My favorite piece of prose that I wrote in my high school Creative Writing class.  Written on 7 September 2008.

In my young teenage years, I often enjoyed taking journeys around my hometown.  Seeking meditation and relaxation, I found myself walking down the streets of downtown San Jose on a brisk Saturday morning.  While enjoying the crisp morning air, my wandering thoughts caused me to forget that the rest of the world existed, causing me to collide into a young man, about my age, on the sidewalk.  We were both uninjured, as it was just a simple bump of the shoulders.  Nonetheless, we both stammered the usual exchange: "Oh, I'm sorry, excuse me," then, "No, it's okay, I'm fine," and we traded an awkward smile of apology as we went on our separate ways.

After a few strides, I turned around and glanced at the young man I just met, however brief, however insignificant - unfortunately brief, and unfortunately insignificant.  It was just a bump of the shoulders.

Yet, the collision seemed to spark a memory, pushing it into the foreground of my mind.  It was of a story that captivated me in my childhood.  I've heard many stories in my childhood that would cling to my heart for the rest of my life, from believing wholeheartedly in the magic of Santa Claus (who I've loved even after realizing that my father and Santa Claus have the same penmanship) to searching eagerly underneath my pillow for a treasure from the tooth fairy.  Yet no tale, tall or otherwise, resonated more with me than the existence of soul mates, which has grown into a hopeful faith that I've believed in for years.  I was taught that everyone in their lifetime would always meet their soul mate at some point in their life.  It can be simply making eye contact in the hospital nursery, it can be being classmates in elementary school, or it can be marrying your soul mate, growing old with your soul mate, and dying with your soul mate.

Or it can be meeting your soul mate by just the bumping of your shoulders.

I looked over my shoulder until I lost sight of him in the crowd of people.  Hesitantly, I turned back to face the world and move on with my life, never to know whether or not I just met the Adam to my Eve.  Then suddenly, I was thinking about mittens.

Guiltily, it may have been because my hands found their way into the pockets of my jacket and my right hand emerged with a pair of red mittens clasped between its fingers, but I held them out, staring at the strand of black yarn attached to two buttons, one on each mitten, keeping them together.  Staring at the mittens in my hand, I suddenly realized that they were meant for each other.  Every single strand of wool on one mitten was destined to be forever paired with the other mitten, and it was blasphemous for either of them to be matched with anything else in the world.  They were soul mates.

I made my way back aboard the light rail to return home, taking my usual seat towards the center.  As I sat there, my innocence returned to my heart, and I put each of the mittens on my hands, untying the string between them.  Feeling the soft wool of the mittens against my palms, I held my hands upright and slowly moved them towards each other, and had my right thumb collide with my left pinky.

"Oh, I'm sorry, excuse me," said the mitten on my right hand in a high pitched voice (which may have originated from the direction of my mouth).

"No, it's okay, I'm fine," said my left hand's mitten in a deeper, gruffer voice.

And as my two hands "walked" away from each other, my right hand turned around, and the mitten asked, "Would you like to grab some coffee?"  The fingers of my left hand nodded.

I took the mitten off and tenderly reattached the string to the mittens, reconnecting the mittens with each other.  Because they were meant to be with each other.

They were, after all, soul mates.

Some nights, I stay up cashing in my bad luck.
Some nights, I call it a draw.
Some nights, I wish that my lips could build a castle.
Some nights, I wish they'd just fall off.

- fun., Some Nights

-+-

There is something poetic about today.

The way that the day was so perfectly laid out. It was like someone rolled out a red carpet for me, preparing me to face this.

Life has been wonderful. There is no doubt about it. I saw the other side of the nation, a sea of green, with walls marbled with red, white, and blue. Flecks of gold lined the skies as I held my breath and looked up, thinking, "This is amazing.  This is the most beautiful thing I could have ever imagined."

However, life has the tendencies to throw you curveballs.  Like when you finally have time to sit down and write, it's on the worst day that you've had in a long while.  It's on the last day of the entire year.  It was a lot of little things, building up over weeks and months, culminating together, all on this one day.  Life is beautiful.  Life is glorious in all its gifts and privileges, but those are stories that I have to put on hold right now.

Because, at this moment, I am stricken.

I sat there, literally crippled by tears.  I have not cried like that in a long while.  I could not breathe.  My hands trembled, barely able to hold myself up.  My vision began to tunnel.

"Breathe," I was told, in a kind, reassuring voice, "Gather yourself.  Breathe."  

It was so different from the Old Life.  I used to cry like this a lot in the Old Life, and I was used to sighs and exasperation when this state of mind used to be a regular visitor.  I was used to a harsh snap of, "Can you stop crying?"

I followed, and I calmed.  I calmed into numbness, and then into anger.  My thoughts took an intermission to ponder, '...Five stages of grief.'

"Promise me that you won't do anything stupid.  Promise me."

I grunted, and refused to raise my head.  I kept staring at the floor.  Soft, beige carpet.  Nothing in the world could get my eyes off that carpet.  Off my purple toenails sifting between the soft brown threads.  For the first time, I could not bring myself to give a definitive and honest, "I won't."

I don't remember the last time I have been so fragile.  For a year, even considering everything that's happened, when compared to last year, I've been a rock.  I've been dumb, I've been stupid, I've been vulnerable, I've been impulsive, and I've been every variation of all of the above, but this felt new.  Fragility felt so new.  When I trembled at the touch of a fingertip on my shoulder.  Where the small words, "You should go," stripped me of my ability to hold a breath.  I fell, unable to keep myself sitting.  I fell, and I lied there, crying, unable to get back up.

"Is there anything that you want to say?"

I shrilled, "What am I supposed to say, huh?  I'm losing my best friend today."

"What?  What, no!"

And then, I said it.  I said the words that will terrify me for lengths of time that I cannot predict.

"This always happens to me.  Everyone always leaves me.  Everyone always tells me that we'll always stay friends, and they never do, they always leave.  Everyone always promises me that they'll always be my friend, but they all lied, and you're lying now too, because everyone always leaves me, everyone always leaves me."

And I realized, that all those months, all those times where I always insisted things like, "My life always gets turned upside down," and "The carpet always gets pulled from underneath me," it usually had to do with someone leaving.  I realized that when Phuc left that fateful year ago, it set off a chain reaction of departure, where I now always expect everyone to leave.  I have given my most valuable, life-changing friendships a countdown until they inevitably come to an end, and my life completely changes once again.

Life has left me waiting for people to leave me.  I walk into everything now with the mindset, "I am going to treasure this for as long as it lasts, because I know that it will not last."  I've formed a notion of transience, of fleeting joys that must be cherished to the fullest before their deaths.  I called it an adaptability to an ever-changing, fast-paced life.  I know now that in reality, it was a coping method with abandonment issues.  I don't know how to react to that.

At the end of the day, it was all just a case of miscommunication, and I just blew everything of out proportion and I severely overreacted.  Life is actually still beautiful as it's ever been. 

But there's a crack in my rose-colored glasses now.

I don't know how to react.

PS I promise that things don't actually suck.  It's just that I don't really need to write in my journals and diaries until the need to vent the bad days.  I am writing this with fresh mental wounds, and I'm sure that my mood and my thoughts will improve with time and reflection.

I owe you a happy blog post sometime.