Hey guys, finally.

Part VII ( The Forgotten)

And in case reference is needed....
Part VI
Part V
Part IV
Part III
Part II
Part I

And on.
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997.

Everything seems so simple nowadays. All I have to do every morning is to tell myself to hang on for another day, just another day, and soon enough things would get better. And then another day passed and I’d have to do it all over again.

In many ways, that’s the sad story of my life. Everyday, just living from moment to moment, earning my pittance and try to keep afloat in a vast ocean of sharks and other unfriendly aquatic wildlife.

If I had to think, I’d say that it all went downhill that night, when I found out about Cate's story. It isn’t every night that you suddenly discover that your love interest carries some pretty hefty baggage. I guess I was fine with all that, but the problem is that she wasn’t.

We were all right for a while, sharing life and love like the blend of light on clear waters, entwined, yet distant and separate as time went on, diffracted through her past. I guess we knew that it always got between us, but we never admitted it till one night, a night where we both ran out of excuses.

She left just a week later. 1st April. I was a fool and that was the joke. By the time I found out, she’d already boarded the plane. No tearful goodbye, no last glance back at the beloved at the barrier. No. Just five words sent via SMS.

Let fate decide our love.

They say that memories fade in time, that the carvings etched on the pillars of conciousness are slowly worn away by the gentle hands of amnesia. Well, whoever they were, they were wrong. Those words were burnt into the back of my head like a fiery brand, and believe me, the branding hurt.

I still miss her. It permeates my every thought, every seam of my mind, and it’s been two years since the day she left for a life beyond. Perhaps it’s not a long time to some, but to me, it feels like I’ve aged a decade since then.

Let fate decide our love. Fate is cruel, that everyone knows.

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I tried looking for her, but I didn’t know where to start. It was days and weeks of searching all the records, asking all her friends, and endless days of calls and messaging. And then one day, I stopped.

I don’t know why I turned my back. I asked myself that question so many times, but I guess some part of me knew the answers and another part told me that there was no answer, not one that I would every find till she returned from the lands beyond the horizon.

I could say I was tired, but I wasn’t, I wanted her so badly. I could say I was angry, but I was more sad than sorry. I just stopped one day, and decided that I just wouldn’t do it anymore.

Life went on, and I was drafted into the army, finished training, and there I was.

Every day, I counted the days since she left and marked it on that tree that meant so much to me. Yet something bugged me.

Do you ever get this feeling that you want something so desperately, that your life seems to hinge upon it, your axis rotates around it, but when suddenly, you get that something, you don’t know what to do?
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999.

I was returning home one day, same old route, at the same old bus stop again. The only variety to the mundane was that it happened to be raining, which was really really odd, considering that your typical April weather is a scorching conflagaration of merciless sunshine, even at night, the heat is suffocating.

It was late, at 7pm, and I was cursing my luck at getting volunteered by my sergeant for the fourth Friday in a row. Murderous thoughts involving grisly accidents and various high caliber firearms were running through my head, like cathartic release.

It was then I realized me and my murderous thoughts were alone at the bus stop. Great, And I’m the last to leave too, I thought. Scenes of someone getting run over repeatedly by a car were playing in my head. Funny, I thought that mess on the road looked like my sergeant.

And there was a white figure in the distance dashing towards the bus stop like it was on fire. Quite an irony, but my mind failed to notice that, for an awful sense of déjà vu began to perforate my thoughts, the memories of promises unkept and loose ends undone coming unbidden. The figure approached rapidly, and features from a memory began to form on a blank canvas.

A nose, a set of lips and a pair of haunting eyes filled in as the painter’s brush filled in the picture.

A bus stop, rain, and a chance meeting.

A watercolour image of her face came to fill the void, and I saw clearly the same features that held me captive for those sweet few months. That I never saw save in dreams the day she left, exactly nine hundred and ninety nine days ago. A smile, that wicked smile.

