In suffering, I think, we all choose death.
I go about my day to day activities. I make coffee in the morning and do the laundry and flash empty smiles to everyone. I’m just another pretty face. I’m just another pretty voice. Just another kid with talent who almost believed he was going somewhere. Does anyone see past my white-Crest smile? Can anyone really hear my thoughts and feelings and experiences and soul through my music? Am I really just another billboard boy and guitar slinging singer?
Do I mean anything to anyone at all?
No.
Not anymore.
But I used to.
Throughout my life, friends, family lovers, and enemies have come and gone. They’ll continue to come and go. I’ve came and left. But throughout all those years and all the people I’ve loved or kissed or slept with or hated, I’ve only bared my soul naked for two people. Throughout my twenty one years of life, I’ve only truly loved two people. Only truly trusted two people. Only been accepted for who I really am by two people.
When I met them, I didn’t even know who I was.
I was just living my life as I was expected to live it. I was so wrapped up in my schoolwork and homework and extracurricular activities and trivial family issues. I didn’t know that there could be a life beyond that. My boundaries were set and clear to me, but what I didn’t know then and what I know now is that there is a gate in those boundaries. A loophole. A doorway out. It’s hard to reach and a challenge to get to, but once you worked past it… The world became clearer, more vivid – brand new.
Kibo showed me that gate when I was fourteen.
We fell in lust in high school. Our romance sprung from the dying scent of roses as February drew to a close. We searched each other’s bodies then; finding a paradise within each other’s curves and skin that we had never felt before. I fell in love with him much later. We had been together for months with only each other’s bodies in mind. At long last I began to appreciate every little thing he did. Every little quirk and habit and thought and smile. I began to know him. And I began to love him. For reasons I still cannot fathom, he loved me too.
Our love was passionate and energetic. We rushed into a forced adulthood and bought an apartment in the city where we could always be together, even though we were still in high school. I think that was the start of all our troubles. We smashed our separate lives into one. We tried to become one. We wanted to be one. But the harder we tried, the more different we became.
Kibo and I had always been opposites. He knew he was gay from the start, but I had to learn it. He smiled, I frowned. I cleaned and organized while he lived in a chaos that I was strangely attracted to. He was rainbows and sunshine, and I was a stormy sky. Everything we did or liked was opposite. I thought this made us a nice pair with a good dynamic. He did too. Everyone did. But I guess there is a point where being too different begins to hurt.
In the end, what we were looking for was too different. We wanted something the other couldn’t provide. We knew it, but there was nothing we could do to change it. Such was life. Such was our life. Our personalities would never let us truly change, no matter how hard we tried. We were no good for each other. Our romance had to end.
It was fast-paced and loving and a great ride while it lasted. But it didn’t last. It wasn’t meant to last. It was too serious and passionate and too early in our lives to last. It was a high school romance – one too passionate and mature for its own good. It was, however, a great romance. One that belongs in a novel. But the thing about a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.
When we separated, neither of us looked back. We had no closure to look back upon. Our fond memories had to be locked away in our closets as skeletons if we ever wanted to survive and continue on with our lives.
But the harder I tried to forget, the more my demons of past passion came back to haunt me. I was lost in a void. New barriers broke through the ground to surround me. But society hadn’t made these new walls. I had. I made a cage around myself to protect myself and my heart. These were walls labeled Denial and Ignorance. Once again I became trapped; my world was dulled and unreal again. I felt so detached from pain and happiness and everything in between.
I tried to make myself believe that I didn’t need Kibo. Kibo who? I’ve never heard of him before.
But I couldn’t escape him anymore than I could escape from the turning earth. He was everywhere. He let me keep the apartment we had bought together. I’m not entirely sure if it was a sweet parting gift or some form of torture he wanted to inflect on me. Maybe it was a little of both.
In every nook and cranny of our apartment – well, my apartment – his prescence prevailed. The couch where we cuddled and sat on watching TV. The coffee table where he dumped his magazines and where I would straighten them again. The stove where we burnt countless batches of cookies together. The sink where he flushed down my drugs. The bathroom where he cried in and the bedroom closet he used to hide in. The carpets were stained with bleach and nail polish and acrylic paints. And then there was every spot we made love in. Every place where we hungered for each other and every place where I came and screamed his name as warm cum shot out from me. Ever inch of the apartment had been marked our territory through mind-blowing sex. I couldn’t help but be reminded of him as I continued to live there.
It was just when I was going to move out and run from my past and run from the door in my boundaries when Love of My Life Number Two came along. He was young. He was naïve. He had an innocence about him that my tainted soul wanted to take and make my own.
And that’s what scared me most. That’s what made me push him away. I was so afraid that he didn’t know what he was getting into. I saw myself in him. I thought I knew the romance that lay before him. I thought I saw how it would end – how hurt he’d be like I had been. He would play my old role, the very one that I was trying to forget the script to. He would be the new meat, never before been gay or in love. We would push our desires on each other only to discover that what we wanted wasn’t the same thing; never had been, and never would be. It would end like how it did between Kibo and me. I couldn’t put Code through that pain. I couldn’t see him hurt like that. And I could never go through it again.
