have done that but I don't know if I could still ask for your help anymore. It was beyond what you could give me. I had to go away..."

I took a huge gulp of water and blinked at him, confused. "You could have told me. You could have asked me to do something. I would anything for you." He still has not looked at me. His left thumb, still rubbing his right thumb. His lips, still a tight line.

Finally, he looked at me. I could see the pain reflecting in his eyes, his neck tensed while he was trying to keep himself together. Why did I bring this up and push him back to where he was trying so hard to get away from? "I still miss her. I still love her. I had to go away to know how to stop loving her." He swallowed again as if trying to gain what little bit of composure he had left. "I didn't leave because I didn't have believe that you will be there for me. I left because it was too painful to stay... I didn't know what else to do." He brought his hands to his chest and squeezed while taking a deep breath. The rubbing of his right thumb has slowed down but he still hasn't unclasped his hands.

The waiter came by to refill out drinks during the lull of our conversation. I had a feeling that I will be annoyed with her if she asked if everything was okay. Fortunately, guessing that she sensed the tension that was present within the radius of our table and she left quickly without a word. I was evidently still upset with him but he had good reason, personal reasons. I couldn't blame him for something that he had to do.

"What would you do if you had one wish?" I asked.

He chuckled weakly and his left thumb started playing with his right thumb nail. "Her," he said softly. "I want nothing else, no one else but her." I saw a small sad smile playing around the edges of his mouth, as if he was remembering something. He continued, "I still remember how I looked at her. I still remember how it felt like to kiss her. It felt like all the stars colliding into a bright meteor shower and the entire world disappearing. It felt like what forever should be like. It felt like everything that I wanted in every lifetime. It felt like she loved me too."