It is December 26, a day after Christmas. I am not even sure why I am writing this. I feel very uncomfortable, bored, contented, and happy all at the same time. I can say I am in a place of confusion yet certainty but I cannot explain in exact words how I feel about everything. I am inside a chaos, trying to build peace brick by brick but being ran on by some bulldozer that I cannot confront. Just not yet.

Out of all the unsure things I am having, there is one thing that I am sure about, exactly my feelings were sure last December 21. It is crazy how I still remember the exact date. I was running away from my feelings, and I just realized that I can only ever forget or move on from the person after I accepted everything.

So I will be writing this letter to you. I am not sure if there will ever be a chance that you will read this, but I will still pour all my feelings in this letter, hoping at some point in this letter, I might have translated these deep feelings to words towards you.

Hi. What an awkward way to greet. Our relationship started kind of confusing. We both know we had an effect on each other, and we are just cautious on how to start, due to some reasons we cannot name out loud. My first impressions of you were: you are nice, gentle, do not break other people's boundaries in the beginning and are very aware of people's needs and emotions. It made me curious about you, as those were the values I also have on a surface level.

I thought we can be friends. Just friends. But I realized later how impossible that seems to be. Months passed, and other people came into my life. I honestly thought I could move on from you, or just forget you if we will have a proper ending, and if those people were better enough to make me forget you. I was just fooling myself. Whenever I am with them, I always think of telling you how the date was, how I talked to them, or if they are a good person. You would also judge them if they were good for me or not. You were fully supportive to find the next good guy for me. I am not sure if I was happy back then or I was hurt. Either way, it was a strong emotion of mine that I could not understand.

There came a guy who I thought was strong enough to finally make me forget about you. Turns out, I still have a hard time ignoring you. I needed the help of some of my friends to fully ignore you, but to no luck. You still find your way to claim your place in my heart, and on no effort at that! You just do it effortlessly, like it is usual to do so. It is funny the same way as it is painful. I have never experienced a love like this. I cried for days, confused and never really truly putting a label on how much love I really have for you, not until last 21st.

A friend told me, one way to truly move on and forget is to truly accept what you feel, acknowledge them and it is up to the person if they were to act on it or not. The important thing is to acknowledge and accept. I have never thought about it that way, and I realized I was running away from how deep this feeling was. I gave myself a day to think about it, but I never really needed a day. All I needed was to break the wall I put on my feelings, and that was it. I got scared for a moment realizing how strong my love is for you, and smiled as to how I am honored to feel such a strong feeling.

Add to the list I wrote in the early paragraphs as to how I got curious about you, you are more. You have so much more positive traits that I love that I could not find from other people, yet you have so many negative traits that I could not ignore yet did not prevent me from loving you as much. You are nice, yet when you are tired you get cranky and boss people around. You are gentle yet when someone crossed your boundaries or messed with your principles, you get so stern and strict and I can see how black and white your personality is. You do not break other people's boundaries, yet when it is necessary to help them, you do. You are very aware of other people's needs and emotions, but most of the time you do not know how to deal with them. Being aware and knowing what to do after that is a problem I also deal with, that is why I understand. I actually love you more for just the fact of being aware. Not everyone can do that. You are rare. I always tell you that you are. I always tell you good things about you because that is also the one thing that I like about you. You have a small ego. You know who you are but you do not know how to brag. You are confident, yet humble. Too humble in a way that when I remind you of who you are, that is only when you will remember and you will feel confident again. You are the only person I like complimenting a lot, because you always forget. And I get happy when you remember who you are. You are organized, yet disheveled when stressed and everything is happening all at once. You are mannered, yet you also break your mannered self when you feel that it is safe and you will not be judged to not have etiquette at all. You are always two-in-one, and I am honored to know and to see both sides of you. It makes me love you more.

You are a person I will never have, but you will always have me. You once told me you felt how strong my love is, and all I can do is confirm. I love you, and hopefully this letter will make it feel all real, that it happened, if in the future I can read it again.