Then, the colours swirled and I saw the truth, that the white figure was but another of my fellow conscripts wading his way through the rain.

I sighed and resumed my task of watching the raindrops fall on the pavement.

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1000.

Midnight. And I was sitting in my chair, contemplating relationships and the fragile strings that hold them together. It’s always easy to keep people who are close together in relationships. As time goes by, people get more distance, and the strands holding them together are taut with tension, and eventually, all relationships that we do not persist in pursuing snap and are gone forever, like a kite in the wind.

Why is it that people hold on to people who are gone like they do? Why do people still tell themselves that everything could be as it used to, even in the darkest depths of their conciousness, they know that it will never be, that changes are enduring, more enduring than relationships, for relationships change, and change is eternal.

It was the start of the thousandth day since she left and hope was fading like figures into the fog. I guess it was always hopeless, just that it was even more hopeless now, if such a thing was possible.

I guess this was it then. The end.

Frank Fong let go Saturday, April 09, 2005

























A thought entered my mind suddenly. What if for those long days, I forgot about Cate, maybe it’d be better if I just let time take its course. It seemed impossible even just yesterday, but some part of me decided I had had enough and it was time to go on with life, to find someone else who actually gave a damn about how I felt. All the thousand days of resentment just came exploding to the surface in an instant like the plug of hope and love I put on the roiling mass just popped out.

And so reason called out like a clarion over the River Lethe. I let the waters lap over my head and sooth the scars in my mind while I sank deep into it, and then a deep deep sleep. And in the depths I saw five words

Let fate decide our love. Maybe this is fate then.

And we all know that fate is cruel.

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1000

I spent the night dialing numbers. More correctly, it was morning and it was 1am, so I guess I spent the morning dialing numbers. Glancing through my phone book, it was amazing how many names seemed so unfamiliar. In fact, many of the names WERE unfamiliar and I had no idea who those people were. It was almost like the names appeared in my phone by some wayward whimsy of chance.

Or perhaps, I had been living like a hermit for the past two odd years.

Looking through the records I found that the last time I called anybody was a week ago. Not too strange, but then I scrolled down the list.

“Base.
Mack
Jake
Jake
Home
Base
Home
Base
Base”

An incredible score of one hundred percent males. It was worse than I thought. Not only was I a hermit. I had…issues.

That was when I decided to turn things around before moss started growing on my phone and truly turned me into a homosexual hermit, grass in my ears and living in my cave eating stewed stone soup with rock steak.

It wasn’t as easy as it seemed though. Calling up people for dates was a little difficult, considering I had never done it before. That and maybe because I had only ten female numbers in my phone book.

I didn’t have much time to waste, so I dialed the first number. I wasn’t expecting an answer, considering that it was already 11 when I tried my cursed luck. Beep Beep. The phone’s ringing went on and on and on.

It was a really long night.





Death.

So many people died this week or the last it's unnerving.

And with their passing comes the pain of adjusting, filling the void left behind when the souls were torn from their mortal shells. Tears flow like rivers and unheard wishes are made to the cold heart of the reaper, but there is no avail.

The saddest thing isnt watching the dead leave this world behind, for they've gone to a better place.

It's watching the living clench their fists in impotence, their eyes misting with tears, trying to put on a brave front and watching their resistance crumble as they look around at everything around them and are reminded of life's one great sundering, uncontrollably. Watching their unsteady feet and shaking hands and wondering if they'd ever get over it. Watching the helpless gestures of desperation, watching their friends try to reach out to them but the experiencing the futility of finding only a fog of memory and loss.

That's sorrow. And i experienced it keenly this past week, sweeping graves, visiting the urns and ashes, the bereaved.

I told myself then I shall never willingly destroy myself to end my own suffering, and leave behind my sobbing, inconsolable parents. I would never cause my loved ones so much grief because I wanted to take the easy way out.

Life's greatest tragedy is death.