So I distanced myself from him. I held him at arm’s length. I couldn’t afford to shed anymore tears. But he could. I soon learned what he sought was nothing like what Kibo had wanted. Though only still a boy yet, Code was wise beyond his years. He had an old soul. He wanted to love. That was it. He didn’t require to be loved in return. He just wanted to love me.
So I gave in to my deepest wishes. He came to live with me. The apartment that had once been clouded in a mist of memories with Kibo evaporated and was replaced with Code. Code’s prescence came to dominate the house with his bamboo plants and Chinese scrolls. The forks were slowly replaced with chopsticks and his quiet, humble, cautious personality soon filled all the cracks that reeked of Kibo. Code’s prescence came to dominate me as well.
The fog in my head cleared and I realized I could break through my boundaries once again into that brilliant place of life as long as Code’s hand held mine. Code’s love blew soft kisses onto all my wounds that I had been licking in a dark corner. He never asked what made those cuts and bruises. He saw my demons of the past floating around me, but he simply held me close and kept them away. Somehow, he understood that I had been hurt. That I had been hurting for a long, long time. But never once had he asked why or how.
Eventually I introduced Kibo to Code. In fragments and bits and pieces, I tried to reveal what had taken place in this apartment. My stories came out awkward and my memories unclear. But Code took it all in stride, smiling that little smile and nodding that little nod. Never expecting me to unbury my former romance and reopening all of my wounds. He smiled and waited patiently until I could tell him more. (That day never came.)
Our love was soft and sweet, like a fresh fruit from the garden that he dreamed of growing. Nothing was rushed this time. Everything fell into its place when it was time, since neither of us expected anything more than love. Hand-holding and jokes and soft laughs and late nights at the TV all came in due time. My life fell into a blissful repetition that seemed bright and anew each day.
We grew steadily older and started to walk the path of our futures. I chose to continue singing and playing music, a passion that I had stopped since Kibo left me. Code began teaching English to foreign Chinese immigrants. We lived two different lives, and let them melt together at their own pace. I eventually took up modeling as well, and then the cash really started rolling in.
But Code had humbled me. I was now a simple man with simple plans. I no longer wanted to buy everything and anything to satisfy a craving that Code did away with. I learned to appreciate the long work day, which only made my evening reunions with Code at home all the more delicious. Our dreams and interests were nothing alike, but we wrapped each other with them and let them lull us to sleep at night.
I was in love. I was completely in love. (Yet, to this day, I still think if Kibo were to call me then, just to say hello, I would have broke down and cried. I would have fallen in my topsy-turvy love with him again. I also think that to this day, Code knew this and accepted it. He was always a very accepting person.)
Over a time span of five long years, I did not think anything bad would happen. I had Code, and Code had me. I finally thought I had been given a gift to which I could hold on to. But I don’t think I deserve something like that anymore. I’m not sure what I did in a past life, but it must have been terrible, because nothing works out for me.
In the prime of his teaching career, Code was diagnosed with cancer. It was a bullet to our relationship that felt like a train wreck. I formed those barriers again; those walls named Denial and Ignorance. I tried to convince us both that it wouldn’t be true. Things like this always happened to someone else. It was then that I realized that we are all someone else to someone else.
We tried so hard to overcome this. Code saw every doctor that I cold afford. He went into extensive chemotherapy, but none of it did him any good. He was fated to die, and he accepted it. But I could not. I told him how he was a fighter. He had such an honorable spirit - he should have an honorable death.
‘To have been loved by you was an honor and a gift,’ he told me. ‘I will die knowing you loved me to the end. I believe that is a very honorable death.’
He was ready to die. He did not want anymore chemotherapy sessions. But I did. It was selfish, but I so badly wanted him to continue with his suffering in hopes of him living. I could not stand the thought of being alone again. I had been abandoned once, and I did not want it to happen again. But I think, in suffering, we all choose death.
His funeral was small and beautiful.
A perfect blend of ancient
In this life, I have learned we are all alone. Even though we surround ourselves with worldly possessions and loved ones, we are still very much alone. Everything will come and go, and no one can stop that. Nothing is permanent in life, except change. Nothing will last. It’s all fleeting.
Though it’s been harsh, I have realized this now. I accept it. We are truly alone. We are born into this world that way, and we will die that way. No one can truly share our thoughts and feelings. I believe that Code knew this from the beginning. I believe that Kibo knew this from his time with me. We are by ourselves, so we must enjoy each other’s company while we can.
Good or bad, we must enjoy it. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Nothing does. I accept this now. I finally understand.
We are all alone. It is so terrifying because it is true.
I accept this. I accept life. Now I can accept death. I will welcome him when he comes knocking on my door.
I am stronger and wiser than I have ever been. I am not afraid to die.
Thank you, Kibo and Code. I enjoyed your company. I hope that the world has enjoyed mine.
-A suicide note found on the famous rock star Allen ‘Ex’ Azele’s desk