I am glad I knew you in this lifetime.

He was the person I never thought I would like. I may never have noticed him at first glance, and I do not think he is the type of person I will break my neck to take a look at again if I happen to see him somewhere in the grocery, or randomly at the mall. Well, let me explain who I am first. I am a person who have a hard time liking a person. Love at first sight never worked for me. Something should happen, something should trigger, before I can actually claim that I like a person. So, I guess this is still in my normal "feelings" range.

The trigger would be his smile. But the difference is, I may have liked his smile a little too much. I am the person who loves to see people smile. Who, in any circumstances, wants to make the mood in the room lighter. If I hear people laugh, or smile genuinely, it would make me happy. But his smile was the first smile that made my entire day. Entire day. This is the first time that this happened.

Life is something for everyone. Life is always a roller coaster, as most would say, that it is a mixture of pain and rainbows. And it is no different with my life. There are people who are just surviving with no hope remaining in their hearts, and I would lie if I will say that I was not one of those people.

I planned to live a routinely life. A life where I will just focus on my growth and making my mindset positively stronger, and my person will just come. I visualized everything, but I knew, deep in my heart, that I have no hope left. I was just trying to live. Waiting for the day to come that I will actually look forward to tomorrow. "Tomorrow" was non-existent for me, and I always think that it is a good thing. That even when I do not have any hope at all, it would be fine. But not until I noticed his smile. It would be an exaggeration to say that his smile gave me, literally and figuratively, hope.

I started to look forward to the next day. My day got brighter, and people have noticed the sudden mood shift that I have. And then the next day, and the next day. All I was thinking was, how can I see his smile again? When can I see his smile again? Will his smile be brighter today? I basically memorize his smile everyday, because I like the feeling of thinking about his smile. It gave me the push to hope for things. To hope that everything will be better, that there is still a chance for life to be better. For life to be lived.

But life really has its own way of pushing everyone. Life has its own way of showing its claws again the moment you think that everything is turning out okay. This was when he became more than his smile to me. Out of all the suddenly's, suddenly his presence made me feel at peace. I do not have to look at him, or to memorize his smile anymore. Just to feel his presence for a few minutes was enough to make me feel okay. I never asked for comfort from anybody, emotionally. But there was something that is pushing me to seek comfort from him, at least through a few words. I decided to follow my gut and asked him for a few comforting words. He wrote back, and those words were something that made me cling to hope again.

He does not know this effect he has on me, but I just wanted to put this here as a memory that someone, in their own ways, showed me that there is a life to be hopeful for. That someone's smile can literally save someone's life.

If there will be a time that he will have the chance to read this, all I can say is: "Thank you for saving me. Thank you for giving me hope. I hope there will be one day that I can repay you for saving me."

i have experienced darkness before

some darkness felt peaceful, that i can fall asleep
some darkness felt painful, that i nearly cut my bedsheets through my nails
some darkness felt sorrowful, that i feel like i have infinite amount of tears i could produce
some darkness felt wrong, that i had been stuck in it for so long i forgot what was right
some darkness felt suffocating, that i barely remembered how to breathe

but the darkness that i am most scared of
is the darkness of emptiness
this darkness felt hollow,
i do not feel alive, yet i am moving
i do not feel anything, yet i am strongly feeling everything
every agony, pain, joy, i feel them all strongly
yet i feel nothing at all
i feel like i want to scream, but there would be no sounds from within
i am a ghost, in a human's body
and i do not know how long i would be hollow
this might be my silent call for help

I like how you are a free person.
You follow the beat of your own drum.
You listen to your emotions, and will not let anyone change it. You control it.
You have been through a lot, and I'm proud that you overcame all the problems that you had, almost alone.
I'm proud, and I'm thankful I got to know a person like you.

Thank you for letting me hear your life story.
Thank you for letting me into your life, even just the tiny part of it.
Thank you for spending time with me whenever we have the chance.
And most specially, thank you for all the lessons.

I can finally say that you're the greatest lesson in my life.