She Was The World I Lived In (pt.2)

Do you remember falling right off a bicycle for the first time when you learned how to ride one?

When you were crying your eyes out because that incident scared you?

Or when the first time you had your broken ribs after football?

You were surprised at the sudden impact and didn’t feel any pain after your whole body touched the ground.

But you would feel it exactly when you expected it.

I didn’t expect things to be like this until it happened.

In my case, I have never been through any incident like that in my life. I suffered every painful minute carrying the fact that I was completely scared to reverse the fantasy I had long ago held into. Seeing her in a hospital bed wasn’t the most terrifying thing I had ever thought of and I regret all of the things I’d done especially for making a stupid decision to keep her away just because ‘she lied’ about her being sick. I had avoided her and the hospital too long and the possibility of death might take her away had haunted me for as long as I left my mind unoccupied.

Small things were clearly seen during her missing presence.

Things we had been doing since the day we moved in.

And most of my days possibly didn’t come out well, she made my morning coffee turned cold. I was losing my focus on every part of daily life I had been having, except how to make a proper breakfast without her presence sitting on the right side of the table. She would also leave my TV turned on all day making one of my neighbors complained about how loud it was. I wasn’t even there to worry about another stuff when my mind was completely attached to her. Every little thing that reminds me of her was stayed in it’s place while memories flashed through every corner of the house; like her regular pyjamas or her favorite coffee mug were left untouched, and the right side of the comforter was always tucked in every time I went to sleep.

No matter how hard I tried to move past it, something always encouraged me to see her.

Like accepting and forgiving myself for things I’d done was easier than being a person I had once admired.

In fact, it’s not.

Those 5 days of my life and nothing was worse compared to being apart from her.

However, I still chose to become the good man I was.

So I decided to see her.

It was Friday evening, I was driving all the way through the hospital while drinking a cup of coffee I had been having for the last 5 days. I didn’t want to fall asleep with the possibility of death was trying to reach her out and could win in every brief second it could get. I had to remind myself every minute I went through pictures or memories of her that life meant more than absolute changes for us. It was more complex than that; either it got better or worse, we still went through moments and changes this world could spare.

But that time was clearly different and proven that she could stay the same or got worse everyday.

She just didn’t get better.

I was wondering what kind of life she was expecting while being in a hospital bed alone, with four white thick walls surrounding her. When no one could give her time or space to pull herself together; to finally embrace herself for having the most dreadful disease for 5 years. I knew for a brief second she would easily pretend it never happened, that our last fight was less than a milestone we should get it over with.

She would say it will be okay even though it’s not.

But that thought had changed before I stepped into a small room full of possibilities.

That room was colder than I expected, every single living creature was probably numb being in that room. It was so intimidating, especially when it didn’t smell like her or even her perfume I had back home. It was just drug scents everywhere. And I hated every last moment of it.

She was positioning herself in a sitting position when the first time she saw me walked in. She looked hopeful and desperate at the same time, maybe she was just glad to see me finally facing the lie she had chosen to live with. Her eyes started to show a hint of an apology, and that look of frustration was emerged like she was asking for help; or at least a redemption for things she had done.

Even though she didn’t have such request, I would always accept it somehow.

She was exceptional.

We were stuck at a hospital all by ourselves. We spent our important dates pretty much in there, I would bring treats to make her feel better sometimes, or we just gave them away to the other patient because her taste buds were off. She would be in that situation where she acted all happy and cheery but also she would just be all stiff and rigid. I didn’t notice the changes because I was there the whole time and she looked just… the same. Her skin had turned pale, and her body was getting skinnier everyday. Her small body was nothing compared to the thick white bed that carried her, she was skinnier than the last time I saw her. But nevertheless, she was still the same person I knew.

The world could give me billions of chances, I would still hand them over to her.

And at moments like this, you’d surrender or sacrifice anything in return for the ability to stop the time.

Because every second was priceless.

She was living every sense of life to the fullest version of it, there were the goods and bads that helped her went through every prospect of changes that made her who she was. I was thinking of many aspects of life she would be getting after she was fully discharged from this hospital. What our lives would have become after everything we had been through; for treatments and medications she had to take or bring with her reminded me that our relationship wouldn’t be no longer survived.

It would never be easy to go through for both of us.

When things were finally coming back in place, she seemed to slowly fade away.

And her body was rapidly turning worse.

She was the world worth living. Every part of her was almost like the art of consistency, my feelings would always stay the same around her. She told me a story about the space once, about how the stars and the moon are still on the same spot for centuries that she wished she was tougher than the strength of the atmosphere which was always keeping them away from us because she thought that humans were careless and ruthless by trying to ruin them apart. Instead, the world that she wished to discover was nowhere to be seen; it was fading away with her when she thought about things that belong to certain places. Those places she could have never been to, places she seemed to be dreaming about.

Maine.

The first state she had recognized when we went through our blind map.

Now she would never notice where it was.

As the last day ends, a new day would come. Everyday with every random possibility we went on waiting for the perfect day for god to finally take her away from me. My world was revolving around her and now it has lost it’s track. It was like the apocalypse all over again causing some odd feelings about how I relive that moment without crashing apart.

The earth might lose a soul when mine was tumbling down.

My world.

And no one was there to pick up the pieces.

She kept her promise to stay longer on the first day we moved in. It was just a basic conversation we had back then when I asked her to remove all of the family photo we had brought pretty much wherever we went. She had her lips covered in cotton candy from the theme park we’d been before we moved our stuff saying that she was excited to finally start a new one with me.

She saw the beauty in things and people sometimes she didn’t expect things to be bad at all.

Even when she was sick for years, she could have assumed things would’ve been better any time now.

Like the slight possibility of surviving still worth saving.

And yet, she was vanished.

I remember it was raining, and everyone was standing around her coffin with their coats keeping the mud and the wetness away from those expensive suit while I was staring up to the sky. I was feeling her presence with the rain covered my body all the way down to my feet. People might not recognize my tears that had been flowing out since I got out of my car; it was like the rain was trying to wipe them clean off my face.

It was keeping me from tearing up.

Like she always did back then.

It wasn’t the rain. It was her.

She used to inspire the way I see things from a better perspective.

I always wanted to recreate her story, to travel around cities and revisit our small conversation about places she had eagerly wanted to go to.

And I had lost my sense of words anytime I tried to write one. 

Two years later, I was in Paris doing a book tour for my best-selling fiction when memories flashed through my mind.

This is the city she randomly marked for our first anniversary.

It was perfect.

She was perfect.

And I loved every part of her. Even when she was a walking disaster, she’s still the same person many years ago; the person who’s still being all this careless and inattentive when her life might end at any moment, now she’s gone.

With every piece of my shattered self that was finally healed from the fresh open wound she had caused. I shall live and love again, because that was what she had once taught me. She was the world I used to live in, but now she was just a part of it.

One day, everyone was having their regular bedtime and she was fully awake while walking around places.

When forever will never be enough, she said. Neither anytime at all.

She Was The World I Lived In (pt.1)