I remember the day when she told me she was leaving. It was not a particularly different cold and windy night as any weeknight in the final months of the year. There may have been a drizzle, but I was too tired to notice. “I am leaving,” her voice resonated over the line.
“Oh.” I was never good with phone conversations, especially with her. I always needed to see her, to look at her in the eyes when we spoke. I guess it made it easier to read her when both of us were together. This moment, on the phone, there were just too many questions I wanted to ask but did not know how, not knowing if I was prepared to accept the answers to them. “That’s nice.” That was my default answer. It was one that showed no emotions, just an affirmation of the previous statement.
“I am going on a vacation. I will be staying with a friend there,” she said, probably sensing the question even before I could conjure the words to ask it. “Are you alright with it?”
There are times that I replay my answer to that question in my mind, wondering if it was right. If I had a glimpse of what was to come after that, I would have realized that nothing was going to be the same ever again from that moment onward. As she was waiting for my response, I felt as if the air thickened as I held on the line, thinking of what to say. “Well, I guess this is something you really wanted to do. I don’t want to deny you your happiness.”
As I said those words, there was an intense pain and a feeling of loss that crawled inside of me, and I was oblivious of what to do. It felt like a star died inside me, and a black hole slowly took its place, sucking in everything once great and beautiful. Now, that feeling is associated to times when people leave my life. But as I look at it today, that feeling is the start of a process of transformation, wherein we begin to choose to become another version of ourselves, either better or worse. Through black holes, another universe may be waiting in the other side, with all its beauty and madness ready to be explored. One just has to desire himself or herself to go through, having faith that everything is going to be alright.
As I think about it now, I realized that what hurt me the most was not that she was leaving, but the fact that as she planned out her journey to her happiness, I was left behind, not included in this story. I was not part of her happiness. But as I continue to think of it, anyone’s happiness should not be dependent on another person; one must search for his or her happiness, in his or her own way. Probably this was her way, being away from what was familiar, what was easy, because it is usually in times of individuality and fear of the unknown that we discover ourselves. And it is only a love that is true and genuine which has the ability to understand this without question, without doubt, without insecurity that she may never come back.
So I let her leave, along whatever path she chooses to find her happiness. And as she takes her journey, I too am happy for her.
Memories linger, and you cannot choose which one stays, because they all do: the ones that lift your spirits, and the ones that hurt you over and over again. All you can do is live with them, carry them with you as you grow and create new memories.