Her warm touch awakened me from my deep sleep in the now empty ward. I could just manage to recognize the innocent smile on her face as she sat there silently smiling down upon me. I tried to get up but my weak body failed me. Her smile never left as she helped me to sit up. We hadn’t talked for almost half a year now, but she still looked as beautiful with her long silky black hair that fell perfectly without her trying. She hadn’t changed a bit since, still so caring, still so protective, sadly I had. At that moment, I finally realized that being true to one self in a world that is constantly trying to make you into something else was the greatest achievement that I would never achieve.
Two years ago, we were a loving couple, both living a happy and memorable life in Malaysia. We would spend the weekends together watching movies in the local cinema, I’d sit beside her with a box of popcorn while she’d snuggle up to me and tickle me once in a while to make sure that I was paying attention to the movie. We’d always be within an hour’s driving distance apart from each other and no matter where we adventured out into the world, we’d always come back into each other’s arms before the day ended to story each other of the exciting events that happened that day. Nothing in the world could be compared to my baby nothing could come between us and nothing could ever come above. She was my Juliet and I was her one and only Romeo, reality was a dream. A dream destined to shatter.
I had to leave Malaysia a year later to further my studies in a foreign country - Australia. She was torn in tears when I broke the news to her, but she supported me wholeheartedly with my decision as she kissed me goodbye at the busy airport terminal that night, promising to always keep in touch, praying that this distance wouldn’t be the reason to tear us apart.
I never knew that that day would be the last time that I’d see her. I would never have guessed that this move would affect more than just me. Since that day, a new chapter of my life began. Living in a foreign country, I was exposed to a whole new world, a world that I had never ever experienced in my whole entire life. People here kicked back and had fun throughout the weekdays playing pool with mates and then during the weekends they would have massive parties with alcohol by the poolside. This world seemed so surreal, yet I couldn’t wait to embrace this newfound freedom.
I was a typical 18 year old Asian teenager, who didn’t go out, didn’t drink alcohol, didn’t flirt with other girls and studied most of his time away, hence I didn’t have much of a social life. However, being the new kid in college always attracted the attention of the students in the same year level and so new people began to walk into my life. Justin was my first friend that I met during Chemistry class. He was a friendly and an open minded guy, although he wasn’t smart but he was surely social able with everyone in the college and pretty popular among the girls. He was always up for a party no matter the time and always dreamed of someday marrying a hot chick called Jessica Alba, whoever that was. He was the total opposite of me but he was my only friend in class and so he introduced me to his group of party people and it wasn’t long before I had found myself hanging around with his group of party people.
I still remember my first kick back session with his group of peers; it was definitely awkward as the only topics that they would talk about were girls, cars and gym routines. For the first time in my life, I felt total disconnected to society. It was then that I realized, I needed to adapt in order to survive in this new society, thus I began to go to the gym, I started reading on cars and I even started checking out other girls just so that I wouldn’t seem so different, so that I could at least feel a tad bit more accepted into the society I was in.
Months passed by and before I knew it, I was living my life by the pool with a bottle of beer in my right hand and a automobile magazine in my left. After going to the gym so much, I now had a perfect “V” figure that girls couldn’t get enough of and my knowledge in automobiles was enough for me to beat an intermediate mechanic while my cell would be on constant vibrate throughout the day. Life was the bomb.
As the saying goes, when you gain something, you always lose something. I gained a new life in a foreign place but in turn I unintentionally lost the life I used to have. One night, the love of my life decided she couldn’t take all the pain from my flirty attitude towards other girls anymore and choose to leave me behind. It didn’t hurt me as much in the start, but I guess love is a slow poison. As the days went by and the poison slowly sunk into my heart, I began to feel my lost.
I woke up one night from another hangover to find myself confronted by a stranger in the mirror. His bedroom was decorated with posters of hot chicks and Ferrari’s, but that wasn’t my room. He was wearing a pair of Playboy boxers, but they weren’t mine. He had huge muscles and the perfect body, but that wasn’t me. I slowly glanced up at his face. The face before me wasn’t mine at all, it had red cheeks from the all the alcohol and had a foul odor coming from him that made me want to puke. I totally freaked out, screaming as I dashed out of my room.
The living room I was in was filled not with books but with weights; this couldn’t be my place. I found myself once again lost without a trace. I ran back into “my” room and started ripping all the posters off the bedroom wall; one by one they fell to the ground. I was in fury as I strived to cleanse these foreign parts of me. I slashed at my wall with all my might, but suddenly something on the wall made me stop. It was a picture of me and her on the wall that was buried beneath all those posters. It stood proud and tall on the clear wall. Staring at that photo, I found myself feeling relaxed at the sight of something that was actually mine. I slowly sat back onto my bed and stared through the window opposite me into the dark wet streets. What have I become?
Staring down at the lonely streets, I saw a lady beneath the lamp post in the rain smiling at me with the same smile that my ex-girlfriend had. I could have sworn that the lady was her. I ran out of my apartment building at full sprint but to no avail, only an empty street awaited me. I stood there, with no place to go. The rain showered down upon me and soaked my shirt as I stared at the stranger before me in the clear puddle – myself.
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