MY PATHETIC EVER AFTER

UNEDITED SAMPLE LITERARY ARTICLE
By Karez Amparo Martin
IV - Michael Faraday


I am not sure if I’m going to be ecstatic or sorrowful for what is currently happening right now. Just a month ago, I thought you already left me. I thought you said that you did love me, but that love quickly faded away. I thought you said that you already loved somebody else. And I thought that that was the end of my happy days.

I can’t seem to think of a reason why you would want me back. I just received a call from your mother, saying that you wanted to tell me something important. Obviously, I am still foolishly and impossibly in love with you. So after the call, I quickly bustled to hail a cab and go straight to the hospital. I can feel the strong pounding of my heart, like it is about to jump out of my body.

As I entered the hospital door, my knees trembled at the sight of you. You look horrible, you look horridly sick. It became difficult for me to walk towards you. It’s like I am approaching your death bed. I don’t know what to feel when you reached out for my hand. And then you began begging for my forgiveness. You said that you are gravely sorry for hurting me. You said that you still loved me more than anything else, that you left me because you didn’t want me to be burdened by your sickness. But you weren’t able to control your desire to see me before leaving this world completely. And so you sought for my company.

I flinched when you said that death isn’t going to separate us. I was stupefied by the word death. Time stopped as reality struck me. You might have said that you still loved me, but you are now going to leave me. Alone. Ad Infinitum. What did you want me to feel right now? Happy, that your heart still lingers for me? Exalted, because your world also revolves around me? I know I am not; I know I can’t be. Because the most important person, even more important than my own self in my life right now, is going to be detached from me forever. Tears filled my eyes. I became speechless, unable to utter even a single word. I just met your eyes, which are also filled with the same sorrow and compassion. Then I was able to make out the words I love you. You inhaled deeply, then breathed out I love you more. And that was your last breath.

My knees became too weak to support my body. So I broke down and cried in my hands beside your bed. I don’t know how to endure the pain anymore. My heart is being stabbed by a thousand knives. It is crumbling away into a million pieces, it is being shattered helplessly. I can’t even distinguish which tormented me more: the time when you said that your love for me had died, or now, when you declared your love for me even before dying yourself. You know that you are the very reason of my existence. How can I subsist in a world without you? How could you just leave me like that? How will I be able to continue breathing when I know that I don’t share the same air that I breathe with you anymore? A lot of questions filled my mind. Until I opened my eyes and realized that the worst was yet to come.

It was just a dream after all. A nightmare, specifically. Am I that desperate for your love? You did not really die. And I am still miserable. Miserable because of the verity that you’ll never be in my arms again. Whatever happened a month ago remains as an irreversible truth. Your love for me already reached its end, and it will need a miracle for that love to come back. You still left me with an unendurable pain that constantly radiates through my entire being. It’s like an electric shock, stinging me until I get numb. I hope numbness will soon come to me. I don’t know up to when I will be able to bear all of this. So I am the one who will die after all. But, you know what? I might as well die because I know that nothingness is a lot better compared to this oppressive and ceaseless torture that you stirred upon my whole entity.