For a long while, I always believed it was only time which had been holding me back, and I always told myself that one day when time was on my side, I would have a grip of what I truly wanted and I would conquer anything. I shouldn’t have been that hopeful. For a while, I had been living with an unrealistic expectation that as long as time was on my side, everything would fall into place. We told each other this a lot, didn’t we? We were sad that we barely found time for each other. We got excited just setting aside a little time every day to see one another. When our time was running short, we kept reminding each other that it would be okay and that it would work out eventually no matter what. Little did we know that time wasn’t the only thing that would keep us apart. We didn’t know that things weren’t supposed to be that simple. How naive we were for actually believing that everything but time was on our side. We had been relying on false belief until now, when we are here standing on different sides separated by this so-called ‘bad timing’.

Some parts of reality cannot be reconciled. We were always trying to be realistic about many things, but we still ended up disregarding some others. We built our hopes up from scratch just to watch them being crushed by the blow of reality. We lied to ourselves and to one another a lot; we probably didn’t even realize it, but definitely, we did. One of the lies we told is that we would always fight for us. We stated that as though ‘WE’ were the only thing we had to fight for. Just like people say, it’s easier said than done. Our goals, dreams, works, and families are there to remind us every day that ‘WE’ is not the center of the story. We were greedy because we wanted to have them all, but at one point, we realized we couldn’t, and that’s when we finally admitted that we couldn’t keep our words because ‘always’ is a strong word, so strong that we couldn’t rise up to that level. I’ve got my dreams, and you’ve got yours. We’re heading to opposite directions at different paces. We’re living with families who have different mindsets. We’ve got our own dreams and passions burning fiercely inside of us, dreams which do not harmonize.

I have always believed that everything happens for a reason. We met for a reason. We were given a chance to talk and become close for a reason. We got together for a reason. Now, I also believe that we’re falling apart for a reason. We are too small for all these things we’re responsible for. We had been acting tough for so long; therefore, I guess it’s high time we accepted that we cannot always fight for us. For the time-being, there’s no longer ‘we’; it’s just ‘you’ and ‘I’ heading after dreams and goals we had always been sharing with one another. I can still sense the burning spark of confidence and certainty I felt when you told me about your dreams, about the person you would become. The delight is still here inside of me when I’m reminded that you were there with me celebrating as a dream of mine was slowly turning into reality.

Maybe I have been spending too much time trying to make sense out of many things in my life. I have been fighting too hard for reasons to justify things that have been happening. But at the end of the day, what matters is not being able to explain every phenomenon out there or solving the endless paradoxes of life. What really matters is accepting that things happen, and sometimes we just have to sit back and watch life unravel itself. One day, our paths might cross again, maybe at an unexpected time for a reason we cannot foresee.

Until then, only you and I can tell whether ‘WE’ is still worth fighting for. 

Julina Mam