Francesca asked me what I’d lose if you were to leave. I replied that I would have lost a co-worker, a mentor, a student, a friend, a life companion, someone like family and even more—an existence only successfully concluded by your name, the sixteen letters that could bring instant joy and hope and strength. There cannot be a better phrase to account for the ecstasy when our glances meet, the echoes of the palpitations of the heart, the moment when everything came to a halt and we stood beyond the physical world.

For you are irreplaceable. With you, I came into an understanding of my past, how the most bizarre events were actually preparing me, step by step, for the emergence of you. As a child, I found myself surrounded by endless rows and rows of corn stalks, the silk swaying in the soft summer breeze, and I wandered around, so desperate to read into the wind for hints on where I was headed. When I finally got to the middle of the field, I no longer see corn stalks in sight, only the barren earth under my feet and sand suffused in the air. Yet I was constantly reminded of the stalks, how their swaying and my readings got me to this ultimate destination.
We were in the middle of nowhere but also at the center of everywhere.

There had been countless instances when I went back to the moment we first met and thought to myself “what are the odds that we met” and then “what are the odds that we met again.” One in ten, one in a hundred, one in a thousand. The chances kept withering over time yet we stand as positive as ever, knowing for certain that statistics offer trial and error, yet we no longer need trials, for we have become life itself. We no longer err either, for every mistake in our past paved its way to a future union, and if our lives were any bit more perfect in the past, we would not have arrived at this dream-like fantasy which we now call reality. Regret, however torturing, was no longer our concern.

How I hoped that all could last.

Yet the horrific night finally came.

From the very beginning, I knew that you had no choice because I was the only option.

Whenever in the future, if fate granted you a normal life--if fate introduced to your world other men and women who are equally as loving as I--you would choose anyone above me within the blink of an eye. Currently, I am an obligation, a requirement, the plan B. I am not, and will never be, the preference.

Therefore I knew my time was limited. When the transition ends so does your existence in my life. So I held on hysterically, cherishing every moment I could have as if it was my last, until the “if” was deleted from the former sentence. You met the others, and I, lost forever. The transition was complete, and all that’s left were bits of remembrance which I had to piece together to relive the past in my mind. That is the ultimate difference between you and I: you could move on, heading towards the future but with no clear destination in sight, while I linger at joy, pulling a tug-of-war with father time into a deeper pit of fear for ominous fate.

“Never mind,” I said to myself, “Never mind.”

Francesca warned me countless times that the finale of our story was definite. But I refused to listen. Francesca is no different from you, following the edict of fate like faithful disciples, believing, never questioning, blindly heading towards a direction unknown. Yet the force that drives me forward is hope: an adamant struggle, not to be found but to remain lost. With such a principle I found you, I loved you, and I made for myself the memories that were worth piecing together. I was the maker of the future.

I shall not speak to you here regarding commitment, for there were none since the very beginning. I never expected eternity, except, maybe, the moment I stared into your eyes for the first time. You, the beam of light pouring in from a long-forgotten crevice in the walls, to touch a beast dwelling silently in the dark cave. Stones came crashing down as both of us began to dig.

We ran, we escaped, we cried, and we promised each other if there could be a second life, let there be no light.