when i am lost

I have a bad habit of skipping town whenever I’m upset.

I once took a cab to get across the causeway and checked into a hotel, with just the clothes I was wearing, the passport, my wallet, a cellphone and a very miserable heart.

It was most painful because of the miserable heart. I went there because I was looking for him. And I thought I remembered where he was. At 5.15am the next morning, I took a cab to the town he supposedly was at. It was the right town, I remembered all the landmarks or so I thought. At 6am, I was at the petrol station which I thought was nearby his house. At 605am, my cellphone’s battery died on me. I was completely lost at the petrol station with the highway in front of me and rows of almost countless houses behind. In one of those houses was the person I was looking for. I felt very tired. I wasn’t scared for myself but for the lost of this opportunity to see him again. I wanted to see him so badly.

Till now, I remember with excruciating clarity the feel of the morning air when my cellphone’s battery went died. The silence of the morning broken only by passing cars. The breaking of dawn. It felt both light and heavy at the same time. A glimmer of hope and yet darkness envelopes.  The first time I felt a sense of lost.

And then a car drove up. Someone got out of the car. Someone familiar. One of Yikor’s men. They sent me back to the hotel where Yikor was waiting in the room next to the one I had left earlier that morning. He had known all along that I would attempt to look for that person. And for the first time in my life, he shouted and ranted and was like a mad man for all of almost an hour about the danger I was in and the amount of worry I had created. At that time, I couldn’t care less. All I thought about was how I had failed to find him. And all I ever wanted to do was to go off again to find him. I was angry with Yikor, extremely upset and tired, and so I shouted back and threw things at him as well.

I can still remember the look on Yikor’s face. I saw the tears he didn’t shed. Yet, I continued to behave like the spoilt  brat that I was.

That person meant more to me than life itself. Yikor took years to finally accept this as a fact. He had thought it’d meant no more than a passing fancy to me but it was not. I told Yikor, I’d give my life to protect this person. I’d give up everything for him. I’d even give up Yikor…just for him.

If you never knew the meaning of pain, the pain of the heart, you never knew love. When two in love are separated by a situation beyond their control…that kind of pain…the real pain of the heart. That one true love. (刻苦铭心的相愛) But how do you know? You know because your heart knows it. And your heart can no longer accept another’s promise of happiness even when you say or think you can. That one true love.

The little breeze caresses your face, you breathe in deeply, let out a deep sigh, hoping that the emptiness will just go away but it remains an aching pain in your heart. And for many years after that, you still feel the emptiness weighing heavily, painfully in your heart though you may say that you have found happiness with someone else…”

That happiness is never complete without your one true love.