When I Die

To Amy

Love's what you make it.

You once said that there is fact, and there is fiction, and we should keep the two as seperate as we can. Or, you said, we'd mix the two up and the happiness of the real life fact would feel too dim when compared to the joys of fiction, and the sadness of real life fact would feel too heavy a burden compared to how easily fictional sadness can be killed.

I don't think that the dead hear us. That is my fact.

And I believe you can hear me, Amy. That is my fiction.

I haven't found much use of mixing fact and fiction, even before you said it, but this is one time I will. I know you won't read my words, Amy, but I believe you will. Call it my single trip away from sanity. The one quirk that I shouldn't have but do.

I still love you just as much, you see.

I wanted to visit your grave--I think I can call it that now. I wanted to kneel down and touch the faded white stone. I couldn't. Just like I couldn't do everything I always regret not doing.

It matters, but somehow it doesn't. If you can hear me, then it doesn't matter.

I still think about you, and never as a footnote. When I can't find anywhere else to go, I think of you.

Fact tells me that you are nothing more than the sum of my conscience, my wants, my psyche's happy place. You are a symbol for my head-shrink-cum-best-friend. In other words, a symbol for me.

You are all that, you know. But fact is an ineffectual and cold analyzer. It gives not a flying fuck about wants, needs, longing.

Never mind. Fact is not what I'm talking about today.

It's just that... I feel betrayed. Not just for myself, either. I feel--over and over--that we--not just you and I--were headed toward something pleasant, something vibrant, and then Fate, or whoever the fuck she calls herself now, suddenly switched gears. Changed her mind.

I don't want to sound this full of myself, but I can't help it: Loss is my life, you know. I lost the country I was born in; I lost my childhood and my bearings after Granny butchered them off piece by piece; I lost Guha, whom I worshipped to death; I lost you in the most horrible way I could, the worst way love can be seperated, and that cut me up so bad I'll probably never mend; I lost my childhood friends; I lost my father. I will lose my mind; I swear I feel that sometimes.

I don't dwell upon it a lot, I try to find happiness, and I do find it--at least false happiness. But sometimes it's just so hard, ma'am. Sometimes it all just clouds up and I feel nothing. Nothing.

I feared I would lose my sense of wonder, but I haven't.

Since I tried to kill myself, I felt I've been living on borrowed time. I don't feel that way now, but on days like today I don't know what I'm living for. I have no purpose. None. I'm not looking for love, I've been denied the right to do the only two things I honestly like--write and compose music, I haven't looked forward to a specific day ever since... well, ever since.

Birthdays and festivals come and go with me putting up those masks which don't even feel like masks anymore, but predetermined knee-jerk reactions. I will stand up and sing, perhaps make them laugh with a joke or two, and I will be everything I should be--would be--if nothing had gone this maddeningly wrong.

I once read that a man's worth is determined by how many people love him. And I don't mean love the way people love these days. I mean the kind of love I have for you, Amy.

How many real, living people love me that way?

What have I earned in this life yet? What is my worth? I will die a nobody. I will not be remembered. What have I accomplished? Nothing of consequence.

I remember thinking once that I am meant for something big, something great.

I guess I was wrong.

Someone said that you and I are one of the great stories he has ever read. I don't want any of it, doesn't he see? I don't want to be a part of this. I do not want you dead. I do not want to end up the way I did. I do not want to be me.

Someone else can have my story. I just want the kind of life I think I'm owed. I just want us--all of us--to have the kind of life I think we're owed.

You know, even now, when I sing a song about love, it's you I see. Not glorified by a blond mane dressed in white with glossy soft-focus lights, but just you as you were. And the image still falls short just like it always has.

When I see a girl eating grapes, I see you.

The irony is that I don't, for one moment, regret that I will always love you, even if it brings so much sadness. You are still the best part of my life; you brought nothing but joy in my life when you were here, and you asked for nothing but joy in return. I hope I made you as happy as you made me.

No, I don't regret loving you forever.

What I regret is that I will always miss you.

What I regret is that there's nothing you or I can do to change that.

If I have tears in the back of my throat now, they're not for the life we lost; they're for the life we should've had, but never did.

Happy birthday, love.

---KC.